_A HOME ON THE VELDT._
JACK TREBY loved to say that he was an English boy, although he had
never seen the dear old mother country of which his father so often
talked; for he was born among the wide South African plains, where
through the parching summer the sun-rays burn like fire, where the
dry leaves shrivel with the heat, and the flowers can only bloom in
sheltered places. Yet he was the proudest and happiest of boys when his
father stroked his curly head and called him a "true-born Briton."
For Jack was his father's all—his joy and treasure. In that wide,
lonely plain they had but each other. Their nearest neighbour was a
good twenty miles distant across country, and he was a Dutch Boer.
There was a Hottentot woman, with arms and face as yellow as a duck's
bill, who lived in a hut at the other side of the farm-yard. She cooked
the dinner and washed the shirts for Jack and his father. She was
always ready to do anything she could to make them comfortable, if she
only knew how. Jack called her "Old Tottie," or "Granny Golden-face,"
when he was in a roguish mood; for she had been very good and kind to
him when he was left a little motherless boy.
Then there were the Kafir men, as black as ebony, with naked legs
and arms, and just a dirty scarlet blanket twisted round their
waists—handsome fellows, who came and worked for Jack's father every
now and then; working diligently and well until they had earned money
enough to buy a rifle or a new blanket, when they would throw down the
spade and flail and go back to their own people.
Jack's father was not a rich man. He had not much money when he
came out to Africa, so he bought his farm where farms were the
cheapest—right out in the wilds. It was life in the rough. No wonder he
kept his little boy always at his side. It made a man of Jack, for he
learned many things in his long talks with his father which a boy of
ten in England would know nothing about. Jack learned more in this way
than he did from books; for his school-hour was the last hour at night,
when his father's work was done, and when both of them were very often
sleepy.
On one delightful summer evening, when the brilliant African moon
poured down its floods of silvery light, Jack sat nodding on the
door-step with a coloured map of England spread upon his knees. He was
trying to rub the sleep out of his winking eyes with one hand, whilst
with the forefinger of the other he tried to trace the boundaries of
the English counties.
"York; chief town, York," he cried triumphantly. "But, father, what
word is this?"
Jack ran off with his map to where his father sat smoking on a rough
bench, in what should have been their garden, only there was so much
work to be done on the farm and so few to do it that the garden was
left to Jack and nature. A hedge of prickly pear kept the oxen from
trampling over it. Jack's watering-pot encouraged one tall cactus to
show its scarlet flowers, under the shadow of the broad eaves of the
low thatched roof of the farm-house.
Jack's father nodded, and then roused himself with a smile to answer
his son's inquiry. "That, Jack? Why, that's Nottingham—the very town
where your grandfather still lives."
"I'll make a mark against it," said Jack. Dashing back into their one
sitting-room for the pen and ink, he made a good round blotch right
over the name.
"Well done," laughed his father. "So you think erasing it in your map
will stamp it in your mind, my boy. Come, we are dead-beat to-night,
and must give it up. Tomorrow we will have a good spell at the figures.
So now to bed; the faster the better."
Jack gathered up his books and went indoors.
His little bedstead was an officer's camp-chair, which his father had
picked up second-hand at the Cape. It stood just opposite the bedroom
window, in the same room with his father's. Between them were the
well-battered black travelling-chests his father had brought with him
from England; and on the pegs over the head of his father's bed lay his
rifle. Every night it was loaded and ready for use. Jack was often in
the room alone with it; but then Jack could be trusted anywhere.
He said his prayers and tumbled into bed; but not to sleep, for his
thoughts were busy with Nottingham and grandfather.
The house was only one story high, and the room had no ceiling. Jack
could look between the rough wooden rafters right up into the thatch,
and watch the bright eyes of the tarantula spiders as they crawled
along the beams. He heard his father speaking to Tottie's husband, a
white-haired Hottentot, who knew the ways of the country, and was by
turns ploughman, shepherd, and house-servant.
"Sheep all right," he heard them say, and lifted up his curly head to
look at the white walls of the sheepfold; for an African sheepfold has
a stone wall all round it, and a good strong gate, which is safely
locked at night-fall. Jack knew very well that this flock was his
father's chief wealth. There was not much ploughing and sowing with so
few hands to depend upon. The sheep were everything.
By-and-by his father came in, gave his little son his customary
good-night kiss, and stretched himself on the truckle-bed in the other
corner, to enjoy the sweet sleep of the labouring man. Jack was careful
not to wake him.
The glorious splendour of the South African moon made the room as light
as day, while all without was flooded with a silvery radiance, so
beautiful that our little Jack felt more wide awake than ever. He was
watching for the stars as they shone out one by one, so much larger and
brighter than we in England have ever seen them.
Presently he saw something black on the wall of the sheepfold. He sat
upright. It moved. He saw it fling out its long dark arms; and then
another and another patch of black seemed crawling up behind it.