Once more he raised his head aloft, and, simply and without a trace of
surprise or gratification, said:
"Yes, you are my chief, I will work for you." In his own mind it had
been settled already: it had never been in doubt.
Jim--when sober--was a splendid worker and the most willing of servants,
and, drunk or sober, he was always respectful in an independent,
upstanding, hearty kind of way. His manner was as rough and rugged as
his face and character; in his most peaceful moments it was--to one who
did not understand him--almost fierce and aggressive; but this was only
skin deep; for the childlike simplicity of the African native was in him
to the full, and rude bursts of Titanic laughter came readily--laughter
as strong and unrestrained as his bursts of passion.
To the other boys he was what his nature and training had made him--not
really a bully, but masterful and over-riding. He gave his orders with
the curtness of a drill sergeant and the rude assurance of a savage
chief. Walking, he walked his course, giving way for none of them. At
the outspan or on the road or footpath he shouldered them aside as one
walks through standing corn, not aggressively but with the superb
indifference of right and habit unquestioned. If one, loitering before
him, blocked his way unseeing, there was no pause or step aside--just
"Suka!" ("Get out") and a push that looked effortless enough but sent
the offender staggering; or, if he had his sticks, more likely a smart
whack on the stern that was still more surprising; and not even the
compliment of a glance back from Jim as he stalked on. He was like the
old bull in a herd--he walked his course; none molested and none
disputed; the way opened before him.
When sober Jim spoke Zulu; when drunk, he broke into the strangest and
most laughable medley of kitchen-Kaffir, bad Dutch, and worse English--
the idea being, in part to consider our meaner intelligences and in part
to show what an accomplished linguist he was. There was no difficulty
in knowing when Jim would go wrong: he broke out whenever he got a
chance, whether at a kraal, where he could always quicken the reluctant
hospitality of any native, at a wayside canteen, or in a town. Money
was fatal--he drank it all out; but want of money was no security, for
he was known to every one and seemed to have friends everywhere; and if
he had not, he made them on the spot--annexed and overwhelmed them.
From time to time you do meet people like that. The world's their
oyster, and the gift of a masterful and infinite confidence opens it
every time: they walk through life taking of the best as a right, and
the world unquestioningly submits.
I had many troubles with Jim, but never on account of white men: drunk
or sober, there was never trouble there. It may have been Rorke's Drift
and Ulundi that did it; but whatever it was, the question of black and
white was settled in his mind for ever. He was respectful, yet stood
upright with the rough dignity of an unvanquished spirit; but on the one
great issue he never raised his hand or voice again. His troubles all
came from drink, and the exasperation was at times almost unbearable--so
great, indeed, that on many occasions I heartily repented ever having
taken him on. Warnings were useless, and punishment--well, the shiny
new skin that made patterns in lines and stars and crosses on his back
for the rest of his life made answer for always upon that point.
The trials and worries were often great indeed. The trouble began as
soon as we reached a town, and he had a hundred excuses for going in,
and a hundred more for not coming out: he had some one to see, boots to
be mended, clothes to buy, or medicine to get--the only illness I ever
knew him have was `a pain inside,' and the only medicine wanted--grog!--
some one owed him money--a stock excuse, and the idea of Jim, always
penniless and always in debt, posing as a creditor never failed to raise
a laugh, and he would shake his head with a half-fierce half-sad disgust
at the general scepticism and his failure to convince me. Then he had
relations in every town! Jim, the sole survivor of his fighting kraal,
produced `blulus,' `babas,' `sisteles,' and even `mamas,' in profusion,
and they died just before we reached the place, as regularly as the
office-boy's aunt dies before Derby Day, and with the same consequence--
he had to go to the funeral.
The first precaution was to keep him at the waggons and put the towns
and canteens `out of bounds'; and the last defence, to banish him
entirely until he came back sober, and meanwhile set other boys to do
his work, paying them his wages in cash in his presence when he returned
fit for duty.
"Is it as I told you? Is it just?" I would ask when this was done.
"It is just, Inkos," he would answer with a calm dispassionate
simplicity which appealed for forgiveness and confidence with far
greater force than any repentance; and it did so because it was genuine;
it was natural and unstudied. There was never a trace of feeling to be
detected when these affairs were squared off, but I knew how he hated
the treatment, and it helped a little from time to time to keep him
right.
The banishing of him from the waggons in order that he might go away and
have it over was not a device to save myself trouble, and I did it only
when it was clear that he could stand the strain no longer. It was
simply a choice of evils, and it seemed to me better to let him go,
clearly understanding the conditions, than drive him into breaking away
with the bad results to him and the bad effects on the others of
disobeying orders. It was, as a rule, far indeed from saving me
trouble, for after the first bout of drinking he almost invariably found
his way back to the waggons: the drink always produced a ravenous
craving for meat, and when his money was gone and he had fought his fill
and cleared out all opposition, he would come back to the waggons at any
hour of the night, perhaps even two or three times between dark and
dawn, to beg for meat. Warnings and orders had no effect whatever; he
was unconscious of everything except the overmastering craving for meat.
He would come to my waggon and begin that deadly monotonous recitation,
"Funa 'nyama, Inkos! Wanta meat, Baas!" There was a kind of hopeless
determination in the tone conveying complete indifference to all
consequences: meat he must have. He was perfectly respectful; every
order to be quiet or go away or go to bed was received with the formal
raising of the hand aloft, the most respectful of salutations, and the
assenting, "Inkos!" but in the very next breath would come the old
monotonous request, "Funa 'nyama, Inkos," just as if he was saying it
for the first time. The persistency was awful--it was maddening; and
there was no remedy, for it was not the result of voluntary or even
conscious effort on his part; it was a sort of automatic process, a
result of his physical condition. Had he known it would cost him his
life, he could no more have resisted it than have resisted breathing.
When the meat was there I gave it, and he would sit by the fire for
hours eating incredible quantities--cutting it off in slabs and
devouring it when not much more than warmed. But it was not always
possible to satisfy him in that way; meat was expensive in the towns and
often we had none at all at the waggons. Then the night became one long
torment: the spells of rest might extend from a quarter of an hour to an
hour; then from the dead sleep of downright weariness I would be roused
by the deep far-reaching voice; "Funa 'nyama, Inkos" wove itself into my
dreams, and waking I would find Jim standing beside me remorselessly
urging the same request in Zulu, in broken English, and in Dutch--"My
wanta meat, Baas," "Wil fleisch krij, Baas," and the old, old, hatefully
familiar explanation of the difference between "man's food" and
"piccanins' food," interspersed with grandiose declarations that he was
"Makokela--Jim Makokel'," who "catchum lion 'live." Sometimes he would
expand this into comparisons between himself and the other boys, much to
their disadvantage; and on these occasions he invariably worked round to
his private grievances, and expressed his candid opinions of Sam.
Sam was the boy whom I usually set to do Jim's neglected work. He was a
`mission boy,' that is a Christian kaffir--very proper in his behaviour,
but a weakling and not much good at work. Jim would enumerate all Sam's
shortcomings; how he got his oxen mixed up on dark nights and could not
pick them out of the herd--a quite unpardonable offence; how he stuck in
the drifts and had to be `double-spanned' and pulled out by Jim; how he
once lost his way in the bush; and how he upset the waggon coming down
the Devil's Shoot.
Jim had once brought down the Berg from Spitzkop a loaded waggon on
which there was a cottage piano packed standing upright. The road was
an awful one, it is true, and few drivers could have handled so
top-heavy a load without capsizing--he had received a bansela for his
skill--but to him the feat was one without parallel in the history of
waggon driving; and when drunk he usually coupled it with his other
great achievement of catching a lion alive. His contempt for Sam's
misadventure on the Devil's Shoot was therefore great, and to it was
added resentment against Sam's respectability and superior education,
which the latter was able to rub in in safety by ostentatiously reading
his Bible aloud at nights as they sat round the fire. Jim was a
heathen, and openly affirmed his conviction that a Christian kaffir was
an impostor, a bastard, and a hypocrite--a thing not to be trusted under
any circumstances whatever. The end of his morose outburst was always
the same. When his detailed indictment of Sam was completed he would
wind up with, "My catchum lion 'live. My bling panyanna fon Diskop (I
bring piano from Spitzkop). My naam Makokela: Jim Makokel'. Sam no
good; Sam leada Bible (Sam reads the Bible). Sam no good!" The
intensity of conviction and the gloomy disgust put into the last
reference to Sam are not to be expressed in words.
Where warning and punishment availed nothing threats would have been
worse than foolish. Once, when he had broken bounds and left the
waggons, I threatened that if he did it again I would tie him up, since
he was like a dog that could not be trusted; and I did it. He had no
excuse but the old ones; some one, he said, had brought him liquor to
the waggons and he had not known what he was doing. The truth was that
the craving grew so with the nearer prospect of drink that by hook or by
crook he would find some one, a passerby or a boy from other waggons, to
fetch some for him; and after that nothing could hold him.
If Jim ever wavered in his loyalty to me, it must have been the day I
tied him up: he must have been very near hating me then. I had caught
him as he was leaving the waggons and still sober; brought him back and
told him to sit under his own waggon where I would tie him up like a
dog. I took a piece of sail twine, tied it to one wrist, and, fastening
the other end to the waggon-wheel, left him.
A kaffir's face becomes, when he wishes it, quite inscrutable--as
expressionless as a blank wall. But there are exceptions to every rule;
and Jim's stoicism was not equal to this occasion. The look of
unspeakable disgust and humiliation on his face was more than I could
bear with comfort; and after half an hour or so in the pillory I
released him. He did not say a word, but, heedless of the hot sun,
rolled himself in his blankets and, sleeping or not, never moved for the
rest of the day.