JANTJE’S STORY
Shortly after the old Boer had gone, John went into the yard of the
hotel to see to the inspanning of the Cape cart, where his attention
was at once arrested by the sight of a row in active progress—at least,
from the crowd of Kafirs and idlers and the angry sounds and curses
which proceeded from them, he judged that it was a row. Nor was he
wrong in his conclusion. In the corner of the yard, close by the
stable-door, surrounded by the aforesaid crowd, stood Frank Muller; a
heavy _sjambock_ in his raised hand, as though in the act to strike.
Before him, a very picture of drunken fury, his lips drawn up like a
snarling dog’s, so that the two lines of white teeth gleamed like
polished ivory in the sunlight, his small eyes all shot with blood and
his face working convulsively, was the Hottentot Jantje. Nor was this
all. Across his face was a blue wheal where the whip had fallen, and in
his hand a heavy white-handled knife which he always carried.
“Hullo! what is all this?” said John, shouldering his way through the
crowd.
“The _swartsel_ (black creature) has stolen my horse’s forage, and
given it to yours!” shouted Muller, who was evidently almost off his
head with rage, making an attempt to hit Jantje with the whip as he
spoke. The latter avoided the blow by jumping behind John, with the
result that the tip of the _sjambock_ caught the Englishman on the leg.
“Be careful, sir, with that whip,” said John to Muller, restraining his
temper with difficulty. “Now, how do you know that the man stole your
horse’s forage; and what business have you to touch him? If there was
anything wrong, you should have reported it to me.”
“He lies, Baas, he lies!” yelled out the Hottentot in tremulous,
high-pitched tones. “He lies; he has always been a liar, and worse than
a liar. Yah! yah! I can tell things about him. The land is English now,
and Boers can’t kill the black people as they like. That man—that Boer,
Muller, he shot my father and my mother—my father first, then my
mother; he gave her two bullets—she did not die the first time.”
“You yellow devil!—You black-skinned, black-hearted, lying son of
Satan!” roared the great Boer, his very beard curling with fury. “Is
that the way you talk to your masters? Out of the light,
_rooibaatje_”—this was to John—“and I will cut his tongue out of him.
I’ll show him how we deal with a yellow liar;” and without further ado
he made a rush for the Hottentot.
As he came, John, whose blood was now thoroughly up, put out his open
hand, and, bending forward, pushed with all his strength on Muller’s
advancing chest. John was a very powerfully made man, though not a
large one, and the push sent Muller staggering back.
“What do you mean by that, _rooibaatje?_” shouted Muller, his face
livid with fury. “Get out of my road or I will mark that pretty face of
yours. I owe you for some goods as it is, Englishman, and I always pay
my debts. Out of the path, curse you!” and he again rushed for the
Hottentot.
This time John, who was now almost as angry as his assailant, did not
wait for the man to reach him, but, springing forward, hooked his arm
around Muller’s throat and, before he could close with him, with one
tremendous jerk managed not only to stop his wild career, but to
reverse the motion, and then, by interposing his foot with considerable
neatness, to land him—powerful as he was—on his back in a pool of
drainage that had collected from the stable in a hollow of the
inn-yard. Down he went with a splash, amid a shout of delight from the
crowd, who always like to see an aggressor laid low, his head bumping
with considerable force against the lintel of the door. For a moment he
lay still, and John was afraid that the man was really hurt. Presently,
however, he rose, and, without attempting any further hostile
demonstration or saying a single word, tramped off towards the house,
leaving his enemy to compose his ruffled nerves as best he could. Now
John, like most gentlemen, hated a row with all his heart, though he
had the Anglo-Saxon tendency to go through with it unflinchingly when
once it began. Indeed, the incident irritated him almost beyond
bearing, for he knew that the story with additions would go the round
of the countryside, and what is more, that he had made a powerful and
implacable enemy.
“This is all your fault, you drunken little blackguard!” he said,
turning savagely on the Tottie, who, now that his excitement had left
him, was snivelling and drivelling in an intoxicated fashion, and
calling him his preserver and his Baas in maudlin accents.
“He hit me, Baas; he hit me, and I did not take the forage. He is a bad
man, Baas Muller.”
“Be off with you and get the horses inspanned; you are half-drunk,”
John growled, and, having seen that operation advancing to a
conclusion, he went to the sitting-room of the hotel, where Bessie was
waiting in happy ignorance of the disturbance. It was not till they
were well on their homeward way that he told her what had passed,
whereat, remembering the scene she had herself gone through with Frank
Muller, and the threats that he had then made use of, she looked very
grave. Her old uncle, too, was very much put out when he heard the
story on their arrival home that evening.
“You have made an enemy, Niel,” he said, as they sat upon the verandah
after breakfast on the following morning, “and a bad one. Not but what
you were right to stand up for the Hottentot. I would have done as much
myself had I been there and ten years younger, but Frank Muller is not
the man to forget being put upon his back before a lot of Kafirs and
white folk too. Perhaps that Jantje is sober by now. I will go and call
him, and we will hear what this story is about his father and his
mother.”
Presently he returned followed by the ragged, dirty-faced little
Hottentot, who, looking very miserable and ashamed of himself, took off
his hat and squatted down on the drive, in the full glare of the
African sun, to the effects of which he appeared to be totally
impervious.
“Now, Jantje, listen to me,” said the old man. “Yesterday you got drunk
again. Well, I’m not going to talk about that now, except to say that
if I hear of your being drunk once more—you leave this place.”
“Yes, Baas,” said the Hottentot meekly. “I was drunk, though not very;
I only had half a bottle of Cape smoke.”
“By getting drunk you made a quarrel with Baas Muller, so that blows
passed between Baas Muller and the Baas here on your account, which was
more than you are worth. Now when Baas Muller had struck you, you said
that he had shot your father and your mother. Was that a lie, or what
did you mean by saying it?”
“It was no lie, Baas,” answered the Hottentot excitedly. “I have said
it once, and I will say it again. Listen, Baas, and I will tell you the
story. When I was young—so tall”—and he held his hand high enough to
indicate a Tottie of about fourteen years of age—“we, that is, my
father, my mother, my uncle—a very old man, older than the Baas”
(pointing to Silas Croft)—“were _bijwoners_ (authorised squatters) on a
place belonging to old Jacob Muller, Baas Frank’s father, down in
Lydenburg yonder. It was a bush-veldt farm, and old Jacob used to come
down there with his cattle from the High veldt in the winter when there
was no grass in the High veldt, and with him came the Englishwoman, his
wife, and the young Baas Frank—the Baas we saw yesterday.”
“How long was all this ago?” asked Mr. Croft.
Jantje counted on his fingers for some seconds, and then held up his
hand and opened it four times in succession. “So,” he said, “twenty
years last winter. Baas Frank was young then, he had only a little down
upon his chin. One year when _Oom_ Jacob went away, after the first
rains, he left six oxen that were too _poor_ (thin) to go, with my
father, and told him to look after them as though they were his
children. But the oxen were bewitched. Three of them took the lung-sick
and died, a lion got one, a snake got one, and one ate ‘tulip’ and died
too. So when _Oom_ Jacob came back the next year all the oxen were
gone. He was very angry with my father, and beat him with a yoke-strap
till he was all blood, and though we showed him the bones of the oxen,
he said that we had stolen them and sold them.
“Now _Oom_ Jacob had a beautiful span of black oxen that he loved like
children. Sixteen of them there were, and they would come up to the
yoke when he called them and put down their heads of themselves. They
were tame as dogs. These oxen were thin when they came down, but in two
months they grew fat and began to want to trek about as oxen do. At
this time there was a Basutu, one of Sequati’s people, resting in our
hut, for he had hurt his foot with a thorn. When _Oom_ Jacob found that
the Basutu was there he was very angry, for he said that all Basutus
were thieves. So my father told the Basutu that the Baas said that he
must go away, and he went that night. Next morning the span of black
oxen were gone too. The kraal-gate was down, and they had gone. We
hunted all day, but we could not find them. Then _Oom_ Jacob went mad
with rage, and the young Baas Frank told him that one of the Kafir boys
had said to him that he had heard my father sell them to the Basutu for
sheep which he was to pay to us in the summer. It was a lie, but Baas
Frank hated my father because of something about a woman—a Zulu girl.
“Next morning when we were asleep, just at daybreak, _Oom_ Jacob Muller
and Baas Frank and two Kafirs came into the hut and pulled us out, the
old man my uncle, my father, my mother, and myself, and tied us up to
four mimosa-trees with buffalo-hide reims. Then the Kafirs went away,
and _Oom_ Jacob asked my father where the cattle were, and my father
told him that he did not know. Then _Oom_ Jacob took off his hat and
said a prayer to the Big Man in the sky, and when he had done Baas
Frank came up with a gun and stood quite close and shot my father dead,
and he fell forward and hung quiet over the reim, his head touching his
feet. Then he loaded the gun again and shot the old man my uncle, and
he slipped down dead, and his hands stuck up in the air against the
reim. Next he shot my mother, but the bullet did not kill her, and cut
the reim, and she ran away, and he ran after her and killed her. When
that was done he came back to shoot me; but I was young then, and did
not know that it is better to be dead than to live like a dog, and I
cried and prayed for mercy while he was loading the gun.
“But the Baas only laughed, and said he would teach Hottentots how to
steal cattle, and old _Oom_ Jacob prayed out loud to the Big Man and
said he was very sorry for me, but it was the dear Lord’s will. And
then, just as Baas Frank lifted the gun, he dropped it again, for
there, coming softly, softly over the brow of the hill, in and out
between the bushes, were all the sixteen oxen! They had got out in the
night and strayed away into some kloof for a change of pasture, and
came back when they were full and tired of being alone. _Oom_ Jacob
turned quite white and scratched his head, and then fell upon his knees
and thanked the dear Lord for saving my life; and just then the
Englishwoman, Baas Frank’s mother, came down from the waggon to see
what the firing was at, and when she saw all the people dead and me
weeping, tied to the tree, and learnt what it was about, she went quite
mad, for sometimes she had a kind heart when she was not drunk, and
said that a curse would fall on them, and that they would all die in
blood. And she took a knife and cut me loose, though Baas Frank wanted
to kill me, so that I might tell no tales; and I ran away, travelling
by night and hiding by day, for I was very much frightened, till I
reached Natal, and there I stopped, working in Natal till this land
became English, when Baas Croft hired me to drive his cart up from
Maritzburg; and living by here I found Baas Frank, looking bigger but
just the same except for his beard.
“There, Baas, that is the truth, and all the truth, and that is why I
hate Baas Frank, because he shot my father and mother, and why Baas
Frank hates me, because he cannot forget that he did it and because I
saw him do it, for, as our people say, ‘one always hates a man one has
wounded with a spear.’”
Having finished his narrative, the miserable-looking little man picked
up his greasy old felt hat that had a leather strap fixed round the
crown, in which were stuck a couple of frayed ostrich feathers, and
jammed it down over his ears. Then he fell to drawing circles on the
soil with his long toes. His auditors only looked at one another. Such
a ghastly tale seemed to be beyond comment. They never doubted its
truth; the man’s way of telling it carried conviction with it; indeed,
two of them at any rate had heard such stories before. Most people have
who live in the wilder parts of South Africa, though they are not all
to be taken for gospel.
“You say,” remarked old Silas at last, “that the Englishwoman said that
a curse would fall on them, and that they would die in blood? She was
right. Twelve years ago _Oom_ Jacob and his wife were murdered by a
party of Mapoch’s Kafirs down on the edge of that very Lydenburg veldt.
There was a great noise about it at the time, I remember, but nothing
came of it. Baas Frank was not there. He was away shooting buck, so he
escaped, and inherited all his father’s farms and cattle, and came to
live here.”
“So!” said the Hottentot, without showing the slightest interest or
surprise. “I knew it would be so, but I wish I had been there to see
it. I saw that there was a devil in the woman, and that they would die
as she said. When there is a devil in people they always speak the
truth, because they can’t help it. Look, Baas, I draw a circle in the
sand with my foot, and I say some words so, and at last the ends touch.
There, that is the circle of _Oom_ Jacob and his wife the Englishwoman.
The ends have touched and they are dead. An old witch-doctor taught me
how to draw the circle of a man’s life and what words to say. And now I
draw another of Baas Frank. Ah! there is a stone sticking up in the
way. The ends will not touch. But now I work and work and work with my
foot, and say the words and say the words, and so—the stone comes up
and the ends touch now. Thus it is with Baas Frank. One day the stone
will come up and the ends will touch, and he too will die in blood. The
devil in the Englishwoman said so, and devils cannot lie or speak half
the truth only. And now, look, I rub my foot over the circles and they
are gone, and there is only the path again. That means that when they
have died in blood they will be quite forgotten and stamped out. Even
their graves will be flat,” and Jantje wrinkled up his yellow face into
a smile, or rather a grin, and then added in a matter-of-fact way:
“Does the Baas wish the grey mare to have one bundle of green forage or
two?”