HOW GAASHA BROUGHT GOOD LUCK
When Ralph returned from pursuing the Zulus, as he drew near to the
laager he lingered a little behind the others, for he was very weary of
all this work of killing, also the flesh-wound that he had got from the
Kaffir’s spear having stiffened pained him when his horse cantered.
There was no more danger now, for the savages were gone, leaving their
path marked by the corpses of those who had been shot down by the
Boers, or of men who had limped away wounded either to die upon the
road or to be killed by their comrades because their case was hopeless.
Following this black trail of death backwards Ralph rode on, and when
he was within a hundred yards of the waggons halted his horse to study
the scene. He thought that he would never see such another, although,
in fact, that at the Blood River when we conquered the Zulu king,
Dingaan, was even more strange and terrible.
The last crimson rays of the setting sun were flooding the plain with
light. Blood-red they shone upon the spear-torn canvas of the waggons
and upon the stained and trampled veldt. Even the bodies of the Kaffirs
looked red as they lay in every shape and attitude; some as though they
slept; some with outstretched arms and spears gripped tight; some with
open mouths as they had died shouting their way-cry. Ralph looked at
them and was thankful that it was not we white people who lay thus, as
it might well have been. Then, just as he was turning towards the
laager, he thought that he saw something move in a tussock of thick
grass, and rode towards it. Behind the tussock lay the body of a young
Kaffir, not an uncommon sight just there, but Ralph was so sure that he
had seen it move that, stirred by an idle curiosity, he dismounted from
his horse to examine it. This he did carefully, but the only hurt that
he could see was a flesh wound caused by a slug upon the foot, not
serious in any way, but such as might very well prevent a man from
running.
“This fellow is shamming dead,” he thought to himself, and lifted his
gun, for in those times we could not afford to nurse sick Kaffirs.
Then of a sudden the young man who had seemed to be a corpse rose to
his knees, and, clasping his hands, began to beg for mercy. Instead of
shooting him at once, as most Boers would have done, Ralph, who was
tender-hearted, hesitated and listened while the Kaffir, a
pleasant-faced lad and young, besought him for his life.
“Why should I spare you,” asked Ralph, who understood his talk well,
“seeing that, like all the rest of these, you set upon my people to
murder them?”
“Nay, chief,” answered the young man, “it is not so. I am no Zulu. I
belong to another tribe, and was but a slave and a carrier in the army
of Kalipi, for I was taken prisoner and forced to carry mats and food
and water,” and he pointed to a bundle and some gourds that lay beside
him.
“It may be so,” answered Ralph, “but the dog shares his master’s fate.”
“Chief,” pleaded the man, “spare me. Although it prevented me from
running away with the others, my wound is very slight and will be
healed in a day or two, and then I will serve you as your slave and be
faithful to you all my life. Spare me and I shall bring you good luck.”
“I need that enough,” said Ralph, “and I am sure that you are no Zulu,
for a Zulu would not stoop to beg for his life thus,” and he stood
thinking.
While he thought, Jan, who had seen him from the laager, came up
behind.
“What are you doing, son,” he asked in an angry voice, “talking to this
black devil here alone among the dead? Stand aside and let me settle
him if you have not the heart,” and he lifted his gun.
“No, father,” said Ralph, pushing it aside, “this man is not a Zulu; he
is but a slave-carrier and he has prayed me to spare his life, swearing
that he will serve me faithfully. Also he says that he brings good
luck.”
“Certainly he brought good luck to these,” answered Jan, pointing to
the scattered dead with his hand, and laughing grimly. “Allemachter!
son, you must be mad to play the fool thus, for doubtless the sneaking
villain will murder you the first time your back is turned. Come, stand
aside and I will finish it.”
Now the young man, whose name was Gaasha, seeing that he was about to
be shot, threw himself upon the ground, and clasping Ralph round the
knees, implored for mercy.
“Save me, Baas,” he prayed, “save me, and you will always be glad of
it, for I tell you I bring you good luck, I tell you I bring you good
luck.”
“Father,” said Ralph, setting his mouth, “if you kill this Kaffir it
will be a cause of quarrel between us, and we never quarrelled yet.”
“Quarrel or no quarrel, he shall die,” said Jan in a rage, for he
thought it the strangest folly that Ralph should wish to spare a black
man.
At that moment, however, something seemed to strike his mind, for his
face grew puzzled, and he looked about him almost anxiously.
“Where have I seen it before?” he said, as though he were speaking to
himself. “The veldt all red with blood and sunset, the laager behind
and the Kaffir with the wounded foot holding Ralph by the knees.
Allemachter! I know. It was that day in the _sit-kammer_[*] at the
stead yonder, when the little doctoress, Sihamba, made me look into her
eyes; yes, yes, I have seen it all in the eyes of Sihamba. Well, let
the lad live, for without a doubt Sihamba did not show me this picture
that should be for nothing. Moreover, although I am stupid, as your
mother says, I have learned that there are many things in the world
which we cannot understand but which play a part in our lives
nevertheless.”
[*] Sitting room.
So the lad Gaasha was brought to the laager, and upon the prayer of Jan
and Ralph, the commandant gave him his life, ordering, however, that he
should sleep outside the waggons.
“Well,” I said when I heard the tale, “one thing is, that you will
never see him again, for he will be off during the night back to his
friends the Zulus.” But I was wrong, for next morning there was Gaasha,
and there he remained even after his foot was quite well, making the
best Kaffir servant that ever I had to do with.
After that day we saw no more of the Zulus at Vetchkop, although later
with the help of other Boers we attacked them twice, killing more than
four thousand of them, and capturing six thousand head of cattle, so
that they fled north for good and all, and founded the nation of the
Matabele far away.
But oh! our fate was hard there at Vetchkop; never have I known worse
days. The Zulus had taken away all our cattle, so that we could not
even shift the waggons from the scene of the fight, but must camp there
amidst the vultures and the mouldering skeletons, for the dead were so
many that it was impossible to bury them all. We sent messengers to
other parties of Boers for help, and while they were gone we starved,
for there was no food to eat, and game was very scarce. Yes, it was a
piteous sight to see the children cry for food and gnaw old bits of
leather or strips of hide cut from Kaffir shields to stay the craving
of their stomachs. Some of them died of that hunger, and I grew so thin
that when I chanced to see myself in a pool of water where I went to
wash I started back frightened.
At length, when we were all nearly dead, some oxen came and with them
we dragged a few of the waggons to Moroko, where an English clergyman
and his wife, taking pity on us, gave us corn, for which reason I have
always held that among the British the clergymen must be a great deal
better than the rest of that proud and worthless race, for it is true
that we judge of people as they deal by us. Yes, and I will go so far
as to say that I do not believe that the Reverend Mr. Owen, the English
missionary at the kraal of the Zulu King Dingaan, did in truth advise
him to massacre Retief and his seventy Boers, as was generally reported
among my countrymen.
Well, after Moselikatse’s Zulus were finally defeated the question
arose whether we should proceed to Zoutpansberg and settle there, or
follow our brethren who in large numbers had already crossed the
Quathlamba Mountains into Natal under the leadership of Retief. In the
end we decided for Natal because it was nearer the sea, for in those
days we never dreamed that the treacherous British Government would
steal that land also; so trekking slowly, we headed for Van Reenen’s
Pass, our party then numbering thirty waggons and about sixty white
people.
It was when we were about four days trek, or sixty miles, from the pass
that one evening, as we sat eating our food, Jan, Ralph, and I—I
remember it was the fried steaks of an eland that Ralph had shot—the
lad Gaasha, who had now served us for some six months, came up to the
fire, and having saluted Ralph, squatted down before him Kaffir
fashion, saying that he had a favour to ask.
“Speak on,” said Ralph. “What is it?”
“Baas,” replied Gaasha, “it is this; I want a week or ten days leave of
absence to visit my people.”
“You mean that you want to desert,” I put in.
“No, lady,” answered Gaasha; “you know that I love the Baas who saved
my life far too well ever to wish to leave him. I desire only to see my
parents and to tell them that I am happy, for doubtless they think me
dead. The Baas proposes to cross into Natal by Van Reenen’s Pass, does
he not? Well, not so very far from my home, although none would guess
it unless he knew the way, is another pass called Oliver’s Hook, and by
that pass, after I have spoken with my father and my mother if they
still live, I would cross the Quathlamba, finding the Baas again on the
further side of the mountains, as I can easily do.”
“I think that I will let you go as I can trust you, Gaasha,” said
Ralph, “but tell me the name of your home, that I may know where to
send to seek you if you should not come back as you promise.”
“Have I not said that I will come back, Baas, unless the lions or the
Zulus should eat me on the way? But the name of the house of my tribe
is Umpondwana. It is only a little tribe, for the Zulus killed many of
us in the time of Chaka, but their house is a very fine house.”
“What does Umpondwana mean?” asked Ralph idly as he lit his pipe.
“It means the Mountain of the Man’s Hand, Baas.”
Ralph let his pipe fall to the ground, and I saw his face turn white
beneath the sunburn, while of a sudden his grey eyes looked as though
they were about to leap from their sockets.
“Why is it called the Mountain of the Man’s Hand?” he asked in a hollow
voice. “Speak quick now, and do not lie to me.”
Gaasha looked up at him astonished. “How should I know, Baas, when the
place was named so before I was born, and none have told me? But I
think that it may be because upon one of the slopes of the mountain,
which has great cliffs of red rock, are five ridges, which, seen from
the plain below, look like the four fingers and thumb of a man. Also
the place has another name, which means ‘where the water springs out of
the rock,’ because from between two of the ridges, those that are like
the thumb and first finger, flows a stream which comes from the heart
of the mountain.”
“On which side of the mountain are the ridges and the stream?” asked
Ralph in the same unnatural voice.
“Baas, when the sun rises it strikes on them.”
Now Ralph swung to and fro like a drunken man, and had I not put my arm
about him I believe that he would have fallen.
“It is the mountain of my vision,” he gasped.
“Be not foolish,” I answered, for I feared lest when he found that all
this strange resemblance was a chance, the bitterness of his
disappointment might overwhelm him. “Be not foolish, son; are there not
many hills in this great land with ridges on their flanks, and streams
of water running down them?”
Then, as Ralph seemed unable to answer me, I asked of Gaasha:
“Who is the chief of this tribe of yours?”
“He is named Koraanu,” he answered, “if he still lives, but a man I met
some months ago told me that he has been dead these two years, and that
she who used to rule us when I was a little child had come back from
the lands whither she had wandered, and is now _Inkoosikaas_ of the
Umpondwana.”
“What is the name of this chieftainess?” I asked in the midst of a
great silence.
Gaasha answered at once; that is, after he had taken a pinch of snuff,
but to us it seemed a year before the words crossed his lips.
“Her name, lady,” and he sneezed, “is”—and he sneezed again, rocking
himself to and fro. Then slowly wiping away the tears which the snuff
had brought to his eyes with the back of his hand he said, “Ow! this is
the best of snuff, and I thank the Baas for giving it to me.”
“Answer,” roared Jan, speaking for the first time, and in such a fierce
voice that Gaasha sprang to his feet and began to run away.
“Come back, Gaasha, come back,” I called, and he came doubtfully, for
Gaasha was not very brave, and ever since he had wished to shoot him he
trembled even at the sight of Jan. “Be silent, you fool,” I whispered
to the latter as the lad drew near, then said aloud, “Now, Gaasha.”
“Lady,” he answered, “it is indeed as I have told you; the Baas gave me
the snuff a long time ago; he took it out of the ear-boxes of the dead
men at Vetchkop. He gave it to me. I did not steal it. He will say so
himself.”
“Never mind the snuff, Gaasha,” I said in a voice half-choked with
doubt and anxiety, for the sight of Ralph’s piteous face and the
strangeness of it all were fast overwhelming me, “but tell us what is
the name of this chieftainess whom you have heard is now the ruler of
your tribe?”
“Her name, lady,” he answered, much relieved, “why it is well known,
for though she is small, it is said that she is the best of doctoresses
and rain-makers.”
Now Jan could no longer be restrained, for stretching out his great
hand he gripped Gaasha by the throat, saying:
“Accursed _swartzel_, if you do not tell us the name at once I will
kill you.”
“Madman,” I exclaimed, “how can the lad speak while you are choking
him?”
Then Jan shifted his grip and Gaasha began to cry for pity.
“The name, the name,” said Jan.
“Why should I hide it? Have I not told it? Baas, it is _Sihamba
Ngenyanga_.”
As the words passed his lips Jan let go of him so suddenly that Gaasha
fell to the ground and sat there staring at us, for without doubt he
thought that we had all gone mad.
Jan looked up to the skies and said, “Almighty, I thank Thee, Who canst
make dreams to fly to the heart of a man as a night-bird to its nest
through the darkness, and Who, because of what I saw in the eyes of
Sihamba, didst turn aside my gun when it was pointed at the breast of
this Kaffir.”
Then he looked at Ralph, and was quiet, for Ralph had swooned away.