[Illustration: "THEY SAT ON THEIR RUMPS OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE OF KAFIRS"]
The old yellow-fanged dog-baboon that was chained to a post in the
yard had a dangerous trick of throwing stones. He would seize a piece
of rock in two hands, stand erect and whirl round on his heels till
momentum was obtained, and then let go. The missile would fly like a
bullet, and woe betide any one who stood in its way! The performance
precluded any kind of aim,--the stone was hurled off at any chance
tangent,--and it was bad luck rather than any kind of malice that
guided one three-pound boulder through the window, across the kitchen,
and into a portrait of Judas de Beer which hung on the wall not half a
dozen feet from the slumbering Vrouw Grobelaar.
She bounced from her chair and ballooned to the door with a silent,
swift agility most surprising to see in a lady of her generous build,
and not a sound did she utter. She was of good veldt-bred fighting
stock, which never cried out till it was hurt, and there was even
something of compassion in her face as Frikkie jumped from the stoop
with a twelve-foot thong in his hand. After all, it was the baboon
that suffered most, if his yells were any index to his feelings.
Frikkie could smudge a fly ten feet off with just a flick of his whip,
and all the tender parts of the accomplished animal came in for
ruthless attention.
"He ought to be shot," was Frikkie's remark as he coiled up the thong,
at the end of the discipline. "A baboon is past teaching if he has bad
habits. He is more like a man than a beast."
The Vrouw Grobelaar seated herself in the stoop-chair which by common
consent was reserved for her use, and shook her head.
"Baboons are uncanny things," she answered slowly. "When you shoot
them, you can never be quite sure how much murder there is in it. The
old story is that some of them have souls and some not; and it is
quite certain that they can talk when they will. You have heard them
crying in the night sometimes. Well, you ask a Kafir what that means.
Ask an old wise Kafir, not a young one that has forgotten the wisdom
of the black people and learned only the foolishness of the white."
"What does it mean, Tante?" It was I who put the question. Katje, too,
seemed curious.
The old lady eyed me gloomily.
"If you were a landed Boer instead of a kind of schoolmaster," she
replied witheringly, "you would not need to ask such a question. But I
will tell you. A baboon may be wicked,--look at that one showing his
teeth and cursing!--but he is not blind nor a fool. He runs about on
the hills, and steals and fights and scratches, and all the time he
has all the knowledge and twice the strength of a man, if it were not
for the tail behind him and the hair on his body. So it is natural
that sometimes he should be grieved to be such a mean thing as a
baboon, when he could be a useful kind of man if the men would let
him. And at nights, particularly, when their troop is in laager and
the young ones are on watch among the high rocks, it comes home to the
best of them, and they sob and weep like young widows, pretending that
they have pains inside, so that the others shall not feel offended and
turn on them. Any one may hear them in the kloofs on a windless night,
and, I can tell you, the sound of their sorrow is pitiful."
Katje threw out a suggestion to console them with buckshot, and the
Vrouw Grobelaar nodded meaningly.
"To hate baboons is well enough in the wife of a burgher," she said
sweetly. "I am glad to see there is so much fitness and wifeliness
about you, since you will naturally spend all your life on farms."
Katje's flush was a distress-signal. First blood to the Vrouw.
"Baboons," continued the old lady, "are among a farmer's worst
enemies; they steal and destroy and menace all the year around. But,
for all that, there are many farmers who will not shoot or trap them.
And these, you will notice, are always farmers of a ripe age and sense
shaped by experience. _They_ know, you may be sure. My stepsister's
first husband, Shadrach van Guelder, shot at baboons once, and was so
frightened afterwards that he was afraid to be alone in the dark."
There was a story toward, and no one moved.
"There were many Kafirs on his farm, which you have not seen," pursued
the Vrouw Grobelaar, adjusting her voice to narrative pitch. "It was
on the fringe of the Drakensberg, and many spurs of hill, divided by
deep kloofs like gashes, descended on to it. So plenty of water came
down, and the cattle were held from straying by the rocks, on one side
at any rate. The Kafirs had their kraals dotted all about the land;
and as they were of the kind that work, my stepsister's husband
suffered them to remain and grow their little patches of mealies,
while they worked for him in between. He was, of course, a cattle
Boer, as all of our family have always been, but here were so many
Kafirs to be had for nothing that he soon commenced to plow great
spaces of land and sow valuable crops. There was every prospect that
we would make very much money out of that farm; for corn always sells,
even when cattle are going for only seven pounds apiece, and Shadrach
van Guelder was very cheerful about it.
"But when a farmer weighs an ungrown crop, you will always find that
there is something or other he does not take into account. He tells
off the weather and the land and the Kafirs and the water on his
fingers, and forgets to bend down his thumb to represent God--or
something. Shadrach van Guelder lifted up his eyes to the hills from
whence came the water, but it was not until the green corn was six
inches high that he saw that there came with it baboons--armies and
republics of them; more baboons than he had thought to exist. They
swooped down on his sprouting lands, and rioted, ate, and rooted,
trampled and wantoned, with that kind of bouncing devilishness that
not even a Kafir can correctly imitate. In one night they undid all
his work on five sown morgen of fat land, and with the first wink of
the sun in the east they were back again in their kopjes, leaving
devastation and foulness wherever they passed.
"It was my stepsister's husband that stood on one leg and cursed like
a Jew. He was wrathful as a Hollander that has been drinking water,
and what did not help to make him content was the fact that hardly
anything would avail to protect his lands. Once the baboons had tasted
the sweetness of the young corn, they would come again and again,
camping in the kloofs overhead as long as anything remained for them,
like a deaf guest. But, for all that, he had no notion of leaving them
to plunder at their ease. The least one can do with an unwelcome
visitor is to make him uncomfortable; and he sent to certain kraals on
the farm for two old Kafirs he had remarked who had the appearance of
cunning old men.
"They came and squatted before him, squirming and shuffling, as Kafirs
do when a white man talks to them. One was quite a common kind of
Kafir, gone a little gray with age, a tuft of white wool on his chin
and little patches of it here and there on his head. But the other was
a small, twisted, yellow man, with no hair at all, and eyes like
little blots of fire on a charred stick; and his arms were so long and
gnarled and lean that he had a bestial look, like a laborious animal.
"'The baboons have killed the crop on the lower lands,' said Shadrach,
smacking his leg with his sjambok. 'If they are not checked, they will
destroy all the corn on this farm. What is the way to go about it?'
"The little yellow man was biting his lips and turning a straw in his
hands, and gave no answer; but the other spoke.
"'I am from Shangaanland,' he said, 'and there, when the baboons
plague us, we have a way with them, a good way.'
"He sneered sideways at his yellow companion as he spoke, and the look
which the latter returned to him was a thing to shrink from.
"'What is this way?' demanded Shadrach.
"'You must trap a baboon,' explained the old Kafir,--'a leading
baboon, for choice, who has a lot to say in the government of the
troop; and then you must skin him, and let him go again. The others
will travel miles and miles as soon as they see him, and never come
back again.'
"'It makes me sick to think of it,' said Shadrach. 'Surely you know
some other way of scaring them?'
"The old Kafir shook his head slowly, but the yellow man ceased to
smile and play with the straw, and spoke:
"'I do not believe in that way, baas. A Shangaan baboon'--he grinned
at his companion--'is more easily frightened than those of the
Drakensberg. I am of the bushmen, and I know. If you flay one of those
up yonder, the others will make war, and where one came before, ten
will come every night. A baboon is not a fat, lazy Kafir; one must be
careful with him!'
"'How would _you_ drive them away, then?' asked Shadrach.
"The yellow man shuffled his hands in the dust, squatting on his
heels. There, there! See--the baboon in the yard is doing the very
same thing!
"'If I were the baas,' said the yellow man, 'I would turn out the
young men to walk round the fields at night, with buckets to hit with
sticks, and make a noise. And I--well, I am of the bushmen.' He
scratched himself and smiled emptily.
"'Yes, yes?' demanded Shadrach. He knew the wonderful ways of the
bushmen with some animals.
"'I do not know if anything can be done,' said the yellow man, 'but,
if the baas is willing, I can go up to the rocks and try.'
"'How?'
"But he could tell nothing. None of these wizards that have charms to
subdue the beasts can tell you anything about it. A Hottentot will
smell the air and say what cattle are near, but if you bid him tell
you how he does it, he giggles like a fool and is ashamed.
"'I do not know if anything can be done,' the yellow man repeated. 'I
cannot promise the baas, but I can try.'
"'Well, try, then,' ordered Shadrach, and went away to make the
necessary arrangements to have the young Kafirs in the fields that
night.
"They did as he bade, and the noise was loathsome--enough to frighten
anything with an ear in its head. The Kafirs did not relish the watch
in the dark at first, but when they found that their work was only to
thump buckets and howl, they came to do it with zest, and roared and
banged till you would have thought a judgment must descend on them.
The baboons heard it, sure enough, and came down, after a while, to
see what was going on. They sat on their rumps outside the circle of
Kafirs, as quiet as people in a church, and watched the niggers
drumming and capering as though it were a show for their amusement.
Then they went back, leaving the crops untouched, but pulling all the
huts in one kraal to pieces as they passed. It was the kraal of the
old white-tufted Shangaan, as Shadrach learned afterwards.
"Shadrach was pleased that the row had saved his corn, and next day he
gave the twisted man a lump of tobacco. The man tucked it into his
cheek and smiled, wrinkling his nose and looking at the ground.
"'Did you get speech of the baboons last night among the rocks?'
Shadrach asked.
"The other shook his head, grinning. 'I am old,' he said. 'They pay no
attention to me, but I will try again. Perhaps, before long, they will
listen.'
"'When they do that,' said Shadrach, 'you shall have five pounds of
tobacco and five bottles of dop.'
"The man was squatting on his heels all this time at Shadrach's feet,
and his hard fingers, like claws, were picking at the ground. Now he
put out a hand and began fingering the laces of the farmer's shoes
with a quick, fluttering movement that Shadrach saw with a spasm of
terror. It was so exactly the trick of a baboon, so entirely a thing
animal and unhuman.
"'You are more than a baboon yourself,' he said. 'Let go of my leg.
Let go, I say! Curse you, get away--get away from me!'
"The creature had caught his ankle with both hands, the fingers, hard
and shovel-ended, pressing into his flesh.
"'Let go!' cried Shadrach, and struck at the man with his sjambok.
"The man bounded on all fours to evade the blow, but it took him in
the flank, and he was human--or Kafir--again in a moment, and rubbed
himself and whimpered quite naturally.
"'Let me see no more of your baboon tricks,' stormed Shadrach, the
more angry because he had been frightened. 'Keep them for your friends
among the rocks. And now, be off to your kraal.'
"That night again the Kafirs drummed all about the green corn, and
sang in chorus the song which the mountain Kafirs sing when the new
moon shows like a paring from a finger-nail of gold. It is a long and
very loud song, with stamping of feet every minute, and again the
baboons came down to see and listen. The Kafirs saw them, many
hundreds of humped black shapes, and sang the louder, while the crowd
of beasts grew ever denser as fresh parties came down and joined it.
It was opposite the rocks on which they sat that the singing-men
collected, roaring their long verses and clattering on the buckets,
doubtless not without some intention to jeer at and flout the baffled
baboons that watched them in such a silence. It was drooping now to
the pit of night, and things were barely seen as shapes, when from
higher up the line, where the guardians of the crops were sparser,
there came a discord of shrieks.
"'The baboons are through the line!' they cried; and it was on that
instant that the great watching army of apes came leaping in a charge
on the main force of the Kafirs. Oh, but that was a wild, a haunting
thing! Great, bull-headed dog-baboons, with naked fangs and clutching
hands alert for murder; bounding mothers of squealing litters that led
their young in a dash to the fight; terrible, lean old bitches that
made for the men when others went for the corn,--they swooped like a
flood of horror on the aghast Kafirs, biting, tearing, bounding
through the air like uncouth birds; and in one second the throng of
the Kafirs melted before them, and they were amid the corn.
"Eight men they killed by rending, and of the others, some sixty,
there was not one but had his wound--some bite to the bone, some gash
where iron fingers had clutched and torn their way through skin and
flesh. When they came to Shadrach and woke him wearily, with the
breathless timidity of beaten men, it was already too late to go with
a gun to the corn-lands. The baboons had contented themselves with
small plunder after their victory, and withdrew orderly to the hills;
and, even as Shadrach came to the door of the homestead, he saw the
last of their marshaled line, black against the sky, moving swiftly
towards the kloofs.
"He flung out his hands like a man in despair, with never a word to
ease his heart, and then the old Shangaan Kafir stood up before him.
He had the upper part of his right arm bitten to the bone and worried,
and now he cast back the blanket from his shoulder and held out the
quivering wound to his master.
"'It was the chief of the baboons that gave me this,' he said, 'and he
is a baboon only in the night. He came through the ranks of them,
bounding like a boulder on a steep hillside, and it was for me that
his teeth were bared. So, when he hung by his teeth to my arm and tore
and snarled, I drew my nails across his back, that the baas should
know the truth.'
"'What is this madness?' cried Shadrach.
"'No madness, but simple deviltry,' answered the Shangaan, and there
came a murmur of support from the Kafirs about him. 'The leader of the
baboons is Naqua, and it was he who taught them the trick they played
us to-night.'
"'Naqua?' repeated Shadrach, feeling cold and weak.
"'The bushman,' explained the old man; 'the yellow man with the long,
lean arms who gave false counsel to the baas.'
"'It is true,' came the chorus of the Kafirs; 'it is true. We saw
it.'
"Shadrach pulled himself together and raised a hand to the lintel of
the door to steady himself.
"'Fetch me Naqua!' he ordered, and a pair of them went upon that
errand. But they came back empty: Naqua was not at his hut, and none
had news of him.
"Shadrach dismissed the Kafirs to patch their wounds, and at sun-up he
went down to the lands where the eight dead Kafirs still lay amid the
corn, to see what traces remained of the night's work. He had hoped to
find a clue in the tracks, but the feet of the Kafirs and the baboons
were so mingled that the ground was dumb, and on the grass there
remained, of course, no sign of the baboons' return. He was no fool,
my stepsister's first husband, and since a wild and belly-quaking tale
was the only one that offered, he was not ready to cast it aside till
a better one were found. At any rate, it was against Naqua that his
preparations were directed.
"He had seven guns in his house for which ammunition could be found,
and from among all the Kafirs on the land he chose a half-dozen Zulus,
who, as you know, will always rather fight than eat. These were only
too ready to face the baboons again, since they were to have guns in
their hands; and a kind of ambush was devised. They were to lie amid
the corn so as to command the flank of the beasts, and Shadrach was to
lie in the middle of them, and would give the signal when to commence
firing by a shot from his own rifle. There was built, too, a pile of
brushwood lying on straw soaked in oil, and this one of them was to
put a light to as soon as the shooting began.
"It was dark when they took their places, and then commenced a long
and anxious watch amid the corn, when every bush that creaked was an
alarm, and every small beast of the veldt that squealed set hearts to
thumping. From where he lay on his stomach, with his rifle before him,
Shadrach could see the line or ridge of rocks over which the baboons
must come, dark against a sky only just less dark; and, with his eyes
fixed on this, he waited. Afterwards he said that it was not the
baboons he waited for, but the yellow man Naqua, and he had in his
head an idea that all the evil and pain that ever was, and all the sin
to be, had a home in that bushman. So a man hates an enemy.
"They came at last. Five of them were suddenly seen on the top of the
rocks, standing erect and peering round for a trap; but Shadrach and
his men lay very still, and soon one of these scouts gave a call, and
then was heard the pat! pat! of hard feet as the body of them came up.
There was not light enough to tell one from another, except by size,
and as they trooped down amid the corn, Shadrach lay with his finger
throbbing on his trigger, peering among them. But he could see nothing
except the mass of their bodies, and, waiting till the main part of
them was past him, so that he could have a shot at them as they came
back, should it happen that they retired at once, he thrust forward
his rifle, aimed into the brown, and fired.
"Almost in the same instant the rifles of the Zulus spoke, and a
crackle of shots ran up and down their line. Then there was a flare of
light as the bonfire was lit, and they could see the army of baboons
in a fuss of panic dashing to and fro. They fired again and again into
the tangle of them, and the beasts commenced to scatter and flee, and
Shadrach and his men rose to their full height and shot faster, and
the hairy army vanished into the darkness, defeated.
"There was a guffaw of laughter from the Zulus, but, ere it was
finished, a shout from Shadrach brought their rifles leaping up again.
The baboons were coming back: a line of them was breaking from the
darkness beyond the range of the fire, racing in great leaps towards
the men. As they came into the light they were a sight to terrify a
host, all big tuskers, and charging without a sound. Shadrach, aiming
by instinct only, dropped two as they came, and the next instant they
were upon him. He heard the grunt of the Zulu next him as a huge beast
leaped against his chest and bore him down, and there were screams
from another. Then something heavy and swift drove at him like a
bullet, and he clubbed his rifle. As the beast flew, with hands and
feet drawn in for the grapple, he hewed at it with the butt and
smashed it to the ground. The stock struck on bone, and he felt it
crush and fail, and there was the thing at his feet.
"How they broke the charge, with what a frenzy of battle they drove
the baboons from them, none of the four who spoke again could ever
tell; but it must have been very soon after Shadrach clubbed his rifle
that the beasts wavered, were beaten, and fled screaming, and the
farmer found himself leaning on his weapon, and a great Zulu, shining
with sweat, talking to him.
"'Never have I had such a fight,' the Zulu was saying, 'and never may
I hope for such another! The baas is a great chief; I watched him.'
"Something was picking at Shadrach's boots, and he drew back with a
shudder from the form that lay at his feet.
"'Bring a stick from the fire,' he ordered. 'I want to see this--this
baboon.'
"As the man went, he ran a cartridge into the breech of his rifle,
and, when the burning stick was brought, he turned over the body with
his foot.
"A yellow face mowed up at him, and pale-yellow eyes sparkled dully.
"'Tck!' clicked the Zulu, in surprise. 'It is the bushman Naqua. No,
baas,' as Shadrach cocked his rifle, 'do not shoot him. Keep him and
chain him to a post; he will like that less.'
"'I shoot!' answered Shadrach, and shattered the evil grin that
gleamed in the face on the ground with a quick shot.
"And, as I told you, my stepsister's first husband, Shadrach van
Guelder, was afraid to be alone in the dark after that night,"
concluded the Vrouw Grobelaar. "It is ill shooting baboons, Frikkie."
"I'm not afraid," retorted Frikkie; and the baboon in the yard rattled
his chain and cursed shrilly.