I am very much afraid that most people would consider him rather a bad
lot. The fact of the matter is he belonged to another period and other
conditions. He was simply a great passionate fighting savage, and,
instead of wearing the cast-off clothing of the white man and peacefully
driving bullock waggons along a transport road, should have been decked
in his savage finery of leopard skin and black ostrich-feathers, showing
off the powerful bronzed limbs and body all alive with muscle, and
sharing in some wild war-dance; or, equipped with shield and assegais,
leading in some murderous fight. Yes, Jim was out of date: he should
have been one of the great Chaka's fighting guard--to rise as a leader
of men, or be killed on the way. He had but one argument and one answer
to everything: Fight! It was his nature, bred and born in him; it ran
in his blood and grew in his bones. He was a survival of a great
fighting race--there are still thousands of them in the kraals of
Zululand and Swaziland--but it was his fate to belong to one of the
expelled families, and to have to live and work among the white men
under the Boer Government of the Transvaal.
In a fighting nation Jim's kraal was known as a fighting one, and the
turbulent blood that ran in their veins could not settle down into a
placid stream merely because the Great White Queen had laid her hand
upon his people and said, "There shall be peace!" Chaka, the `black
Napoleon' whose wars had cost South Africa over a million lives, had
died--murdered by his brother Dingaan--full of glory, lord and master
wherever his impis could reach. "Dogs whom I fed at my kraal!" he
gasped, as they stabbed him. Dingaan his successor, as cruel as
treacherous, had been crushed by the gallant little band of Boers under
Potgieter for his fiendish massacre of Piet Retief and his little band.
Panda the third of the three famous brothers--Panda the peaceful--had
come and gone! Ketshwayo, after years of arrogant and unquestioned
rule, had loosed his straining impis at the people of the Great White
Queen. The awful day of 'Sandhl'wana--where the 24th Regiment died
almost to a man--and the fight on H'lobani Mountain had blooded the
impis to madness; but Rorke's Drift and Kambula had followed those
bloody victories--each within a few hours--to tell another tale; and at
Ulundi the tides met--the black and the white. And the kingdom and
might of the house of Chaka were no more.
Jim had fought at 'Sandhl'wana, and could tell of an umfaan sent out to
herd some cattle within sight of the British camp to draw the troops out
raiding while the impis crept round by hill and bush and donga behind
them; of the fight made by the red-coats as, taken in detail, they were
attacked hand to hand with stabbing assegais, ten and twenty to one; of
one man in blue--a sailor--who was the last to die, fighting with his
back to a waggon-wheel against scores before him, and how he fell at
last, stabbed in the back through the spokes of the wheel by one who had
crept up behind.
Jim had fought at Rorke's Drift! Wild with lust of blood, he had gone
on with the maddest of the victory-maddened lot to invade Natal and eat
up the little garrison on the way. He could tell how seventy or eighty
white men behind a little rampart of biscuit-tins and flour-bags had
fought through the long and terrible hours, beating off five thousand of
the Zulu best, fresh from a victory without parallel or precedent; how,
from the burning hospital, Sergeant Hook, V.C., and others carried sick
and wounded through the flames into the laager; how a man in black with
a long beard, Father Walsh, moved about with calm face, speaking to
some, helping others, carrying wounded back and cartridges forward--
Father Walsh who said "Don't swear, boys: fire low;" how Lieutenants
Chard and Bromhead--V.C.s too for that day's work--led and fought, and
guided and heartened their heroic little band until the flour-bags and
biscuit-tins stood lower than the pile of dead outside, and the Zulu
host was beaten and Natal saved that day.
Jim had seen all that--and Ulundi, the Day of Despair! And he knew the
power of the Great White Queen and the way that her people fight. But
peace was not for him or his kraal: better any fight than no fight. He
rallied to Usibepu in the fight for leadership when his King, Ketshwayo,
was gone, and Jim's kraal had moved--and moved too soon: they were
surrounded one night and massacred; and Jim fought his way out, wounded
and alone. Without kith or kin, cattle, king, or country, he fled to
the Transvaal--to work for the first time in his life!
Waggon-boys--as the drivers were called--often acquired a certain amount
of reputation on the road or in the locality where they worked; but it
was, as a rule, only a reputation as good or bad drivers. In Jim's case
it was different. He was a character and had an individual reputation,
which was exceptional in a Kaffir. I had better say at once that not
even his best friend would claim that that reputation was a good one.
He was known as the best driver, the strongest nigger, the hardest
fighter, and the worst drinker on the road.
His real name was Makokela, but in accordance with a common Zulu habit,
it was usually abbreviated to Makokel'! Among a certain number of the
white men--of the sort who never can get any name right--he was oddly
enough known as McCorkindale. I called him Jim as a rule--Makokel',
when relations were strained. The waggon-boys found it safer to use his
proper name. When anything had upset him it was not considered wise to
take the liberty of shouting "Jim": the answer sometimes came in the
shape of a hammering.
Many men had employed Jim before he came to me, and all had `sacked' him
for fighting, drinking, and the unbearable worry he caused. They told
me this, and said that he gave more trouble than his work was worth. It
may have been true: he certainly was a living test of patience, purpose,
and management; but, for something learnt in that way, I am glad now
that Jim never `got the sack' from me. Why he did not, is not easy to
say; perhaps the circumstances under which he came to me and the hard
knocks of an unkind fate pleaded for him. But it was not that alone:
there was something in Jim himself--something good and fine, something
that shone out from time to time through his black skin and battered
face as the soul of a real man.
It was in the first season in the Bushveld that we were outspanned one
night on the sand-hills overlooking Delagoa Bay among scores of other
waggons dotted about in little camps--all loading or waiting for loads
to transport to the Transvaal. Delagoa was not a good place to stay in,
in those days: liquor was cheap and bad; there was very little in the
way of law and order; and every one took care of himself as well as he
could. The Kaffir kraals were close about the town, and the natives of
the place were as rascally a lot of thieves and vagabonds as you could
find anywhere. The result was everlasting trouble with the waggon-boys
and a chronic state of war between them and the natives and the banyans
or Arab traders of the place. The boys, with pockets full of wages,
haggled and were cheated in the stores, and by the hawkers, and in the
canteens; and they often ended up the night with beer-drinking at the
kraals or reprisals on their enemies. Every night there were fights and
robberies: the natives or Indians would rob and half-kill a waggon-boy;
then he in turn would rally his friends, and raid and clear out the
kraal or the store. Most of the waggon-boys were Zulus or of Zulu
descent, and they were always ready for a fight and would tackle any
odds when their blood was up.
It was the third night of our stay, and the usual row was on. Shouts
and cries, the beating of tomtoms, and shrill ear-piercing whistles,
came from all sides; and through it all the dull hum of hundreds of
human voices, all gabbling together. Near to us there was another camp
of four waggons drawn up in close order, and as we sat talking and
wondering at the strange babel in the beautiful calm moonlight night,
one sound was ever recurring, coming away out of all the rest with
something in it that fixed our attention. It was the sound of two
voices from the next waggons. One voice was a kaffir's--a great, deep,
bull-throated voice; it was not raised--it was monotonously steady and
low; but it carried far, with the ring and the lingering vibration of a
big gong.
"Funa 'nyama, Inkos; funa 'nyama!" ("I want meat, Chief; I want meat!")
was what the kaffir's voice kept repeating at intervals of a minute or
two with deadly monotony and persistency.
The white man's voice grew more impatient, louder, and angrier, with
each refusal; but the boy paid no heed. A few minutes later the same
request would be made, supplemented now and then with, "I am hungry,
Baas, I can't sleep. Meat! Meat! Meat!" or, "Porridge and bread are
for women and piccaninnies. I am a man: I want meat, Baas, meat." From
the white man it was, "Go to sleep, I tell you!"
"Be quiet, will you?"
"Shut up that row!"
"Be still, you drunken brute, or I'll tie you up!" and "You'll get
twenty-five in a minute!"
It may have lasted half an hour when one of our party said, "That's
Bob's old driver, the big Zulu. There'll be a row to-night; he's with a
foreigner chap from Natal now. New chums are always roughest on the
niggers."
In a flash I remembered Bob Saunderson's story of the boy who had caught
the lion alive, and Bob's own words, "a real fine nigger, but a terror
to drink, and always in trouble. He fairly wore me right out."
A few minutes later there was a short scuffle, and the boy's voice could
be heard protesting in the same deep low tone: they were tying him up to
the waggon-wheel for a flogging. Others were helping the white man, but
the boy was not resisting.
At the second thin whistling stroke some one said, "That's a sjambok
he's using, not a nek-strop!" Sjambok, that will cut a bullock's hide!
At about the eighth there was a wrench that made the waggon rattle, and
the deep voice was raised in protest, "Ow, Inkos!"
It made me choke: it was the first I knew of such things, and the horror
of it was unbearable; but the man who had spoken before--a good man too,
straight and strong, and trusted by black and white--said, "Sonny, you
must not interfere between a man and his boys here; it's hard sometimes,
but we'd not live a day if they didn't know who was baas."