← catalogue

Jock of the Bushveld

by Percy Fitzpatrick · English · Gutenberg #36951 · 728,118 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jock of the Bushveld
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Jock of the Bushveld

Author: Percy Fitzpatrick

Illustrator: E. Caldwell


        
Release date: August 2, 2011 [eBook #36951]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36951

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOCK OF THE BUSHVELD ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Jock of the Bushveld
By Sir Percy FitzPatrick
Illustrations by E. Caldwell
Published by Longmans, Green, and Co, London.
This edition dated 1922.
Jock of the Bushveld, by Sir Percy FitzPatrick.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
JOCK OF THE BUSHVELD, BY SIR PERCY FITZPATRICK.


PREFACE.

"Sonny, you kin reckon it dead sure, thar's something wrong 'bout a
thing that don't explain itself."

That was Old Rocky's advice, given three-and-twenty years ago--not
forgotten yet, but, in this instance, respectfully ignored.

It happened some years ago, and this was the way of it: the Fox of
Ballybotherem having served three generations--in his native Tipperary,
in Kaffraria, and in the Transvaal--seemed entitled to a rest; and when,
in the half-hour before `lights out,' which is the Little People's
particular own, the demand came from certain Autocrats of the Nightgown:
"Now, tell us something else!" it occurred to the Puzzled One to tell of
Jock's fight with the table leg.  And that is how the trouble began.
Those with experience will know what followed; and, for those less
fortunate, the modest demand of one, comfortably tucked up tailorwise,
and emphasising his points by excited hand-shakes with his toes, will
convey the idea: "It must be _all true_! and don't leave out
_anything_!"

To such an audience a story may be told a hundred times, but it must be
told, as Kipling says, "Just so!" that is, in the same way; because,
even a romance (what a three-year-old once excused as "only a play
tell") must be true--to itself!

Once Jock had taken the field it was not long before the narrator found
himself helped or driven over the pauses by quick suggestions from the
Gallery; but there were days of fag and worry when thoughts lagged or
strayed, and when slips were made, and then a vigilant and pitiless
memory swooped like the striking falcon on its prey.  There came a night
when the story was of the Old Crocodile, and one in the Gallery--one of
more exuberant fancy--seeing the gate open ran into the flower-strewn
field of romance and by suggestive questions and eager promptings helped
to gather a little posy: "And he caught the Crocodile by the tail,
didn't he?"  "And he hung on and fought him, didn't he?"  "And the Old
Crocodile flung him high into the air?  High!" and, turning to the two
juniors, added "quite as high as the house?"  And the narrator--
accessory by reason of a mechanical nod and an absent-minded "Yes"
passed on, thinking it could all be put right next time.  But there is
no escape from the `tangled web' when the Little People sit in judgment.
It was months later when retribution came.  The critical point of the
story was safely passed when--Oh; the irony and poetic justice of it--it
was the innocent tempter himself who laid his hand in solemn protest on
the narrator's shoulder and, looking him reproachfully in the eyes, said
"Dad!  You have left out the best part of all.  Don't you remember
how..."

And the description which followed only emphasises the present writer's
unfitness for the task he has undertaken.  In the text of the story and
in the illustration by my friend Mr Caldwell (who was himself subjected
to the same influence) there is left a loophole for fancy: it is open to
any one to believe that Jock is just beginning or just ending his aerial
excursion.  The Important People are not satisfied; but then the page is
not big enough to exhibit Jock at the top of that flight--of fancy!

From the date of that lesson it was apparent that reputations would
suffer if the story of Jock were not speedily embodied in some durable
and authoritative form, and during a long spell of ill health many of
the incidents were retold in the form of letters to the Little People.
Other Less Important Persons--grown-ups--read them and sometimes heard
them, and so it came about that the story of Jock was to be printed for
private circulation, for the Little People and their friends.  Then the
story was read in manuscript and there came still more ambitious
counsels, some urging the human story of the early days, others the wild
animal life of South Africa.  Conscious of many deficiencies the
narrator has left two great fields practically untouched, adhering to
the original idea--the story of Jock; and those who come into it, men
and animals, come in because of him and the life in which he played so
large a part.  The attempt to adapt the original letters to the symmetry
of a connected story involved, as one might have known, endless trouble
and changes, necessitating complete re-writing of most parts; and the
responsibility and work became still greater when, after a casual and
unforeseen meeting, my friend Mr Caldwell accepted the suggestion to
come out to South Africa and spend six months with us in order to study
the game in its native bush and to know the conditions of the life and
put that experience into the work of illustrating "Jock."

The writer is well aware that, from the above causes and one other,
there are grave inequalities in style and system, and in plane of phrase
and thought, in different parts of the book.  For this feature the `one
other' cause is alone put forward as a defence.  The story belongs to
the Little People, and their requirements were defined--"It must be _all
true_!  Don't leave out _anything_!"  It has been necessary to leave out
a great deal; but the other condition has been fully and fairly complied
with; for it is a true story from beginning to end.  It is not a diary:
incidents have been grouped and moved to get over the difficulty of
blank days and bad spells, but there is no incident of importance or of
credit to Jock which is not absolutely true.  The severest trial in this
connection was in the last chapter, which is bound to recall perhaps the
most famous and most cherished of all dog stories.  Much, indeed, would
have been sacrificed to avoid that; but it was unthinkable that, for any
reason, one should in the last words shatter the spell that holds Jock
dear to those for whom his life is chronicled--the spell that lies in `a
true story.'

Little by little the book has grown until it has come perilously near
the condition in which it might be thought to have Pretensions.  It has
none!  It is what it was: a simple record, compiled for the interest and
satisfaction of some Little People, and a small tribute of remembrance
and affection offered at the shrine of the old life and those who made
it--tendered in the hope that some one better equipped with
opportunities and leisure may be inspired to do justice to it and to
them for the sake of our native land.


CHAPTER ONE.

THE BACKGROUND.

Of the people who live lonely lives, on the veld or elsewhere, few do so
of their own free choice.  Some there are shut off from all their kind--
souls sheathed in some film invisible, through which no thrill of
sympathy may pass; some barred by their self-consciousness, heart hungry
still, who never learned in childhood to make friends; some have a
secret or a grief; some, thoughts too big or bad for comradeship.  But
most will charge to Fate the thoughtless choice, the chance, or hard
necessity, that drew or drove them to the life apart; they know the
lesson that was learned of old: "It is not good for man to be alone."

Go out among them, ever moving on, whose white bones mark the way for
others' feet--who shun the cities, living in the wilds, and move in
silence, self-contained.  Who knows what they think, or dream, or hope,
or suffer?  Who can know?  For speech among that hard-schooled lot is
but a half-remembered art.

Yet something you may guess, since with the man there often goes--his
dog; his silent tribute to The Book.  Oh, it's little they know of life
who cannot guess the secret springs of loneliness and love that prompt
the keeping of a trifling pet; who do not know what moves a man who
daily takes his chance of life and death--man whose "breath is in his
nostrils"--to lay his cheek against the muzzle of his comrade dog, and
in the trackless miles of wilderness feel he has a friend.  Something to
hold to; something to protect.

There was old Blake--"mad, quite mad," as everybody knew--of whom they
vaguely said that horses, hounds, coaches, covers, and all that goes
with old estates, were his--once.  We knew him poor and middle-aged.
How old to us!  Cheery and unpractical, with two old pointers and a
fowling-piece, and a heart as warm as toast.  We did not ask each
other's business there; and, judging by the dogs and gun, we put him
down as a `remittance man.'  But that, it seems, was wrong.  They were
his all.

He left no letters--a little pile of paper ash; no money and no food!
That was his pride.  He would not sell or give away his dogs!  That was
his love.  When he could not keep them it seemed time to go!  That was
his madness.  But before he went, remembering a friend in hospital, he
borrowed two cartridges and brought him in a brace of birds.  That was
old mad Blake, who `moved on' and took his dogs with him, because they
had always been together, and he could not leave their fate to chance.
So we buried him with one on either side, just as he would have liked
it!

There was Turner, who shot the crocodile that seized his dog, and
reckless of the others, swam in and brought the dog to land.

There was the dog that jumped in when his master slipped from the rock,
and, swimming beside him, was snapped down in his stead!  And there was
the boy who tried a rescue in the dark--when a rustle, yelp and growl
told that the lions had his dog--and was never seen again.

So it goes, and so it went, from year to year: a little showing now and
then, like the iceberg's tip, from which to guess the bulk below.

There was a Boy who went to seek his fortune.  Call him boy or man: the
years proved nothing either way!  Some will be boyish always; others
were never young: a few--most richly dowered few--are man and boy
together.  He went to seek his fortune, as boys will and should; no
pressure on him from about; no promise from beyond.  For life was easy
there, and all was pleasant, as it may be--in a cage.  `To-day' is sure
and happy; and there is no `to-morrow'--in a cage.

There were friends enough--all kind and true--and in their wisdom they
said: "Here it is safe: yonder all is chance, where many indeed are
called, but few--so few--are chosen.  Many have gone forth; some to
return, beaten, hopeless, and despised; some to fall in sight outside;
others are lost, we know not where; and ah! so few are free and well.
But the fate of numbers is unheeded still; for the few are those who
count, and lead; and those who follow do not think `How few,' but cry
`How strong!  How free!'  Be wise and do not venture.  Here it is safe:
there is no fortune there!"

But there was something stronger than the things he knew, around,
without, beyond--the thing that strove within him: that grew and grew,
and beat and fought for freedom: that bade him go and walk alone and
tell his secret on the mountain slopes to one who would not laugh--a
little red retriever; that made him climb and feel his strength, and
find an outlet for what drove within.  And thus the end was sure; for of
all the voices none so strong as this!  And only those others reached
him that would chime with it; the gentle ones which said: "We too
believe," and one, a stronger, saying: "Fifty years ago I did it.  I
would do it now again!"

So the Boy set out to seek his fortune, and did not find it; for there
was none in the place where he sought.  Those who warned him were--in
the little--right: yet was he--in the greater--right too!  It was not
given to him as yet to know that fortune is not in time or place or
things; but, good or bad, in the man's own self for him alone to find
and prove.

Time and place and things had failed him; still was effort right; and,
when the first was clear beyond all question, it was instinct and not
knowledge bade him still go on, saying: "Not back to the cage.  Anything
but that!"

When many days had passed, it was again a friend who met him, saying:
"Commonsense is not cowardice.  You have made a mistake: repair it while
you may.  I have seen and know: there is nothing here.  Come back with
me, and all will be made easy."  And answer, in reason, there was none;
for the little truth was all too plain, and the greater not yet seen.
But that which had swelled to bursting and had fought within for freedom
called out: "Failure is the worst of all!"  And the blind and struggling
instinct rose against all knowledge and all reason.  "Not back to the
cage!  Not that!"

And the heart that had once been young spoke up for Auld Lang Syne: the
old eyes softened and dropped: "God speed you, Boy--Good-bye!"  And as
the mail-coach rumbled off the Boy put up his head--to try again.

The days passed, and still there was no work to do.  For, those who were
there already--hardened men and strong, pioneers who had roughed it--
were themselves in straitened case, and it was no place for boys.

So the Boy moved on again, and with him a man in, equal plight, but,
being a man, a guide and comfort to the Boy, and one to lead him on the
way.  Hungry, they walked all day; yet when the sun went down and light
began to fail the place where work and food and sleep should be was
still far off.  The mountain tracks were rough and all unknown; the
rivers many, cold and swift: the country wild; none lived, few ever
passed, that way.  When night closed in the Boy walked on in front, and
the man lagged wearily, grumbling at their luck.  In the valley at the
mountain foot they came at midnight upon water, black and still, between
them and the cabin's lights beyond; and there the man lay down.  Then
the Boy, turning in his anger, bade him come on; and, dragging him out
upon the further bank, had found--unknowing--some little of the fortune
he had come to seek.

Still, morning brought no change; still, was there no work to do.  So
the man gave up, and sagging back, was lost.  And the Boy went on alone.

Rough and straight-spoken, but kindly men and true, were those he came
among.  What they could they did: what they had they gave.  They made
him free of board and bed; and, kinder still, now and then made work for
him to do, knowing his spirit was as theirs and that his heart cried
out: "Not charity, but work!  Give me work!"  But that they could not
do, for there was no work they could not do themselves.

Thus the days and weeks went by.  Willing, but unused to fend for
himself--unfit by training for the wild rough life, heart and energy all
to waste, the little he did know of no value there--the struggle with
the ebbing tide went on; it was the wearing hopeless fight against that
which one cannot grapple, and cannot even see.  There was no work to be
done.  A few days here and there; a little passing job; a helping hand
disguised; and then the quest again.  They were all friendly--but, with
the kindly habit of the place: it told the tale of hopelessness too
well.  They did not even ask his name; it made no difference.

Then came a day when there was nowhere else to try.  Among the lounging
diggers at their week-end deals he stood apart--too shy, too proud to
tell the truth; too conscious of it to trust his voice; too hungry to
smile as if he did not care!  And then a man in muddy moleskins, with
grave face, brown beard, and soft blue eyes, came over to him, saying
straight: "Boy, you come along o' me!"  And he went.

It was work--hard work.  But the joy of it!  Shovelling in the icy
water, in mud and gravel, and among the boulders, from early dawn to
dark.  What matter?  It was work.  It was not for hire, but just to help
one who had helped him; to `earn his grub' and feel he was a man, doing
the work of his friend's partner, `who was away.'

For three full weeks the Boy worked on; grateful for the toil; grateful
for the knowledge gained; most grateful that he could by work repay a
kindness.  And then the truth came out!  The kindly fiction fell away as
they sat and rested on the day of rest.  "The claim could not stand two
white men's grub" had fallen from the man, accounting for his partner's
absence.

It was the simple and unstudied truth and calm unconsciousness of where
it struck that gave the thrust its force; and in the clear still air of
the Sunday morning the Boy turned hot and cold and dizzy to think of his
folly, and of the kindness he had so long imposed upon.  It was a little
spell before his lips would smile, and eyes and voice were firm enough
to lie.  Then he said gently: If he could be spared--he had not liked to
ask before, but now the floods were over and the river turned perhaps it
could be managed--he would like to go, as there were letters waiting,
and he expected news.

Up the winding pathway over rocky ledge and grassy slope, climbing for
an hour to the pass, the toil and effort kept the hot thoughts under.
At the top the Boy sat down to rest.  The green rock-crested mountains
stood like resting giants all around: the rivers, silvered by the sun,
threaded their ways between: the air was clear, and cool, and still.
The world was very beautiful from there.

Far, far below--a brownish speck beside the silver streak--stood the
cabin he had left.  And, without warning, all came back on him.  What he
had mastered rose beyond control.  The little child that lies hidden in
us all reached out--as in the dark--for a hand to hold; and there was
none.  His arms went up to hide the mocking glory of the day, and, face
buried in the grass, he sobbed: "Not worth my food!"

Science tells that Nature will recoup herself by ways as well defined as
those that rule mechanics.  The blood flows upward--and the brain's
awhirl; the ebb-tide sets--and there is rest.  Whatever impulse sways
the guiding hand, we know that often when we need it most there comes
relief; gently, unbidden, unobserved.

The Boy slept, and there was peace awhile.  Then came faint echoes of
the waking thoughts--odd words shot out, of hope and resolution;
murmured names of those at home.  Once his hand went out and gently
touched the turf, reaching for the friend and comrade of the past--one
who knew his every mood, had heard his wildest dreams described, had
seen him, hot-eyed, breathless, struggling to escape the cage; one to
whom the boyish soul was often bared in foolish confidence; one who
could see and hear and feel, yet never tell--a little red retriever left
at home; and the boy stirred and sighed, for answer to the soft brown
eyes.

No!  It is not good for man to be alone.  A wisp of drifting cloud came
by, a breath of cooler air, and the fickle spirit of the mountain
changed the day as with a wand.  The Boy woke up shivering, dazed,
bewildered: the mountain of his dreams had vanished; and his dog was not
there!  The cold driving mist had blotted out the world.  Stronger and
stronger grew the wind, driving the damp cold through and through; for
on the bleak plateau of the mountain nothing broke its force.

Pale and shaken, and a little stiff, he looked about; then slowly faced
the storm.  It had not struck him to turn back.

The gusts blew stronger, and through the mist came rain, in single
stinging drops--portents of the greater storm.  Slowly, as he bent to
breast it, the chilled blood warmed, and when the first thunderclap
split overhead, and lost itself in endless roars and rumblings in the
kloofs and hills around, there came a warmth about his heart and a light
into his eye--mute thanksgiving that here was something he could battle
with and be a man again.

On the top of the world the storms work all their fury.  Only there come
mist and wind and rain, thunder and lightning and hail together--the
pitiless terrible hail: there, where the hare hiding in the grass may
know it is the highest thing in all God's world, and nearest to the
storm--the one clear mark to draw the lightning--and, knowing, scurries
to the sheltered slopes.

But the Boy pressed on--the little path a racing stream to guide him.
Then in the one group of ghostly, mist-blurred rocks he stopped to
drink; and, as he bent--for all the blackness of the storm--his face
leaped out at him, reflected for one instant in the shallow pool; the
blue-white flame of lightning, blinding his aching eyes, hissed down;
the sickening smell of brimstone spread about; and crashing thunder
close above his head left him dazed and breathless.

Heedless of the rain, blinking the blackness from his eyes, he sat still
for head to clear, and limbs to feel their life again; and, as he
waited, slowly there came upon a colder stiller air that other roar, so
far, so dull, so uniform; so weird and terrifying--the voice of the
coming hail.

Huddled beneath the shelving rock he watched the storm sweep by with
awful battering din that swamped and silenced every other sound--the
tearing, smashing hail that seemed to strip the mountain to its very
bone.

Oh! the wanton fury of the hail; the wild, destructive charge of hordes
of savage cavalry; the stamping, smashing sweep along the narrow strip
where all the fury concentrates; the long black trail of death and
desolation!  The birds and beasts, the things that creep and fly, all
know the portents, and all flee before it, or aside.  But in the
darkness--in the night or mist--the slow, the weak, the helpless, and
the mothers with their young--for them is little hope.

The dense packed column swept along, ruthless, raging, and unheeding,
overwhelming all...  A sudden failing of its strength, a little
straggling tail, and then--the silence!

The sun came out; the wind died down; light veils of mist came slowly
by--bits of floating gossamer--and melted in the clear, pure air.

The Boy stepped out once more.  Miles away the black column of the
falling hail sped its appointed course.  Under his feet, where all had
been so green and beautiful, was battered turf, for the time transformed
into a mass of dazzling brilliants, where jagged ice-stones caught the
sunlight on their countless facets, and threw it back in one fierce
flashing glare, blinding in its brilliance.

On the glittering surface many things stood out.

In the narrow pathway near the spring a snake lay on its back, crushed
and broken; beyond it, a tortoise, not yet dead, but bruised and
battered through its shell; then a partridge--poor unprotected thing--
the wet feathers lying all around, stripped as though a hawk had
stricken it, and close behind it all the little brood; and further
afield lay something reddish-brown--a buck--the large eyes glazed, an
ooze of blood upon its lips and nose.  He stooped to touch it, but drew
back: the dainty little thing was pulp.

All striving for the sheltering rocks; all caught and stricken by the
ruthless storm; and he, going on to face it, while others fled before--
he, blindly fighting on--was spared.  Was it luck?  Or was there
something subtle, more?  He held to this, that more than chance had
swayed the guiding hand of fate--that fortune holds some gifts in store
for those who try; and faith resurgent moved him to a mute Te Deum, of
which no more reached the conscious brain than: "It is good to be alive!
But... better _so_ than in the cage."

Once more, a little of the fortune that he had come to seek!

At sunset, passing down the long rough gorge, he came upon one battling
with the flood to save his all--the white man struggling with the
frightened beasts; the kaffir swept from off his feet; the mad
bewildered oxen yielding to the stream and heading downwards towards the
falls--and in their utmost need the Boy swam in and helped!

And there the long slow ebb was stayed: the Boy was worth his food.

But how recall the life when those who made it set so little store by
all that passed, and took its ventures for their daily lot; when those
who knew it had no gift or thought to fix the colours of the fading
past: the fire of youth; the hopes; the toil; the bright illusions gone!
And now, the Story of a Dog to conjure up a face, a name, a voice, or
the grip of a friendly hand!  And the half-dreamed sound of the tramping
feet is all that is left of the live procession long since passed: the
young recruits; the laggards and the faint; the few who saw it through;
the older men--grave-eyed, thoughtful, unafraid--who judged the future
by the battered past, and who knew none more nor less than man--
unconscious equals of the best and least; the grey-hued years; the
thinning ranks; the summons answered, as they had lived--alone.  The
tale untold; and, of all who knew it, none left to picture now the life,
none left to play a grateful comrade's part, and place their record on a
country's scroll--the kindly, constant, nameless Pioneers!


CHAPTER TWO.

INTO THE BUSHVELD.

"Distant hills are always green," and the best gold further on.  That is
a law of nature--human nature--which is quite superior to facts; and
thus the world moves on.

So from the Lydenburg Goldfields prospectors `humping their swags' or
driving their small pack-donkeys spread afield, and transport-riders
with their long spans and rumbling waggons followed, cutting a wider
track where traders with winding strings of carriers had already
ventured on.  But the hunters had gone first.  There were great hunters
whose names are known; and others as great who missed the accident of
fame; and after them hunters who traded, and traders who hunted.  And so
too with prospectors, diggers, transport-riders and all.

Between the goldfields and the nearest port lay the Bushveld, and game
enough for all to live on.

Thus, all were hunters of a sort, but the great hunters--the hunters of
big game--were apart; we were the smaller fry, there to admire and to
imitate.

Trophies, carried back with pride or by force of habit, lay scattered
about, neglected and forgotten, round the outspans, the tents of lone
prospectors, the cabins of the diggers, and the grass wayside shanties
of the traders.  How many a `record' head must have gone then, when none
had thought of time or means to save them!  Horns and skins lay in
jumbled heaps in the yards or sheds of the big trading stores.  The
splendid horns of the Koodoo and Sable, and a score of others only less
beautiful, could be seen nailed up in crude adornment of the roughest
walls; nailed up, and then unnoticed and forgotten!  And yet not quite!
For although to the older hands they were of no further interest, to the
new-comer they spoke of something yet to see, and something to be done;
and the sight set him dreaming of the time when he too would go
a-hunting and bring his trophies home.

Perched on the edge of the Berg, we overlooked the wonder-world of the
Bushveld, where the big game roamed in thousands and the "wildest tales
were true."  Living on the fringe of a hunter's paradise, most of us
were drawn into it from time to time, for shorter or longer spells, as
opportunity and our circumstances allowed; and little by little one got
to know the names, appearances, and habits of the many kinds of game
below.  Long talks in the quiet nights up there under waggons, in grass
shelters in the woods, or in the wattle-and-daub shanties of the
diggers, where men passed to and fro and swapped lies, as the polite
phrase went, were our `night's entertainments,' when younger hands might
learn much that was useful and true, and more that was neither.

It was a school of grown-up schoolboys; no doubt a hard one, but it had
its playground side, and it was the habit of the school to `drop on to'
any breach of the unwritten laws, to `rub in' with remorseless good
humour the mistakes that were made, and to play upon credulity with a
shamelessness and nerve quite paralysing to the judgment of the
inexperienced.  Yet, with it all, there was a kindliness and quick
instinct of `fair doos' which tempered the wind and, in the main, gave
no one more than was good for him.

There the new boy had to run the gauntlet, and, if without a watchful
instinct or a friendly hint, there was nothing to warn him of it.  When
Faulkner--dragged to the piano--protested that he remembered nothing but
a mere `morceau,' he was not conscious of transgression, but a delighted
audience caught up the word, and thenceforth he was known only as
`Ankore'--Harry the Sailor having explained that `more so' was a
recognised variant.

"Johnny-come-lately's got to learn" was held to be adequate reason for
letting many a beginner buy his experience, while those who had been
through it all watched him stumble into the well-known pitfalls.  It
would no doubt have been a much more comfortable arrangement all round
had there been a polite ignoring of each other's blunders and
absurdities.  But that is not the way of schools where the spirit of fun
plays its useful part; and, after all, the lesson well `rubbed in' is
well remembered.

The new assayer, primed by us with tales of Sable Antelope round Macmac
Camp, shot old Jim Hill's only goat, and had to leave the carcase with a
note of explanation--Jim being out when he called.  What he heard from
us when he returned, all prickly with remorse and shame, was a liberal
education; but what he remembers best is Jim's note addressed that
evening to our camp:

"Boys!  Jim Hill requests your company to dinner to-morrow, Sunday!"

"Mutton!"

As the summer spent itself, and whispers spread around of new strikes
further on, a spirit of restlessness--a touch of trek fever--came upon
us, and each cast about which way to try his luck.  Our camp was the
summer headquarters of two transport-riders, and when many months of
hard work, timber-cutting on the Berg, contracting for the Companies,
pole-slipping in the bush, and other things, gave us at last a `rise,'
it seemed the natural thing to put it all into waggons and oxen, and go
transport-riding too.

The charm of a life of freedom and complete independence--a life in
which a man goes as and where he lists, and carries his home with him--
is great indeed; but great too was the fact that hunting would go with
it.

How the little things that mark a new departure stamp themselves
indelibly on the memory!  A flower in the hedgerow where the roads
divide will mark the spot in one's mind for ever; and yet a million
more, before and after, and all as beautiful, are passed unseen.  In
memory, it is all as fresh, bright and glorious as ever: only the years
have gone.  The start, the trek along the plateau, the crystal streams,
the ferns and trees, the cool pure air; and, through and over all, the
quite intoxicating sense of freedom!  Then came the long slow climb to
Spitzkop where the Berg is highest and where our ascent began.  For
there, with Africa's contrariness, the highest parts banked up and
buttressed by gigantic spurs are most accessible from below, while the
lower edges of the plateau are cut off sheer like the walls of some
great fortress.  There, near Spitzkop, we looked down upon the promised
land; there, stood upon the outmost edge, as a diver on his board, and
paused and looked and breathed before we took the plunge.

It is well to pitch one's expectations low, and so stave off
disappointments.  But counsels of perfection are wasted on the young,
and when accident combines with the hopefulness of youth to lay the
colours on in all their gorgeousness, what chance has Wisdom?

"See here, young feller!" said Wisdom, "don't go fill yourself up with
tomfool notions 'bout lions and tigers waitin' behind every bush.  You
won't see one in a twelvemonth!  Most like you won't see a buck for a
week!  You don't know what to do, what to wear, how to walk, how to
look, or what to look for; and you'll make as much noise as a traction
engine.  This ain't open country: it's bush; they can see and hear, and
you can't.  An' as for big game, you won't see any for a long while yet,
so don't go fool yourself!"

Excellent!  But fortune in a sportive mood ordained that the very first
thing we saw as we outspanned at Saunderson's on the very first day in
the Bushveld, was the fresh skin of a lion stretched out to dry.  What
would the counsels of Solomon himself have weighed against that wet
skin?

Wisdom scratched its head and stared: "Well, I am completely sugared!"

Of course it was a fluke.  No lions had been seen in the locality for
several years; but the beginner, filled with all the wildest
expectations, took no heed of that.  If the wish be father to the
thought, then surely fact may well beget conviction.  It was so in this
case, at any rate, and thus not all the cold assurances of Wisdom could
banish visions of big game as plentiful as partridges.

A party had set out upon a tiger hunt to clear out one of those
marauders who used to haunt the kloofs of the Berg and make descents
upon the Kaffir herds of goats and sheep; but there was a special
interest in this particular tiger, for he had killed one of the white
hunters in the last attempt to get at him a few weeks before.  Starting
from the store, the party of men and boys worked their way towards the
kloof, and the possibility of coming across a lion never entered their
heads.  No notice was taken of smaller game put up from time to time as
they moved carelessly along; a rustle on the left of the line was
ignored, and Bill Saunderson was as surprised as Bill ever could be to
see a lion facing him at something like six or seven yards.  The lion,
with head laid level and tail flicking ominously, half crouched for its
spring.  Bill's bullet glanced along the skull, peeling off the skin.
"It was a bad shot," he said afterwards, in answer to the beginner's
breathless questions.  "He wasn't hurt: just sank a little like a
pointer when you check him; but before he steadied up again I took for
the nose and got him.  You see," he added thoughtfully, "a lion's got no
forehead: it is all hair."

That was about all he had to say; but, little store as he may have set
on it, the tip was never forgotten and proved of much value to at least
one of our party years afterwards.  To this day the picture of a lion
brings up that scene--the crouching beast, faced by a man with a long
brown beard, solemn face, and clear unfaltering eyes; the swift yet
quiet action of reloading; and the second shot an inch or so lower,
because "a lion's got no forehead: it's all hair."

The shooting of a lion, fair and square, and face to face, was the Blue
Riband of the Bush, and no detail would have seemed superfluous; but
Bill, whose eye nothing could escape, had, like many great hunters, a
laggard tongue.  Only now and then a look of grave amusement lighted up
his face to show he recognised the hungry enthusiasm and his own
inability to satisfy it.  The skin with the grazed stripe along the
nose, and the broken skull, were handled and looked at many times, and
the story was pumped from every Kaffir--all voluble and eager, but none
eye-witnesses.  Bob, the sociable and more communicative, who had been
nearest his brother, was asked a hundred questions, but all he had to
say was that the grass was too long for him to see what happened: he
reckoned that it was "a pretty near thing after the first shot; but
Bill's all right!"

To me it was an absurd and tiresome affectation to show interest in any
other topic, and when, during that evening, conversation strayed to
other subjects, it seemed waste of time and priceless opportunity.  Bob
responded good-naturedly to many crude attempts to head them back to the
entrancing theme, but the professional interest in rates, loads, rivers,
roads, disease, drought, and `fly,' was strong in the older
transport-riders, as it should have been, but, for the time at least,
was not, in me.  If diplomacy failed, however, luck was not all out; for
when all the pet subjects of the road had been thrashed out, and it was
about time to turn in, a stray question brought the reward of patience.

"Have you heard if Jim reached Durban all right?"

"Yes!  Safely shipped."

"You got some one to take him right through?"

"No!  A Dutchman took him to Lydenburg, and I got Tom Hardy, going back
empty, to take him along from there."

"What about feeding?"

"I sent some goats," said Bob, smiling for a moment at some passing
thought, and then went on: "Tom said he had an old span that wouldn't
mind it.  We loaded him up at Parker's, and I cleared out before he got
the cattle up.  But they tell me there was a gay jamboree when it came
to inspanning; and as soon as they got up to the other waggons and the
young bullocks winded Jim, they started off with their tails up--a
regular stampede, voorloopers and drivers yelling like mad, all the
loose things shaking out of the waggons, and Tom nearly in a fit from
running, shouting and swearing."

Judging by the laughter, there was only one person present who did not
understand the joke, and I had to ask--with some misgiving--who was this
Jim who needed so much care and feeding, and caused such a scare.

There was another burst of laughter as they guessed my thoughts, and it
was Bob who answered me: "Only a lion, lad--not a wild man or a lunatic!
Only a young lion!  Sold him to the Zoo, and had to deliver him in
Durban."

"Well, you fairly took me in with the name!"

"Oh!  Jim?  Well that's his pet name.  His real name is Dabulamanzi.
Jim, my hunting boy, caught him, so we call him Jim out of compliment,"
he added with a grin.  "But Jim called him Dabulamanzi, also out of
compliment, and I think that was pretty good for a nigger."

"You see," said Bob, for the benefit of those who were not up in local
history, "Dabulamanzi, the big fighting General in the Zulu War, was
Jim's own chief and leader; and the name means `The one who conquers the
waters.'"

Then one of the others exclaimed: "Oh!  Of course, that's how you got
him, isn't it: caught him in a river?  Tell us what did happen, Bob.
What's the truth of it?  It seemed a bit steep as I heard it."

"Well, it's really simple enough.  We came right on to the lioness
waiting for us, and I got her; and then there were shouts from the boys,
and I saw a couple of cubs, pretty well grown, making off in the grass.
This boy Jim legged it after one of them, a cub about as big as a
Newfoundland dog--not so high, but longer.  I followed as fast as I
could, but he was a big Zulu and went like a buck, yelling like mad all
the time.  We were in the bend of one of the long pools down near the
Komati, and when I got through the reeds the cub was at the water's edge
facing Jim, and Jim was dancing around heading it off with only one
light stick.  As soon as it saw us coming on, the cub took to the water,
and Jim after it.  It was as good as a play.  Jim swam up behind, and
putting his hand on its head ducked it right under: the cub turned as it
came up and struck out at him viciously, but he was back out of reach:
when it turned again to go Jim ducked it again, and it went on like that
six or eight times, till the thing was half drowned and had no more
fight in it.  Then Jim got hold of it by the tail and swam back to us,
still shouting and quite mad with excitement.

"Of course," added Bob with a wag of his head, "you can say it was only
a cub; but it takes a good man to go up naked and tackle a thing like
that, with teeth and claws to cut you into ribbons."

"Was Jim here to-day?"  I asked, as soon as there was an opening.  Bob
shook his head with a kindly regretful smile.  "No, Sonny, not here;
you'd 'a' heard him.  Jim's gone.  I had to sack him.  A real fine
nigger, but a terror to drink, and always in trouble.  He fairly wore me
right out."

We were generally a party of half a dozen--the owners of the four
waggons, a couple of friends trading with Delagoa, a man from Swaziland,
and--just then--an old Yankee hunter-prospector.  It was our holiday
time, before the hard work with loads would commence, and we dawdled
along feeding up the cattle and taking it easy ourselves.

It was too early for loads in the Bay, so we moved slowly and hunted on
the way, sometimes camping for several days in places where grass and
water were good; and that lion skin was the cause of many
disappointments to me.  Never a bush or ant-heap, never a donga or a
patch of reeds, did I pass for many days after that without the
conviction that something was lurking there.  Game there was in plenty,
no doubt, but it did not come my way.  Days went by with, once or twice,
the sight of some small buck just as it disappeared, and many times, the
noise of something in the bush or the sound of galloping feet.  Others
brought their contributions to the pot daily, and there seemed to be no
reason in the world why I alone should fail--no reason except sheer bad
luck!  It is difficult to believe you have made mistakes when you do not
know enough to recognise them, and have no extent your own ignorance;
and then bad luck is such an easy and such a flattering explanation!  If
I did not go so far on the easy road of excuse-making as to put all the
failures down to bad luck, perhaps some one else deserves the credit.

One evening as we were lounging round the camp fire, Robbie, failing to
find a soft spot for his head on a thorn log, got up reluctantly to
fetch his blankets, exclaiming with a mock tragic air:

"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set
it right."

We knew Robbie's way.  There were times when he would spout heroics,
suggested by some passing trifle, his own face a marvel of solemnity the
whole time, and only the amused expression in his spectacled grey eyes
to show he was poking fun at himself.  An indulgent smile, a chuckle,
and the genial comment "Silly ass!" came from different quarters; for
Robbie was a favourite.  Only old Rocky maintained his usual gravity.

As Robbie settled down again in comfort, the old man remarked in level
thoughtful tones: "I reckon the feller as said that was a waster, he
chucked it!"  There was a short pause in which I, in my ignorance, began
to wonder if it was possible that Rocky did not know the source; or did
he take the quotation seriously?  Then Robbie answered in mild protest:
"It was a gentleman of the name of Hamlet who said it."

"Well, you can bet he was no good, anyhow," Rocky drawled out.  "`Jus'
my luck!' is the waster's motto!"

"They do say he was mad," Robbie replied, as his face twitched with a
pull-your-leg expression, "but he got off a lot of first-class things
all the same--some of the best things ever said."

"I da' say; they mostly can.  But a man as sets down and blames his luck
is no good anyhow.  He's got no sand, and got no sense, and got no
honesty!  It ain't the time's wrong: it's the man!  It ain't the job's
too big: it's the man's too little!"

"You don't believe in luck at all, Rocky?"  I ventured to put in.

"I don't say thar's no such thing as luck--good and bad; but it ain't
the explanation o' success an' failure--not by a long way.  No, sirree,
luck's just the thing any man'd like ter believe is the reason for his
failure and another feller's success.  But it ain't so.  When another
man pulls off what you don't, the first thing you got ter believe is
it's your own fault; and the last, it's his luck.  And you jus' got ter
wade in an' find out whar you went wrong, an' put it right, 'thout any
excuses an' explanations."

"But, Rocky, explanations aren't always excuses, and sometimes you
really have to give them!"

"Sonny, you kin reckon it dead sure thar's something wrong 'bout a thing
that don't explain itself; an' one explanation's as bad as two
mistakes--it don't fool anybody worth speaking of, 'cept yerself.  You
find the remedy; you can leave other folks put up the excuses."

I was beaten.  It was no use going on, for I knew he was right.  I
suppose the other fellows also knew whom he was getting at, but they
said nothing; and the subject seemed to have dropped, when Rocky,
harking back to Robbie's quotation, said, with a ghost of a smile: "I
reckon ef that sharp o' your'n hed ter keep the camp in meat we'd go
pretty nigh hungry."

But it seemed a good deal to give up all at once--the bad luck, the
excuses and explanations, and the comfort they afforded; and I could not
help thinking of that wretched wrong-headed stembuck that had actually
allowed me to pass it, and then cantered away behind me.

Rocky, known, liked and respected by all, yet intimate with none, was
`going North'--even to the Zambesi, it was whispered--but no one knew
where or why.  He was going off alone, with two pack-donkeys and not
even a boy for company, on a trip of many hundreds of miles and
indefinite duration.  No doubt he had an idea to work out; perhaps a
report of some trader or hunter or even native was his pole-star: most
certainly he had a plan, but what it was no living soul would know.
That was the way of his kind.  With them there was no limit in time or
distance, no hint of purpose or direction, no home, no address, no
`people'; perhaps a partner somewhere or a chum, as silent as
themselves, who would hear some day--if there was anything to tell.

Rocky had worked near our camp on the Berg.  I had known him to nod to,
and when we met again at one of the early outspans in the Bush and
offered a lift for him and his packs he accepted and joined us, it being
still a bit early to attempt crossing the rivers with pack-donkeys.  It
may be that the `lift' saved his donkeys something on the roughest roads
and in the early stages; or it may be that we served as a useful screen
for his movements, making it difficult for any one else to follow his
line and watch him.  Anyway, he joined us in the way of those days: that
is, we travelled together and as a rule we grubbed together; yet each
cooked for himself and used his own stores, and in principle we
maintained our separate establishments.  The bag alone was common; each
man brought what game he got and threw it into the common stock.

The secret of agreement in the veld is--complete independence!  Points
of contact are points of friction--nowhere more so; and the safest plan
is, each man his own outfit and each free to feed or sleep or trek as
and when he chooses.  I have known partners and friends who would from
time to time move a trek apart, or a day apart, and always camp apart
when they rejoined; and so remain friends.

Rocky--in full, Rocky Mountain Jack--had another name, but it was known
to few besides the Mining Commissioner's clerk who registered his
licences from time to time.  "In the Rockies whar I was raised" is about
the only remark having deliberate reference to his personal history
which he was known to have made; but it was enough on which to found the
name by which we knew him.

What struck me first about him was the long Colt's revolver, carried on
his hip; and for two days this `gun,' as he called it, conjured up
visions of Poker Flat and Roaring Camp, Jack Hamlin and Yuba Bill of
cherished memory; and then the inevitable question got itself asked:

"Did you ever shoot a man, Rocky?"

"No, Sonny," he drawled gently, "never hed ter use it yet!"

"It looks very old.  Have you had it long?"

"Jus' 'bout thirty years, I reckon!"

"Oh!  Seems a long time to carry a thing without using it!"

"Waal," he answered half absently, "thet's so.  It's a thing you don't
want orfen--but when you do, you want it derned bad!"

Rocky seemed to me to have stepped into our life out of the pages of
Bret Harte.  For me the glamour of romance was cast by the Master's
spell over all that world, and no doubt helped to make old Rocky
something of a hero in the eyes of youth; but such help was of small
account, for the cardinal fact was Rocky himself.  He was a man.

There did not seem to be any known region of the earth where prospectors
roam that he had not sampled, and yet whilst gleaning something from
every land, his native flavour clung to him unchanged.  He was silent by
habit and impossible to draw; not helpful to those who looked for short
cuts, yet kindly and patient with those who meant to try; he was not to
be exploited, and had an illuminating instinct for what was not genuine.
He had `no use for short weight'--and showed it!

I used to watch him in the circle round the fire at nights, his face
grave, weather-stained and wrinkled, with clear grey eyes and long brown
beard, slightly grizzled then--watch and wonder why Rocky, experienced,
wise and steadfast, should--at sixty--be seeking still.  Were the prizes
so few in the prospector's life? or was there something wanting in him
too?  Why had he not achieved success?

It was not so clear then that ideals differ.  Rocky's ideal was the
life--not the escape from it.  There was something--sentiment,
imagination, poetry, call it what you will--that could make common
success seem to him common indeed and cheap!  To follow in a new rush,
to reap where another had sown, had no charm for him.  It may be that an
inborn pride disliked it; but it seems more likely that it simply did
not attract him.  And if--as in the end I thought--Rocky had taken the
world as it is and backed himself against it--living up to his ideal,
playing a `lone hand' and playing it fair in all conditions, treading
the unbeaten tracks, finding his triumph in his work, always moving on
and contented so to end: the crown, "He was a man!"--then surely Rocky's
had achieved success!

That is Rocky, as remembered now!  A bit idealised?  Perhaps so: but who
can say!  In truth he had his sides and the defects of his qualities,
like every one else; and it was not every one who made a hero of him.
Many left him respectfully alone; and something of their feeling came to
me the first time I was with him, when a stupid chatterer talked and
asked too much.  He was not surly or taciturn, but I felt frozen through
by a calm deadly unresponsiveness which anything with blood and brain
should have shrunk under.  The dull monotone, the ominous drawl, the
steady something in his clear calm eyes which I cannot define, gave an
almost corrosive effect to innocent words and a voice of lazy
gentleness.

"What's the best thing to do following up a wounded buffalo?" was the
question.  The questions sprung briskly, as only a `yapper' puts them;
and the answers came like reluctant drops from a filter.  "Git out!"

"Yes, but if there isn't time?"

"Say yer prayers!"

"No--seriously--what is the best way of tackling one?"

"Ef yer wawnt to know, thar's only one way: Keep cool and shoot
straight!"

"Oh! of course--_if you can_?"

"An' ef you can't," he added in fool-killer tones, "best stay right
home!"

Rocky had no fancy notions: he hunted for meat and got it as soon as
possible; he was seldom out long, and rarely indeed came back
empty-handed.  I had already learnt not to be too ready with questions.
It was better, so Rocky put it, "to keep yer eyes open and yer mouth
shut"; but the results at first hardly seemed to justify the process.
At the end of a week of failures and disappointments all I knew was that
I knew nothing--a very notable advance it is true, but one quite
difficult to appreciate!  Thus it came to me in the light of a
distinction when one evening, after a rueful confession of blundering
made to the party in general, Rocky passed a brief but not unfriendly
glance over me and said, "On'y the born fools stays fools.  You'll git
ter learn bymbye; you ain't always yappin'!"

It was not an extravagant compliment; but failure and helplessness act
on conceit like water on a starched collar: mine was limp by that time,
and I was grateful for little things--most grateful when next morning,
as we were discussing our several ways, he turned to me and asked
gently, "Comin' along, Boy?"

Surprise and gratitude must have produced a touch of effusiveness which
jarred on him; for, to the eager exclamation and thanks, he made no
answer--just moved on, leaving me to follow.  In his scheme of life
there was `no call to slop over.'

There was a quiet unhesitating sureness and a definiteness of purpose
about old Rocky's movements which immediately inspired confidence.  We
had not been gone many minutes before I began to have visions of
exciting chases and glorious endings, and as we walked silently along
they took possession of me so completely that I failed to notice the
difference between his methods and mine.  Presently, brimful of
excitement and hope, I asked cheerily what he thought we would get.  The
old man stopped and with a gentle graveness of look and a voice from
which all trace of tartness or sarcasm was banished, said, "See, Sonny!
If you been useter goin' round like a dawg with a tin it ain't any
wonder you seen nothin'.  You got ter walk soft an' keep yer head shut!"

In reply to my apology he said that there was "no bell an' curtain in
this yere play; you got ter be thar waitin'."

Rocky knew better than I did the extent of his good nature; he knew that
in all probability it meant a wasted day; for, with the best will in the
world, the beginner is almost certain to spoil sport.  It looks so
simple and easy when you have only read about it or heard others talk;
but there are pitfalls at every step.  When, in what seemed to me
perfectly still air, Rocky took a pinch of dust and let it drop, and
afterwards wet one finger and held it up to feel which side cooled, it
was not difficult to know that he was trying the wind; but when he
changed direction suddenly for no apparent reason, or when he stopped
and, after a glance at the ground, slackened his frame, lost all
interest in sport, wind and surroundings, and addressed a remark to me
in ordinary tones, I was hopelessly at sea.  His manner showed that some
possibility was disposed of and some idea abandoned.  Once he said
"Rietbuck!  Heard us I reckon," and then turned off at a right-angle;
but a little later on he pointed to other spoor and, indifferently
dropping the one word `Koodoo,' continued straight on.  To me the two
spoors seemed equally fresh; he saw hours'--perhaps a whole day's--
difference between them.  That the rietbuck, scared by us, had gone
ahead and was keenly on the watch for us and therefore not worth
following, and that the koodoo was on the move and had simply struck
across our line and was therefore not to be overtaken, were conclusions
he drew without hesitation.  I only saw spoor and began to palpitate
with thoughts of bagging a koodoo bull.

We had been out perhaps an hour, and by unceasing watchfulness I had
learnt many things: they were about as well learnt and as useful as a
sentence in a foreign tongue got off by heart; but to me they seemed the
essentials and the fundamentals of hunting.  I was feeling very pleased
with myself and confident of the result; the stumbling over stones and
stumps had ceased; and there was no more catching in thorns, crunching
on bare gritty places, clinking on rocks, or crackling of dry twigs; and
as we moved on in silence the visions of koodoo and other big game
became very real.  There was nothing to hinder them: to do as Rocky did
had become mechanically easy; a glance in his direction every now and
then was enough; there was time and temptation to look about and still
perhaps to be the first to spot the game.

It was after taking one such casual glance around that I suddenly missed
Rocky: a moment later I saw him moving forward, fast but silently, under
cover of an ant-heap--stooping low and signing to me with one hand
behind his back.  With a horrible feeling of having failed him I made a
hurried step sideways to get into line behind him and the ant-heap, and
I stepped right on to a pile of dry crackly sticks.  Rocky stood up
quietly and waited, while I wished the earth would open and swallow me.
When I got up abreast he half turned and looked me over with eyes
slightly narrowed and a faint but ominous smile on one side of his
mouth, and drawled out gently:

"You'd oughter brought some fire crackers!"  If only he had sworn at me
it would have been endurable.

We moved on again and this time I had eyes for nothing but Rocky's back,
and where to put my foot next.  It was not very long before he checked
in mid-stride and I stood rigid as a pointer.  Peering intently over his
shoulder in the direction in which he looked I could see nothing.  The
bush was very open, and yet, even with his raised rifle to guide me, I
could not for the life of me see what he was aiming at.  Then the shot
rang out, and a duiker toppled over kicking in the grass not a hundred
yards away.

The remembrance of certain things still makes me feel uncomfortable; the
yell of delight I let out as the buck fell; the wild dash forward, which
died away to a dead stop as I realised that Rocky himself had not moved;
the sight of him, as I looked back, calmly reloading; and the silence.
To me it was an event: to him, his work.  But these things were
forgotten then--lost behind the everlasting puzzle, How was it possible
I had not seen the buck until it fell?  Rocky must have known what was
worrying me, for, after we had picked up the buck, he remarked without
any preliminary, "It ain't easy in this bush ter pick up what don't
move; an' it ain't hardly possible ter find what ye don't know!"

"Game you mean?"  I asked, somewhat puzzled.

"This one was feeding," he answered, after a nod in reply.  "I saw his
head go up ter listen; but when they don't move, an' you don't jus' know
what they look like, you kin 'most walk atop o' them.  You got ter kind
o' shape 'em in yer eye, an' when you got that fixed you kin pick 'em up
'most anywhere!"

It cost Rocky an effort to volunteer anything.  There were others always
ready to talk and advise; but they were no help.  It was Rocky himself
who once said that "the man who's allus offerin' his advice fer nothin'
's askin' 'bout's much's it's worth."  He seemed to run dry of words--
like an overdrawn well.  For several days he took no further notice of
me, apparently having forgotten my existence or repented his good
nature.  Once, when in reply to a question, I was owning up to the hopes
and chances and failures of the day, I caught his attentive look turned
on me and was conscious of it--and a little apprehensive--for the rest
of the evening; but nothing happened.

The following evening however it came out.  I had felt that that look
meant something, and that sooner or later I would catch it.  It was
characteristic of him that he could always wait, and I never felt quite
safe with him--never comfortably sure that something was not being saved
up for me for some mistake perhaps days old.  He was not to be hurried,
nor was he to be put off, and nobody ever interrupted him or headed him
off.  His quiet voice was never raised, and the lazy gentleness never
disturbed; he seemed to know exactly what he wanted to say, and to have
opening and attention waiting for him.  I suppose it was partly because
he spoke so seldom: but there was something else too--the something that
was just Rocky himself.  Although the talk appeared the result of
accident, an instinct told me from the start that it was not really so:
it was Rocky's slow and considered way.

The only dog with us was licking a cut on her shoulder--the result of an
unauthorised rush at a wounded buck--and after an examination of her
wound we had wandered over the account of how she had got it, and so on
to discussing the dog herself.  Rocky sat in silence, smoking and
looking into the fire, and the little discussion was closed by some one
saying, "She's no good for a hunting dog--too plucky!"  It was then I
saw Rocky's eyes turned slowly on the last speaker: he looked at him
thoughtfully for a good minute, and then remarked quietly:

"Thar ain't no sich thing as too plucky!"  And with that he stopped,
almost as if inviting contradiction.  Whether he wanted a reply or not
one cannot say; anyway, he got none.  No one took Rocky on
unnecessarily; and at his leisure he resumed:

"Thar's brave men; an' thar's fools; an' you kin get some that's both.
But thar's a whole heap that ain't!  An' it's jus' the same with dawgs.
She's no fool, but she ain't been taught: that's what's the matter with
her.  Men ha' got ter larn: dawgs too!  Men ain't born equal: no more's
dawgs!  One's born better 'n another--more brains, more heart; but I
ain't yet heard o' the man born with knowledge or experience; that's
what they got ter learn--men an' dawgs!  The born fool's got to do
fool's work all the time: but the others larn; and the brave man with
brains 's got a big pull.  He don't get shook up--jus' keeps on thinkin'
out his job right along, while the other feller's worryin' about his
hide!  An' dawgs is the same."

Rocky's eyes--for ever grave and thoughtful--rested on the fire; and the
remarks that came from the other men passed unnoticed, but they served
to keep the subject alive.  Presently he went on again--opening with an
observation that caused me to move uneasily before there was time to
think why!

"Boys is like pups--you got ter help 'em some; but not too much, an' not
too soon.  They got ter larn themselves.  I reckon ef a man's never made
a mistake he's never had a good lesson.  Ef you don't pay for a thing
you don't know what it's worth; and mistakes is part o' the price o'
knowledge--the other part is work!  But mistakes is the part you don't
like payin': thet's why you remember it.  You save a boy from makin'
mistakes and ef he's got good stuff in him, most like you spoil it.  He
don't know anything properly, 'cause he don't think; and he don't think,
'cause you saved him the trouble an' he never learned how!  He don't
know the meanin' o' consequences and risks, 'cause you kep' 'em off him!
An' bymbye he gets ter believe it's born in him ter go right, an' knows
everything, an' can't go wrong; an' ef things don't pan out in the end
he reckon it's jus' bad luck!  No!  Sirree!  Ef he's got ter swim you
let him know right there that the water's deep an' thar ain't no one to
hol' him up, an' ef he don't wade in an' larn, it's goin' ter be his
funeral!"

My eyes were all for Rocky, but he was not looking my way, and when the
next remark came, and my heart jumped and my hands and feet moved of
their own accord, his face was turned quite away from me towards the man
on his left.

"An' it's jus' the same 'ith huntin'!  It looks so blamed easy he
reckons it don't need any teachin'.  Well, let him try!  Leave him run
on his own till his boots is walked off an' he's like to set down and
cry, ef he wasn't 'shamed to; let him know every pur-tickler sort o'
blamed fool he can make of himself; an' then he's fit ter teach, 'cause
he'll listen, an' watch, an' learn--at? say thank ye fer it!  Mostly you
got ter make a fool o' yourself once or twice ter know what it feels
like an' how t' avoid it: best do it young--it teaches a boy; but it
kind o' breaks a man up!"

I kept my eyes on Rocky, avoiding the others, fearing that a look or
word might tempt some one to rub it in; and it was a relief when the old
man naturally and easily picked up his original point and, turning
another look on Jess, said:

"You got ter begin on the pup.  It ain't her fault; it's yours.  She's
full up o' the right stuff, but she got no show to larn!  Dawgs is all
different, good an' bad--just like men: some larns quick; some'll never
larn.  But thar ain't any too plucky!"

He tossed a chip of green wood into the heart of the fire and watched it
spurtle and smoke, and after quite a long pause, added:

"Thar's times when a dawg's got to see it through an' be killed.  It's
his dooty--same as a man's.  I seen it done!"

The last words were added with a narrowing of his eyes and a curious
softening of voice--as of personal affection or regret.  Others noticed
it too; and in reply to a question as to how it had happened Rocky
explained in a few words that a wounded buffalo had waylaid and tossed
the man over its back, and as it turned again to gore him the dog rushed
in between, fighting it off for a time and eventually fastening on to
the nose when the buffalo still pushed on.  The check enabled the man to
reach his gun and shoot the buffalo; but the dog was trampled to death.

"Were you...?" some one began--and then at the look in Rocky's face,
hesitated.  Rocky, staring into the fire, answered:

"It was my dawg!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Long after the other men were asleep I lay in my blankets watching the
tricks of light and shadow played by the fire, as fitfully it flamed or
died away.  It showed the long prostrate figures of the others as they
slept full stretch on their backs, wrapped in dark blankets; the
waggons, touched with unwonted colours by the flames, and softened to
ghostly shadows when they died; the oxen, sleeping contentedly at their
yokes; Rocky's two donkeys, black and grey, tethered under a
thorn-tree--now and then a long ear moving slowly to some distant sound
and dropping back again satisfied.  I could not sleep; but Rocky was
sleeping like a babe.  He, gaunt and spare--6 foot 2 he must have
stood--weather-beaten and old, with the long solitary trip before him
and sixty odd years of life behind, he slept when he laid his head down,
and was wide awake and rested when he raised it.  He, who had been
through it all, slept; but I, who had only listened, was haunted,
bewitched, possessed, by racing thoughts; and all on account of four
words, and the way he said them, "It was my dawg."

It was still dark, with a faint promise of saffron in the East, when I
felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Rocky's voice saying, "Comin'
along, Sonny?"

One of the drivers raised his head to look at us as we passed, and then
called to his voorlooper to turn the cattle loose to graze, and dropped
back to sleep.  We left them so and sallied out into the pure clear
morning while all the world was still, while the air, cold and subtly
stimulating, put a spring into the step and an extra beat or two into
the pulse, fairly rinsing lungs and eyes and brain.

What is there to tell of that day?  Why! nothing, really nothing, except
that it was a happy day--a day of little things that all went well, and
so it came to look like the birthday of the hunting.  What did it matter
to me that we were soaked through in ten minutes? for the dew weighed
down the heavy-topped grass with clusters of crystal drops that looked
like diamond sprays.  It was all too beautiful for words: and so it
should be in the spring-time of youth.

Rocky was different that day.  He showed me things; reading the open
book of nature that I could not understand.  He pointed out the spoors
going to and from the drinking-place, and named the various animals;
showed me one more deeply indented than the rest and, murmuring "Scared
I guess," pointed to where it had dashed off out of the regular track;
picked out the big splayed pad of the hyena sneaking round under cover;
stopped quietly in his stride to point where a hare was sitting up
cleaning itself, not ten yards off; stopped again at the sound of a
clear, almost metallic, `clink' and pointed to a little sandy gully in
front of us down which presently came thirty or forty guinea-fowl in
single file, moving swiftly, running and walking, and all in absolute
silence except for that one `clink.'  How did he know they were there,
and which way they would go, and know it all so promptly? were questions
I asked myself.

We walked with the sun--that is towards the West--so that the light
would show up the game and be in their eyes, making it more difficult
for them to see us.  We watched a little red stembuck get up from his
form, shake the dew from his coat, stretch himself, and then pick his
way daintily through the wet grass, nibbling here and there as he went.
Rocky did not fire; he wanted something better.

After the sun had risen, flooding the whole country with golden light,
and, while the dew lasted, making it glisten like a bespangled
transformation scene, we came on a patch of old long grass and, parted
by some twenty yards, walked through it abreast.  There was a wild rush
from under my feet, a yellowish body dashed through the grass, and I got
out in time to see a rietbuck ram cantering away.  Then Rocky, beside
me, gave a shrill whistle; the buck stopped, side on, looked back at us,
and Rocky dropped it where it stood.  Instantly following the shot there
was another rush on our left, and before the second rietbuck had gone
thirty yards Rocky toppled it over in its tracks.  From the whistle to
the second shot it was all done in about ten seconds.  To me it looked
like magic.  I could only gasp.

We cleaned the bucks, and hid them in a bush.  There was meat enough for
the camp then, and I thought we would return at once for boys to carry
it; but Rocky, after a moment's glance round, shouldered his rifle and
moved on again.  I followed, asking no questions.  We had been gone only
a few minutes when to my great astonishment he stopped and pointing
straight in front asked:

"What 'ud you put up for that stump?"  I looked hard, and answered
confidently, "Two hundred!"

"Step it!" was his reply.  I paced the distance; it was eighty-two
yards.

It was very bewildering; but he helped me out a bit with "Bush
telescopes, Sonny!"

"You mean it magnifies them?"  I asked in surprise.  "No!  Magnifies the
distance, like lookin' down an avenue!  Gun barr'l looks a mile long
when you put yer eye to it!  Open flats brings 'em closer; and 'cross
water or a gully seems like you kin put yer hand on 'em?"

"I would have missed--by feet--that time Rocky!"

"You kin take it fer a start, Halve the distance and aim low!"

"Aim low, as well?"

"Thar's allus somethin' low: legs, an' ground to show what you done!
But thar's no `outers' marked on the sky!"

Once, as we walked along, he paused to look at some freshly overturned
ground, and dropped the one word, `Pig.'  We turned then to the right
and presently came upon some vlei ground densely covered with tall green
reeds.  He slowed down as we approached; I tip-toed in sympathy; and
when only a few yards off he stopped and beckoned me on, and as I came
abreast he raised his hand in warning and pointed into the reeds.  There
was a curious subdued sort of murmur of many deep voices.  It conveys no
idea of the fact to say they were grunts.  They were softened out of all
recognition: there is only one word for it, they sounded `confidential.'
Then as we listened I could make out the soft silky rustling of the
rich undergrowth, and presently, could follow, by the quivering and
waving of odd reeds, the movements of the animals themselves.  They were
only a few yards from us--the nearest four or five; they were busy and
contented; and it was obvious they were utterly unconscious of our
presence.  As we peered down to the reeds from our greater height it
seemed that we could see the ground and that not so much as a rat could
have passed unnoticed.  Yet we saw nothing!

And then, without the slightest sign, cause or warning that I could
detect, in one instant every sound ceased.  I watched the reeds like a
cat on the pounce: never a stir or sign or sound: they had vanished.  I
turned to Rocky: he was standing at ease, and there was the faintest
look of amusement in his eyes.

"They must be there; they can't have got away?"  It was a sort of
indignant protest against his evident `chucking it'; but it was full of
doubt all the same.

"Try!" he said, and I jumped into the reeds straight away.  The
under-foliage, it is true, was thicker and deeper than it had looked;
but for all that it was like a conjuring trick--they were not there!  I
waded through a hundred yards or more of the narrow belt--it was not
more than twenty yards wide anywhere--but the place was deserted.  It
struck me then that if they could dodge us at five to ten yards while we
were watching from the bank and they did not know it--Well, I `chucked
it' too.  Rocky was standing in the same place with the same faint look
of friendly amusement when I got back, wet and muddy.

"Pigs is like that," he said, "same as elephants--jus' disappears!"

We went on again, and a quarter of an hour later, it may be, Rocky
stopped, subsided to a sitting position, beckoned to me, and pointed
with his levelled rifle in front.  It was a couple of minutes before he
could get me to see the stembuck standing in the shade of a thorn-tree.
I would never have seen it but for his whisper to look for something
moving: that gave it to me; I saw the movement of the head as it
cropped.

"High: right!" was Rocky's comment, as the bullet ripped the bark off a
tree and the startled stembuck raced away.  In the excitement I had
forgotten his advice already!

But there was no time to feel sick and disgusted; the buck, puzzled by
the report on one side and the smash on the tree on the other, half
circled us and stopped to look back.  Rocky laid his hand on my
shoulder:

"Take your time, Sonny!" he said, "Aim low; an' _don't full!  Squeeze_!"
And at last I got it.

We had our breakfast there--the liver roasted on the coals, and a couple
of `dough-boys,' with the unexpected addition of a bottle of cold tea,
weak and unsweetened, produced from Rocky's knapsack!  We stayed there a
couple of hours, and that is the only time he really opened out.  I
understood then--at last--that of his deliberate kindliness he had come
out that morning meaning to make a happy day of it for a youngster; and
he did it.

He had the knack of getting at the heart of things, and putting it all
in the fewest words.  He spoke in the same slow grave way, with habitual
economy of breath and words; and yet the pictures were living and real,
and each incident complete.  I seemed to get from him that morning all
there was to know of the hunting in two great continents--Grizzlies and
other `bar,' Moose and Wapiti, hunted in the snows of the North West;
Elephant, Buffalo, Rhino, Lions, and scores more, in the sweltering heat
of Africa!

That was a happy day!

When I woke up next morning Rocky was fitting the packs on his donkeys.
I was a little puzzled, wondering at first if he was testing the
saddles, for he had said nothing about moving on; but when he joined us
at breakfast the donkeys stood packed ready to start.  Then Robbie
asked:

"Going to make a move, Rocky?"

"Yes!  Reckon I'll git!" he answered quietly.

I ate in silence, thinking of what he was to face: many hundreds of
miles--perhaps a thousand or two; many, many months--may be a year or
two; wild country, wild tribes, and wild beasts; floods and fever;
accident, hunger, and disease; and alone!

When we had finished breakfast he rinsed out his beaker and hung it on
one of the packs, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and picking up his
long assegai-wood walking-stick tapped the donkeys lightly to turn them
into the Kaffir footpath that led away North.  They jogged on into place
in single file.

Rocky paused a second before following, turned one brief grave glance on
us, and said!

"Well.  So long!"

He never came back!


CHAPTER THREE.

JESS.

Good dogs were not easy to get; I had tried hard enough for one before
starting, but without success.  Even unborn puppies had jealous
prospective owners waiting to claim them.

There is always plenty of room at the top of the tree, and good hunting
dogs were as rare as good men, good horses, and good front oxen.  A lot
of qualities are needed in the make-up of a good hunting dog: size,
strength, quickness, scent, sense and speed--and plenty of courage.
They are very very difficult to get; but even small dogs are useful, and
many a fine feat stands to the credit of little terriers in guarding
camps at night and in standing off wounded animals that meant mischief.

Dennison was saved from a wounded lioness by his two fox-terriers.  He
had gone out to shoot bush-pheasants, and came unexpectedly on a lioness
playing with her cubs: the cubs hid in the grass, but she stood up at
bay to protect them, and he, forgetting that he had taken the big
`looper' cartridges from his gun and reloaded with Number 6, fired.  The
shot only maddened her, and she charged; but the two dogs dashed at her,
one at each side, barking, snapping and yelling, rushing in and jumping
back so fast and furiously that they flustered her.  Leaving the man for
the moment, she turned on them, dabbing viciously with her huge paws,
first at one, then at the other; quick as lightning she struck right and
left as a kitten will at a twirled string; but they kept out of reach.
It only lasted seconds, but that was long enough for the man to reload
and shoot the lioness through the heart.

There was only the one dog in our camp; and she was not an attractive
one.  She was a bull-terrier with a dull brindled coat--black and grey
in shadowy stripes.  She had small cross-looking eyes and uncertain
always-moving ears; she was bad tempered and most unsociable; but she
was as faithful and as brave a dog as ever lived.  She never barked;
never howled when beaten for biting strangers or kaffirs or going for
the cattle; she was very silent, very savage, and very quick.  She
belonged to my friend Ted, and never left his side day or night.  Her
name was Jess.

Jess was not a favourite, but everybody respected her, partly because
you knew she would not stand any nonsense--no pushing, patting or
punishment, and very little talking to--and partly because she was so
faithful and plucky.  She was not a hunting dog, but on several
occasions had helped to pull down wounded game; she had no knowledge or
skill, and was only fierce and brave, and there was always the risk that
she would be killed.  She would listen to Ted, but to no one else; one
of us might have shouted his lungs out, but it would not have stopped
her from giving chase the moment she saw anything and keeping on till
she was too dead beat to move any further.

The first time I saw Jess we were having dinner, and I gave her a bone--
putting it down close to her and saying, "Here! good dog!"  As she did
not even look at it, I moved it right under her nose.  She gave a low
growl, and her little eyes turned on me for just one look as she got up
and walked away.

There was a snigger of laughter from some of the others, but nobody said
anything, and it seemed wiser to ask no questions just then.
Afterwards, when we were alone, one of them told me Ted had trained her
not to feed from any one else, adding, "You must not feed another man's
dog; a dog has only one master!"

We respected Jess greatly; but no one knew quite how much we respected
her until the memorable day near Ship Mountain.

We had rested through the heat of the day under a big tree on the bank
of a little stream; it was the tree under which Soltke prayed and died.
About sundown, just before we were ready to start, some other waggons
passed, and Ted, knowing the owner, went on with him intending to rejoin
us at the next outspan.  As he jumped on to the passing waggon he called
to Jess, and she ran out of a patch of soft grass under one of the big
trees behind our waggons.  She answered his call instantly, but when she
saw him moving off on the other waggon she sat down in the road and
watched him anxiously for some seconds, then ran on a few steps in her
curious quick silent way and again stopped, giving swift glances
alternately towards Ted and towards us.  Ted remarked laughingly that
she evidently thought he had made a mistake by getting on to the wrong
waggon, and that she would follow presently.

After he had disappeared she ran back to her patch of grass and lay
down, but in a few minutes she was back again squatting in the road
looking with that same anxious worried expression after her master.
Thus she went to and fro for the quarter of an hour it took us to
inspan, and each time she passed we could hear a faint anxious little
whine.

The oxen were inspanned and the last odd things were being put up when
one of the boys came to say that he could not get the guns and
water-barrel because Jess would not let him near them.  There was
something the matter with the dog, he said; he thought she was mad.

Knowing how Jess hated kaffirs we laughed at the notion, and went for
the things ourselves.  As we came within five yards of the tree where we
had left the guns there was a rustle in the grass, and Jess came out
with her swift silent run, appearing as unexpectedly as a snake does,
and with some odd suggestion of a snake in her look and attitude.  Her
head, body and tail were in a dead line, and she was crouching slightly
as for a spring; her ears were laid flat back, her lips twitching
constantly, showing the strong white teeth, and her cross wicked eyes
had such a look of remorseless cruelty in them that we stopped as if we
had been turned to stone.  She never moved a muscle or made a sound, but
kept those eyes steadily fixed on us.  We moved back a pace or two and
began to coax and wheedle her; but it was no good; she never moved or
made a sound, and the unblinking look remained.  For a minute we stood
our ground, and then the hair on her back and shoulders began very
slowly to stand up.  That was enough: we cleared off.  It was a mighty
uncanny appearance.

Then another tried his hand; but it was just the same.  No one could do
anything with her; no one could get near the guns or the water-barrel;
as soon as we returned for a fresh attempt she reappeared in the same
place and in the same way.

The position was too ridiculous, and we were at our wits' end; for Jess
held the camp.  The kaffirs declared the dog was mad, and we began to
have very uncomfortable suspicions that they were right; but we decided
to make a last attempt, and surrounding the place approached from all
sides.  But the suddenness with which she appeared before we got into
position so demoralised the kaffirs that they bolted, and we gave it up,
owning ourselves beaten.  We turned to watch her as she ran back for the
last time, and as she disappeared in the grass we heard distinctly the
cry of a very young puppy.  Then the secret of Jess's madness was out.

We had to send for Ted, and when he returned a couple of hours later
Jess met him out on the road in the dark where she had been watching
half the time ever since he left.  She jumped up at his chest giving a
long tremulous whimper of welcome, and then ran ahead straight to the
nest in the grass.

He took a lantern and we followed, but not too close.  When he knelt
down to look at the puppies she stood over them and pushed herself in
between him and them; when he put out a hand to touch them she pushed it
away with her nose, whining softly in protest and trembling with
excitement--you could see she would not bite, but she hated him to touch
her puppies.  Finally, when he picked one up she gave a low cry and
caught his wrist gently, but held it.

That was Jess, the mother of Jock!


CHAPTER FOUR.

THE PICK OF THE PUPPIES.

There were six puppies, and as the waggons were empty we fixed up a
roomy nest in one of them for Jess and her family.  There was no trouble
with Jess; nobody interfered with her, and she interfered with nobody.
The boys kept clear of her; but we used to take a look at her and the
puppies as we walked along with the waggons; so by degrees she got to
know that we would not harm them, and she no longer wanted to eat us
alive if we went near and talked to her.

Five of the puppies were fat strong yellow little chaps with dark
muzzles--just like their father, as Ted said; and their father was an
imported dog, and was always spoken of as the best dog of the breed that
had ever been in the country.  I never saw him, so I do not really know
what he was like--perhaps he was not a yellow dog at all; but, whatever
he was, he had at that time a great reputation because he was
`imported,' and there were not half a dozen imported dogs in the whole
of the Transvaal then.  Many people used to ask what breed the puppies
were--I suppose it was because poor cross faithful old Jess was not much
to look at, and because no one had a very high opinion of yellow dogs in
general, and nobody seemed to remember any famous yellow bull-terriers.
They used to smile in a queer way when they asked the question, as if
they were going to get off a joke; but when we answered "Just like their
father--Buchanan's _imported_ dog," the smile disappeared, and they
would give a whistle of surprise and say "By Jove!" and immediately
begin to examine the five yellow puppies, remark upon their ears and
noses and legs, and praise them up until we were all as proud as if they
had belonged to us.

Jess looked after her puppies and knew nothing about the remarks that
were made, so they did not worry her, but I often looked at the faithful
old thing with her dark brindled face, cross-looking eyes and
always-moving ears, and thought it jolly hard lines that nobody had a
good word for her; it seemed rough on her that every one should be glad
there was only one puppy at all like the mother--the sixth one, a poor
miserable little rat of a thing about half the size of the others.  He
was not yellow like them, nor dark brindled like Jess, but a sort of
dirty pale half-and-half colour with some dark faint wavy lines all over
him, as if he had tried to be brindled and failed; and he had a dark
sharp wizened little muzzle that looked shrivelled up with age.

Most of the fellows said it would be a good thing to drown the odd one
because he spoilt the litter and made them look as though they were not
really thoroughbred, and because he was such a miserable little rat that
he was not worth saving anyhow; but in the end he was allowed to live.
I believe no one fancied the job of taking one of Jess's puppies away
from her; moreover, as any dog was better than none, I had offered to
take him rather than let him be drowned.  Ted had old friends to whom he
had already promised the pick of the puppies, so when I came along it
was too late, and all he could promise me was that if there should be
one over I might have it.

As they grew older and were able to crawl about they were taken off the
waggons when we outspanned and put on the ground.  Jess got to
understand this at once, and she used to watch us quite quietly as we
took them in our hands to put them down or lift them back again.  When
they were two or three weeks old a man came to the waggons who talked a
great deal about dogs, and appeared to know what had to be done.  He
said that the puppies' tails ought to be docked, and that a bull-terrier
would be no class at all with a long tail, but you should on no account
clip his ears.  I thought he was speaking of fox-terriers, and that with
bull-terriers the position was the other way round, at that time; but as
he said it was `the thing' in England, and nobody contradicted him, I
shut up.  We found out afterwards that he had made a mistake; but it was
too late then, and Jess's puppies started life as bull-terriers up to
date, with long ears and short tails.

I felt sure from the beginning that all the yellow puppies would be
claimed and that I should have to take the odd one, or none at all; so I
began to look upon him as mine already, and to take an interest in him
and look after him.  A long time ago somebody wrote that "the sense of
possession turns sand into gold," and it is one of the truest things
ever said.  Until it seemed that this queer-looking odd puppy was going
to be mine I used to think and say very much what the others did--but
with this difference, that I always felt sorry for him, and sorry for
Jess too, because he was like her and not like the father.  I used to
think that perhaps if he were given a chance he might grow up like poor
old Jess herself, ugly, cross and unpopular, but brave and faithful.  I
felt sorry for him, too, because he was small and weak, and the other
five big puppies used to push him away from his food and trample on him;
and when they were old enough to play they used to pull him about by his
ears and pack on to him--three or four to one--and bully him horribly.
Many a time I rescued him, and many a time gave him a little preserved
milk and water with bread soaked in it when the others had shouldered
him out and eaten everything.

After a little while, when my chance of getting one of the good puppies
seemed hopeless and I got used to the idea that I would have to take the
odd one, I began to notice little things about him that no one else
noticed, and got to be quite fond of the little beggar--in a kind of
way.  Perhaps I was turning my sand into gold, and my geese into swans;
perhaps I grew fond of him simply because, finding him lonely and with
no one else to depend on, I befriended him; and perhaps it was because
he was always cheerful and plucky and it seemed as if there might be
some good stuff in him after all.  Those were the things I used to think
of sometimes when feeding the little outcast.  The other puppies would
tumble him over and take his food from him; they would bump into him
when he was stooping over the dish of milk and porridge, and his head
was so big and his legs so weak that he would tip up and go heels over
head into the dish.  We were always picking him out of the food and
scraping it off him: half the time he was wet and sticky, and the other
half covered with porridge and sand baked hard by the sun.

One day just after the waggons had started, as I took a final look round
the outspan place to see if anything had been forgotten, I found the
little chap--who was only about four inches high--struggling to walk
through the long grass.  He was not big enough or strong enough to push
his way--even the stems of the down-trodden grass tripped him--and he
stumbled and floundered at every step, but he got up again each time
with his little tail standing straight up, his head erect, and his ears
cocked.  He looked such a ridiculous sight that his little tragedy of
"lost in the veld" was forgotten--one could only laugh.

What he thought he was doing, goodness only knows; he looked as proud
and important as if he owned the whole world and knew that every one in
it was watching him.  The poor little chap could not see a yard in that
grass; and in any case he was not old enough to see much, or understand
anything, for his eyes still had that bluish blind look that all very
young puppies have, but he was marching along as full of confidence as a
general at the head of his army.  How he fell out of the waggon no one
knew; perhaps the big puppies tumbled him out, or he may have tried to
follow Jess, or have climbed over the tail-board to see what was the
other side, for he was always going off exploring by himself.  His
little world was small, it may be--only the bed-plank of the waggon and
the few square yards of the ground on which they were dumped at the
outspans--but he took it as seriously as any explorer who ever tackled a
continent.

The others were a bit more softened towards the odd puppy when I caught
up to the waggons and told them of his valiant struggle to follow; and
the man who had docked the puppies' tails allowed, "I believe the rat's
got pluck, whatever else is the matter with him, for he was the only one
that didn't howl when I snipped them.  The little cuss just gave a grunt
and turned round as if he wanted to eat me.  I think he'd 'a' been
terrible angry if he hadn't been so s'prised.  Pity he's such an
awful-looking mongrel."

But no one else said a good word for him: he was really beneath notice,
and if ever they had to speak about him they called him "The Rat."
There is no doubt about it he was extremely ugly, and instead of
improving as he grew older, he became worse; yet, I could not help
liking him and looking after him, sometimes feeling sorry for him,
sometimes being tremendously amused, and sometimes--wonderful to
relate--really admiring him.  He was extraordinarily silent; while the
others barked at nothing, howled when lonely, and yelled when frightened
or hurt, the odd puppy did none of these things; in fact, he began to
show many of Jess's peculiarities; he hardly ever barked, and when he
did it was not a wild excited string of barks but little suppressed
muffled noises, half bark and half growl, and just one or two at a time;
and he did not appear to be afraid of anything, so one could not tell
what he would do if he was.

One day we had an amusing instance of his nerve: one of the oxen,
sniffing about the outspan, caught sight of him all alone, and filled
with curiosity came up to examine him, as a hulking silly old tame ox
will do.  It moved towards him slowly and heavily with its ears spread
wide and its head down, giving great big sniffs at this new object,
trying to make out what it was.  "The Rat" stood quite still with his
stumpy tail cocked up and his head a little on one side, and when the
huge ox's nose was about a foot from him he gave one of those funny
abrupt little barks.  It was as if the object had suddenly `gone off'
like a cracker, and the ox nearly tumbled over with fright; but even
when the great mountain of a thing gave a clumsy plunge round and
trotted off, "The Rat" was not the least frightened; he was startled,
and his tail and ears flickered for a second, but stiffened up again
instantly, and with another of those little barks he took a couple of
steps forward and cocked his head on the other side.  That was his way.

He was not a bit like the other puppies; if any one fired off a gun or
cracked one of the big whips the whole five would yell at the top of
their voices and, wherever they were, would start running, scrambling
and floundering as fast as they could towards the waggon without once
looking back to see what they were running away from.  The odd puppy
would drop his bone with a start or would jump round; his ears and tail
would flicker up and down for a second; then he would slowly bristle up
all over, and with his head cocked first on one side and then on the
other, stare hard with his half-blind bluish puppy eyes in the direction
of the noise; but he never ran away.

And so, little by little, I got to like him in spite of his awful
ugliness.  And it really was awful!  The other puppies grew big all
over, but the odd one at that time seemed to grow only in one part--his
tummy!  The poor little chap was born small and weak; he had always been
bullied and crowded out by the others, and the truth is he was half
starved.  The natural consequence of this was that as soon as he could
walk about and pick up things for himself he made up for lost time, and
filled up his middle piece to an alarming size before the other parts of
his body had time to grow; at that time he looked more like a big
tock-tockie beetle than a dog.

Besides the balloon-like tummy he had stick-out bandy-legs, very like a
beetle's too, and a neck so thin that it made the head look enormous,
and you wondered how the neck ever held it up.  But what made him so
supremely ridiculous was that he evidently did not know he was ugly; he
walked about as if he was always thinking of his dignity, and he had
that puffed-out and stuck-up air of importance that you only see in
small people and bantam cocks who are always trying to appear an inch
taller than they really are.

When the puppies were about a month old, and could feed on porridge or
bread soaked in soup or gravy, they got to be too much for Jess, and she
used to leave them for hours at a time and hide in the grass so as to
have a little peace and sleep.  Puppies are always hungry, so they soon
began to hunt about for themselves, and would find scraps of meat and
porridge or old bones; and if they could not get anything else, would
try to eat the raw-hide nekstrops and reims.  Then the fights began.  As
soon as one puppy saw another busy on anything, he would walk over
towards him and, if strong enough, fight him for it.  All day long it
was nothing but wrangle, snarl, bark and yelp.  Sometimes four or five
would be at it in one scrum; because as soon as one heard a row going on
he would trot up hoping to steal the bone while the others were busy
fighting.

It was then that I noticed other things about the odd puppy: no matter
how many packed on to him, or how they bit or pulled him, he never once
let out a yelp; with four or five on top of him you would see him on his
back, snapping right and left with bare white teeth, gripping and
worrying them when he got a good hold of anything, and all the time
growling and snarling with a fierceness that was really comical.  It
sounded as a lion fight might sound in a toy phonograph.

Before many days passed, it was clear that some of the other puppies
were inclined to leave "The Rat" alone, and that only two of them--the
two biggest--seemed anxious to fight him and could take his bones away.
The reason soon became apparent: instead of wasting his breath in making
a noise, or wasting strength in trying to tumble the others over, "The
Rat" simply bit hard and hung on; noses, ears, lips, cheeks, feet and
even tails--all came handy to him; anything he could get hold of and
hang on to was good enough, and the result generally was that in about
half a minute the other puppy would leave everything and clear off
yelling, and probably holding up one paw or hanging its head on one side
to ease a chewed ear.

When either of the big puppies tackled the little fellow the fight
lasted much longer.  Even if he were tumbled over at once--as generally
happened--and the other one stood over him barking and growling, that
did not end the fight: as soon as the other chap got off him he would
struggle up and begin again; he would not give in.  The other puppies
seemed to think there was some sort of rule like the `count out' in
boxing, or that once you were tumbled over you ought to give up the
bone; but the odd puppy apparently did not care about rules; as far as I
could see, he had just one rule: "Stick to it," so it was not very long
before even the two big fellows gave up interfering with him.  The bites
from his little white teeth--sharp as needles--which punctured noses and
feet and tore ears, were most unpleasant.  But apart from that, they
found there was nothing to be gained by fighting him: they might roll
him over time after time, but he came back again and worried them so
persistently that it was quite impossible to enjoy the bone--they had to
keep on fighting for it.

At first I drew attention to these things, but there was no
encouragement from the others; they merely laughed at the attempt to
make the best of a bad job.  Sometimes owners of other puppies were
nettled by having their beauties compared with "The Rat," or were
annoyed because he had the cheek to fight for his own and beat them.
Once, when I had described how well he had stood up to Billy's pup,
Robbie caught up "The Rat," and placing him on the table, said: "Hats
off to the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo."  That seemed to
me the poorest sort of joke to send five grown men into fits of
laughter.  He stood there on the table with his head on one side, one
ear standing up, and his stumpy tail twiggling--an absurd picture of
friendliness, pride and confidence; yet he was so ugly and ridiculous
that my heart sank, and I whisked him away.  They made fun of him, and
he did not mind; but it was making fun of me too, and I could not help
knowing why; it was only necessary to put the puppies together to see
the reason.

After that I stopped talking about him, and made the most of the good
points he showed, and tried to discover more.  It was the only
consolation for having to take the leavings of the litter.

Then there came a day when something happened which might easily have
turned out very differently, and there would have been no stories and no
Jock to tell about; and the best dog in the world would never have been
my friend and companion.  The puppies had been behaving very badly, and
had stolen several nekstrops and chewed up parts of one or two big
whips; the drivers were grumbling about all the damage done and the
extra work it gave them; and Ted, exasperated by the worry of it all,
announced that the puppies were quite old enough to be taken away, and
that those who had picked puppies must take them at once and look after
them, or let some one else have them.  When I heard him say that my
heart gave a little thump from excitement, for I knew the day had come
when the great question would be settled once and for all.  Here was a
glorious and unexpected chance; perhaps one of the others would not or
could not take his, and I might get one of the good ones...  Of course
the two big ones would be snapped up: that was certain; for, even if the
men who had picked them could not take them, others; who had been
promised puppies before me would exchange those they had already chosen
for the better ones.  Still, there were other chances; and I thought of
very little else all day long, wondering if any of the good ones would
be left; and if so, which?

In the afternoon Ted came up to where we were all lying in the shade and
startled us with the momentous announcement:

"Billy Griffiths can't take his pup!"

Every man of us sat up.  Billy's pup was the first pick, the champion of
the litter, the biggest and strongest of the lot.  Several of the others
said at once that they would exchange theirs for this one; but Ted
smiled and shook his head.

"No," he said, "you had a good pick in the beginning."  Then he turned
to me, and added: "You've only had leavings."  Some one said "The Rat,"
and there was a shout of laughter, but Ted went on; "You can have
Billy's pup."

It seemed too good to be true; not even in my wildest imaginings had I
fancied myself getting the pick of the lot.  I hardly waited to thank
Ted before going off to look at my champion.  I had seen and admired him
times out of number, but it seemed as if he must look different now that
he belonged to me.  He was a fine big fellow, well built and strong, and
looked as if he could beat all the rest put together.  His legs were
straight; his neck sturdy; his muzzle dark and shapely; his ears equal
and well carried; and in the sunlight his yellow coat looked quite
bright, with occasional glints of gold in it.  He was indeed a handsome
fellow.

As I put him back again with the others the odd puppy, who had stood up
and sniffed at me when I came, licked my hand and twiddled his tail with
the friendliest and most independent air, as if he knew me quite well
and was glad to see me, and I patted the poor little chap as he waddled
up.  I had forgotten him in the excitement of getting Billy's pup; but
the sight of him made me think of his funny ways, his pluck and
independence, and of how he had not a friend in the world except Jess
and me; and I felt downright sorry for him.  I picked him up and talked
to him; and when his wizened little face was close to mine, he opened
his mouth as if laughing, and shooting out his red tongue dabbed me
right on the tip of my nose in pure friendliness.  The poor little
fellow looked more ludicrous than ever: he had been feeding again and
was as tight as a drum; his skin was so tight one could not help
thinking that if he walked over a mimosa thorn and got a scratch on the
tummy he would burst like a toy balloon.

I put him back with the other puppies and returned to the tree where Ted
and the rest were sitting.  As I came up there was a shout of laughter,
and--turning round to see what had provoked it--I found "The Rat" at my
heels.  He had followed me and was trotting and stumbling along,
tripping every yard or so, but getting up again with head erect, ears
cocked and his stumpy tail twiddling away just as pleased and proud as
if he thought he had really started in life and was doing what only a
`really and truly' grown-up dog is supposed to do--that is, follow his
master wherever he goes.

All the old chaff and jokes were fired off at me again, and I had no
peace for quite a time.  They all had something to say: "He won't swap
you off!"

"I'll back `The Rat'!"  "He is going to take care of you!"

"He is afraid you'll get lost!" and so on; and they were still chaffing
about it when I grabbed "The Rat" and took him back again.

Billy's failure to take his puppy was so entirely unexpected and so
important that the subject kept cropping up all the evening.  It was
very amusing then to see how each of those who had wanted to get him
succeeded in finding good reasons for thinking that his own puppy was
really better than Billy's.  However they differed in their estimates of
each other's dogs, they all agreed that the best judge in the world
could not be certain of picking out the best dog in a good litter until
the puppies were several months old; and they all gave instances in
which the best looking puppy had turned out the worst dog, and others in
which the one that no one would look at had grown up to be the champion.
Goodness knows how long this would have gone on if Robbie had not
mischievously suggested that "perhaps `The Rat' was going to beat the
whole lot."  There was such a chorus of guffaws at this that no one told
any more stories.

The poor little friendless Rat!  It was unfortunate, but the truth is
that he was uglier than before; and yet I could not help liking him.  I
fell asleep that night thinking of the two puppies--the best and the
worst in the litter.  No sooner had I gone over all the splendid points
in Billy's pup and made up my mind that he was certainly the finest I
had ever seen, than the friendly wizened little face, the half-cocked
ears and head on one side, the cocky little stump of a tail, and the
comical dignified plucky look of the odd puppy would all come back to
me.  The thought of how he had licked my hand and twiddled his tail at
me, and how he dabbed me on the nose, and then the manful way in which
he had struggled after me through the grass, all made my heart go soft
towards him, and I fell asleep not knowing what to do.

When I woke up in the morning, my first thought was of the odd puppy--
how he looked to me as his only friend, and what he would feel like if,
after looking on me as really belonging to him and as the one person
that he was going to take care of all his life, he knew he was to be
left behind or given away to any one who would take him.  It would never
have entered his head that he required some one to look after him; from
the way he had followed me the night before it was clear he was looking
after me; and the other fellows thought the same thing.  His whole
manner had plainly said: "Never mind old man!  Don't you worry: I am
here."

We used to make our first trek at about three o'clock in the morning, so
as to be outspanned by sunrise; and walking along during that morning
trek I recalled all the stories that the others had told of miserable
puppies having grown into wonderful dogs, and of great men who had been
very ordinary children; and at breakfast I took the plunge.

"Ted," I said, bracing myself for the laughter, "if you don't mind, I'll
stick to `The Rat.'"

If I had fired off a gun under their noses they would have been much
less startled.  Robbie made a grab for his plate as it slipped from his
knees.

"_Don't_ do that sort of thing!" he protested indignantly.  "My nerves
won't stand it!"

The others stopped eating and drinking, held their beakers of steaming
coffee well out of the way to get a better look at me, and when they saw
it was seriously meant there was a chorus of: "Well, I'm hanged."

I took him in hand at once--for now he was really mine--and brought him
over for his saucer of soaked bread and milk to where we sat at
breakfast.  Beside me there was a rough camp table--a luxury sometimes
indulged in while camping or trekking with empty waggons--on which we
put our tinned-milk, treacle and such things to keep them out of reach
of the ants, grasshoppers, Hottentot-gods, beetles and dust.  I put the
puppy and his saucer in a safe place under the table out of the way of
stray feet, and sank the saucer into the sand so that when he trod in it
he would not spill the food; for puppies are quite stupid as they are
greedy, and seem to think that they can eat faster by getting further
into the dish.  He appeared to be more ravenous than usual, and we were
all amused by the way the little fellow craned his thin neck out further
and further until he tipped up behind and his nose bumping into the
saucer see-sawed him back again.  He finished it all and looked round
briskly at me, licking his lips and twiddling his stumpy tail.

Well, I meant to make a dog of him, so I gave him another lot.  He was
just like a little child--he thought he was very hungry still and could
eat any amount more; but it was not possible.  The lapping became slower
and more laboured, with pauses every now and then to get breath or lick
his lips and look about him, until at last he was fairly beaten: he
could only look at it, blink and lick his chops; and, knowing that he
would keep on trying, I took the saucer away.  He was too full to object
or to run after it; he was too full to move.  He stood where he was,
with his legs well spread and his little body blown out like a balloon,
and finished licking the drops and crumbs off his face without moving a
foot.

There was something so extraordinarily funny in the appearance and
attitude of the puppy that we watched to see what he would do next.  He
had been standing very close to the leg of the table, but not quite
touching it, when he finished feeding; and even after he had done
washing his face and cleaning up generally, he stood there stock-still
for several minutes, as though it was altogether too much trouble to
move.  One little bandy hind leg stuck out behind the table-leg, and the
bulge of his little tummy stuck out in front of it; so that when at last
he decided to make a move the very first little lurch brought his hip up
against the table-leg.  In an instant the puppy's appearance changed
completely: the hair on his back and shoulders bristled; his head went
up erect; one ear stood up straight and the other at half cock; and his
stumpy tail quivered with rage.  He evidently thought that one of the
other puppies had come up behind to interfere with him.  He was too
proud to turn round and appear to be nervous: with head erect he glared
hard straight in front of him, and, with all the little breath that he
had left after his big feed, he growled ferociously in comical little
gasps.  He stood like that, not moving an inch, with the front foot
still ready to take that step forward; and then, as nothing more
happened, the hair on his back gradually went flat again; the fierceness
died out of his face; and the growling stopped.

After a minute's pause, he again very slowly and carefully began to step
forward; of course exactly the same thing happened again, except that
this time he shook all over with rage, and the growling was fiercer and
more choky.  One could not imagine anything so small being in so great a
rage.  He took longer to cool down, too, and much longer before he made
the third attempt to start.  But the third time it was all over in a
second.  He seemed to think that this was more than any dog could stand,
and that he must put a stop to it.  The instant his hip touched the leg,
he whipped round with a ferocious snarl--his little white teeth bared
and gleaming--and bumped his nose against the table-leg.

I cannot say whether it was because of the shout of laughter from us, or
because he really understood what had happened, that he looked so
foolish, but he just gave one crestfallen look at me and with a feeble
wag of his tail waddled off as fast as he could.

Then Ted nodded over at me, and said: "I believe you have got the
champion after all!"  And I was too proud to speak.


CHAPTER FIVE.

JOCK'S SCHOOLDAYS.

After that day no one spoke of "The Rat" or "The Odd Puppy," or used any
of the numberless nicknames that they had given him, such as "The
Specimen," "The Object," "Number 6," "Bully-Beef," (because he got his
head stuck in a half-pound tin one day), "The Scrap"; and even "The Duke
of Wellington" ceased to be a gibe.  They still laughed at his
ridiculous dignity; and they loved to tease him to see him stiffen with
rage and hear his choky little growls; but they liked his independence
and admired his tremendous pluck.  So they respected his name when he
got one.

And his name was "Jock."

No one bothered about the other puppies' names: they were known as
"Billy's pup," "Jimmy's pup," "Old Joe's Darling," "Yellow Jack," and
"Bandy-Legged Sue"; but they seemed to think that this little chap had
earned his name, fighting his way without anybody's help and with
everything against him; so they gave up all the nicknames and spoke of
him as "Jock."

Jock got such a good advertisement by his fight with the table-leg that
every one took notice of him now and remarked about what he did; and as
he was only a very young puppy, they teased him, fed him, petted him,
and did their best to spoil him.  He was so young that it did not seem
to matter, but I think if he had not been a really good dog at heart he
would have been quite spoilt.

He soon began to grow and fill out; and it was then that he taught the
other puppies to leave him alone.  If they had not interfered with him
he might perhaps have left them alone, as it was not his nature to
interfere with others; but the trouble was they had bullied him so much
while he was weak and helpless that he got used to the idea of fighting
for everything.  It is probably the best thing that could have happened
to Jock that as a puppy he was small and weak, but full of pluck; it
compelled him to learn how to fight; it made him clever, cool, and
careful, for he could not afford to make mistakes.  When he fought he
meant business; he went for a good spot, bit hard, and hung on for all
he was worth; then, as the enemy began to slacken, he would start
vigorously worrying and shaking.  I often saw him shake himself off his
feet, because the thing he was fighting was too heavy for him.

The day Jock fought the two big puppies--one after the other--for his
bone, and beat them off, was the day of his independence; we all saw the
tussle, and cheered the little chap.  And then for one whole day he had
peace; but it was like the pause at low water before the tide begins to
flow the other way.  He was so used to being interfered with that I
suppose he did not immediately understand they would never tackle him
again.

It took a whole day for him to realise this; but as soon as he did
understand it he seemed to make up his mind that now his turn had come,
and he went for the first puppy he saw with a bone.  He walked up slowly
and carefully, and began to make a circle round him.  When he got about
half-way round the puppy took up the bone and trotted off; but Jock
headed him off at once, and again began to walk towards him very slowly
and stiffly.  The other puppy stood quite still for a moment, and then
Jock's fierce determined look was too much for him: he dropped the bone
and bolted.

There was mighty little but smell on those bones, for we gave the
puppies very little meat, so when Jock had taken what he could off this
one, he started on another hunt.  A few yards away Billy's pup was
having a glorious time, struggling with a big bone and growling all the
while as if he wanted to let the world know that it was as much as any
one's life was worth to come near him.  None of us thought Jock would
tackle him, as Billy's pup was still a long way the biggest and
strongest of the puppies, and always ready to bully the others.

Jock was about three or four yards away when he caught sight of Billy's
pup, and for about a minute he stood still and quietly watched.  At
first he seemed surprised, and then interested, and then gradually he
stiffened up all over in that funny way of his; and when the hair on his
shoulders was all on end and his ears and tail were properly up, he
moved forward very deliberately.  In this fashion he made a circle round
Billy's pup, keeping about two feet away from him, walking infinitely
slowly and glaring steadily at the enemy out of the corners of his eyes;
and while he was doing this, the other fellow was tearing away at his
bone, growling furiously and glaring sideways at Jock.  When the circle
was finished they stood once more face to face; and then after a short
pause Jock began to move in closer, but more slowly even than before.

Billy's pup did not like this: it was beginning to look serious.  He
could not keep on eating and at the same time watch Jock; moreover,
there was such a very unpleasant wicked look about Jock, and he moved so
steadily and silently forward, that any one would feel a bit creepy and
nervous; so he put his paw on the bone and let out a string of snarly
barks, with his ears flat on his neck and his tail rather low down.  But
Jock still came on--a little more carefully and slowly perhaps, but just
as steadily as ever.  When about a foot off the enemy's nose he changed
his direction slightly, as if to walk past, and Billy's pup turned his
head to watch him, keeping his nose pointed towards Jock's, but when
they got side by side he again looked straight in front of him.

Perhaps he did this to make sure the bone was still there, or perhaps to
show his contempt when he thought Jock was going off.  Whatever the
reason was, it was a mistake; for, as he turned his head away, Jock flew
at him, got a good mouthful of ear, and in no time they were rolling and
struggling in the dust--Jock's little grunts barely-audible in the noise
made by the other one.  Billy's pup was big and strong, and he was not a
coward; but Jock was worrying his ear vigorously, and he could not find
anything to bite in return.  In less than a minute he began to howl, and
was making frantic efforts to get away.  Then Jock let go the ear and
tackled the bone.

After that he had no more puppy fights.  As soon as any one of the
others saw Jock begin to walk slowly and carefully towards him he seemed
to suddenly get tired of his bone, and moved off.

Most dogs--like most people--when their hearts fail them will try to
hide the truth from one another and make some sort of effort or pretence
to keep their dignity or self-respect or the good opinion of others.
You may see it all any day in the street, when dogs meet and stop to
`size' each other up.  As a rule the perfectly shameless cowards are
found in the two extreme classes--the outcasts, whose spirits are broken
by all the world being against them; and the pampered darlings, who have
never had to do anything for themselves.  Many dogs who are clearly
anxious to get out of fighting will make a pretence of bravery at
the time, or at least cover up their cowardice, with a
`wait-till-I-catch-you-next-time' air, as soon as they are at a safe
distance.  Day after day at the outspans the puppies went through every
stage of the business, to our constant amusement and to my unconcealed
pride; for Jock was thenceforth cock of the walk.  If they saw him some
distance off moving towards them or even staring hard and with his ears
and tail up, the retreat would be made with a gloomy and dignified air,
sometimes even with growls just loud enough to please themselves without
provoking him; if he was fairly close up when spotted they wasted no
time in putting on airs, but trotted off promptly; but sometimes they
would be too busy to notice anything until a growl or a rustle in the
grass close behind gave warning; and it was always followed by a jump
and a shameless scuttle, very often accompanied by a strangled sort of
yowling yelp, just as if he had already got them by the ear or throat.

Some of them became so nervous that we could not resist playing
practical jokes on them--making sudden strange noises, imitating Jock's
growls, tossing bits of bark at them or touching them from behind with a
stick while they were completely occupied with their bones--for the fun
of seeing the stampede and hearing the sudden howls of surprise and
fright.

One by one the other puppies were taken away by their new masters, and
before Jock was three months old he and Jess were the only dogs with the
waggons.  Then he went to school, and like all schoolboys learnt some
things very quickly--the things that he liked; and some things he learnt
very slowly, and hated them just as a boy hates extra work in play-time.
When I poked about with a stick in the banks of dongas to turn out mice
and field-rats for him, or when I hid a partridge or a hare and made him
find it, he was as happy as could be; but when I made him lie down and
watch my gun or coat while I pretended to go off and leave him, he did
not like it; and as for his lessons in manners! well, he simply hated
them.

There are some things which a dog in that sort of life simply must learn
or you cannot keep him; and the first of these is, not to steal.  Every
puppy will help himself until he is taught not to; and your dog lives
with you and can get at everything.  At the outspans the grub-box is put
on the ground, open for each man to help himself; if you make a stew, or
roast the leg of a buck, the big three-legged pot is put down handy and
left there; if you are lucky enough to have some tinned butter or
condensed milk, the tins are opened and stood on the ground; and if you
have a dog thief in the camp, nothing is safe.

There was a dog with us once--a year or two later--who was the worst
thief I ever knew.  He was a one-eyed pointer with feet like a duck's,
and his name was Snarleyow.  He looked the most foolish and most
innocent dog in the world, and was so timid that if you stumbled as you
passed him he would instantly start howling and run for the horizon.
The first bad experience I had of Snarley was on one of the little
hunting trips which we sometimes made in those days, away from the
waggons.  We travelled light on those occasions, and, except for some
tea and a very little flour and salt, took no food; we lived on what we
shot and of course kept `hunter's pot.'

`Hunter's pot' is a perpetual stew; you make one stew, and keep it going
as long as necessary, maintaining a full pot by adding to it as fast as
you take any out; scraps of everything go in; any kind of meat--buck,
bird, pig, hare--and if you have such luxuries as onions or potatoes, so
much the better; then, to make the soup strong, the big bones are
added--the old ones being fished out every day and replaced by a fresh
lot.  When allowed to cool it sets like brawn, and a hungry hunter wants
nothing better.

We had had a good feed the first night of this trip and had then filled
the pot up leaving it to simmer as long as the fire lasted, expecting to
have cold pie set in jelly--but without the pie-crust--for early
breakfast next morning before going off for the day; but, to our
amazement, in the morning the pot was empty.  There were some strange
kaffirs--camp followers--hanging on to our trail for what they could
pick up, and we suspected them.  There was a great row, but the boys
denied having touched the pot, and we could prove nothing.

That night we made the fire close to our sleeping-place and moved the
kaffirs further away, but next morning the pot was again empty--cleaned
and polished as if it had been washed out.  While we, speechless with
astonishment and anger, were wondering who the thief was and what we
should do with him, one of the hunting boys came up and pointed to the
prints of a dog's feet in the soft white ashes of the dead fire.  There
was only one word: "Snarleyow."  The thief was lying fast asleep
comfortably curled up on his master's clothes.  There could be no
mistake about those big splayed footprints, and in about two minutes
Snarleyow was getting a first-class hammering, with his head tied inside
the three-legged pot for a lesson.

After that he was kept tied up at night; but Snarleyow was past curing.
We had practically nothing to eat but what we shot, and nothing to drink
but bush tea--that is, tea made from a certain wild shrub with a very
strong scent; it is not nice, but you drink it when you cannot get
anything else.  We could not afford luxuries then, but two days before
Ted's birthday he sent a runner off to Komati Drift and bought a small
tin of ground coffee and a tin of condensed milk for his birthday treat.
It was to be a real feast that day, so he cut the top off the tin
instead of punching two holes and blowing the milk out, as we usually
did in order to economise and keep out the dust and insects.  What we
could not use in the coffee that day we were going to spread on our
`dough-boys' instead of butter and jam.  It was to be a real feast!

The five of us sat down in a circle and began on our hunter's pot,
saving the good things for the last.  While we were still busy on the
stew, there came a pathetic heartbreaking yowl from Snarleyow, and we
looked round just in time to see him, his tail tucked between his legs
and his head high in the air, bolting off into the bush as hard as he
could lay legs to the ground, with the milk tin stuck firmly on to his
nose.  The greedy thief in trying to get the last scrap out had dug his
nose and top jaw too far in, and the jagged edges of the tin had gripped
him; and the last we saw of our birthday treat was the tin flashing in
the sunlight on Snarley's nose as he tore away howling into the bush.
Snarleyow came to a bad end: his master shot him as he was running off
with a ham.  He was a full-grown dog when he came to our camp, and too
old to learn principles and good manners.

Dogs are like people: what they learn when they are young, whether of
good or of evil, is not readily forgotten.  I began early with Jock,
and--remembering what Rocky had said--tried to help him.  It is little
use punishing a dog for stealing if you take no trouble about feeding
him.  That is very rough on the dog; he has to find out slowly and by
himself what he may take, and what he may not.  Sometimes he leaves what
he was meant to take, and goes hungry; and sometimes takes what was not
intended for him, and gets a thrashing.  That is not fair.  You cannot
expect to have a good dog, and one that will understand you, if you
treat him in that way.  Some men teach their dogs not to take food from
any one but themselves.  One day when we were talking about training
dogs, Ted told one of the others to open Jess's mouth and put a piece of
meat in it, he undertaking not to say a word and not even to look at
her.  The meat was put in her mouth and her jaws were shut tight on it;
but the instant she was free she dropped it, walked round to the other
side of Ted and sat close up to him.  He waited for a minute or so and,
without so much as a glance at her, said quietly "All right."  She was
back again in a second and with one hungry bite bolted the lump of meat.

I taught Jock not to touch food in camp until he was told to `take it.'
The lesson began when he got his saucer of porridge in the morning; and
he must have thought it cruel to have that put in front of him, and then
to be held back or tapped with a finger on the nose each time he tried
to dive into it.  At first he struggled and fought to get at it; then he
tried to back away and dodge round the other side; then he became dazed,
and, thinking it was not for him at all, wanted to walk off and have
nothing more to do with it.  In a few days, however, I got him to lie
still and take it only when I patted him and pushed him towards it; and
in a very little time he got on so well that I could put his food down
without saying anything and let him wait for permission.  He would lie
down with his head on his paws and his nose right up against the saucer,
so as to lose no time when the order came; but he would not touch it
until he heard `Take it.'  He never moved his head, but his little
browny dark eyes, full of childlike eagerness, used to be turned up
sideways and fixed on mine.  I believe he watched my lips; he was so
quick to obey the order when it came.

When he grew up and had learned his lessons there was no need for these
exercises.  He got to understand me so well that if I nodded or moved my
hand in a way that meant `all right,' he would go ahead: by that time
too he was dignified and patient; and it was only in his puppyhood that
he used to crouch up close to his food and tremble with impatience and
excitement.

There was one lesson that he hated most of all.  I used to balance a
piece of meat on his nose and make him keep it there until the word to
take it came.

Time after time he would close his eyes as if the sight of the meat was
more than he could bear, and his mouth would water so from the savoury
smell that long streels of dribble would hang down on either side.

It seems unnecessary and even cruel to tantalise a dog in that way; but
it was not: it was education; and it was true kindness.  It taught him
to understand his master, and to be obedient, patient, and observant; it
taught him not to steal; it saved him from much sickness, and perhaps
death, by teaching him not to feed on anything he could find; it taught
him manners and made it possible for him to live with his master and be
treated like a friend.

Good feeding, good care, and plenty of exercise soon began to make a
great change in Jock.  He ceased to look like a beetle--grew bigger
everywhere, not only in one part as he had done at first; his neck grew
thick and strong, and his legs straightened up and filled out with
muscle.  The others, seeing him every day, were slow to notice these
things, but my sand had been changed into gold long ago, and they always
said I could not see anything wrong in Jock.

There was one other change which came more slowly and seemed to me much
more wonderful.  After his morning feed, if there was nothing to do, he
used to go to sleep in some shady place, and I remember well one day
watching him as he lay.  His bit of shade had moved away and left him in
the bright sunshine; and as he breathed and his ribs rose and fell, the
tips of the hairs on his side and back caught the sunlight and shone
like polished gold, and the wavy dark lines seemed more distinct and
darker, but still very soft.  In fact, I was astonished to see that in a
certain light Jock looked quite handsome.  That was the first time I
noticed the change in colour; and it made me remember two things.  The
first was what the other fellows had said the day Billy gave up his pup,
"You can't tell how a puppy will turn out: even his colour changes;" and
the second was a remark made by an old hunter who had offered to buy
Jock--the real meaning of which I did not understand at the time.

"The best dog I ever owned was a golden brindle," said the old man
thoughtfully, after I had laughed at the idea of selling my dog.  I had
got so used to thinking that he was only a faded wishy-washy edition of
Jess that the idea of his colour changing did not occur to me then, and
I never suspected that the old man could see how he would turn out; but
the touch of sunlight opened my eyes that day, and after that whenever I
looked at Jock the words "golden brindle" came back to my mind, and I
pictured him as he was going to be--and as he really did grow up--having
a coat like burnished gold with soft, dark, wavy brindles in it and that
snow-white V on his chest.

Jock had many things to learn besides the lessons he got from me--the
lessons of experience which nobody could teach him.  When he was six
months old--just old enough, if he had lived in a town, to chase a cat
and make a noise--he knew many things that respectable puppies of twice
his age who stay at home never get a chance of learning.

On trek there were always new places to see, new roads to travel, and
new things to examine, tackle or avoid.  He learnt something fresh
almost every day: he learnt, for instance, that, although it was shady
and cool under the waggon, it was not good enough to lie in the wheel
track, not even for the pleasure of feeling the cool iron tyre against
your back or head as you slept; and he knew that, because one day he had
done it and the wheel had gone over his foot; and it might just as
easily have been his back or head.  Fortunately the sand was soft and
his foot was not crushed; but he was very lame for some days, and had to
travel on the waggon.

He learned a good deal from Jess: among other things, that it was not
necessary to poke his nose up against a snake in order to find out what
it was.  He knew that Jess would fight anything; and when one day he saw
her back hair go up and watched her sheer off the footpath wide into the
grass, he did the same; and then when we had shot the snake, both he and
Jess came up very very cautiously and sniffed at it, with every hair on
their bodies standing up.

He found out for himself that it was not a good idea to turn a scorpion
over with his paw.  The vicious little tail with a thorn in it whipped
over the scorpion's back, and Jock had such a foot that he must have
thought a scorpion worse than two waggons.  He was a very sick dog for
some days; but after that, whenever he saw a thing that he did not
understand, he would watch it very carefully from a little way off and
notice what it did and what it looked like, before trying experiments.

So, little by little, Jock got to understand plenty of things that no
town dog would ever know, and he got to know--just as some people do--by
what we call instinct, whether a thing was dangerous or safe, even
though he had never seen anything like it before.  That is how he knew
that wolves or lions were about--and that they were dangerous--when he
heard or scented them; although he had never seen, scented or heard one
before to know what sort of animal it might be.  You may well wonder how
he could tell whether the scent or the cry belonged to a wolf which he
must avoid, or to a buck which he might hunt, when he had never seen
either a wolf or a buck at the time; but he did know; and he also knew
that no dog could safely go outside the ring of the camp fires when wolf
or lion was about.  I have known many town-bred dogs that could scent
them just as well as Jess or Jock could, but having no instinct of
danger they went out to see what it was, and of course they never came
back.

I used to take Jock with me everywhere so that he could learn everything
that a hunting dog ought to know, and above all things to learn that he
was my dog, and to understand all that I wanted to tell him.  So while
he was still a puppy, whenever he stopped to sniff at something new or
to look at something strange, I would show him what it was; but if he
stayed behind to explore while I moved on, or if he fell asleep and did
not hear me get up from where I had sat down to rest, or went off the
track on his own account, I used to hide away from him on top of a rock
or up a tree and let him hunt about until he found me.

At first he used to be quite excited when he missed me, but after a
little time he got to know what to do and would sniff along the ground
and canter away after me--always finding me quite easily.  Even if I
climbed a tree to hide from him he would follow my track to the foot of
the tree, sniff up the trunk as far as he could reach standing up
against it, and then peer up into the branches.  If he could not see me
from one place, he would try another--always with his head tilted a bit
on one side.  He never barked at these times; but as soon as he saw me,
his ears would drop, his mouth open wide with the red tongue lolling
out, and the stump of a tail would twiggle away to show how pleased he
was.  Sometimes he would give a few little whimpery grunts: he hardly
ever barked; when he did I knew there was something worth looking at.

Jock was not a quarrelsome dog, and he was quick to learn and very
obedient, but in one connection I had great difficulty with him for
quite a little time.  He had a sort of private war with the fowls; and
it was due to the same cause as his war with the other puppies: they
interfered with him.  Now, every one knows what a fowl is like: it is
impudent, inquisitive, selfish, always looking for something to eat, and
has no principles.

A friend of mine once told me a story about a dog of his and the trouble
he had with fowls.  Several of us had been discussing the characters of
dogs, and the different emotions they feel and manage to express, and
the kind of things they seem to think about.  Every one knows that a dog
can feel angry, frightened, pleased, and disappointed.  Any one who
knows dogs will tell you that they can also feel anxious, hopeful,
nervous, inquisitive, surprised, ashamed, interested, sad, loving,
jealous, and contented--just like human beings.

We had told many stories illustrating this, when my friend asked the
question: "Have dogs a sense of humour?"  Now I know that Jock looked
very foolish the day he fought the table-leg--and a silly old hen made
him look just as foolish another day--but that is not quite what my
friend meant.  On both occasions Jock clearly felt that he had made
himself look ridiculous; but he was very far from looking amused.  The
question was: Is a dog capable of sufficient thinking to appreciate a
simple joke, and is it possible for a dog to feel amused.  If Jess had
seen Jock bursting to fight the table-leg would she have seen the joke?
Well, I certainly did not think so; but he said he was quite certain
some dogs have a sense of humour; and he had had proof of it.

He told the story very gravely, but I really do not even now know
whether he--Well, here it is: He had once owned a savage old watch-dog,
whose box stood in the back-yard where he was kept chained up all day;
he used to be fed once a day--in the mornings--and the great plague of
his life was the fowls.  They ran loose in the yard and picked up food
all day, besides getting a really good feed of grain morning and
evening; possibly the knowledge of this made the old dog particularly
angry when they would come round by ones or twos or dozens trying to
steal part of his one meal.  Anyhow, he hated them, and whenever he got
a chance killed them.  The old fowls learned to keep out of his way and
never ventured within his reach unless they were quite sure that he was
asleep or lying in his kennel where he could not see them; but there
were always new fowls coming, or young ones growing up; and so the war
went on.

One Sunday morning my friend was enjoying a smoke on his back stoep when
feeding time came round.  The cook took the old dog's food to him in a
high three-legged pot, and my friend, seeing the fowls begin to gather
round and wishing to let the old dog have his meal in peace, told the
cook to give the fowls a good feed in another part of the yard to draw
them off.  So the old fellow polished off his food and licked the pot
clean, leaving not a drop or a speck behind.

But fowls are very greedy; they were soon back again wandering about,
with their active-looking eyes searching everything.  The old dog,
feeling pretty satisfied with life, picked out a sandy spot in the
sunshine, threw himself down full stretch on his side, and promptly went
to sleep--at peace with all the world.  Immediately he did this, out
stepped a long-legged athletic-looking young cockerel and began to
advance against the enemy.  As he got nearer he slowed down, and looked
first with one eye and then with the other so as to make sure that all
was safe, and several times he paused with one foot poised high before
deciding to take the next step.  My friend was greatly amused to see all
the trouble that the fowl was taking to get up to the empty pot, and,
for the fun of giving the conceited young cockerel a fright, threw a
pebble at him.  He was so nervous that when the pebble dropped near him,
he gave one great bound and tore off flapping and screaming down the
yard as if he thought the old dog was after him.  The old fellow himself
was startled out of his sleep, and raised his head to see what the row
was about; but, as nothing more happened, he lay down again, and the
cockerel, finding also that it was a false alarm, turned back not a bit
ashamed for another try.

The cockerel had not seen the old dog lift his head; my friend had, and
when he looked again he saw that, although the underneath eye--half
buried in the sand--was shut, the top eye was open and was steadily
watching the cockerel as he came nearer and nearer to the pot.  My
friend sat dead still, expecting a rush and another fluttering scramble.
At last the cockerel took the final step, craned his neck to its utmost
and peered down into the empty pot.  The old dog gave two gentle pats
with his tail in the sand, and closing his eye went to sleep again.

Jock had the same sort of trouble.  The fowls tried to steal his food;
and he would not stand it.  His way of dealing with them was not good
for their health: before I could teach him not to kill, and before the
fowls would learn not to steal, he had finished half a dozen of them one
after another with just one bite and a shake.  He would growl very low
as they came up and, without lifting his head from the plate, watch them
with his little eyes turning from soft brown to shiny black; and when
they came too near and tried to snatch just one mouthful--well, one
jump, one shake, and it was all over.

In the end he learned to tumble them over and scare their wits out
without hurting them; and they learned to give him a very wide berth.

I used always to keep some fowls with the waggons, partly to have fresh
meat if we ran out of game, but mainly to have fresh eggs, which were a
very great treat; and as a rule it was only when a hen turned obstinate
and would not lay that we ate her.  I used to have one old rooster,
whose name was Pezulu, and six or eight hens.  The hens changed from
time to time--as we ate them--but Pezulu remained.

The fowl-coop was carried on top of everything else, and it was always
left open so that the fowls could go in and out as they liked.  In the
very beginning of all, of course, the fowls were shut in and fed in the
coop for a day or two to teach them where their home was; but it is
surprising how quickly a fowl will learn and how it observes things.
For instance, the moving of the coop from one waggon to another is not a
thing one would expect the fowls to notice, all the waggons being so
much alike and having no regular order at the outspans; but they did
notice it, and at once.  They would first get on to the waggon on which
the coop had been, and look about in a puzzled lost kind of way; then
walk all over the load apparently searching for it, with heads cocked
this way and that, as if a great big coop was a thing that might have
been mislaid somewhere; then one after another would jerk out short
cackles of protest, indignation and astonishment, and generally make no
end of a fuss.  It was only when old Pezulu led the way and perched on
the coop itself and crowed and called to them that they would get up on
to the other waggon.

Pezulu got his name by accident--in fact, by a misunderstanding.  It is
a Zulu word meaning `up' or `on top,' and when the fowls first joined
the waggons and were allowed to wander about at the outspan places, the
boys would drive them up when it was time to trek again by cracking
their big whips and shouting "Pezulu."  In a few days no driving or
whip-cracking was necessary; one of the boys would shout "Pezulu" three
or four times, and they would all come in and one by one fly and
scramble up to the coop.  One day, after we had got a new lot of hens, a
stranger happened to witness the performance.  Old Pezulu was the only
one who knew what was meant, and being a terribly fussy nervous old
gentleman, came tearing out of the bush making a lot of noise, and
scrambled hastily on to the waggon.  The stranger, hearing the boys call
"Pezulu" and seeing him hurry up so promptly, remarked: "How well he
knows his name!"  So we called him Pezulu after that.

Whenever we got new fowls Pezulu became as distracted as a nervous man
with a large family trying to find seats in an excursion train.  As soon
as he saw the oxen being brought up, and before any one had called for
the fowls, he would begin fussing and fuming--trying all sorts of dodges
to get the hens up to the waggons.  He would crow and cluck-cluck or
kip-kip; he would go a few yards towards the waggons and scratch in the
ground, pretending to have found something good, and invite them to come
and share it; he would get on the disselboom and crow and flap his wings
loudly; and finally he would mount on top of the coop and make all sorts
of signals to the hens, who took not the least notice of him.  As the
inspanning went on he would get more and more excited; down he would
come again--not flying off, but hopping from ledge to ledge to show them
the easy way; and once more on the ground he would scrape and pick and
cluck to attract them, and the whole game would be played over again and
again.  So even with new fowls we had very little trouble, as old Pezulu
did most of the teaching.

But sometimes Pezulu himself was caught napping--to the high delight of
the boys.  He was so nervous and so fussy that they thought it great fun
to play tricks on him and pretend to go off and leave him behind.  It
was not easy to do this because, as I say, he did not wait to be called,
but got ready the minute he saw the oxen coming up.  He was like those
fussy people who drive every one else crazy and waste a lot of time by
always being half an hour early, and then annoy you by boasting that
they have never missed a train in their lives.

But there was one way in which Pezulu used to get caught.  Just as he
knew that inspanning meant starting, so, too, he knew that outspanning
meant stopping; and whenever the waggons stopped--even for a few
minutes--out would pop his head, just like the fussy red-faced father of
the big family looking out to see if it was their station or an accident
on the line.  Right and left he would look, giving excited inquisitive
clucks from time to time, and if they did not start in another minute or
two, he would get right out and walk anxiously to the edge of the load
and have another good look around--as the nervous old gentleman gets
half out, and then right out, to look for the guard, but will not let go
the handle of the door for fear of being left.  Unless he saw the boys
outspanning he would not get off, and if one of the hens ventured out he
would rush back at her in a great state and try to bustle her back into
the coop.  But often it happens while trekking that something goes wrong
with the gear--a yokeskey or a nek-strop breaks, or an ox will not pull
kindly or pulls too hard where he is, and you want to change his place;
and in that way it comes about that sometimes you have to outspan one or
two or even more oxen in the middle of a trek.

That is how Pezulu used to get caught: the minute he saw outspanning
begin, he would nip off with all the hens following him and wander about
looking for food, chasing locusts or grasshoppers, and making darts at
beetles and all sorts of dainties--very much interested in his job and
wandering further from the waggons at every step.  The boys would watch
him, and as soon as they were fixed up again, would start off without a
word of warning to Pezulu.  Then there was a scene.  At the first sound
of the waggon-wheels moving he would look up from where he was or walk
briskly into the open or get on to an ant-heap to see what was up, and
when to his horror he saw the waggon actually going without him, he
simply screamed open-mouthed and tore along with wings outstretched--the
old gentleman shouting "Stop the train, stop the train," with his family
straggling along behind him.  It never took him long to catch up and
scramble on, but even then he was not a bit less excited: he was
perfectly hysterical, and his big red comb seemed to get quite purple as
if he might be going to have apoplexy, and he twitched and jerked about
so that it flapped first over one eye and then over the other.  This was
the boys' practical joke which they played on him whenever they could.

That was old Pezulu--Pezulu the First.  He was thick in the body, all
chest and tail, short in the legs, and had enormous spurs; and his big
comb made him; look so red in the face that one could not help thinking
he was too fond of his dinner.  In some old Christmas number we came
across a coloured caricature of a militia colonel in full uniform, and
for quite a long time it remained tacked on to the coop with "Pezulu"
written on it.

Pezulu the Great--who was Pezulu the Second--was not like that: he was a
game cock, all muscle and no frills, with a very resolute manner and a
real love of his profession; he was a bit like Jock in some things; and
that is why I fancy perhaps Jock and he were friends in a kind of way.
But Jock could not get on with the others: they were constantly
changing; new ones who had to be taught manners were always coming; so
he just lumped them together, and hated fowls.  He taught them manners,
but they taught him something too--at any rate, one of them did; and one
of the biggest surprises and best lessons Jock ever had was given him by
a hen while he was still a growing-up puppy.

He was beginning to fancy that he knew a good deal, and like most young
dogs was very inquisitive and wanted to know everything and at once.  At
that time he was very keen on hunting mice, rats and bush squirrels, and
had even fought and killed a meerkat after the plucky little rikkitikki
had bitten him rather badly through the lip; and he was still much
inclined to poke his nose in or rush on to things instead of sniffing
round about first.

However, he learned to be careful, and an old hen helped to teach him.
The hens usually laid their eggs in the coop because it was their home,
but sometimes they would make nests in the bush at the outspan places.
One of the hens had done this, and the bush she had chosen was very low
and dense.  No one saw the hen make the nest and no one saw her sitting
on it, for the sunshine was so bright everywhere else, and the shade of
the bush so dark that it was impossible to see anything there; but while
we were at breakfast Jock, who was bustling about everywhere as a puppy
will, must have scented the hen or have seen this brown thing in the
dark shady hole.

The hen was sitting with her head sunk right down into her chest, so
that he could not see any head, eyes or beak--just a sort of brown lump.
Suddenly we saw Jock stand stock-still, cock up one ear, put his head
down and his nose out, hump up his shoulders a bit and begin to walk
very slowly forward in a crouching attitude.  He lifted his feet so
slowly and so softly that you could count five between each step.  We
were all greatly amused and thought he was pointing a mouse or a locust,
and we watched him.

He crept up like a boy showing off until he was only six inches from the
object, giving occasional cautious glances back at us to attract
attention.  Just as he got to the hole the hen let out a vicious peck on
the top of his nose and at the same time flapped over his head,
screaming and cackling for dear life.  It was all so sudden and so
surprising that she was gone before he could think of making a grab at
her; and when he heard our shouts of laughter he looked as foolish as if
he understood all about it.


CHAPTER SIX.

THE FIRST HUNT.

Jock's first experience in hunting was on the Crocodile River not far
from the spot where afterwards we had the great fight with The Old
Crocodile.  In the summer when the heavy rains flood the country the
river runs `bank high,' hiding everything--reeds, rocks, islands, and
stunted trees--in some places silent and oily like a huge gorged snake,
in others foaming and turbulent as an angry monster.  In the rainless
winter when the water is low and clear the scene is not so grand, but is
quiet, peaceful, and much more beautiful.  There is an infinite variety
in it then--the river sometimes winding along in one deep channel, but
more often forking out into two or three streams in the broad bed.  The
loops and lacings of the divided water carve out islands and spaces of
all shapes and sizes, banks of clean white sand or of firm damp mud
swirled up by the floods, on which tall green reeds with yellow
tasselled tops shoot up like crops of Kaffir corn.  Looked down upon
from the flood banks the silver streaks of water gleam brightly in the
sun, and the graceful reeds, bowing and swaying slowly with the gentlest
breeze and alternately showing their leaf-sheathed stems and crested
tops, give the appearance of an ever-changing sea of green and gold.
Here and there a big rock, black and polished, stands boldly out, and
the sea of reeds laps round it like the waters of a lake on a bright
still day.  When there is no breeze the rustle of the reeds is hushed,
and the only constant sound is the ever-varying voice of the water,
lapping, gurgling, chattering, murmuring, as it works its way along the
rocky channels; sometimes near and loud, sometimes faint and distant;
and sometimes, over long sandy reaches, there is no sound at all.

Get up on some vantage point upon the high bank and look down there one
day in the winter of the tropics as the heat and hush of noon approach,
and it will seem indeed a scene of peace and beauty--a place to rest and
dream, where there is neither stir nor sound.  Then, as you sit silently
watching and thinking, where all the world is so infinitely still, you
will notice that one reed down among all those countless thousands is
moving.  It bows slowly and gracefully a certain distance, and then with
a quivering shuddering motion straightens itself still more slowly and
with evident difficulty, until at last it stands upright again like the
rest but still all a-quiver while they do not move a leaf.  Just as you
are beginning to wonder what the reason is, the reed bows slowly again,
and again struggles back; and so it goes on as regularly as the swing of
a pendulum.  Then you know that, down at the roots where you cannot see
it, the water is flowing silently, and that something attached to this
reed is dragging in the stream and pulling it over, and swinging back to
do it again each time the reed lifts it free--a perpetual seesaw.

You are glad to find the reason, because it looked a little uncanny; but
the behaviour of that one reed has stopped your dreaming and made you
look about more carefully.  Then you find that, although the reeds
appear as still as the rocks, there is hardly a spot where, if you watch
for a few minutes, you will not see something moving.  A tiny
field-mouse climbing one reed will sway it over; a river rat gnawing at
the roots will make it shiver and rustle; little birds hopping from one
to another will puzzle you; and a lagavaan turning in his sunbath will
make half a dozen sway outwards.

All feeling that it is a home of peace, a place to rest and dream,
leaves you; you are wondering what goes on down below the green and gold
where you can see nothing; and when your eye catches a bigger, slower,
continuous movement in another place, and for twenty yards from the bank
to the stream you see the tops of the reeds silently and gently parting
and closing again as something down below works its way along without
the faintest sound, the place seems too quiet, too uncanny and
mysterious, too silent, stealthy and treacherous for you to sit still in
comfort: you must get up and do something.

There is always good shooting along the rivers in a country where water
is scarce.  Partridges, bush-pheasants and stembuck were plentiful along
the banks and among the thorns, but the reeds themselves were the home
of thousands of guinea-fowl, and you could also count on duiker and
rietbuck as almost a certainty there.  If this were all, it would be
like shooting in a well-stocked cover, but it is not only man that is on
the watch for game at the drinking-places.  The beasts of prey--lions,
tigers, hyenas, wild dogs and jackals, and lastly pythons and
crocodiles--know that the game must come to water, and they lie in wait
near the tracks or the drinking-places.  That is what makes the mystery
and charm of the reeds; you never know what you will put up.  The lions
and tigers had deserted the country near the main drifts and followed
the big game into more peaceful parts; but the reeds were still the
favourite shelter and resting-place of the crocodiles; and there were
any number of them left.

There is nothing that one comes across in hunting more horrible and
loathsome than the crocodile: nothing that rouses the feeling of horror
and hatred as it does: nothing that so surely and quickly gives the
sensation of `creeps in the back' as the noiseless apparition of one in
the water just where you least expected anything, or the discovery of
one silently and intently watching you with its head resting flat on a
sand spit--the thing you had seen half a dozen times before and mistaken
for a small rock.  Many things are hunted in the Bushveld; but only the
crocodile is hated.  There is always the feeling of horror that this
hideous, cowardly, cruel thing--the enemy of man and beast alike--with
its look of a cunning smile in the greeny glassy eyes and great wide
mouth, will mercilessly drag you down--down--down to the bottom of some
deep still pool, and hold you there till you drown.  Utterly helpless
yourself to escape or fight, you cannot even call, and if you could, no
one could help you there.  It is all done in silence: a few bubbles come
up where a man went down; and that is the end of it.

We all knew about the crocodiles and were prepared for them, but the
sport was good, and when you are fresh at the game and get interested in
a hunt it is not very easy to remember all the things you have been
warned about and the precautions you were told to take.  It was on the
first day at the river that one of our party, who was not a very old
hand at hunting, came in wet and muddy and told us how a crocodile had
scared the wits out of him.  He had gone out after guinea-fowl, he said,
but as he had no dog to send in and flush them, the birds simply played
with him: they would not rise but kept running in the reeds a little way
in front of him, just out of sight.  He could hear them quite
distinctly, and thinking to steal a march on them took off his boots and
got on to the rocks.  Stepping bare-footed from rock to rock where the
reeds were thin, he made no noise at all and got so close up that he
could hear the little whispered chink-chink-chink that they give when
near danger.  The only chance of getting a shot at them was to mount one
of the big rocks from which he could see down into the reeds; and he
worked his way along a mud-bank towards one.  A couple more steps from
the mud-bank on to a low black rock would take him to the big one.
Without taking his eyes off the reeds where the guinea-fowl were he
stepped cautiously on to the low black rock, and in an instant was swept
off his feet, tossed and tumbled over and over, into the mud and reeds,
and there was a noise of furious rushing and crashing as if a troop of
elephants were stampeding through the reeds.  He had stepped on the back
of a sleeping crocodile; no doubt it was every bit as frightened as he
was.  There was much laughter over this and the breathless earnestness
with which he told the story; but there was also a good deal of chaff,
for it seems to be generally accepted that you are not bound to believe
all hunting stories; and Jim and his circus crocodile became the joke of
the camp.

We were spending a couple of days on the river bank to make the most of
the good water and grazing, and all through the day some one or other
would be out pottering about among the reeds, gun in hand, to keep the
pot full and have some fun, and although we laughed and chaffed about
Jim's experience, I fancy we were all very much on the look-out for
rocks that looked like crocs and crocs that looked like rocks.

One of the most difficult lessons that a beginner has to learn is to
keep cool.  The keener you are the more likely you are to get excited
and the more bitterly you feel the disappointments; and once you lose
your head, there is no mistake too stupid for you to make, and the
result is another good chance spoilt.  The great silent bush is so
lonely; the strain of being on the look-out all the time is so great;
the uncertainty as to what may start up--anything from a partridge to a
lion--is so trying that the beginner is wound up like an alarum clock
and goes off at the first touch.  He is not fit to hit a haystack at
twenty yards; will fire without looking or aiming at all; jerk the rifle
as he fires; forget to change the sight after the last shot; forget to
cock his gun or move the safety catch; forget to load; forget to fire at
all: nothing is impossible--nothing too silly.

On a later trip we had with us a man who was out for the first time, and
when we came upon a troop of koodoo he started yelling, war-whooping and
swearing at them, chasing them on foot and waving his rifle over his
head.  When we asked him why he, who was nearest to them, had not fired
a shot, all he could say was that he never remembered his rifle or
anything else until they were gone.

These experiences had been mine, some of them many times, in spite of
Rocky's example and advice; and they were always followed by a fresh
stock of good resolutions.

I had started out this day with the same old determination to keep cool,
but, once into the reeds, Jim's account of how he had stepped on the
crocodile put all other thoughts out of my mind, and most of my
attention was given to examining suspicious-looking rocks as we stole
silently and quietly along.

Jock was with me, as usual; I always took him out even then--not for
hunting, because he was too young, but in order to train him.  He was
still only a puppy, about six months old, as well as I remember, and had
never tackled or even followed a wounded buck, so that it was impossible
to say what he would do; he had seen me shoot a couple and had wanted to
worry them as they fell; but that was all.  He was quite obedient and
kept his place behind me; and, although he trembled with excitement when
he saw or heard anything, he never rushed in or moved ahead of me
without permission.  The guinea-fowl tormented him that day; he could
scent and hear them, and was constantly making little runs forward, half
crouching and with his nose back and tail dead level and his one ear
full-cocked and the other half-up.

For about half an hour we went on in this way.  There was plenty of
fresh duiker spoor to show us that we were in a likely place, one spoor
in particular being so fresh in the mud that it seemed only a few
minutes old.  We were following this one very eagerly but very
cautiously, and evidently Jock agreed with me that the duiker must be
near, for he took no more notice of the guinea-fowl; and I for my part
forgot all about crocodiles and suspicious-looking rocks; there was at
that moment only one thing in the world for me, and that was the duiker.
We crept along noiselessly in and out of the reeds, round rocks and
mudholes, across small stretches of firm mud or soft sand, so silently
that nothing could have heard us, and finally we came to a very big
rock, with the duiker spoor fresher than ever going close round it down
stream.  The rock was a long sloping one, polished smooth by the floods
and very slippery to walk on.  I climbed it in dead silence, peering
down into the reeds and expecting every moment to see the duiker.

The slope up which we crept was long and easy, but that on the
down-stream side was much steeper.  I crawled up to the top on hands and
knees, and raising myself slowly, looked carefully about, but no duiker
could be seen; yet Jock was sniffing and trembling more than ever, and
it was quite clear that he thought we were very close up.  Seeing
nothing in front or on either side, I stood right up and turned to look
back the way we had come and examine the reeds on that side.  In doing
so a few grains of grit crunched under my foot, and instantly there was
a rush in the reeds behind me; I jumped round to face it, believing that
the crocodile was grabbing at me from behind, and on the polished
surface of the rock my feet slipped and shot from under me, both bare
elbows bumped hard on the rock, jerking the rifle out of my hands; and I
was launched like a torpedo right into the mass of swaying reeds.

When you think you are tumbling on to a crocodile there is only one
thing you want to do--get out as soon as possible.  How long it took to
reach the top of the rock again, goodness only knows!  It seemed like a
life-time; but the fact is I was out of those reeds and up that rock in
time to see the duiker as it broke out of the reeds, raced up the bank,
and disappeared into the bush with Jock tearing after it as hard as ever
he could go.

One call stopped him, and he came back to me looking very crestfallen
and guilty, no doubt thinking that he had behaved badly and disgraced
himself.  But he was not to blame at all; he had known all along that
the duiker was there--having had no distracting fancies about
crocodiles--and when he saw it dash off and his master instantly jump in
after it, he must have thought that the hunt had at last begun and that
he was expected to help.

After all that row and excitement there was not much use in trying for
anything more in the reeds--and indeed I had had quite enough of them
for one afternoon; so we wandered along the upper banks in the hope of
finding something where there were no crocodiles, and it was not long
before we were interested in something else and able to forget all about
the duiker.

Before we had been walking many minutes, Jock raised his head and ears
and then lowered himself into a half crouching attitude and made a
little run forward.  I looked promptly in the direction he was pointing
and about two hundred yards away saw a stembuck standing in the shade of
a mimosa bush feeding briskly on the buffalo grass.  It was so small and
in such bad light that the shot was too difficult for me at that
distance, and I crawled along behind bushes, ant-heaps and trees until
we were close enough for anything.  The ground was soft and sandy, and
we could get along easily enough without making any noise; but all the
time, whilst thinking how lucky it was to be on ground so soft for the
hands and knees, and so easy to move on without being heard, something
else was happening.  With eyes fixed on the buck I did not notice that
in crawling along on all-fours, the muzzle of the rifle dipped regularly
into the sand, picking up a little in the barrel each time.  There was
not enough to burst the rifle, but the effect was surprising.  Following
on a painfully careful aim, there was a deafening report that made my
head reel and buzz; the kick of the rifle on the shoulder and cheek left
me blue for days; and when my eyes were clear enough to see anything the
stembuck had disappeared.

I was too disgusted to move, and sat in the sand rubbing my shoulder and
thanking my stars that the rifle had not burst.  There was plenty to
think about, to be sure, and no hurry to do anything else, for the noise
of the shot must have startled every living thing for a mile round.

It is not always easy to tell the direction from which a report comes
when you are near a river or in broken country or patchy bush; and it is
not an uncommon thing to find that a shot which has frightened one
animal away from you has startled another and driven it towards you; and
that is what happened in this case.  As I sat in the shade of the thorns
with the loaded rifle across my knees there was the faint sound of a
buck cantering along in the sand; I looked up; and only about twenty
yards from me a duiker came to a stop, half fronting me.  There it stood
looking back over its shoulder and listening intently, evidently
thinking that the danger lay behind it.  It was hardly possible to miss
that; and as the duiker rolled over, I dropped my rifle and ran to make
sure of it.

Of course, it was dead against the rules to leave the rifle behind; but
it was simply a case of excitement again: when the buck rolled over
everything else was forgotten!  I knew the rule perfectly well--Reload
at once and never part with your gun.  It was one of Rocky's lessons,
and only a few weeks before this, when out for an afternoon's shooting
with an old hunter, the lesson had been repeated.  The old man shot a
rietbuck ram, and as it had been facing us and dropped without a kick we
both thought that it was shot through the brain.  There was no mark on
the head, however, and although we examined it carefully, we failed to
find the bullet-mark or a trace of blood; so we put our rifles down to
settle the question by skinning the buck.  After sawing at the neck for
half a minute, however, the old man found his knife too blunt to make an
opening, and we both hunted about for a stone to sharpen it on, and
while we were fossicking about in the grass there was a noise behind,
and looking sharply round we saw the buck scramble to its feet and
scamper off before we had time to move.  The bullet must have touched
one of its horns and stunned it.  My companion was too old a hunter to
get excited, and while I ran for the rifles and wanted to chase the buck
on foot he stood quite still, gently rubbing the knife on the stone he
had picked up.  Looking at me under bushy eyebrows and smiling
philosophically, he said:

"That's something for you to remember, Boy.  It's my belief if you lived
for ever there'd always be something to learn at this game."

Unfortunately I did not remember when it would have been useful.  As I
ran forward the duiker tumbled, struggled and rolled over and over, then
got up and made a dash, only to dive head foremost into the sand and
somersault over; but in a second it was up again and racing off, again
to trip and plunge forward on to its chest with its nose outstretched
sliding along the soft ground.  The bullet had struck it in the
shoulder, and the broken leg was tripping it and bringing it down; but,
in far less time than it takes to tell it, the little fellow found out
what was wrong, and scrambling once more to its feet was off on three
legs at a pace that left me far behind.  Jock, remembering the mistake
in the reeds, kept his place behind, and I in the excitement of the
moment neither saw nor thought of him until the duiker, gaining at every
jump, looked like vanishing for ever.  Then I remembered and, with a
frantic wave of my hand, shouted, "After him, Jock."

He was gone before my hand was down, and faster than I had ever seen him
move, leaving me ploughing through the heavy sand far behind.  Past the
big bush I saw them again, and there the duiker did as wounded game so
often do: taking advantage of cover it changed direction and turned away
for some dense thorns.  But that suited Jock exactly; he took the short
cut across to head it off and was close up in a few more strides.  He
caught up to it, raced up beside it, and made a jump at its throat; but
the duiker darted away in a fresh direction, leaving him yards behind.
Again he was after it and tried the other side; but the buck was too
quick, and again he missed and overshot the mark in his jump.  He was in
such deadly earnest he seemed to turn in the air to get back again and
once more was close up--so close that I the flying heels of the buck
seemed to pass each side of his ears; then he made his spring from
behind, catching the duiker high up on one hind leg, and the two rolled
over together, kicking and struggling in a cloud of dust.  Time after
time the duiker got on its feet, trying to get at him with its horns or
to break away again; but Jock, although swung off his feet and rolled
on, did not let go his grip.  In grim silence he hung on while the
duiker plunged, and, when it fell, tugged and worried as if to shake the
life out of it.

What with the hot sun, the heavy sand, and the pace at which we had
gone, I was so pumped that I finished the last hundred yards at a walk,
and had plenty of time to see what was going on; but even when I got up
to them the struggle was so fierce and the movements so quick that for
some time it was not possible to get hold of the duiker to finish it
off.  At last came one particularly bad fall, when the buck rolled over
on its back, and then Jock let go his grip and made a dash for its
throat; but again the duiker was too quick for him; with one twist it
was up and round facing him on its one knee, and dug, thrust, and swept
with its black spiky horns so vigorously that it was impossible to get
at its neck.  As Jock rushed in the head ducked and the horns flashed
round so swiftly that it seemed as if nothing could save him from being
stabbed through and through, but his quickness and cleverness were a
revelation to me.  If he could not catch the duiker, it could not catch
him: they were in a way too quick for each other, and they were a long
way too quick for me.

Time after time I tried to get in close enough to grab one of the buck's
hind legs, but it was not to be caught.  While Jock was at it fast and
furious in front, I tried to creep up quietly behind--but it was no use:
the duiker kept facing Jock with horns down, and whenever I moved it
swung round and kept me in front also.  Finally I tried a run straight
in; and then it made another dash for liberty.  On three legs, however,
it had no chance, and in another minute Jock had it again, and down they
came together, rolling over and over once more.  The duiker struggled
hard, but he hung on, and each time it got its feet to the ground to
rise he would tug sideways and roll it over again, until I got up to
them, and catching the buck by the head, held it down with my knee on
its neck and my Bushman's Friend in hand to finish it.

There was, however, still another lesson for us both to learn that day;
neither of us knew what a buck can do with its hind feet when it is
down.  The duiker was flat on its side; Jock, thinking the fight was
over, had let go; and, before I could move the supple body doubled up,
and the feet whizzed viciously at me right over its head.  The little
pointed cloven feet are as hard and sharp as horns and will tear the
flesh like claws.  By good luck the kick only grazed my arm, but
although the touch was the lightest it cut the skin and little beads of
blood shot up marking the line like the scratch of a thorn.  Missing my
arm the hoof struck full on the handle of the Bushman's Friend and sent
it flying yards out of reach.  And it was not merely one kick: faster
than the eye could follow them the little feet whizzed and the legs
seemed to buzz round like the spokes of a wheel.  Holding the horns at
arm's length in order to dodge the kicks, I tried to pull the duiker
towards the knife; but it was too much for me, and with a sudden twist
and a wrench freed itself and was off again.

All the time Jock was moving round and round panting and licking his
chops, stepping in and stepping back, giving anxious little whimpers,
and longing to be at it again, but not daring to join in without
permission.  When the duiker broke away, however, he waited for nothing,
and was on to it in one spring--again from behind; and this time he let
go as it fell, and jumping free of it, had it by the throat before it
could rise.  I ran to them again, but the picking up of the knife had
delayed me and I was not in time to save Jock the same lesson that the
duiker had just taught me.

Down on its side, with Jock's jaws locked in its throat, once more the
duiker doubled up and used its feet.  The first kick went over his head
and scraped harmlessly along his back; but the second caught him at the
point of the shoulder, and the razor-like toe ripped his side right to
the hip.  Then the dog showed his pluck and cleverness.  His side was
cut open as if it had been slashed by a knife, but he never flinched or
loosened his grip for a second; he seemed to go at it more furiously
than ever, but more cleverly and warily.  He swung his body round clear
of the whizzing feet, watching them with his little beady eyes fixed
sideways and the gleaming whites showing in the corners; he tugged away
incessantly and vigorously, keeping the buck's neck stretched out and
pulling it round in a circle backwards so that it could not possibly
double its body up enough to kick him again; and before I could catch
the feet to help him, the kicks grew weaker; the buck slackened out, and
Jock had won.

The sun was hot, the sand was deep, and the rifle was hard to find; it
was a long way back to the waggons, and the duiker made a heavy load;
but the end of that first chase seemed so good that nothing else
mattered.  The only thing I did mind was the open cut on Jock's side;
but he minded nothing: his tail was going like a telegraph needle; he
was panting with his mouth open from ear to ear, and his red tongue
hanging out and making great slapping licks at his chops from time to
time; he was not still for a second, but kept walking in and stepping
back in a circle round the duiker, and looking up at me and then down at
it, as if he was not at all sure that there might not be some fresh game
on, and was consulting me as to whether it would not be a good thing to
have another go in and make it all safe.

He was just as happy as a dog could be, and perhaps he was proud of the
wound that left a straight line from his shoulder to his hip and showed
up like a cord under the golden brindle as long as he lived--a memento
of his first real hunt.


CHAPTER SEVEN.

IN THE HEART OF THE BUSH.

When the hen pecked Jock on the nose, she gave him a useful lesson in
the art of finding out what you want to know without getting into
trouble.  As he got older, he also learned that there are only certain
things which concerned him and which it was necessary for him to know.
A young dog begins by thinking that he can do everything, go everywhere,
and know everything; and a hunting dog has to learn to mind his own
business, as well as to understand it.  Some dogs turn sulky or timid or
stupid when they are checked, but an intelligent dog with a stout heart
will learn little by little to leave other things alone, and grow
steadily keener on his own work.  There was no mistake about Jock's
keenness.  When I took down the rifle from the waggon he did not go off
into ecstasies of barking, as most sporting dogs will do, but would give
a quick look up and with an eager little run towards me give a whimper
of joy, make two or three bounds as if wanting to stretch his muscles
and loosen his joints, then shake himself vigorously as though he had
just come out of the water, and with a soft suppressed "Woo-woo-woo"
full of contentment, drop silently into his place at my heels and give
his whole attention to his work.

He was the best of companions, and through the years that we hunted
together I never tired of watching him.  There was always something to
learn, something to admire, something to be grateful for, and very often
something to laugh at--in the way in which we laugh only at those whom
we are fond of.  It was the struggle between Jock's intense keenness and
his sense of duty that most often raised the laugh.  He knew that his
place was behind me; but probably he also knew that nine times out of
ten he scented or saw the game long before I knew there was anything
near, and naturally wanted to be in front or at least abreast of me to
show me whatever there was to be seen.

He noticed, just as surely and as quickly as any human being could, any
change in my manner: nothing escaped him, for his eyes and ears were on
the move the whole time.  It was impossible for me to look for more than
a few seconds in any one direction, or to stop or even to turn my head
to listen, without being caught by him.  His bright brown eyes were
everlastingly on the watch and on the move: from me to the bush, from
the bush back to me.  When we were after game, and he could scent or see
it, he would keep a foot or two to the side of me so as to have a clear
view; and when he knew by my manner that I thought there was game near,
he kept so close up that he would often bump against my heels as I
walked, or run right into my legs if I stopped suddenly.  Often when
stalking buck very quietly and cautiously, thinking only of what was in
front, I would get quite a start by feeling something bump up against me
behind.  At these times it was impossible to say anything without risk
of scaring the game, and I got into the habit of making signs with my
hand which he understood quite as well.

Sometimes after having crawled up I would be in the act of aiming when
he would press up against me.  Nothing puts one off so much as a touch
or the expectation of being jogged when in the act of firing, and I used
to get angry with him then, but dared not breathe a word; I would lower
my head slowly, turn round, and give him a look.  He knew quite well
what it meant.  Down would go his ears instantly, and he would back away
from me a couple of steps, drop his stump of a tail and wag it in a
feeble deprecating way, and open his mouth into a sort of foolish laugh.
That was his apology!  "I beg your pardon: it was an accident!  I won't
do it again."

It was quite impossible to be angry with him, he was so keen and he
meant so well; and when he saw me laughing softly at him, he would come
up again close to me, cock his tail a few inches higher and wag it a bit
faster.

There is a deal of expression in a dog's tail: it will generally tell
you what his feelings are.  My friend maintained that that was how he
knew his old dog was enjoying the joke against the cockerel; and that is
certainly how I knew what Jock was thinking about once when lost in the
veld; and it showed me the way back.

It is easy enough to lose oneself in the Bushveld.  The Berg stands up
some thousands of feet inland on the west, looking as if it had been put
there to hold up the High veld; and between the foothills and the sea
lies the Bushveld, stretching for hundreds of miles north and south.
From the height and distance of the Berg it looks as flat as the floor,
but in many parts it is very much cut up by deep rough dongas, sharp
rises and depressions, and numbers of small kopjes.  Still, it has a way
of looking flat, because the hills are small, and very much alike; and
because hill and hollow are covered and hidden mile after mile by small
trees of a wonderful sameness, just near enough together to prevent you
from seeing more than a few hundred yards at a time.  Most people see no
differences in sheep: many believe that all Chinamen are exactly alike;
and so it is with the Bushveld: you have to know it first.

So far I had never lost my way out hunting.  The experiences of other
men and the warnings from the old hands had made me very careful.  We
were always hearing of men being lost through leaving the road and
following up the game while they were excited, without noticing which
way they went and how long they had been going.  There were no beaten
tracks and very few landmarks, so that even experienced hunters went
astray sometimes for a few hours or a day or two when the mists or heavy
rains came on and nothing could be seen beyond fifty or a hundred yards.

Nearly every one who goes hunting in the Bushveld gets lost some time or
other--generally in the beginning before he has learned to notice
things.  Some have been lost for many days until they blundered on to a
track by accident or were found by a search-party; others have been lost
and, finding no water or food, have died; others have been killed by
lions, and only a boot or a coat--or, as it happened in one case that I
know of, a ring found inside a lion--told what had occurred; others have
been lost and nothing more ever heard of them.  There is no feeling
quite like that of being lost--helplessness, terror, and despair!  The
horror of it is so great that every beginner has it before him; every
one has heard of it, thought of it, and dreamed of it, and every one
feels it holding him to the beaten track, as the fear of drowning keeps
those who cannot swim to shallow water.  That is just in the beginning.
Presently, when little excursions, each bolder than the previous, have
ended without accident, the fear grows less and confidence develops.
Then it is, as a rule, that the accident comes and the lesson is
learned, if you are lucky enough to pull through.

When the camp is away in the trackless bush, it needs a good man always
to find the way home after a couple of hours' chase with all its twists
and turns and doublings; but when camp is made on a known road--a long
main road that strikes a fair line between two points of the compass--it
seems impossible for any one to be hopelessly lost.  If the road runs
east and west you, knowing on which side you left it, have only to walk
north or south steadily and you must strike it again.  The old hands
told the beginners this, and we were glad to know that it was only a
matter of walking for a few hours, more or less, and that in the end we
were bound to find the road and strike some camp.  "Yes," said the old
hands, "it is simple enough here where you have a road running east and
west; there is only one rule to remember: When you have lost your way,
don't lose your head."  But indeed that is just the one rule that you
are quite unable to observe.

Many stories have been told of men being lost: many volumes could be
filled with them for the trouble of writing down what any hunter will
tell you.  But no one who has not seen it can realise how the thing may
happen; no one would believe the effect that the terror of being lost,
and the demoralisation which it causes, can have on a sane man's senses.
If you want to know what a man can persuade himself to believe against
the evidence of his senses--even when his very life depends upon his
holding to the absolute truth--then you should see a man who is lost in
the bush.  He knows that he left the road on the north side; she loses
his bearings; he does not know how long how fat, or how far he has
walked; yet if he keep his head he will make due south and must
inevitably strike the road.  After going for half an hour and seeing
nothing familiar, he begins to feel that he is going in the wrong
direction; something pulls at him to face right about.  Only a few
minutes more of this, and he feels sure that he must have crossed the
road without noticing it, and therefore that he ought to be going north
instead of south, if he hopes ever to strike it again.  How, you will
ask, can a man imagine impossible to cross a big dusty road twenty or
thirty feet wide without seeing it?  The idea seems absurd; yet they do
really believe it.  One of the first illusions that occurs to men when
they lose their heads is that they have done this, and it is the cause
of scores of cases of `lost in the bush.'  The idea that they may have
done it is absurd enough; but stranger still is the fact that they
actually _do_ it.

If you cannot understand a man thinking he had done such a thing, what
can you say of a man actually doing it?  Impossible, quite impossible,
you think.  Ah! but it is a fact: many know it for a fact and I have
witnessed it twice myself, once in Mashonaland and once on the Delagoa
road.  I saw men, tired, haggard and wild-eyed, staring far in front of
them, never looking at the ground, pressing on, on, on, and actually
cross well-worn waggon roads, coming from hard veld into a sandy
wheel-worn track and kicking up a cloud of dust as they passed, and
utterly blind to the fact that they were walking across the roads they
had been searching for--in one case for ten hours, and in the other for
three days.  When we called to them they had already crossed and were
disappearing again into the bush.  In both cases the sound of the human
voice and the relief of being `found,' made them collapse.  The knees
seemed to give way: they could not remain standing.  The man who loses
his head is really lost.  He cannot think, remember, reason, or
understand; and the strangest thing of all is that he often cannot even
_see_ properly--he fails to see the very things that he most wants to
see, even when they are as large as life before him.  Crossing the road
without seeing it is not the only or the most extraordinary example of
this sort of thing.  We were out hunting once in a mounted party, but to
spare a tired horse I went on foot and took up my stand in a game run
among some thorn-trees on the low spur of a hill, while the others made
a big circuit to head off a troop of koodoo.  Among our party there was
one who was very nervous: he had been lost once for six or eight hours,
and being haunted by the dread of being lost again, his nerve was all
gone and he would not go fifty yards without a companion.  In the
excitement of shooting at and galloping after the koodoo probably this
dread was forgotten for a moment: he himself could not tell how it
happened that he became separated, and no one else had noticed him.

The strip of wood along the hills in which I was waiting was four or
five miles long but only from one to three hundred yards wide, a mere
fringe enclosing the little range of kopjes; and between the stems of
the trees I could see our camp and waggons in the open a quarter of a
mile away.  Ten or twelve shots faintly heard in the distance told me
that the others were on to the koodoo, and knowing the preference of
those animals for the bush I took cover behind a big stump and waited.
For over half an hour, however, nothing came towards me, and believing
then that the game had broken off another way, I was about to return to
camp when I heard the tapping of galloping feet a long way off.  In a
few minutes the hard thud and occasional ring on the ground told that it
was not the koodoo; and soon afterwards I saw a man on horseback.  He
was leaning eagerly forward and thumping the exhausted horse with his
rifle and his heels to keep up its staggering gallop.  I looked about
quickly to see what it was he was chasing that could have slipped past
me unnoticed, but there was nothing; then thinking there had been an
accident and he was coming for help, I stepped out into the open and
waited for him to come up.  I stood quite still, and he galloped past
within ten yards of me--so close that his muttered "Get on, you brute;
get on, get on!" as he thumped away at his poor tired horse, were
perfectly audible.

"What's up, sportsman?"  I asked, no louder than you would say it across
a tennis-court; but the words brought him up, white-faced and terrified,
and he half slid, half tumbled, off the horse gasping out, "I was lost,
I was lost!"  How he had managed to keep within that strip of bush,
without once getting into the open where he would have seen the line of
kopjes to which I had told him to stick or could have seen the waggons
and the smoke of the big camp fire, he could never explain.  I turned
him round where he stood, and through the trees showed him the white
tents of the waggons and the cattle grazing near by, but he was too
dazed to understand or explain anything.

There are many kinds of men.  That particular kind is not the kind that
will ever do for veld life: they are for other things and other work.
You will laugh at them at times--when the absurdity is greatest and no
harm has been done.  But see it!  See it--and realise the suspense, the
strain, and the terror; and then even the funniest incident has another
side to it.  See it once; and recall that the worst of endings have had
just such beginnings.  See it in the most absurd and farcical
circumstances ever known; and laugh--laugh your fill; laugh at the
victim and laugh with him, when it is over--and safe.  But in the end
will come the little chilling thought that the strongest, the bravest,
and the best have known something of it too; and that even to those
whose courage holds to the last breath there may come a moment when the
pulse beats a little faster and the judgment is at fault.

Buggins who was with us in the first season was no hunter, but he was a
good shot and not a bad fellow.  In his case there was no tragedy; there
was much laughter and--to me--a wonderful revelation.  He showed us, as
in a play, how you can be lost; how you can walk for ever in one little
circle, as though drawn to a centre by magnetic force, and how you can
miss seeing things in the bush if they do not move.

We had outspanned in a flat covered with close grass about two feet high
and shady flat-topped thorn trees.  The waggons, four in number, were
drawn up a few yards off the road, two abreast.  The grass was sweet and
plentiful; the day was hot and still; and as we had had a very long
early morning trek there was not much inclination to move.  The cattle
soon filled themselves and lay down to sleep; the boys did the same; and
we, when breakfast was over, got into the shade of the waggons, some to
sleep and others to smoke.

Buggins--that was his pet name--was a passenger returning to "England,
Home, and Beauty"--that is to say, literally, to a comfortable home,
admiring sisters and a rich indulgent father--after having sought his
fortune unsuccessfully on the goldfields for fully four months.  Buggins
was good-natured, unselfish, and credulous; but he had one fault--he
`yapped': he talked until our heads buzzed.  He used to sleep
contentedly in a rumpled tarpaulin all through the night treks and come
up fresh as a daisy and full of accumulated chat at the morning outspan,
just when we--unless work or sport called for us--were wanting to get
some sleep.

We knew well enough what to expect, so after breakfast Jimmy, who
understood Buggins well, told him pleasantly that he could "sleep,
shoot, or shut up."  To shut up was impossible, and to sleep again--
without a rest--difficult, even for Buggins; so with a good-natured
laugh he took the shot gun, saying that he "would potter around a bit
and give us a treat."  Well, he did!

We had outspanned on the edge of an open space in the thorn bush; there
are plenty of them to be found in the Bushveld--spaces a few hundred
yards in diameter, like open park land, where not a single tree breaks
the expanse of wavy yellow grass.  The waggons with their greyish tents
and buck-sails and dusty wood-work stood in the fringe of the trees
where this little arena touched the road, and into it sallied Buggins,
gently drawn by the benevolent purpose of giving us a treat.  What he
hoped to find in the open on that sweltering day he only could tell; we
knew that no living thing but lizards would be out of the shade just
then, but we wanted to find him employment harmless to him and us.

He had been gone for more than half an hour when we heard a shot, and a
few minutes later Jimmy's voice roused us.

"What the dickens is Buggins doing?" he asked in a tone so puzzled and
interested that we all turned to watch that sportsman.  According to
Jimmy, he had been walking about in an erratic way for some time on the
far side of the open ground--going from the one end to the other and
then back again; then disappearing for a few minutes in the bush and
re-appearing to again manoeuvre in the open in loops and circles, angles
and straight lines.  Now he was walking about at a smart pace, looking
from side to side apparently searching for something.  We could see the
whole of the arena as clearly as you can see a cricket-field from the
railings--for our waggon formed part of the boundary--but we could see
nothing to explain Buggins's manoeuvres.  Next we saw him face the
thorns opposite, raise his gun very deliberately, and fire into the top
of the trees.

"Green pigeons," said Jimmy firmly; and we all agreed that Buggins was
after specimens for stuffing; but either our guess was wrong or his aim
was bad, for after standing dead still for a minute he resumed his
vigorous walk.  By this time Buggins fairly fascinated us; even the
kaffirs had roused each other and were watching him.  Away he went at
once off to our left, and there he repeated the performance, but, again
made no attempt to pick up anything and showed no further interest in
whatever it was he had fired at, but turned right about face and walked
across the open ground in our direction until he was only a couple of
hundred yards away.  There he stopped and began to look about him and
making off some few yards in another direction climbed on to a
fair-sized ant-heap five or six feet high, and balancing himself
cautiously on this he deliberately fired off both barrels in quick
succession.  Then the same idea struck us all together, and "Buggins is
lost" came from several--all choking with laughter.

Jimmy got up and, stepping out into the open beside the waggon, called,
"Say, Buggins, what in thunder _are_ you doing?"

To see Buggins slide off the ant-heap and shuffle shamefacedly back to
the waggon before a gallery of four white men and a lot of kaffirs, all
cracking and crying with laughter, was a sight never to be forgotten.

I did not want to get lost and be eaten alive, or even look ridiculous,
so I began very carefully: glanced back regularly to see what the track,
trees, rocks, or kopjes looked like from the other side; carefully noted
which side of the road I had turned off; and always kept my eye on the
sun.  But day after day and month after month went by without accident
or serious difficulty, and then the same old thing happened: familiarity
bred contempt, and I got the beginner's complaint, conceit fever, just
as others did: thought I was rather a fine fellow, not like other chaps
who always have doubts and difficulties in finding their way back, but
something exceptional with the real instinct in me which hunters,
natives, and many animals are supposed to have; though, in fact, I could
not get lost.  So each day I went further and more boldly off the road,
and grew more confident and careless.

The very last thing that would have occurred to me on this particular
day was that there was any chance of being lost or any need to take note
of where we went.  For many weeks we had been hunting in exactly the
same sort of country, but not of course in the same part; and the truth
is I did not give the matter a thought at all, but went ahead as one
does with the things that are done every day as matters of habit.


CHAPTER EIGHT.

LOST IN THE VELD.

We were outspanned near some deep shaded water-holes, and at about three
o'clock I took my rifle and wandered off in the hope of dropping across
something for the larder and having some sport during the three hours
before the evening trek would begin; and as there was plenty of spoor of
many kinds the prospects seemed good enough.

We had been going along slo

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/36951