Mrs Goodrick is now an old lady, with children long since grown to man
and womanhood, she has never quite thrown off the terror of that awful
night. Even now she will wake with a start if she hears any sudden cry
in her sleep, thinking for the moment it is the death scream of
Prinsloo's Kloof. As for the haunted kloof, it lies to this day in
desolation black and utter. No footfall wakes its rugged echoes; the
grim baboons keep watch and ward; the carrion aasvogels wheel and circle
high above its cliffs, gazing down from their aerial dominion with
ever-searching eyes; the black and white ravens seek in its fastnesses
for their food, looking, as they swoop hither and thither, as if still
in half mourning for the deed of blood of bygone years; and the
antelopes and leopards wander free and undisturbed. But no sign of
human life is there, or seems ever likely to be; and if, by cruel fate,
the straying traveller should haplessly outspan for his night's repose
by the haunted farmhouse on the night of the 15th of January, he will
yet see enacted, so the neighbouring farmers say, the horrible drama of
Jan Prinsloo's death.
CHAPTER FOUR.
THE BUSHMAN'S FORTUNE.
Kwaneet, the Bushman, had lost his wife Nakeesa, and was just now a
little puzzled what to do with himself. Nakeesa, poor thing, had been
slain by a lion on the Tamalakan River in an attempt to rescue her man.
[See "Tales of South Africa," by the same Author.] The attempt was
successful so far as Kwaneet was concerned, but Nakeesa and the babe she
carried had fallen victims. Kwaneet had quickly got rid of Nakeesa's
child by her first husband, Sinikwe. It was a useless encumbrance to
him, and he had sold it for a new assegai to some Batauana people near
Lake Ngami.
The Masarwa was how at a loose end. The companionship of Nakeesa during
their year and a half of union--married life it could scarcely be called
among these nomads--had been very pleasant. Nakeesa was always
industrious, and had saved him an infinity of trouble in providing
water, digging up roots and ground-nuts and picking the wild fruit when
game was scarce, and a score of other occupations pertaining to the
Bushman's life. Now she was gone, and he must shift for himself again,
which was a nuisance. But, chiefly, his mind was just now exercised, as
he squatted by himself at a small desert fountain, as to what he should
do with himself in the immediate future. Suddenly an old and
long-cherished plan flashed across his mind. Years before, as a young
lad, his father had taken him on a long hunting expedition to a distant
corner of that vast desert of the Kalahari, in which the Masarwa Bushmen
make their home. He remembered the stalking of many ostriches, and the
acquisition of great store of feathers; he remembered a long, long piece
of thirst country through which they had toiled; and he remembered most
of all coming presently to the solitary abode of a white man, planted in
that distant and inaccessible spot, an abode almost unknown even to the
wild Masarwa of the desert. From this white man his father had obtained
for his feathers, amongst other things, a good hunting-knife--a
treasured possession which he himself now carried. That white man, his
waggon--there were no oxen, he remembered, nor horses--the house he had
built for himself, and its fascinating contents; the strong fountain of
sweet water which welled from the limestone hard by; all these things he
remembered well. But most of all he recalled an air of mystery which
enveloped everything. When he and his father had approached the white
man's dwelling, they had seen him, before he set eyes on them, digging
in a depression of the open plain a mile from the house. Much of the
grass had been removed, and piles of sand and stones were heaped here
and there, and there were heaps, too, he remembered, near the house.
Kwaneet's father had, when they left that secret and unknown place,
strongly impressed upon his son the absolute necessity of silence
concerning the white man and his abode. The white man gave value for
feathers--good value in a Bushman's eyes--which the harsh and bullying
Batauana people of Chief Moremi at Nghabe (Lake Ngami) never did. On
the contrary, the Batauana robbed the poor Bushman of all his spoils of
the desert whenever they got a chance, which happily was not often.
Now Kwaneet had plenty of time upon his hands and no settled plan. The
mystery of the lone white man had always fascinated him. He would go
now and see if he still lived. It was some winters ago, but he might
still be there. So Kwaneet filled three ostrich eggs and a calabash
with water, made fresh snuff against the journey, and next morning, long
before the clear star of dawn had leaped above the horizon, started upon
his quest. He was well equipped for a Masarwa. His giraffe hide
sandals, not needed till the thorns were traversed, and his little skin
cloak, neatly folded, were fastened to one end of his assegai. At the
other end hung the full calabash of water. His tiny bow, quiver of reed
arrows, bone-tipped and strongly poisoned, and a rude net of fibre
containing three ostrich eggs of water were slung over his back. Some
meat and a supply of ground-nuts, the latter skewered up in the dried
crops of guinea-fowls, completed his outfit.
It was a long, long journey, but Kwaneet, travelling leisurely at the
rate of twenty or thirty miles a day--he was in no violent hurry--
steadily progressed. He had not been through that part of the Kalahari
since, as a lad, he had accompanied his father; yet, thanks to the
wonderful Bushman instinct, the way through the flat and pathless
wilderness seemed as plain to him as the white man's waggon road from
Khama's to Lake Ngami. Despite the thirst, it was not an unpleasant
journey. The various acacias, hack-thorn, wait-a-bit, hook-and-stick
thorn, and the common thorny acacia, with its long, smooth ivory
needles, were all putting forth their round, sweet-scented blooms, some
greenish, some yellow, against the coming of the rains. Leagues upon
leagues of forest of spreading giraffe-acacia (mokaala) were in flower,
and their big, round, plush-like pompons of rich orange-yellow blossom
scented the veldt for miles with a delicious perfume. Even to the
dulled senses of the Bushman these symptoms of renewed life at the end
of a long drought were very pleasant. As the Masarwa plunged further
and further into the heart of the wilderness, game was very plentiful.
Great troops of giraffe wandered and fed among the mokaala forests;
steinbuck and duiker were everywhere amid grass and bush. Upon the
great grass plains, or in the more open forest glades, herds of
magnificent gemsbok and of brilliant bay hartebeests grazed peacefully
in an undisturbed freedom; not seldom fifty or sixty noble elands were
encountered in a single troop. All these animals are almost entirely
independent of water, and found here a welcome sanctuary. The country
was absolutely devoid of mankind. Many years before a number of
Masarwas had been massacred at a water-pit by a band of Sebituane's
Makololo, then crossing the desert. The tradition of fear had been
perpetuated and the region was seldom visited by Bushmen.
One morning, after sleeping within the welcome shelter of some thick
bush, Kwaneet steps forth upon a great open plain of grass. Kwaneet
remembers the plain at once. Upon it his father and he had slain
ostriches years before, on their way to the white man's; and across the
broad, thirty-mile flat lay a water-pit, the last before the white man's
dwelling was reached. The Bushman looks with a keen interest out upon
the plain. He expects to see ostriches, and he is not disappointed. He
at once begins preparation for a hunt. First he takes from his neck
three curious-looking flat pieces of bone, triangular in shape, scored
with a rude pattern. One of these is more pointed than the others. He
pulls them from the hide strip on which they are threaded, shakes them
rapidly between his two palms, and casts them upon the earth, after
which he stares with intense concentration for a long half minute.
These are his dice, his oracles, which disclose to him whether the hunt
is to be a good or an unsuccessful one. Apparently the result of the
first throw is doubtful. The Bushman picks up the dice, shakes them,
and throws them again. This time the more acute-angled piece points
away from the rest. The Bushman's eyes gleam, he mutters to himself in
that odd, high, complaining voice which these people have, giving a
cluck or two with his tongue as he does so, and throws once more. Again
the oracle is propitious. Well pleased, the Masarwa re-strings his
dice, fastens them about his neck, and hastens his preparations.
He now divests himself of all his encumbrances; water vessels, food,
cloak, assegai, and sandals are all left behind. Stark naked, except
for the hide patch about his middle, and armed only with his bow,
arrows, and knife, he sets forth. The nearest ostrich is feeding more
than a mile away, and there is no covert but the long, sun-dried, yellow
grass, but that is enough for the Bushman. Worming himself over the
ground with the greatest caution, he crawls flat on his belly towards
the bird. No serpent could traverse the grass with less disturbance.
In the space of an hour and a half he has approached within a hundred
yards of the tall bird. Nearer he dare not creep on this bare plain,
and at more than twenty-five paces he cannot trust his light reed
arrows. He lies patiently hidden in the grass, his bow and arrows ready
in front of him, trusting that the ostrich may draw nearer. It is a
long wait under the blazing sun, close on two hours, but his instinct
serves him, and at last, as the sun shifts a little, the great ostrich
feeds that way. It is a splendid male bird, jet black as to its body
plumage, and adorned with magnificent white feathers upon the wings and
tail. Kwaneet's eyes glisten, but he moves not a muscle. Closer and
closer the ostrich approaches. Thirty paces, twenty-five, twenty.
There is a light musical twang upon the hot air, and a tiny yellowish
arrow sticks well into the breast of the gigantic bird. The ostrich
feels a sharp pang and turns at once. In that same instant a second
arrow is lodged in its side, just under the wing feathers. Now the
stricken bird raises its wings from its body and speeds forth into the
plain. But Kwaneet is quite content. The poison of those two arrows
will do his work effectually. He gets up, follows the ostrich, tracking
it, after it has disappeared from sight, by its spoor, and in two hours
the game lies there before him amid the grass, dead as a stone. The
Bushman carefully skins the whole of the upper plumage of the bird, cuts
off the long neck at its base, takes what meat he requires, and walks
back to his camping-place. There he skins the neck of the bird,
extracting the muscles and vertebra; and, leaving the head, sews up the
neck again, inserting into it a long stick and some dry grass, and lays
it on one side. The hunt and these preparations have consumed most of
the day. Kwaneet now feeds heartily, drinks a little water, indulges
himself in a pinch or two of snuff, and then, nestling in his skin cloak
close to his fire, his back sheltered by a thick bush, sleeps soundly
till early morning.
So soon as it is light an ostrich stalks from the Bushman's "scherm" and
moves quietly on to the plain. All its motions are as natural as
possible. It holds its head erect, looking abroad for any possible
danger, as these wary creatures will, puts its head down to feed at
times, scratches itself, all in the most natural fashion. The ostrich
is no other than Kwaneet, disguised with the greatest care and deftness
in the skin of the slain bird. He manoeuvres the neck and head on the
long stick inserted yesterday. All this is part of a Bushman's
education, and Kwaneet is merely profiting by desert lessons acquired
from his father years before. The Bushman-ostrich moves quietly out on
to the flat, and presently joins a knot of birds feeding amid the grass.
His approach is so skilful that he is able, without suspicion, to lodge
an arrow in the finest male bird of the troop. From this troop, moving
as they move when alarmed and keeping always with them, he kills four
birds during the morning, all of which he rifles of their best feathers.
During three days' hunting upon the plain Kwaneet thus kills eight fine
cock ostriches, and gains a noble booty of prime feathers. These
feathers having carefully fastened together, he proceeds on his journey.
It takes him a long day to cross the plain. He rests at the limestone
water-pit on the other side, recruits his water calabash and eggshells,
and then sets himself for the wearisome two days of waterless journey to
the white man's settlement. He travels faster now, and late in the
second afternoon reaches the well-remembered spot. The digging upon the
grass plain seems to him as he passes it much larger than of old. Many
heaps are now grass-covered and even overgrown with low bushes. But
chiefly Kwaneet notices that the dry bed of an ancient stream, which
ages since ran here, has been greatly excavated. The banks are piled up
with soil, and the channel is much deeper than when he last saw it.
Kwaneet smiles to himself and marvels at the white man's profitless
labour. The man is alive, that is certain, his spoor plainly tells that
tale. In another mile, following the path worn long since, the Masarwa
walks into the pleasant open glade just upon the outskirts of the
camelthorn forest, where the dwelling stands. It is exactly as Kwaneet
remembers it, a low cottage of wattle and daub, neatly thatched. The
old waggon still stands there under the spreading acacia fifty yards to
the left. It is now rotten and dilapidated, almost falling to pieces;
the white ants have been busy with it. There are signs of cultivation.
Away to the right, near the fountain, a patch of mealie and tobacco
ground is almost ready for the rains that soon must fall.
In front of the red mud walls of the hut, now glowing warmly beneath the
rays of the dying sun, sits the white man in an old waggon chair. As
Kwaneet walks up, he starts, rises, and, looking hard at the Bushman,
says: "Who is it?" Then, looking still harder, "Surely Dwar, the
Masarwa?"
"Nay," answers Kwaneet, "it is not Dwar, but Kwaneet, the son of Dwar.
Dwar died in the drought, in the season that three lions pulled down the
giraffe by the pool of Maqua."
The white man laughs grimly. "That is the answer of a true Masarwa," he
says. "How can I tell when Dwar died? But now I remember you, Kwaneet.
You were here as a lad with your father, and you are as like Dwar as
one kiewitje's egg is like another. What do you do here? The Masarwa
seldom comes this way."
"Oh, my lord," returned Kwaneet, "I lost my wife on the Tamalakan River
and I wished to wander again. I thought I would hunt this way and see
if the white man still abode here. Here are feathers which he may wish
to buy."
The white man was long silent and gazed hard at Kwaneet, and as he gazed
his eyes seemed to wander dreamingly into the past. Meanwhile Kwaneet,
squatting there in the red sand in front of him, had time to observe him
well. The white man had changed a good deal. His glance, which the
Masarwa remembered as shifting and uneasy, was the same, but otherwise
he was different from the strong man he had last seen. He stooped and
was very thin, his face was deeply lined, the flesh followed tightly the
contour of the bones. The beard and hair, which the Bushman remembered
as an intense black, were now thickly streaked with white.
While the two men sit thus silent, let us look into the white man's
past--that past which at this moment he himself retraces within the
mazes of his brain. James Fealton, fifteen years before, was a
Namaqualand trader, who knew the interior and its natives well, and had
prospered moderately. He had not a very good reputation. When diamonds
were discovered and the rush took place to the Vaal River, he happened
to be down-country. He joined the rush, and, chumming with an
Englishman fresh from the old country, spent many months in digging.
The two men lived hard, and had no luck for six months, by which time
most of their capital had come to an end. Then came a big stroke of
fortune. They found a huge stone of many carats, worth some thousands
of pounds. Not a soul in the camp knew of the find. But one day
Fealton had disappeared, his partner was found in their tent stabbed to
the heart, and a hue and cry arose. The hue and cry did not last long;
the camp was far too busy in those days with its own affairs to trouble
greatly about bringing felons to justice. Fealton had carefully covered
up his traces and the search presently died away. Fealton had, as a
matter of fact, ridden off on a fleet horse by night and had secured
three good days' start. Avoiding all dwellings, he rode across the
veldt, and presently reached a kraal on the north bank of the Orange
River, where he had left a waggon, oxen, and some stores some six months
earlier, just before he had been bitten with the diamond fever.
Within six hours of his arrival at the kraal he had inspanned his oxen
and trekked away north into the heart of the Kalahari. At first he had
luck; there were plenty of wild melons (tsama) about the desert, and,
failing water, his oxen subsisted on these for some weeks. At Lehuditu,
a Kalahari kraal, where the only native he had with him lived, he paid
off the man and thence trekked on alone. But as he pressed yet north
the tsama failed, and one after another the oxen fell in their yokes and
died of thirst and exhaustion. It was a ghastly struggle for life.
Fealton managed to reach the pleasant fountain where Kwaneet found him
and there halted. He had reached a remote place, surrounded by
"thirsts"--a place unknown to white men--here he would rest for a year
or two. The remnant of his oxen, save two, soon after died from eating
a poisonous plant--"Tulp," as the Boers call it--and he was stranded
whether he liked it or no. But the place suited him very well. He was
haunted by the gnawing fear of detection. The crime itself--the foul
murder of his friend--troubled him little at present in the haste and
toil of flight, but the consequences of it, the terror of retribution
and of justice, dwelt with him incessantly. He would stay here till
things were forgotten, and then escape north far into Portuguese
territory and so to Europe. Meanwhile there was plenty of game around
him. He had a plentiful store of ammunition--enough for many years,
with care--and was fond of sport. He would hunt ostrich feathers, and
thus collect wealth to add to the value of that wonderful diamond, which
he carried ever about him. And so he had built himself a hut, and made
himself a home in the wilderness.
Rambling with his gun about the country near the place of his
settlement, he had found one day a dry river-bed, where water had
evidently run in ages past. Some of the gravel here and there, left
uncovered by the light sand of the desert, struck him. He brought a
spade and searched carefully, and presently from a washing picked out a
small diamond. The discovery electrified him. That here in this secret
place, happened upon by the merest accident in that desperate flight
from the great diamond stretches of the Vaal River, he should have lit
upon another field, seemed the wildest improbability of a dream. Yet so
it was. He found a week or two later another stone. They were not
large diamonds, but they were wonderfully pure gems, white and flawless.
He now set to work with feverish energy. He would amass a huge fortune
in a year or two and then get away to some civilised country and enjoy
that life of luxury and indulgence for which inwardly his soul had
always pined. He had a few trading tools on his waggon, among them
picks and spades. These easily sufficed him. He worked steadily for
three years in the dry river-bed, until the time when Kwaneet and his
father had made their way to his hut. His success had not been very
great, thus far the stones were scarce and far apart and not very large.
Moreover, the toil of carrying the stuff to his fountain for washing
purposes was great, and took up much time. But, four years after the
Bushman's visit, a turn came. Moving farther along the dry channel he
had at length hit upon much richer soil. Fine diamonds of considerable
size were occasionally to be found after the washings, and slowly the
man's store of gems increased. Yet, always hoping for some yet greater
streak of luck, he toiled on. Now at last, in the leather bag, locked
in a corner of his waggon-chest, he had a great fortune. But for the
last two years his health had begun to fail. Some internal trouble
sapped at his strong frame. He lost flesh and grew old and wrinkled.
The fitful beating of his heart, palpitations, and even sudden pangs,
alarmed him. He gave up digging, he had barely enough energy at times
to shoot or snare game and keep himself in meat. He must escape from
the desert, which he now loathed, and get to Europe and obtain medical
advice. No doubt he could be put right again.
For months he had been casting about for some means of escape from what
was now in his weakened state a prison. He doubted whether he could
struggle on foot to the next water--sixty long miles of heat and
thirst--and there were other long thirsts to be traversed before he
could even strike a native settlement and buy a horse or oxen. And
here, in the midst of his perplexities, the Bushman had turned up!
Nothing could have been more fortunate, it was absolutely providential.
Fealton felt that evening more cheerful than he had done for years past.
His troubles would vanish now. That night he treated Kwaneet to a
magnificent feed--for a Bushman--opened his last bottle of brandy--the
long-treasured remnant from a case of two dozen--and, under the
mellowing influence of the liquor and companionship, his spirits rose
immensely. The old bright dreams, which had been fading in the last
year or two, rose clear before him. He understood the Koranna dialect,
which much resembles Masarwa, and he had no difficulty in conversing
with the Bushman. From him he gleaned a little--a very little--of what
was passing in the native states around him. Moremi reigned at Lake
Ngami. Khama had succeeded Macheng and ruled the Bamangwato. Secheli
still lived. The white men came oftener into the country, the game grew
scarcer. He could glean little else than these bare facts from the
desert man. Yet it was wonderfully pleasant to use his tongue, to break
the long silence of the lonely wilderness, to exchange ideas even with a
Masarwa. The two men talked for a couple of hours, then Fealton
motioned Kwaneet into a corner of the hut, and himself lay down upon his
rough bed.
Kwaneet curled himself up under his hartebeest skin cloak and was soon
fast asleep. He woke as usual very early, but Fealton was awake before
him. Peering from under his cloak, Kwaneet saw in the dim light of
early morning that the white man was sitting on his bed. He had in his
hands a skin bag. He opened this and poured out its contents on the
couch. The Bushman could not see all, but he saw a little heap of
pebbles, which the hand of the white man levelled and spread over the
blanket. Several of the larger stones he picked up and examined closely
and weighed in his hand. It was clear to Kwaneet from the white man's
movement that he set great store by these pebbles. The Bushman stirred.
Fealton swept the stones into the skin bag again, put them into his
waggon-chest, which stood close to the bed, and locked it.
That morning, after breakfast, Fealton unfolded his plans to the
Masarwa. He was to go with some ostrich feathers to a trader at Lake
Ngami and barter two good pack oxen on which the white man could make
his escape. He could ride one and pack his belongings on the other.
The Masarwa had more than once tended cattle for the Bechuanas, and
understood them. Oxen would traverse the "thirst" better than horses--
even if horses could be obtained, which was doubtful--and Kwaneet did
not understand horses. For the Bushman's protection in this business--
lest he should be robbed or cheated of the feathers by the way--Fealton
wrote a note in an assumed name and hand, authorising the cattle to be
delivered in exchange for feathers. He represented himself briefly as a
traveller who had broken down in the desert. He enjoined upon Kwaneet
complete secrecy as to his long settlement in the Kalahari. The reward
to Kwaneet for the due despatch of this piece of business was in the
Bushman's eyes a very great one. The white man promised him a
breech-loading rifle and ammunition and some goats. Kwaneet had
ambitions, for a Masarwa, and began to look forward to setting up as an
aristocrat, such, for instance, as the Batauana or Bamangwato people,
who lorded it so greatly over the poor children of the desert.