"WHOSO BREAKETH A FENCE..."
The night had just fallen when Koos Bester arrived at his camp after
leaving Nathan, his persecutor, to his dreadful fate in the burning
dunes. Koos arrived in the wildest state of excitement and the highest
of spirits. His team was in a miserable condition; the poor horses just
staggered away for a few yards when outspanned and then sank exhausted
on the ground. The Hottentot servants attempted to make them get up and
walk slowly about so as to cool gradually before drinking. With some
difficulty the leaders were got upon their legs. The wheelers, however,
could not be induced by either blows or persuasion to arise; about an
hour afterwards it was found that they were dead.
Mrs Bester was very uneasy; she felt that something was wrong. Koos
drank quantities of water but could not be induced to eat. After a
while he flung himself upon the bed and fell at once into a deep sleep
which lasted until noon of the following day. Then he became violently
ill. At his wife's earnest solicitation he had eaten a little food upon
awakening, but this he was unable to keep upon his stomach. Then he lay
on the bed for a couple of days, during which he hardly spoke.
All the other Boers had trekked away to the Nachtmaal at Namies, so,
with the exception of her old and feeble father and the Hottentot
servants, Mrs Bester had no one to turn to for assistance or advice.
One night Koos began muttering to himself; from this time he seemed to
be quite bereft of his understanding. He sometimes ate food that was
placed before him with avidity. Six days and nights passed in this
manner. He appeared to suffer acute pain in his head and to be
continually thirsty. At length he again slept deeply. Mrs Bester had
taken the children out of the mat-house and was staying with them in the
wagon for the purpose of keeping them quiet. In the middle of the night
she stole quietly out and went on tiptoe to the mat-house door. She
listened carefully, but there was no sound of breathing. Then she
softly struck a match and looked in under the door-flap. The bed was
empty. She called up the servants and a search was made, but no trace
of her husband could be found.
Koos Bester awoke just before midnight and sat up in bed. He could not
remember where he was or what had happened. He got up and groped about;
then he realised that he was at home, in his own mat-house. Then the
past came back to him, bit by bit, and the wretched man realised that he
had stained his soul with a double murder. He would be hanged, that was
now certain; he would give himself up and get the thing over as soon as
possible. To get it over quickly was all he was very anxious about.
But where were his wife and children? Some faint flickering memories of
what had occurred during his delirium came back to him, and he arrived
at a true inference regarding their absence. He was glad. It was
terrible to be alone, but the dread of meeting his wife and telling
her--as he felt he inevitably must when next he saw her--of what he had
done, kept him from calling her. He felt quite sure that she and the
children were in the wagon, close at hand.
The darkness was full of terrible and menacing shapes; huddled figures
crouched all over the floor. The far, faint yowl of a jackal sounded
from the direction of the dunes; it reminded him of Nathan's hoarse,
despairing scream when he realised that he was abandoned to die of
thirst. The mat-house, with its population of mysterious shadows and
huddled shapes, became intolerable. Better the sense of freedom outside
under the accusing stars, where a man can get away from the thing that
seems to crawl to his feet as though to clasp his knees. He lifted the
door-flap and stepped out into the night.
The Hottentot servants had inhabited a scherm about fifty yards to the
rear of the camp. Hottentots often sit up more than half the night,
chatting, laughing, and dancing. Mrs Bester, for the sake of keeping
the neighbourhood quiet, had told the servants to move their scherm
farther away. They had, accordingly, taken their belongings to the
other side of a little knoll about two hundred yards away, on the
right-hand side of the camp. Here they might hold their nocturnal
jollifications to their hearts' content without disturbing anybody or
anything except the meerkats in the adjacent burrows.
A wandering stranger from Great Namaqualand had arrived during the
course of the evening. This man had a ramkee upon which he performed
with skill. A few months previously he had visited Namies, and had one
night listened to Gert Gemsbok playing his favourite tune. Being struck
with admiration of the melody, he had picked it up. He was now
popularising it among the dwellers of the Desert, for he played it at
every scherm he visited.
Coffee had been made of burnt rye, a sheep had died on the previous day;
thus the scherm contained the materials for a feast. The company had
been dancing to a series of inspiriting reels, but were now resting a
space from their laborious leapings and gruntings. The stranger was
playing Gert Gemsbok's tune as an interlude to the reels. A bright fire
of candle-bushes was burning. All but the ramkee player were lying down
resting behind the scherm fence.
When Koos Bester stepped out of the mat-house he at once experienced a
sense of relief. His head was bare and the cool breeze which wandered
over the Desert refreshed his brain. The stars could, he found, pity as
well as accuse; the night seemed to take compassion on his misery. He
looked round to the back of the camp in the direction of where the
scherm of the servants had been, and was relieved to see no light. He
wanted to be free--even of the suggestion of the presence of another
human being--until he had rearranged his distorted faculties. The sandy
road led past the camp; he turned to the right and paced slowly along
it, with bent head.
He stopped short, for a sound of horribly familiar music reached his
ear; then he started and gasped, for the glow of a fire smote his eyes,
coming from behind the little knoll. Being to windward of the knoll, he
could not exactly distinguish what tune was being played. He knew that
the instrument was a ramkee--that, in itself, was sufficiently horrible.
A cold hand seemed to steal into his breast and gradually close upon
his stricken heart. He stood rigidly still and tried to catch the tune
exactly. He strained every nerve with this end, but the breeze
freshened slightly, and only an indefinite tinkle reached him. In the
midst of his reeling consciousness only one idea stood firm--he must go
closer and determine who the player was and what the tune that was being
played. He pressed his hands convulsively to his ears and stepped,
crouching, towards the knoll.
He reached the knoll and cautiously raised his head till he was able to
see over its top. The musician was sitting with his back towards the
watcher, and just inside the scherm. Against the diffused glow of the
embers--for the flame had died down--the outline of his head and
shoulders stood clear and black. To the mind of Koos came the certain
conviction that he was looking at the ghost of the man he had murdered.
With a supreme effort of despairing will he tore his shielding hands
away from his ears, and the unmistakable tones of the dead man's music
crashed like thunder into his brain.
Then Koos Bester's madness returned upon him, and he fled away
noiselessly across the Desert sands in the direction of the dunes.
It was long before he paused, for the fever in his brain prevented him
from feeling fatigue. At length, as he was running over the roofs of a
city of Desert mice, the ground gave way beneath his foot and he fell.
The shock rendered him almost senseless. After a few minutes he sat up,
pressed his hands to his temples, and began to grope in the haunted
spaces of his darkened intellect for some clue to guide him.
He looked around. The dew-washed air of the Desert night was clear as
crystal, the pulsing stars were domed over him sumptuously. He dug his
hot hands into the cooling sand and lifted his faced to meet the soft,
refreshing breeze.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Hottentots at the scherm had evidently thrown another armful of
candle-bush upon the embers, for a bright flame shot up and momentarily
increased in volume. Koos gazed at it, fascinated. As the fire grew
brighter he thought it was rushing toward him with terrific speed. The
flames had been sent from hell to consume him quick. Like Abiram, God
had doomed him for his crimes to go down alive into the pit. He sprang
to his feet with a terrible cry, and again fled onwards in the direction
of the dunes.
When he again paused he was wading in the heavy sand on the flank of the
main dune. He had ascended slightly and thus could overlook a large
area of the Desert. The cold breath which circles around the world as
the precursor of the dawn was stealing over the plains. The rain had
fallen recently upon this side of the Desert, and many of the Boers had
sent their stock, in charge of herds, to graze on the track of the
shower. The scantily clad Hottentots awoke to the chill, so they began
to light fires. Here and there, at immense distances apart, he could
see the sudden leapings of the flames from the easily kindled
candle-bushes. To the demented brain of the fugitive it appeared as if
the whole Desert were full of fiends seeking him with torches, far and
near. Where the Milky Way dipped to the horizon the thronging stars
seemed each a torch lit at the nether flame, and borne by a searching
demon. In among the sinuous dunes he might escape. If he could but
reach Inkruip he might creep down the water-shaft and hide. They would
never think of looking for him there. In the icy water he might cool
his scorched brain.
He stumbled on, crossing dune after dune and ploughing through the sand
as with the strength of a giant. In one of the hollows he came to a
clump of low bush. Into this he crept for hiding. He lay prone,
completely covered, and looking out through a narrow opening. The
morning star tipped the back of the dune he had last crossed and
thrilled through the clear atmosphere with almost super-stellar
brilliance. Koos took this for the torch of a tracking fiend, and again
rushed forward with a scream of agonised dismay. His only possible
refuge now was under the ground at Inkruip.
The sun arose and scorched his bare head. He was now almost
unconscious; he simply pressed forward in obedience to a blind, animal
instinct--a sort of momentum generated by the terror which had passed
away with the darkness.
It was an awful day, not a breath of wind could be felt, but the sun
smote down from a pitiless heaven in all the fulness of its torrid
might. Koos pressed blindly up the side of a steep, high dune--his
breath coming in husky, choking gasps. Then something seemed to explode
in his head with the sound like that of a cannon, and he fell upon his
face in the sand.
He had one blinding flash of consciousness, during the continuance of
which he seemed again to live through all his lifetime and see anew
everything he had ever seen. The minutest trifles of former experience
became distinctly apparent, as the smallest details of a landscape show
up when lightning flashes near and vividly on a dark night. Then came
the darkness which men call death.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As soon as ever day broke the spoor of the missing man was found and
followed. Mrs Bester, assisted by her old father, inspanned four
horses in the cart and drove on behind the trackers. When she reached
the dunes she found that the horses could take the cart no farther, so
she outspanned the team and tied the legs of each animal together to
prevent it from straying.
She sat through weary hours in the broiling heat. Early in the
afternoon one of the Hottentots returned with word that her husband's
dead body had been found. The horses were at once inspanned, and the
cart taken by a roundabout course to the vicinity of where it was lying.
It was late at night when she arrived at the camp, with the corpse of
her husband tied, stiff and stark, on the seat beside her.
Next day two constables came with a warrant for Koos Bester's arrest,
but he had gone before a higher tribunal than that of the Special
Magistrate.