CHAPTER EIGHT.
THE LUCK OF TOBIAS DE LA REY.
Tobias De la Rey was one of those pastoral, hunting Boers who are still
to be found in some numbers in the remoter parts of the North and East
Transvaal. His farm was a poor one, he had no great head of stock,
sheep did very ill upon that veldt, and Tobias, like others of his
class, finding it hard to make ends meet, was in the habit annually, as
his father had been before him, of making a hunting trip beyond the
Transvaal during the season of winter and bringing back as much ivory
and as many skins of giraffe, hippopotamus and the larger antelopes as
he could get together during six months' hunting. This cargo he took
down to Zeerust, in the Marico district, and sold there. Once or twice
he had been led so far afield in search of elephants that he and the
other Boers hunting with him had remained away two seasons. But still
Tobias was a poor man. He had no luck with his stock, his land was not
good enough to grow tobacco, and now at the age of twenty-four, when
most good Boers are married and have children about them, he remained in
single wretchedness; for in the judgment of the uxorious Boer, by the
age of twenty-two, every Dutch Afrikander, if he is worth his salt,
ought to be married and settled. It was not De la Rey's fault by any
means. He had more than once offered himself for the hand of some
well-to-do neighbour's stout daughter, but his advances had, hitherto,
purely by reason of his poverty, been civilly declined.
The South African winter season was just now setting in--it was the
month of April--and Tobias, who meant having another hunt this year, had
already made all his preparations. His waggon was refitted and
overhauled, his trek oxen were ready and his servants at hand. His
hunting horses, three of them--two unsalted--including his old, salted,
ewe-necked garron "Blaauwbok," a gaunt, knowing old "blaauw-schimmel"
(blue roan), which had carried him already four seasons in the hunting
veldt, were pastured near the house and fed occasionally with mealies,
to give them heart and condition for the hard life that lay before them.
And Tobias himself had this year obtained permission from Khama, chief
of Bamangwato, to pass through his country--following the route of the
Trek Boers, who had gone through two seasons before--and had determined
to hunt in the wild and little known country far to the north-west of
Lake Ngami.
But before setting forth, Tobias had a visit to pay. He had viewed with
increasing favour this last year or two Gertruey Terblans, niece of
Mevrouw Joanna Terblans, with whom she lived. Truey was an orphan and
had some land and stock of her own. She was a dark, brown-eyed, sturdy
girl of sixteen, and Tobias De la Rey regarded her and her farm and
stock as highly desirable acquisitions. This morning, therefore, he
saddled up his best looking nag and trippled briskly off, with that
curious ambling gait--something between a trot and a canter--so greatly
affected by the Dutch Afrikanders. Tobias had dressed himself with some
care. He wore a new broad-brimmed hat, decked with a couple of short
white ostrich feathers. He had struggled with immense difficulty into a
collar, and was resplendent in a blue satin necktie. And he wore a suit
of new corduroy store clothes, purchased for his hunting outfit. His
spurs, too, were new and shining. Tobias meant to make a bit of a
splash to-day, and although he was not prepared for the solemnity of an
"opsitting" (that all-night form of courtship, dear to the heart of the
Boer), and had therefore no candle in his saddle-bag, he wished to leave
upon the minds of Truey and her aunt, on this leave-taking, the most
favourable impression possible. Tobias himself was a huge, loose-limbed
Boer, standing six feet two in his velschoons. He was a rough,
unkempt-looking fellow, even at his best to-day. His straggling beard
and moustache and long shaggy hair were of a fiery red. His broad,
freckled face and smallish grey eyes were vacant and expressionless in
all ordinary affairs of life--even in presence of the fair Truey
herself. Only the excitement of hunting could rouse the man. Then he
was, like most of his fellows, a different being, transformed from a
dull, listless, stupid-looking giant to a man of action, alert, active
and energetic even as an Englishman. The horse he bestrode was the
youngest and best looking of his stud, a not bad-looking bay
five-year-old, which to-day was resplendent in a new cheap curb bridle
of that frightfully severe pattern always affected by the South African
Dutch. His saddle was not new, but a gorgeous red and yellow
saddle-cloth, in De la Rey's eyes, fully atoned for that defect.
Tobias rode steadily north up the Nylstroom River, and in three hours'
time came in sight of the Terblans homestead, "Vogelstruisfontein"
(ostrich fountain), an ordinary Dutch farmhouse, built of Kaffir bricks
and whitewashed, and backed by goat and cattle kraals, a grove of fruit
trees--peach, apricot and quince--and a weeping willow or two. Sitting
in the shade of the stoep was old Jan Terblans, now turned seventy, and,
from fevers and privations of early days, long past work. The old man
still had the use of his eyes, however, and, catching sight of De la
Rey, he called to him to off-saddle and come in. Tobias obeyed, and,
after shaking hands with Terblans and chatting a few minutes, went at
his host's request indoors. In the living room, at the top of the
table, by the coffee urn, sat Tant' Joanna Terblans, second wife of the
old man outside, an enormous matron of five-and-forty, whose eighteen
solid stones of flesh filled to overflowing the capacious armchair that
supported her. Tant' Terblans had been a little taken by surprise, it
is true, but she had had time to send for her best apron, and had
smoothed her dull brown hair, and her great, full-moon face was now
turned inquiringly towards Tobias as he entered.
Tobias held out his hand, took the Vrouw's fat paw in his own, and
returned her greeting with a "Dag, Tant'."
"Why, bless the man," remarked the matron, "how smart you are to-day.
And what may you have come over about? No `opsitting' mind, Tobias!
Remember what I told you six months ago. Truey with her fortune is to
make a good match, and a wandering elephant hunter like yourself need
never think of her. We are glad to see you over, of course, in a
neighbourly way, but not with any ideas of Truey."
Tobias meekly replied that he had but come to say farewell before
starting on a long hunting trip. "And perhaps," he added, "if I have
luck this time and bring back a waggon-load of ivory you may see things
differently, Tant'? Remember I have more stock than I used to have.
Another trip or two, with luck, should set me up fairly."
"Nay, nay," rejoined the Vrouw, as she handed him his second cup of
coffee and pushed the tobacco towards him, "'tis not to be thought of--
unless indeed you can come back from your hunt a thousand pound better
man than you are now, which is not likely." Tobias shook his head
sadly, as if that tremendous sum were utterly beyond hope, and at that
moment the door opened and Truey herself came in.
Truey had seen with sharp eyes Tobias De la Rey spurring across the flat
in the final sharp canter up to the house. She had changed her dirty
print frock for a stuff one, had brushed her dark hair, tied a pink
ribbon to the thick single plait that fell down her back, and had even
washed her face and hands. In truth Gertruey had a soft corner in her
heart for Tobias. After all he was her devoted admirer--she knew that.
And then he was a first-rate hunter, a good veldt man, who had killed
many an elephant, and had met death fairly and squarely time after time
these eight years past. And indeed, he was not so ill looking; there
were few good-looking bachelors within a radius of fifty miles of
Vogelstruisfontein, and Tobias was no worse than his neighbours. He was
poor, certainly, but he was less poor than he used to be, and she had
land and stock of her own--or would have when she came of age.
Truey came in, then, passably well-dressed and on good terms with
herself, and there was quite a pleased look in her honest brown eyes as
they caught Tobias's first glance. Tant' Joanna viewed her niece's
little personal preparations for the visitor with something very like
disapproval, and Truey, whose countenance had, under her aunt's
dragon-like gaze, assumed a fitting humility, was soon dismissed to the
kitchen to hasten on preparation for "middagmaal." During the long
afternoon, before Tobias saddled up and rode for home, he had the
opportunity of exchanging but two or three sentences with Truey alone.
Still those sentences carried consolation. Tobias was a terrible coward
with women, but he had in sheer desperation ventured to remark that
Tant' Joanna meant her niece to marry a rich man, and that no doubt he
should find her settled with her own husband on his return. Tracy had
answered stoutly, with reddening cheeks, that she should have a good
deal to say to that, and that for her part Tobias might be very sure she
should not be married before he returned again. There was something in
the girl's voice and look that gave the faint-hearted Tobias fresh hope,
and he said hastily--for he heard Tant' Joanna coming in from the
stoep,--"Then you will wait, Truey?" And Truey answered under her
breath, yet very steadfastly, "Yes. I will wait, Tobias." And there
was a very warm pressure of the hand between these two--far different
from the usual lifeless handshake of the Boers--as they said farewell.
Tobias climbed briskly to his saddle at four o'clock, touched his nag
with the off spur to make him show himself a little, and from his safe
eminence fired his parting shot at Vrouw Terblans: "Farewell, Tant', I
shall be back in twelve months a thousand pound better man, with the
waggon loaded up with ivory."
"Ach! Tobias, man, you will be too late," rejoined the huge dame from
the stoep, in her sharp voice. "Too late, I tell you. Never mind, good
luck to you, and farewell."
But behind her, as she spoke these words, stood Truey, shaking her head,
and her head-shake and the look in her kind eyes, just now dim with
tears, were consolations good enough and reassuring enough for Tobias De
la Rey as he rode off.
It was a glorious mellow evening, that, as Tobias galloped home in a
frame of mind not often usual to one of his sluggish breed. If he had
killed a brace of elephants, with teeth averaging fifty pounds apiece,
he could not have felt more lively. Long, long afterwards did Tobias
recall that shining evening as he rode home from Vogelstruisfontein.
Never had the grass veldt looked more fair, the bush more green, the
distant mountains more ruddy with the flush of sunset; never had life
itself seemed more worth the living.
Leaving a kinsman to look after his farm and stock, De la Rey trekked
next morning for the far distant hunting grounds that were his goal. A
year later he and his shooting-fellow, Klaas Erasmus, a first-rate
hunter like himself, were outspanned with their waggons in a wild
region, unknown even to the Trek Boers in their wanderings, towards the
Cubangwe River. It was plainly apparent, from the look of their
outfits, that the hunters had had a very rough time of it during these
twelve months. Their waggons were worn and battered; the tents had long
since been torn to shreds by the thorns and were now replaced by the
hides of game. Their combined stud--they had started with seven--had
now dwindled to a pair of jaded-looking nags, one of which was De la
Rey's old salted schimmel "Blaauwbok," now looking, if possible, more
gaunt and antique than ever. The two men had had no great luck
hitherto. It had taken them four good months to reach the elephant
country, and after eight months' hunting they had shot and traded
between them little more than fifteen hundred pounds weight of ivory.
They had determined, therefore, to hunt for a second season. Twice or
thrice in the unhealthy season just ended had they been each very near
to death from fever and dysentery, and both looked yellow and pulled
down. Yet in the last few days, luck had turned; they had stumbled by
chance upon a veldt thick with elephants; they had slain three yesterday
and were now hot upon the spoor of an immense troop, which on the coming
morning they hoped to attack.
At seven o'clock, having supped and smoked their pipes, they turned into
their waggons and slept. Hunters, and especially Dutch hunters, rise
early, and seek their kartels betimes, after a hard day in the veldt.
An hour before dawn they were stirring, coffee was drunk, some food
swallowed, the horses were saddled up, the rifles got out, cartridge
belts buckled on; the hunters mounted, and with their native spoorers,
set out upon the trail just as the light was breaking through the white
mist of early morning.
Three Bushmen spoored for them, and besides these, two native servants,
fair shots and reliable hunters, carried rifles and accompanied the
Boers on foot.
Hour after hour the keen Bushmen held upon the broad trail of the
retreating herd, upon whose skirts they had now been hanging these three
days past. It was a mighty troop--as near as could be judged by the
trail left, at least 150 strong. The sun rose and rose and beat hotly
down upon the thick bush in which the party were now involved. Hour
after hour they pressed steadily on, and still the big troop kept its
lead. At two o'clock, in the hottest, weariest hour of afternoon, they
began the ascent of a steepish hill, up which the elephants had climbed
in their retreat. Their horses were showing signs of collapse. It was
a matter of absolute necessity that they should off-saddle for half an
hour and give them a much needed rest. The spoorers, too, wanted rest
and a drink from their calabashes and a welcome pinch of snuff--that
ineffable blessing to the worn and jaded black man. While they
off-saddled and the horses rested and fed a little, the native hunters
were in deep consultation; the Bushmen, especially, were jabbering in
their queer inarticulate language--in whispers, of course--and their
gestures indicated that something very exciting was stirring in their
minds. Presently Lukas, the Griqua, who carried a gun, came to the two
Boers and translated. What the Bushmen wanted to point out was this.
Below the hill, on the farther side, lay an immense marsh, which was
just now in its most treacherous condition. A week before it was under
water and no elephants would have faced it. A week later, under the
influence of the fierce sun, it would have dried sufficiently to bear
the weight even of an elephant. If, said the Bushmen, the elephants,
which were now assuredly nearing the summit of the hill, browsing slowly
as they climbed, could be driven down the steep into the marsh they
would be hopelessly embogged. The big troop, the Bushmen said (they
knew every herd of game in that vast veldt, just as the average Kaffir
knows his own cattle), had been driven far out of their own feeding
grounds and this part of the country was strange to them. The two Boers
listened with a fierce intensity to this absorbing scheme. They pulled
at their beards, knit their brows, and leaped hungrily at each word as
it came from the mouth of Lukas, the Griqua. Here was the chance of a
lifetime, and they knew it.
In half an hour the plan of campaign was settled, the horses were
saddled up and the seven hunters, spreading out in a widish line,
advanced upon their game. They reached the summit of the hill. There,
three hundred yards below, in a broad opening of the bush, moved very
slowly at least sixty huge elephants, most of them carrying long white
teeth. In other parts of the thick bush the dusky forms and pale
gleaming tusks of other mammoths could be counted.
The Boers dismounted, left their horses behind them, and, one upon
either flank, crept in; the two natives carrying guns were in the
centre; the three Bushmen, armed only with assegais, served to maintain
the thin line of the advance. Half-way down the hill, the Boers fired
their rifles into the herd, now close in front of them, the native
gunners followed suit, and then, with loud yells, the whole party dashed
in upon the elephants. It was a risk, but the plan succeeded to
admiration. Half the herd tore terror-stricken down the remaining three
hundred yards of hill and entered headlong upon the flat marsh in front
of them. Half scattered, and, turning short round, broke back through
the thin cordon of hunters. Of these, two big bulls and a cow, all
bearing magnificent teeth, fell victims. Leaving these to die, as they
quickly did, of their wounds, the hunters ran on and reached the edge of
the marsh. Quite a respectable troop was already stuck fast in its
treacherous depths. The hunters fired, and fired, and fired again, shot
after shot, and as the victims fell, the remainder of the troop, in
their desperate exertions to free themselves and escape, only buried
themselves yet deeper in the black mud of the smooth, green-looking
swamp. It was a scene never to be forgotten. The gunners, black and
white, in the fiercest stage of excitement, shouting, screaming,
swearing, firing; the Bushmen, mad with the lust of blood, venturing
with light feet upon the swamp and spearing the hopelessly embogged
elephants; the screaming and trumpeting of the great pachyderms
themselves, frantic with helpless rage and terror, created in this erst
silent wilderness an infernal pandemonium. By sundown the last elephant
but one of all that troop was slain, and seventy-three of the great tusk
bearers lay dead upon the marsh. One young bull, lighter than its
fellows, had marvellously crossed the swamp in safety and escaped. Some
of the finest tusks in Africa lay here under the red rays of the dying
sun. Few were under thirty pounds in weight. Many were well over fifty
pounds apiece. The two biggest bulls carried teeth that, when dried
out, pulled the beam at over ninety pounds apiece. It took the hunters
and their natives more than a week to chop out the tusks and get them
stowed in their waggons. In the last few days, although the marsh had
become firmer and work more easy, the two Dutchmen were unable to
withstand the dreadful effluvia of the rotting carcases, and the natives
completed the loathsome task alone save for the throngs of vultures that
kept them company.
Six months later Tobias De la Rey had reached the far Transvaal border
on his return home, had crossed a drift of the Limpopo, and was now
approaching Vogelstruisfontein. Despite the toils and dangers of his
last eighteen months in the wilderness, his heart was light and there
was a look upon his broad and stolid face that told of much happiness.
The house was reached at last, and Tobias's travel-worn waggon, loaded
to the tilt with ivory, halted fifty yards away from the door. Vrouw
Terblans, aroused by the cracking of whips, the cries of the drivers,
and the heavy creaking of the waggon, stood outside upon the stoep.
"Well, Tant' Joanna," cried Tobias, as he rode up, "there is the finest
load of ivory that has come into the Transvaal for many a long year.
More than a thousand pounds' worth. I have kept my word Ja! I have
made my last hunt and brought home three thousand pounds weight of
ivory. Allemaghte! It was the greatest hunt ever known in South
Africa. Seventy-six elephants we killed in a single day. But where are
Truey and Terblans?" De la Rey, in the joy of this unspeakably
triumphant moment--looked forward to so eagerly during every waking hour
of the last six months--had not noticed the stout huis-vrouw's black
stuff gown and her lugubrious expression.
"Alas!" she replied. "Have not you heard, Tobias? Truey caught a fever
four months since and died, poor child, in my arms. My man died too--he
had been long ailing--six months after you had trekked. I have had sore
trouble, but the Heer God who chastens can bring the healing. It is a
blessed thing to see the face of an old friend again. Will ye not
off-saddle and come in, Tobias? I want your help and advice."
Tobias had stared at Tant' Joanna as she spoke these words, his slow
mind not fully comprehending their terrible import. He leaned down
towards her from his horse and said in a low, fierce, guttural voice:
"What was that you said, woman?--Truey dead?"
Vrouw Terblans was whimpering now and had a kerchief to her eyes.
"Yes, Tobias," she answered feebly, "dead indeed."
With a deep groan, but without another word, De la Rey jerked fiercely
at his horse's bit and turned to his waggon. "Trek on for home," he
said huskily, and himself rode forward.
For six months, De la Rey, his dream shattered, his brightest hopes
dispelled, shut himself up, away upon his lonely farm, and nursed the
bitter sorrow that had overtaken him. But, after all, the Dutch
Afrikanders are an eminently practical race, and Tobias began presently
to look abroad again. Tant' Joanna and he in due time met each other
once more. She was now very ready to play the consoler; a wealthy widow
is always a source of deep attraction, even to a Boer twenty or thirty
years her junior; their farms adjoined; and so within a year De la Rey
and she made up their minds, trekked to Pietersburg and were married at
the Dutch Reformed Church.
Tobias De la Rey is now a comfortable man, respected for his wealth and
well known throughout the Northern Transvaal as one of the two hunters
who slew in a single day six-and-seventy elephants. But there come to
him at times, undoubtedly, bitter moments, and, looking with the mind's
eye past the immense figure of his grim and elderly vrouw, he sees again
the kind brown eyes and the pleasant face of his lost Truey. These
thoughts, for very good and sufficient reasons, he keeps severely to
himself. For Tant' Joanna is, it must be owned, a jealous and an
exacting spouse.
CHAPTER NINE.
THE MAHALAPSI DIAMOND.
It was a fine warm evening at Kimberley, and Frank Farnborough, just
before the dinner hour at the "Central," was fortifying his digestion
with a glass of sherry and bitters, and feeling on very good terms with
himself. He had put in an excellent day's work at De Beers, that
colossal diamond company's office, where he had the good fortune to be
employed, and had that morning received from his chief an intimation
that his salary had been raised to four hundred pounds per annum. Four
hundred per annum is not an immense sum in Kimberley, where living is
dear all round; but for a young man of five-and-twenty, of fairly
careful habits, it seemed not so bad a stipend. And so Frank sat down
to the excellent menu, always to be found at the "Central," at peace
with the world and with a sound appetite for his dinner. Next to him
was a fellow-member of the principal Kimberley cricket team, and, as
they were both old friends and enthusiasts, they chatted freely.
Everywhere around them sat that curious commingling of mankind usually
to be seen at a Kimberley _table d'hote_--diamond dealers, Government
officials, stock-brokers, detectives, Jews, Germans, Englishmen and
Scots, and a few Irish, hunters and traders from the far interior,
miners, prospectors, concessionaires, and others. A few women leavened
by their presence the mass of mankind, their numbers just now being
increased by some members of a theatrical company playing in the town.
As for Frank and his companion, they drank their cool lager from tall
tankards, ate their dinners, listened with some amusement to the
impossible yarns of an American miner from the Transvaal, and, presently
rising, sought the veranda chairs and took their coffee. In a little
while Frank's comrade left him for some engagement in the town.