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 with meaning.
"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 round, 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 works, 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 plough great
spaces of land and sow valuable crops. There was every
prospect that he 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 of 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 yellow 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 half 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!' he cried, 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
fingernail 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, who
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 among 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 devilry,' 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 tonight.'
"'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 among 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
of the baboons' return there remained, of course, no sign.
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
among 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 among the corn, when
every bush that creaked was an alarm and every small beast
of the veld that squealed set hearts to thumping. From
where he lay on his stomach, with his rifle before him,
Shadrach could see the line of 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 among 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 breach 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.
MORDER DRIFT
The business was something before my time, but I can
remember several versions of it, which were commonly
current when I first came into the Dopfontein district. It
was not much of a tale as a general thing, except that, if
you happened to have a strain of hot blood in you, it
discovered a quality of very picturesque pathos. However,
as you shall see, only the tail end of the story was
generally known, and it was the Vrouw Grobelaar, the
transmitter of chronicles, who divulged it to Katje and
myself one evening in its proper proportions.
As I first heard it the tale was about thus. The drift
across the Dolf Spruit, below the Zwaartkop, was a ragged
gash in the earth, hidden from all approaches by dense
bushes of wacht een beetje thorn. The spruit was here
throttled between banks of worn stone, and the water roared
over the drift at a depth that made it impassible to foot-
farers. Its name Morder Drift (Murder Ford), was secured to
it no less by its savage aspect than by the incident
associated with it.
One morning a Kafir brought news to a farm of a strange
thing at the drift, a tale of violent death at criminal
hands. Straightway four men got to horse and rode over.
Arriving, they found their information justified in a
strange fashion. Seated in the deep southern approach to
the water was a Boer woman, a young one, pillowing on her
lap the head of a murdered man, whose body oozed blood from
a dozen wounds. The woman paid no heed to the approach of
the Burghers, and they, on nearing the body, observed that
her eyes were fixed across the spruit, and that a smile, a
dreadful twisted smile of contempt, ruled her face as
though frozen there.
The woman was recognized as a girl of good Boer family who
had recently married in opposition to the strong objections
of her family; the dead man at her feet was soon
identified as all that was left of her husband.
That was the tale: it ended there like a broken string, for
while the matter was under investigation at the hands of
the feldkornet, a Kafir chief in the Magaliesberg commenced
to assert himself and the commando of the district was
called out to wait on him. And there the matter dropped,
for during the two years that elapsed before she died the
woman never uttered a word. But (and here, for me, at any
rate, the wonder of the story commenced) every day and all
day, come fine or rain, sun or storm, there she would sit
in the drift, damning the traitor's road of escape with
that smile the Burghers had shuddered at. The scene, and
the unspeakable sadness of it, used to govern my dreams.
I was telling Katje the story, for she said she had never
heard it, but this I since learned to have been untrue. At
first the conversation had been varied even to the point of
inanity, but in time it turned--as such conversations will,
you know--to the wonder and beauty of the character of women
in general. I think it must have been at this stage that
the Vrouw Grobelaar, who had been dozing like a dog, with
one ear awake, commenced to listen; and I have always
thought the better of the good lady for not annihilating
the situation with some ponderously arch comment, as was a
habit of hers.
When my tale was finished, though, the contempt of the
artist for the mere artisan moved her to complete the
record.
"You are wrong when you say the truth never came to light,"
she said. "I know the whole story."
"But," I answered in surprise, "nothing was ever done in
the matter."
"Certainly not," she said with spirit. "It was not a Kafir
murder. It was a killing by Burghers, and, though God knows
I utterly condemn all such doings, it cannot be denied that
there was as much on the one side as on the other."
The due request was proffered.
"It is not a tale to carry abroad," observed the old lady.
"It concerns some of my family. The woman was Christina van
der Poel, a half sister of my second husband, and what I am
now telling you is the confession of Koos van der Poel, her
brother, on the day he died. I remember he was troubled
with an idea that he would be buried near her, and that she
would cry out on him from her grave to his."
The suggestion, as you must agree, quite justified Katje's
moving closer to me.
"It was like this," resumed the Vrouw Grobelaar, after an
expressionless glance at the two of us. "Christina was a
wild fanciful girl, with an eye to every stranger that off-
saddled at the farm, Katje; and she had barely a civil word
to waste on a bashful Burgher. I can't say I ever saw much
in her myself. She was a tall young woman, with a face that
drew the eye, as it were; but she was restless and unquiet
in her motions, and, to my mind, too thin and leggy. But
men have no taste in these things; and if Christina had
been of a decent turn, she might have had her pick of all
the unmarried men within a day's ride, and there used to be
some very good men about here.
"But, as I said, she kept them all on the far side of the
fence, and for a long time their only comfort was in seeing
no one else take her. Till one day a surprising thing
happened.
"A tall smart man rode into the farm one afternoon and hung
up his horse on the rail. He swaggered with his great
clumping feet right into the house, and went from one room
to another till he found the old father.
"'Are you Mynheer van der Poel?' he asked him in a loud
voice, standing in the middle of the chamber with his hat
on his head and his sjambok in his hand.
"'I am,' answered the other.
"'I am John Dunn,' said the stranger. 'I have a store at
Bothaskraal, and I am come to ask for your daughter to
wife.'
"'An Englishman?' asked the old man.
"'To be sure,' said the stranger.
"'But where have you seen the girl?' asked Mynheer van der
Poel.
"'Oh, in many places,' replied the Englishman, laughing.
'We are very good friends, she and I, and have been meeting
every evening for a long time. Indeed, you have to thank me
for giving you a chance to consent to the wedding.'