Max sprang up, meaning to run back to Namies and fetch a drink, but
Gemsbok motioned to him to come close. Max bent over him again.
"Baas Max... leave... the water... it is... too late... I die for...
the old sin... In my bag... sewn up... there is something... They are
yours... I came honestly... by them..."
Then the head fell back, and with a low moan of pain Gert Gemsbok drew
his last breath--an obscure martyr in the cause of Truth, at whose
deserted shrine in the Desert he had worshipped to his own despite.
Max tried to revive him, but soon found that his attempts were useless.
The dog sat on the bank at the edge of the gully, giving vent to
long-drawn howls.
Max stood and looked at the body through a mist of blinding tears. Then
he gathered up the fragments of the instrument which had been the only
solace of the man lying dead before him through years of misery, and
laid them reverently at the side of the corpse. He closed the lids of
the dim and tired eyes and tied up the fallen jaw with his
pocket-handkerchief. In doing this his hand came in contact with the
reim by which the skin bag was slung over the dead man's shoulder. This
reminded him of the words with which Gemsbok had gasped out his life.
He drew the bag softly away and began to examine its contents.
He found a pipe, a tinder box, tobacco, some dried roots, and a few
strings for the ramkee in course of preparation out of sinew; nothing
else. Then he discovered that the bottom of the bag had been sewn up
from corner to corner, and that some hard bodies were secured under the
sewn portion. He ripped open the stitches and the five diamonds rolled
into his hand.
Max gazed in astonishment at the stones for a few seconds and then
slipped them into his pocket. He felt dazed by all he had experienced.
He sat down to collect his scattered thoughts. He looked once more upon
the dead face. The diamonds were at once forgotten, and he burst into
passionate sobs. The weight of all the wickedness of the world seemed
to press upon him, and a sense of the futility of good darkened his
soul.
He climbed out of the gully and hastened back to Namies. In a few
moments all the men there were on their way to the spot where Gert
Gemsbok lay as if enjoying a peace in death such as he had never known
when living.
It was Old Schalk's duty as Assistant Field Cornet to hold an inquest,
and, if there were discovered the slightest sign of foul play, to send
immediately a report on the subject to the magistrate.
The body was stripped, and was found to be horribly bruised and swollen.
The Assistant Field Cornet at once gave it as his opinion that the
deceased had come to his death through being thrown from a horse.
"It is well known," said he, "that these Bushmen are in the habit of
catching the Boers' horses in the veld and riding their tails off."
"But," broke in Max, "this man never interfered with anybody's--"
"Young man," said Old Schalk with severity, "when you have lived as long
in Bushmanland, and seen as many dead Bushmen as I have seen, you'll
perhaps be entitled to give an opinion."
"But," said Max excitedly, "the man told me just before he died that--"
"Young man," interrupted Old Schalk, who had made a shrewd guess as to
the perpetrator of the deed, and felt that his duty to the Trek-Boers of
Bushmanland forbade him to permit indiscreet revelations, "are you the
Field Cornet or am I? What does it matter what he told you--who ever
knew a Bushman tell the truth? It is well known that Oom Dantje van
Rooyen has a very vicious horse, which only last year threw a man to the
ground and then kicked and bit him. That very horse is running in this
veld at present--I saw it myself only yesterday. I am quite sure that
nothing but the horse did this. The case is quite clear."
A buzz of approval on the part of the Boers followed this verdict. Here
was a dead Bushman whose body showed lesions and appearances such as
might be caused by equestrian misadventure. Grazing somewhere in the
neighbourhood was a horse which had been known to kick and bite a man
after it had thrown him. Of course the case was perfectly clear.
Max looked around the ring of faces and saw nothing but amusement at his
warmth of expression, mingled with slyness, depicted upon them. There
was no pity for the sufferings which the man must have endured before he
died--no horror that such a deed had been perpetrated by one with whom
they were on terms of intimacy upon a sentient human being, was
suggested. He felt an arm slipped within his. Looking round he saw the
inscrutable visage of Oom Schulpad close beside him.
"Come, children, let us go and drink some coffee," said Old Schalk as he
led the way, assisted by a stalwart Boer, to the cart which had conveyed
him from his camp to the nearest available point.
As the others followed in small groups Oom Schulpad heard one young Boer
say to another--
"Got, kerel, maar Koos hat die ou' Boschmann lekker geskop."
[God, old fellow, but Koos kicked the old Bushman nicely.]
Oom Schulpad gave a sardonic grin which might have been expressive of
anything, from rapture to nausea, and turned back to where Max was
sitting fuming with indignation and grief. He laid a sympathetic hand
upon the boy's shoulder and bent his rough face, which now bore a kindly
expression, over him.
"Never mind, child," he said, "the poor old schepsel is not going to
suffer any more pain. Who knows but he may be with the old woman now,
and she, perhaps, may have got a new pair of legs."
"But the man has been murdered," replied Max hotly, "and he wants to
screen the murderer--"
"Shush, shush. Young tongues gallop into dangerous places. What good
can you do by making a disturbance? You won't bring the old Bushman to
life again, and it would be a bad thing for him if you could. Besides,
a man must never try to set the world right all by himself."
"But he wouldn't hear what I had to say. I shall let the Government
know what sort of a Field Cornet he is."
"And get nothing for your pains except the hatred of every one about
here. What does the Government care? It only wants not to be troubled
about things. When you are as old as I am you will not be put out by
anything done by people like Old Schalk."
"I shall send a letter off at once to the magistrate and ask him to come
here and see for himself."
"No, I think you had better do nothing of the kind. If you did, the
magistrate and the doctor would perhaps arrive in three weeks from now
and when they came what would they be able to find out from the body?
Besides, in that case it would probably turn out that some one had seen
him riding Oom Dantje's horse, or had even seen him thrown and trampled
on. No, you had better do nothing at all but just bury the old Bushman.
I liked him because he knew more music than I did. Come, I will help
you to bury him. We'll dig his grave next to where the old woman lies--
among the kopjes. I'll inspan my donkeys and we'll draw him up in the
cart."
Max and Oom Schulpad wended back to Namies, and, with a couple of spades
which they took out of the shop, soon dug a grave in the sluit at the
back of the little kopje. It was easy ground to work, and, in spite of
his deformity, Oom Schulpad was a first-rate hand at digging. In a
little more than half an hour the grave was ready, and then Oom Schulpad
harnessed his donkeys to the little cart and drove down to fetch the
body.
Max had brought some clean, white linen from the shop, and in this they
wrapped the earthly remains of Gert Gemsbok, the lonely, martyred votary
at Truth's neglected shrine. The fragments of the ramkee were
reverently tied together by the old fiddler, who was honest artist
enough to acknowledge a superior when he met him. He laid the shattered
instrument where the stiffened hand might press upon the slackened
strings until both turned to dust.
The full moon lifted her sweet face over the rim of the world, and,
under the spell of her smile, the Desert took on beauty of a weird and
unearthly kind. The plumy heads of the grass became pendant with
dew-diamonds; every tussock was transformed into a fairy-forest lit by
sparkling lamps. The ice-plants glinted so brightly that they seemed to
merge together a few yards from the observer's feet, and from there to
form a shining pathway to the moon.
The strange funeral _cortege_ wended up between the camps of Namies.
Oom Schulpad walked at the side, holding the reins; Max, with bent head,
followed close behind the body.
So they laid Gert Gemsbok in the sand, next to his "Old Woman" and with
his broken ramkee at his side. If what some tell us about a future life
be true, that ramkee will surely be recreated in the celestial
equivalents of the rarest earthly instruments of music--if not something
as valuable and more sonorous.
Old Schalk was sitting in the moonlight at the door of his mat-house
talking to a few cronies when the funeral passed. A silence fell upon
all when they saw what it was that the patient donkeys were hauling up
the hill through the heavy sand. Just after the vehicle had passed out
of sight around the flank of one of the kopjes Old Schalk broke the
silence. He turned to one of his companions and said--"I never yet knew
a man who could play the fiddle well who was not a little mad."
"Ja," replied the other, "I have often heard that such is the case."