pack oxen, got them safely across the desert--luckily it was the
beginning of the rains--and arrived one day at the white man's hut. He
approached the place with a swelling sense of satisfaction. He had
accomplished a difficult mission for a desert-bred man. The white man
would be vastly pleased. The reward, that magnificent Snider rifle,
which always he had carried in his mind's eye, the cartridges, the
goats--all, all were soon to be his. Within fifty yards of the hut
something caught the eye of the Masarwa--something that sent a thrill
down his back. Here was now, since the rain had fallen, fair green
grass starred with flowers. Big pink and white lilies stood in their
short-lived bravery near the fountain, and amid these wild lilies lay
bleached bones and pieces of torn cloth. The white man was dead, and
here was the last of him. Kwaneet turned over the bones. Many of them
were broken by hyenas and jackals, but there was no mistaking the
fragments of clothing amid which they lay. The Bushman's aid had come
too late. Fealton's fate had at last overtaken him. He had died
suddenly of the ailment that had been so long sapping at his life, and
the birds and beasts of the desert had been his undertakers.
Here at first was a bitter disappointment for Kwaneet. Presently,
however, on thinking it all over, the affair looked not quite so blank
for him. Here in this secret place was wealth--a good rifle, some
ammunition still remaining, as he knew, the two oxen he had brought.
Why should not he himself live here and enjoy this pleasant spot and
these good things? So Kwaneet took possession of the hut and its
contents, clothed himself in an old pair of trousers and a flannel
shirt, and entered upon the life of a great man. He built a little
kraal for his two oxen, and for a time was as happy as an English squire
with a heavy rent roll in the good days. He tried the rifle, and after
a time even overcame the alarming difficulty of letting it off. But it
was a serious undertaking, and upon the whole he preferred his bow and
arrows.
Presently Kwaneet, Masarwa though he was, yearned once more for
companionship. He would try to get a wife again. He had found the
white man's bag of pebbles. He felt convinced somehow, from the care
the man had bestowed upon them, that they were valuable. He would take
these and the best of the ostrich feathers to the trader and obtain more
cattle for them, and on his way thither he would pick up a wife at the
water of Ghansi. This last was not a difficult task. At Ghansi he
bought the girl he needed, paying for her his father's old
hunting-knife, which he had replaced by a better one found in the white
man's hut. Kwaneet's appearance with a couple of pack oxen and a big
load of feathers, and other indications of immense wealth, created some
sensation among the Masarwas squatting at Ghansi. One of them in
particular, Sakwan, made it his business to inquire further into the
matter. He had an old grudge against Kwaneet--it had happened over a
stray tusk of ivory found in the desert; it irked him yet more to see
his rival thus prospering. After Kwaneet with his new wife had left
Ghansi for the Lake, therefore, Sakwan followed secretly upon their
spoor. Kwaneet found no difficulty in marketing his wares at the end of
his journey. He interviewed the trader by night. The man was staggered
at sight of the magnificent lot of ostrich feathers which Kwaneet turned
out of the skin coverings that enveloped them; yet more staggered was he
when the Bushman produced his bag of pebbles, and poured them upon the
deal table. The trader knew diamonds in the rough perfectly well.
Here, he assured himself, was the price of a king's ransom. Where did
they come from? Were there more of them? To these questions Kwaneet
returned evasive answers. He knew nothing more than that he had found
them in the desert. There were no more of them. What then, asked the
trader, did Kwaneet want for the lot--feathers and pebbles? They were
not worth much to him, but he would buy them. Kwaneet had thought all
this out His fortune was worth to him, he conceived, ten head of cows, a
bull, twenty goats, some Snider ammunition, a hat, a suit of trade
clothes, and a shawl for his wife. He shook a little with excitement as
he proposed these enormous terms. The trader laughed to himself at the
Masarwa's idea of wealth; he knew well that that wonderful bag of
diamonds alone was worth some tens of thousands of pounds. And the
feathers--magnificent "prime bloods," long and snow-white, represented
three or four hundred pounds at least. He haggled a little to save
appearances, and finally closed the bargain.
Two days later, Kwaneet and his wife started away from a quiet cattle
post belonging to the trader, which lay at some distance from the native
town. It was part of the bargain that the trader should see the coast
clear, so that the Bushman might get away unknown to the Batauana. This
was safely accomplished. The two bush people, driving their fortune
before them, plunged straightway into the desert. It was an anxious yet
a delightful journey for Kwaneet. He had made his pile; henceforth he
would rear flocks and herds in that dim corner of the desert and grow
ever richer--as rich as a Bechuana. What Masarwa before him had ever
accomplished, had ever even dreamt so much?
Thanks to the rains, which held late that season, Kwaneet got all his
stock safely over the journey and reached his goal. It was a fine clear
morning as they drove the cattle and goats up to the pleasant fountain,
now brimming over with the rains, which Kwaneet knew so well. There
stood the hut and the waggon just as he had left them. Partridge-like
francolins were calling sharply near the water. Brilliant rollers and
wood-peckers, and bizarre hornbills, with monstrous yellow bills, were
flitting to and fro among the trees of the mokaala grove. Beautiful
wild doves cooed softly from the spreading branches of the great
giraffe-acacia, beneath which the old waggon stood. Bands of
sand-grouse were drinking, splashing, and stooping at the water. The
grass was still green; flowers still flourished; the place looked very
fair. All that day Kwaneet and his young wife toiled hard, cutting
thorns and making a temporary kraal for the cattle. Then they ate some
food and, turning into the hut, slept.
Two hours later--before the moon rose--a dark form crept up to the
doorway. The cry of a hyaena was heard. Kwaneet came forth and was met
not by any prowling beast but by the sharp blade of an assegai which
pierced his heart. That deadly thrust was made by Sakwan, who had
shadowed for weeks past the career of his hated rival. Thus miserably
ended the fortunes and hopes of Kwaneet the Bushman. Perchance if he
had lived he might have founded here in this remote place, as he had
sometimes in these last weeks dreamed to himself, a tribe--perhaps even
a dynasty--of the desert! Why not! Lehuditu, that strange village of
the central Kalahari, sprang from no greater a beginning! But all these
aspirations had been ruthlessly ended by Sakwan's spear-head. They sank
there into the thirsty sand with Kwaneet's life-blood. As for Sakwan,
he took possession of the Masarwa girl, squatted at the fountain till
they had killed and devoured Kwaneet's cattle and goats, and then, with
his wife, betook himself once more to the roaming life of his kind.
Kwaneet's bones rest there amid the Kalahari grass, mingling with those
of the white man, mute records of ruined hopes, the pitiful relics of
the first and last Masarwa Bushman that dared to have ambition.
Sometimes the jackal turns them over with his sharp snout, but they are
very white and very clean now, and not even a jackal can find
consolation in them. The diamonds collected so painfully by the
murderer Fealton, and so lightly parted with by the simple Kwaneet, are
scattered too; but at least they have built the fortunes of the white
trader, who now lives in England upon their proceeds the life of a man
of wealth. He can little guess, nor, I suppose, would he be greatly
interested to know, the sorry ending of the desert nomad to whom he owes
his luck.
CHAPTER FIVE.
THE CONQUEST OF CHRISTINA DE KLERK.
The few hunters, traders, and Trek Boers who cross the dreaded
Thirstland of the Northern Kalahari, and, upon their long and trying
journey towards Lake Ngami, strike the Lake River (marked upon the maps
Zouga or Botletli River), well know the pleasant outspan at Masinya's
Kraal. Masinya's is a small village of Bakurutse natives, planted a
mile or so from the southern bank of the Lake River. Between the kraal
and the river, amid a thin grove of spreading giraffe-acacia trees, set
upon a little islet of rising ground, lies the outspan where travellers
bound to and from Ngami usually halt. On the right, a hundred and fifty
yards from the tall, oak-like motjeerie tree, which every hunter knows,
lies a deep depression, which, fed by the overflow of the Lake River,
assumes the aspect of a handsome lagoon, at some seasons full and deep,
at others a mere shallow vlei. Beyond the lagoon lie the hard,
sun-baked alluvial flats which border the sluggish river. Upon the
southern and western sides of the charming oasis of Masinya's Kraal
stretch the great open grass plains, flecked with springboks, and dotted
here and there with a troop of larger game, which fifteen or twenty
miles away are checked by the endless and waterless forest and bush of
the Kalahari--that vast desert which, thanks to its lack of surface
water, lies to this day dim, unknown, and mysterious to all races of
mankind, save the wandering Bushmen and Vaalpens who inhabit it.
Upon the 28th of December, 1878, towards four o'clock in the afternoon,
a great Cape waggon, conspicuous by its new white tilt and
spick-and-span paint, toiled heavily across the flat towards Masinya's
Kraal. Presently, urged by the excited yells of the driver and the
pistol-like cracks of his great whip, the eighteen stout oxen rose the
slight sandy ascent, and a little further drew up their burden under the
shade of a spreading acacia. A white woman, young, dark, and
good-looking, her face shaded by a broad-brimmed straw hat, sat upon the
box; and as the great waggon halted she descended with light foot to the
dry, grassy soil, shook herself a little, adjusted her hat, and looked
about her. The first thing her brown eyes lit upon was another waggon
and encampment some hundred and fifty yards to her right.
Kate Marston was a colonial-born girl, and understood the ways and signs
of the veldt well enough. Something about the look of the encampment,
the old buck-sail stretched from the waggon to a couple of friendly tree
stems (thus forming an apartment in itself), the travel-worn waggon, its
tilt patched with raw hides, and a general air of untidiness, convinced
her that it belonged to a Boer owner. The sight of a female figure
sitting under the lee of the waggon in a squat chair, and her immense
Dutch kapje, or sun-bonnet, at once settled that conviction.
But Kate Marston had plenty to do at present before troubling herself
about a visit to her neighbour. Her husband, Fred Marston, was away in
the veldt, hunting, and she wished to have her camp settled, her
tent-sail fixed, some of her belongings got out of the waggon, the fires
lighted, and the evening meal prepared against his return, which she
expected towards sundown. In half an hour's time, thanks to her brisk
and energetic ways, things were settling themselves as she wished. The
tent-sail was fastened down, the little folding camp-table--flanked by a
couple of waggon chairs--in its place and covered with a clean
table-cloth (even in the wilderness, Kate, with her English ways, loved
to be neat), a fire of wood blazed cheerfully, the game stew was
simmering in the big Kaffir pot. These things being attended to, Kate
had washed her hands and face after the day of trekking, brushed her
thick, dark hair; and now, in her thin light brown stuff dress, clean
collar and cuffs, and broad sun-hat, looked as fresh, bright, and
cheerful as if she had just issued from her bedroom in some well-found
house, instead of from a mere rude travelling home in the wilderness.
Kate Marston, the daughter of a well-to-do British settler in Griqualand
West, had recently married, and was now, two months after her wedding,
travelling in the hunting veldt with her husband--a trip she had looked
forward to with the keenest anticipation for more than a year past. It
was the dream of her life. Although very well-educated at the Cape,
Kate, brought up on a colonial farm, loved the free, unfettered life of
the veldt. She rode well, was a good shot with the fowling-piece, and,
before settling down on a Transvaal farm in Marico, had persuaded her
husband to take her with him on an expedition into the far interior.
Rough though the journey had been through Bechuanaland, Khama's country,
and across the parched wastes of the Kalahari, Kate had loved it all.
To her each day brought with it new delights--scenes and memories, of
which, to the latest day of her existence, she could never be deprived.
Fred Marston, her husband, a man of two-and-thirty, had done very well
for years past as a trader and elephant hunter. He was about settling
down for life in the Transvaal--now for a year past proclaimed a British
possession; and before retiring from the wild life of the wilderness he
was thus trekking with his wife, on a journey of pure pleasure and
hunting, towards Lake Ngami.
A native boy had strolled across from the Boer camp, and from him Kate
Marston had learned the name of the Dutch woman sitting over yonder. It
was de Klerk. Her husband was an elephant hunter from the Northern
Transvaal. They had a good load of ivory, gleaned during a year or two
of adventure, and the wife, husband, and two children were now on their
way down-country. Kate was not very sure of her reception if she went
across. The Transvaal Dutch were, since the annexation of their
country, not only disaffected towards the British Government, but rude
and uncivil towards individual English folk. However, Kate understood
the Dutch and their language exceedingly well, and her cheerful nature
inclined her to be friendly. She had often before now thawed the
stubborn reserve of a Boer huis-vrouw. She would go across and pay the
Dutch camp a visit. A walk of less than two hundred yards, and she
stood by the de Klerks' waggon.
Now Vrouw de Klerk had heard from her native servant, sent casually
across to pick up news, who and what the new arrivals were. She was not
much comforted. She had hoped to see the faces of Dutch folk. Here
were only English, whom she hated. However, she was not to be caught
napping. She had washed her children's faces and hands and her own,
pinned a big bow of blue ribbon at her throat, and put on a clean kapje,
and had even donned a nearly new black alpaca apron. She sat under the
waggon sail, cutting up dried onions into a tin dish; but as Kate
Marston approached she made no attempt to meet her. She was not a
bad-looking woman, Christina de Klerk, as Boers--who are not noted for
female beauty--go. She had plenty of light brown hair, drawn tightly
back from her face and knotted under her great sun-bonnet; but the face
was--as is so often the case with Afrikander Dutch women--broad, high
boned, and absolutely lacking in colour; the blue eyes were somewhat
pale and colourless; and although she was a young woman--little more
than three-and-twenty--a dull, stolid, even hard expression was already
settling itself for life upon her lineaments. Christina was a tall, big
woman, but her figure was thick, heavy, and altogether devoid of grace;
stiff and unyielding it was as her own nature.
Bred up in a remote back-country in Waterberg--scarcely educated at
all--if reading with no great ease from the great family Bible can be
called education, Christina had, like most of her fellows, a mind almost
untouched by civilisation; a mind narrow, bigoted, and prejudiced to a
degree almost inconceivable to denizens of modern Europe. But when all
was said and done, allowances were to be made for Christina de Klerk.
The grandchild of one of those Dutch families which had quitted the Cape
and thrown off English rule in the Great Trek of 1836; the daughter of a
frontiersman, who, after making himself a home in the wilds of the
Northern Transvaal, had seen his beloved republic entered and possessed
by the very British from whom he and his parents had trekked; she had
from infancy been nurtured in a blind and unreasoning hatred against all
English people. Just now, as Kate Marston advanced and stood before her
tent, her naturally grave and impassive face had assumed a very sour and
unpleasant look. Christina had surveyed with rapid sidelong glances the
Englishwoman's approach; she now took a full, steady, but by no means
friendly look at her as Kate halted and spoke. In these glances and in
that look she had time to observe that the Englishwoman was young, very
good-looking, and--in a Boer woman's eyes--well-dressed. All this
tended little to lull her wrath. The woman, she felt, was her superior.
She hated her for it. And as Kate spoke in a soft, clear English
voice, with that lip speech which, to users of the rough, thick,
guttural Dutch, seems mincing and super-refined, Christina detested her
yet more. Her husband hated the English, her father and grandfather had
hated them; now at this moment her spirit rose in a burning flame of
resentment against the woman who had come to speak to her.
"Good evening, Vrouw de Klerk," said Kate pleasantly.
"Good evening," repeated Christina in a low, subacid voice, looking away
into her bowl of sliced onions.
"We have just come up-country and I hear you are on your journey out I
thought I should like just to step across and ask if there is anything
we can do for you. We have plenty of stores on our waggon. You may be
short of coffee, sugar, or other things? And I thought, too, perhaps,
as you have been away in the veldt so long, you might like to have news
from down-country."
Christina no longer looked away, but now stared straight into the
Englishwoman's face. A faint flush had risen upon her dull cheeks; her
anger, the pent-up hatred of years, was now at boiling point.
"I want to know and hear nothing," she replied in a hard, set voice,
with much energy. "The English have stolen our Transvaal country; we
have nothing to say to them until we have got that country back. You
took the Old Colony from us. You took Natal, which we won with our
blood. Now you have taken the Transvaal. Ach! and yet you are
surprised that we hate you. If I were dying I would not take one drop
of cold water from an Englishwoman. We are enemies. You know it. And
yet you must pursue us even here in the veldt. I want to have nothing
to do with your people at all or at any time!"
Kate was a good deal staggered at this outburst, but she knew the Dutch
and their uncouth ways; she knew that their bark is often far worse than
their bite. In a perfectly calm tone, but with some spirit, she
replied:
"Your welcome is surely a churlish one, Mevrouw de Klerk, and your
accusations are very absurd. I am an Afrikander, like yourself, and I
know of these things. I will grant that perhaps the Dutch in the Old
Colony had some reason for their Great Trek. But that is a tale more
than eighty years old, which should surely be forgotten. As for Natal,
there were, as I happen to know--for my mother was a Natal colonist--
English traders at Port Durban years before the Boers trekked into the
country. And for the Transvaal, surely you must admit that your
weakness and misgovernment was so great that the English Government had
to step in to save your country and the rest of South Africa from Zulu
and other native dangers."
Vrouw de Klerk was preparing to answer vigorously. Kate Marston raised
her hand. "Stop," she said, "I won't argue the matter further. I'll
just say Good evening and go back to my waggon. Perhaps when you come
to think it over you will see that you have been rude and unreasonable
to a stranger in the veldt--even an English Afrikander has feelings. If
I can help you in any way, if you want anything, send over to our waggon
and you can have it with pleasure. Your children there,"--looking at
the two fat Dutch kinder, staring with blue eyes and moon faces at the
dreadful Englishwoman--"may want something, perhaps." So speaking, Kate
turned on her heel and walked back to the camp.
Christina de Klerk sat glaring for a full minute at Kate's back as she
walked away. She was turning over in her dull, slow-moving mind some
scathing retort upon her adversary's statements. But Kate was now too
far away. She rose with a snort of defiance, and, muttering angrily to
herself, went off to the fire with her sliced onions. These she threw
into a three-legged pot, adding to the meat already there a pinch or two
of salt and pepper, and then bestirred herself towards the cookies of
Boer meal baking among the embers.
Kate Marston, not a little vexed and put out at her unexpected
reception, strolled back to her waggon, and then, moving fifty yards
beyond, sat down with her back to a tree to enjoy the sunset and watch
for the approach of her husband. She was upon the edge of the grove,
and the great grass plains stretched away at her feet in illimitable
monotones of green and yellow--green where the natives had fired the
veldt, and the recent rain had induced fresh vegetation; yellow where
belts and patches of last year's grass, which had escaped the fire, yet
remained. It was nearing sundown; the western sky was ablaze with
colour; far up towards the zenith the gorgeous hues of crimson and
orange faded off to amber, and yet higher the heavens were of a wondrous
clear, pale sea-green. The plains were just now bathed in a rich warm
glow. As Kate looked she could see droves of springbok dotted here and
there, their white backs and under parts showing up curiously in the
mellow light of evening. It was a wonderful hour, and amid that vast
calm and the soothing glamour of the scene Kate's ruffled feelings soon
assumed their wonted peacefulness.
Her eyes, ranging over the vast expanse, presently lit upon something
that arrested her attention. There were two figures far away in the sea
of grass; surely one of them would be her husband? She watched, and
presently made out that one of the objects was much taller than the
other. What could it mean? A little while and the two figures rose
clearer before her gaze. Now, at last, she understood what they meant
Fred Marston had found a number of giraffe, and turned one out of the
troop, and, aided by a masterly use of the wind, had succeeded in
driving the tall creature in front of him right up to his own waggon.
Skilled South African hunters can achieve this feat with the eland and
giraffe, but the giraffe is usually far more difficult to ride into camp
than the eland.
Closer came the strange group. The giraffe was tiring, and now, instead
of galloping in its clumsy yet swift fashion, paced with giant,
shuffling strides across the veldt, with something of the gait of a
camel. A hundred yards from where Kate sat, quietly watching this
singular spectacle, the great dappled giant stood. It had caught sight
of the waggon and of figures moving among the trees, and would go no
further. The tall quadruped, full seventeen feet in height, its rich,
dark, chestnut-pied coat gleaming warmly beneath the flush of sunset,
stood for a full minute absolutely motionless, as these animals will do.
It looked like some strange figure of bronze, the creature of a
vanished age. Thirty paces to the right Fred Marston had reined in his
horse and stood expectant.
"There you are, Kate!" he shouted, cheerily, as his wife rose. "A real
good giraffe cow, fat as butter, and in splendid coat. I've had the
dickens' own trouble with her, though. She was as obstinate as a mule."
Kate clapped her hands together. "Oh, how wonderful!" she exclaimed.
It was the first giraffe she had ever set eyes on.