bedside; it was keen enjoyment just to lie and inhale the aroma, but the
aroma was nothing to the taste.
Soon a weak shaft of sunlight touched the wall above my head, so I
sprang up and went to the open window. The beauty of the scene was
incomparable. To the southward arose the stark, rugged mountain mass
which formed the culmination of the range--its topmost crags touched
with gold; all else was clothed in a diaphanous purple veil; every
hollow was brimming with mystery. Here and there a faint wreath of mist
clung like departing sleep to the eyelids of the mountain. As I looked,
the sun climbed through a gap, and straightway the lesser summits grew
golden.
Not a breath of the slightest breeze disturbed the sacred stillness.
The only sound was the faint murmur from the distant stream foaming over
the grey boulders at the bottom of the valley. From the stream the
hillside sloped steeply up, dotted thickly with dark green trees. But
an undercurrent of very real sadness flowed through all this beauty. I
could not forget the blind man in the next room; did he ever recall this
scene--which he must often have gazed upon--and repine? Although his
peace seemed to be as deep and changeless as the vault of the blue sky,
the memory must, surely, often strain his heartstrings.
I leant upon the window-sill and looked to the right. There I saw
Gertrude standing, her dead-gold hair unbound, her pure, calm visage
bathed in the sunlight. She appeared to gaze at the sun as
unconcernedly as an eagle might have done. She afforded the one touch
necessary to complete the harmony of the scene.
After an early breakfast I took my rifle and, accompanied by the
Hottentot guide, went forth in search of game. The mountain was so
steep that our ponies could only ascend by scarping, zigzag fashion. It
took nearly two hours to reach the central plateau lying between the two
highest summits of the range.
From here the view was superb; billow after billow seemed to surge away
in every direction--each crested with a fringe of cliff like the foam of
a breaking wave. Every now and then a faint cloud-wreath would form
around one or other of the higher crags, then float away to leeward like
a tress, until dissolved by the sunshine.
Having shot a couple of rheboks, I felt disinclined for further
slaughter, so laid myself down among the late mountain flowers and
basked in the light. The heat was deliciously tempered by a
steadily-streaming breeze. Thus were spent several hours.
It was only when the sun had sunk considerably in to the afternoon that
I regretfully began to think of returning to the homestead. The ponies
were grazing a short distance away, so after telling my after-rider to
replace the saddles, load up the game and make his way homeward by the
nearest available course, I took a bee-line on foot for the farmhouse.
My course led across the head of a gorge, the sides of which were steep,
grassy slopes, interspersed with patches of moraine. Here and there
immense angular fragments of stone--which had, ages back, slid down from
the crowning cliffs--protruded from the earth. Passing one of these,
something peculiar in its appearance caught my eye, so I approached more
closely. Upon its flat face the following inscription had been roughly
cut:--
"HIER WORDT EEN ZONDENAAR BEKEERD."
Having thought much of old Sarei during the day, I involuntarily
connected him with the strange inscription--"Here a sinner became
converted." The letters were deeply carved into the stone, and the way
the dents were overgrown with lichen showed that the carving had taken
place many years ago. Somehow the legend seemed quite congruous; if a
special revelation ever came from the Divine to the human, what place
could be more appropriate for its happening than this--the undefiled
heart of the everlasting hills, where the hand of man had as yet wrought
no desecration? Like Moses before the Burning Bush, I felt as though
standing upon holy ground.
I reached the homestead just as dusk was setting in. After supper I
again went to pay my respects to old Sarei. He greeted me with
cheerfulness--
"Well, they say no Englishman can shoot, yet I hear you killed two bucks
to-day."
"Yes," I replied, "I killed two bucks, and I almost wish I had not done
so. It seemed to be a sin to shed blood in such a place and on such a
day."
Old Sarei turned his mild, inquiring, blind eyes upon me, but made no
reply. We sat and smoked in silence for a while.
"Can you tell me anything about an inscription I saw upon a rock
to-day--`Here a sinner became converted'?"
"Yes," he replied, after a pause, "I am the sinner. My son cut the
words upon the stone at my wish."
I held silence, so he shortly afterwards asked--"Would you like me to
tell you of what happened?"
"Yes, I should be most grateful."
"I was born on this farm," he said; "my father was one of the first to
take up land about here. When a young man, hunting was my passion. I
made friends with the wild Bushmen who then dwelt on the mountain, and
they used to drive the game for me. I built a hut near the spring just
below the summit, and there I sometimes stayed for weeks together.
"I was proud of my eyesight and my skill with the rifle. I did not care
for the society of others; I neglected my wife and children; I neither
feared God nor regarded man. The mountain I looked upon as my home.
Living so near the sky makes one different to others. The sins of the
Flesh lose their breath and cannot climb so high, but those of the
Spirit beset you sorely. You will remember that Satan tempted the Lord
on the top of a high mountain.
"One day in summer, about forty years ago, I was riding across the head
of the kloof where the stone stands whereon you read those words to-day.
A thunderstorm was sweeping down from the north-west, but I took no
heed, for I had never known fear of lightning nor anything else. The
Bushmen were driving on a troop of elands, and I expected them to cross
the saddle at the head of the kloof; so I left the horse concealed in a
hollow and took my stand, with the rifle on my arm, at the foot of the
rock.
"Soon the elands appeared; they ran for a short distance down the kloof,
then halted just opposite where I was standing. One great bull stood
apart from the others. As I lifted my rifle to take aim a flash leaped
out of the cloud and struck the ground close to where the bull was
standing, igniting the grass. The animal sprang back in terror. I
fired--and it rolled over, dead.
"Then I laughed aloud and shouted that my aim was more true than that of
the Almighty. An instant afterwards the heavens opened and flame
enveloped me like a sheet. I fell, senseless, to the ground.
"When I recovered I thought night had fallen. I could smell that my
clothing was scorched, but I felt no hurt. The rain had ceased and I
was conscious of a sensation of warmth. I still thought it was night,
but night blacker than I had ever known. After a while I stood up and
groped about in terror, for I now imagined that the end of the world had
come and that the sun had been quenched. Then I heard a bird singing: I
still wondered; but when I heard the Bushmen calling to me from the
other side of the kloof, where the dead eland lay, the truth struck me
in all its terror: I was blind.
"I shrieked and blasphemed as I staggered about. I found my gun and
tried to shoot myself, but the lightning had twisted it as you might
twist a handful of straw. The Bushmen led me down to the homestead.
"Afterwards, I spent many days and nights in hell, but the day arrived
when my pride lay broken in the dust, and I came to acknowledge that
God's Angel was sitting on that thundercloud, charged to save my soul."
That night I lay long awake, thinking of old Sard's tale. I had a very
clear recollection of the inscribed stone and its surroundings, so tried
to picture the tremendous episode of forty years back. The sultry
summer day; the white thundercloud curdling into shape upon the hot
north-western horizon and towering into the ether, until its spreading
tentacles seemed to seize the world in a mighty grip. Later, the low
muttering of thunder, pulsing from the monster's baleful heart, and the
thin streak of fire darting out far in advance of the rain and igniting
the dry grass. Then the blasphemous jest of the strong man proud of his
skill. Lastly, the thunderbolt winged to smite but not to slay,
touching not so much as a hair of the head of the defiant human atom,
but crushing the gun in his hand as though it were a reed, and filling
his eyes with such excess of light that nothing less vivid could stir
their sense for evermore.
CHAPTER THREE.
TOMMY'S EVIL GENIUS.
"Greater love hath no man than this."--S. John XV. 13.
His name was Danster. His age might have been anything between fifteen
and forty-five. His cheekbones were high, and his eyes oblique like
those of a Mongolian. Scattered unevenly over his bullet-shaped skull
were thin tufts of wool, each culminating in a minute, solid pellet.
His only clothing was a noisome sheep-skin kaross which had formerly
belonged to a great-grandfather--long since deceased.
Danster was a Hottentot--or rather what is called by that indefinite
term at the Cape. In his much-mixed blood that of the Bushman evidently
preponderated. An anthropologist would have valued his skull, which
seemed to epitomise the results of a criminal ancestry extending through
many generations.
Tommy, surnamed Winwood, was very different. He was a blonde,
blue-eyed, yellow-haired lad of eight years of age, somewhat slight and
undersized, but agile and capable of endurance when under the stimulus
of excitement. Five children had nested in the Winwood nursery, but
only Tommy survived. The others had all succumbed to congenital
delicacy before reaching the age of seven. With Tommy the Winwoods had
come to South Africa in the early eighties, and had taken a farm near
the coast in one of the eastern districts of the Cape Colony. Mr
Winwood was a nervous, retiring man of literary tastes. Having enough
money to live upon, his farming was hardly a serious pursuit. In fact
he left the management of the place almost solely in the hands of a
somewhat dour but conscientious Boer, who managed to run the concern at
a profit.
Mrs Winwood suffered from extreme delicacy. She was an accomplished
musician, but the climate had sapped her energy to such an extent that
when the weather was warm she hardly ever touched the piano. When the
days were cool, she often played for six or seven hours a day, and thus
seriously overtaxed her strength. Both she and her husband were moody
and morbid. Although much attached to each other, their life was a
series of misunderstandings.
It may be imagined what a lonely life poor Tommy led. He received three
hours' instruction every day--two from his father and one from his
mother. His nursery was full of toys, but the very number and variety
of these had rendered them valueless as a resource. The homestead stood
on the steep south slope of a valley through which a stream ran between
fringes of timber rooted in rich, fern-bearing soil, and commanded a
grand view of interspersed forest and grassy slopes. But,
unfortunately, snakes abounded, so poor Tommy was restricted to the
cleared area immediately surrounding the house. So his face took on
that expression of pathos which haunts the looks of children debarred
from the companionship of their kind.
When the tempter appeared Tommy fell an easy prey. Danster was a
calf-herd. He, too, felt lonely. His avocations kept him in the
vicinity of the homestead, so he soon found an opportunity of making
friends with the lonely child. The intimacy grew, unnoticed by Tommy's
parents, and was for some time tacitly acquiesced in. However, one day
Mrs Winwood came upon the two sitting behind the big water-tank, and
found Danster engaged in extracting the eyes of a living bird with a
mimosa thorn, while Tommy looked on, fascinated. Danster was thereupon
severely flogged by the overseer, under Mr Winwood's supervision, and
earnestly warned never to show his ill-favoured face near the homestead
again.
Tommy was a thoroughly truthful child. When questioned he freely
admitted that the removal of the bird's eyes was the last of a long
series of hideous vivisectional experiments at which he had assisted,
and which had been organised for his delectation. Like most
highly-strung people, Mr and Mrs Winwood were morbidly sensitive to
physical suffering, either in themselves or in other sentient beings.
The keenness of their distress may therefore be imagined. Horrible
though the thing was, they took far too serious a view of it. In fact,
they imagined that their child's character had been irreparably ruined.
Tommy had not realised how attached he was to the disreputable Danster
until after the separation. One night, about a week after the dreadful
discovery, Tommy confessed to his mother that he loved Danster very much
indeed. Soon he began to mope visibly. His father and mother were
horribly annoyed at the turn things had taken. They always referred to
Danster as their son's evil genius.
Something had to be done, so it was decided to employ a governess. In
due course a highly certificated lady came to undertake the regeneration
of Tommy's morals as well as the development of his mind. She had much
erudition, but little sympathy, so Tommy and she were antipathetic
towards each other from the very start, and the starved heart of the
lonely child went out more and more towards the banished Danster.
Drought had lain heavily on the land for many months. The season was
autumn. During early spring copious rains had fallen, but throughout
sultry January and blistering February the heavens had been as brass and
the wind as the blast from a furnace. The grass which had sprung up
rank and luxuriant withered again, and now the farm, which was much
under-stocked, lay like a clay potsherd covered with tinder.
One afternoon the sun smote the earth with more than usual fury. Away
to the westward irregular fragments of thundercloud, which seemed
incapable of cohering sufficiently to produce a storm, coquetted with
the quivering mountain-tops. Ever and anon irregular gusts from the
eastward would trail over glowing hill and gasping vale with a sound as
though the tortured earth were sobbing an appeal to the skies for the
withheld mercy of rain. It was one of those days on which the beast
seeks, gasping, for a cool lair, and the bird pants with half
outstretched wings, deep in the densest foliage.
Mr and Mrs Winwood had collapsed completely; the governess retired to
her darkened room; the servants had disappeared. Tommy only was awake.
He tried all sorts of devices for passing the time, but the walls of his
comparatively cool room became an irksome prison as the afternoon wore
on; so he opened the glass door quietly, to avoid wakening his father in
the next room, and stepped quietly on to the back stoep. Here he was in
the shade. The air had taken on that suspicion of coolness which, in
seasons of drought, nearly always tempers the afternoon.
Tommy leant upon the verandah rail, and the wind, as it stirred his
yellow locks, seemed to be charged with some odour that stimulated his
languid pulses. He sniffed at it wonderingly; what did it remind him
of? Then he suddenly knew, and his cheek crimsoned with a guilty flush:
it was the smell of Danster's kaross, its grosser elements subdued by
distance, which assailed his nostrils.
Tommy cast his eyes around, and they fell upon an object which sent the
blood coursing wildly through his veins. There, emerging from a bush
only a few yards away, was the bullet-shaped head and Mongolian face of
the Hottentot, his eyes filled with appeal and his wide mouth distended
into a white-toothed smile. Tommy gazed spellbound, and the evil genius
cautiously held out at arm's length a stick from which a small
water-tortoise hung by one tortured leg. After this had been dangled
for a few seconds it was withdrawn and then the nest of a loxia was held
forth. The loxia suspends its nest from boughs overhanging dark,
forest-nurtured pools, and the nest has a long, woven tube, cunningly
devised for the purpose of keeping out snakes, lizards and other enemies
that prey upon the eggs and young of wild birds. Tommy had often gazed
at these works of woven art as they hung from the whip-like acacia
boughs, and had longed to possess one. A vision of the cool forest grot
where he had seen them swaying in the wind arose in his mind. Duty was
forgotten in an instant; Nature, like a long-banished king, came back
and claimed his own. An old hat belonging to his father hung upon a
nail close at hand. Hurriedly placing this upon his head he tripped
down the steps into the garden and followed the beckoning tempter.
Tommy hurried after his evil genius along the pathway which led through
the orchard down to the bottom of the valley. In passing, Danster
skilfully snatched a supply of half-ripe peaches from the laden trees,
and hid the loot in a fold of his odoriferous kaross. This grated on
Tommy's sense of honour; his conscience lifted his head. To salve it,
he mentally resolved not to eat any of the fruit.
They climbed over the orchard fence and pressed through the rustling
Tambookie grass, which filled the air with its sharp, sweet scent. Then
they reached the strip of forest at the bottom of the valley. From the
heart of its charmed mystery stole the delightful murmur of falling
water.
Just where the pathway crossed the stream was a rocky ledge over which a
thin gush of crystal water trembled down through the air and, smiting a
boulder, resolved itself into fine spray. A vagrant sunbeam pierced
this, and the miracle of a tiny rainbow hung over the pool. This is a
phenomenon only seen in severe droughts, and when the sunlight smites
through a gap in the greenery at a certain angle. The impressionable
Tommy become intoxicated with delight; the smell of Danster's kaross,
which had always offended his sensitive nose, was forgotten. The evil
genius became a wood-god and Tommy his humble votary.
The wind, heated once more to furnace pitch, moaned threateningly along
the hillside, but here all was cool, grateful and quiet. The unruffled
water slept beneath the shadowing trees from which, ever and anon,
sounded the peevish twitter of drowsy birds. A large iguana slowly
dragged its scaly length over the stones, pausing now and then to snap
at an insect, which it swallowed, gulping solemnly. A flash of vivid
blue seemed to fill the gloom--a kingfisher skimmed out of the darkness
across the surface of the pool and perched on a stone. Quick as thought
Danster flung his short, knobbed stick with unerring aim, and the bird
fell, mangled, its bright plumage scattered over the surface of the
crystal pool. This broke the spell. Grasping the dead bird in his
hand, Tommy followed his evil genius across the stream and through the
fringe of woodland on the other side.
Now came the main effort of the enterprise; the steep, grassy hillside
had to be climbed. Beyond, high up, stood the enchanted forest in the
depth of which the red-winged, green-crested lories flitted with
noiseless undulations from tree to tree or waked strident echoes with
their hoarse-throated calls. There the satyrs of the South--the
black-faced, green-backed monkeys--tore swinging along from bough to
bough, scattering leaves, flowers and berries from sheer love of
mischief. There the great woodland butterflies flitted like ghosts
through the nether gloom or circled like fairies around the tree-tops.
From there the raucous barking of the rutting bushbucks sounded at
midnight across the valley. There were hidden wonders--untold,
transcendent--stinging imagination into ecstasy.
The hillside had once been covered with forest, but the timber had, on
the lower slopes, disappeared under the blighting hand of man. Now the
high, waving Tambookie grass lay thick upon it, and through this the
path wound and zigzagged aimlessly, after the manner of South African
footways. A stream had once flowed down the decline, but being no
longer nurtured by the growth of timber, had shrunk to an underground
trickle, the course of which was here and there marked by a
funnel-shaped opening filled with bracken. Here a careful ear might
discover the musical tinkle of semi-subterranean water.
Tommy became very tired, but pushed bravely on, following the lead of
his evil genius. The air became hotter and hotter. A few belated
cloudlets, very high up, sailed slowly against the wind. From some of
these a few heavy gouts of rain occasionally fell, only to be
immediately evaporated by the glowing earth. Now and then a remote
metallic clashing of thunder could be heard. A sudden and furious
succession of gusts sprang up and joined in a mad whirl from eastward.
This covered the hillside with dust, and sent leaves and twigs flying
over the billows of the swaying grass.
Tommy looked longingly at the dense forest, which now lay but a couple
of hundred yards ahead. The wind blew his hair bewilderingly into his
eyes; the hot, acrid dust filled his throat. His legs trembled under
him, but he still struggled bravely on. His evil genius stood between
him and the worst of the gusts, and the unsavoury kaross proved an
acceptable shield against the stinging missiles with which the air was
filled.
At length a lull--but the wind was only pausing to gain strength for a
burst of wilder fury. Then a dense cloud of dust and detritus arose to
windward and advanced with a strident moan.
A small, solid-looking cloud hung above them, shaped like a pear. From
this a thin blade of white lightning flickered down and ignited the
grass to windward, just in front of the advancing tempest. Immediately
the dustcloud closed down on the ignited spot; in an instant the
hillside was a hell of roaring, whirling, leaping flame.
Danster did not hesitate for an instant. Dropping the tortoise, the
loxia's nest and the stolen fruit, he seized Tommy by the hand and
dragged him swiftly back down the hillside towards the last of the
subterranean openings they had passed. It was a race for life with the
springing, vaulting flame, which was hurled onward by the wind in
immense flakes, pausing for the fraction of a minute here and there as
though to gain strength for the next leap. Soon it became apparent that
the fire must win. Then a hissing tongue of flame darted out and cut
the fugitives off from their goal.
Without pausing for an instant Danster denuded himself of his kaross,
wrapped Tommy in it, and, picking him up, dashed naked into the fire
with a wild yell, hurling himself and his burthen into the gulf beyond.
They sank together into the burning mass of bracken, Tommy beneath and
his evil genius above. Then the world went out for Tommy in a wild
turmoil of heat, smoke, suffocation and crackling explosions.
The first thing that struck Tommy's awakening senses was a strong smell
of burnt leather. He was lying in a mass of slimy ooze. After a
violent struggle he sat up, his head piercing the charred kaross, which
had been his shield against the devouring fire. He looked around him
with smarting eyes. The sides of the depression in which he lay were
jet-black, with here and there a thin whorl of smoke eddying upwards.
The strong, amber-tinted sunshine dazzled him. Close by he noticed a
pair of yellow, pain-shot eyes, with brown vertical slits. A wild cat
with all its fur scorched off was painfully crawling out of the water.
He felt a movement at his feet; a half-scorched snake was loosely coiled
about his ankles. He turned to look behind him, wondering where Danster
was... But what was that blackened, shrivelled, crackling mass
contorted so horribly beside him among the charred stumps of the fern?
Alas! it was the body of his evil genius, who had died in agony that
Tommy might live.
Tommy staggered to his feet. Not so much as a hair of his yellow head
had been touched by the fire. He climbed out of the hollow and fled
down the blackened hillside, still holding the dead kingfisher in his
hand.
CHAPTER FOUR.
THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT.