A WALK IN THE DARKNESS--DREAMS OF A MORNING--THE SCHERM--THE SLAYING OF
THE OSTRICH.
Arched, sore, gritty and with overstrung nerves I sought my bed early,
hoping that sleep would come soon and obliterate the effects of that day
of turmoil. I meant to shoot an ostrich on the morrow. To make this
practicable I should have to rise at 2 a.m., for it was essential that I
should reach a locality at least six miles away before daybreak.
But the fiery breath,--the tawny, tossing mane of Typhon seemed still to
envelop me; his moaning hiss yet filled my ears. I felt as if I had
stood face to face with one of the Lords of Hell. The reek of Tophet
was still in my nostrils. Midnight had passed before sleep came.
When Hendrick wakened me I felt as though I had hardly lost
consciousness. It was the specified hour. Hendrick could no more read
the face of a clock than he could decipher a logarithm, but he knew what
it was we were going to attempt, and that if our adventure were to have
any chance of success, we should set about it without delay.
Before waking me, Hendrick had brewed the coffee, so after hurriedly
emptying a pannikin and adding a few rusks to the contents of my
haversack, I seized a rifle and made a start. My course lay due south,
my objective being the vicinity in which the troops of ostriches had
been visible on the previous morning. It had been arranged that
Hendrick was to start an hour later and make a wide detour to the right,
for the purpose of stampeding any birds he could manage to get to the
westward of. It was trusted that such birds might run towards the spot
where I intended to lie concealed.
The sky was clear as a crystal lens, for the copious dew had caught all
dust particles which were left suspended in the atmosphere after
yesterday's outburst, and carried them back to earth. The waning moon
had just arisen; fantastic shadows were cast by every shrub and tussock.
The air was cool--almost cold; not a breath stirred. Every few yards I
stumbled over irregular heaps of soft sand, varying in height, in size
and in contour. These were fragments of the ravaged locks of Typhon--
locks torn out in his fury of yesterday and flung far and wide over the
desert.
How still it was; how void my environment of the details of ordinary
experience. It was like a ramble through dreamland. The whirring
wheels of Time seemed to have become dislocated; each as it were turning
reversed on its axis--no two moving at the same speed. It seemed as
though the mill of which sequence is a product had fallen out of gear,
for yesterday joined hands with a day of twenty years old, while the
intervening myriads of days flew forth into the void like chaff from a
winnower.
Space seemed to have taken on additional dimensions,--the impossible to
have become actual without an effort. Faces glimmered up through the
mists that hung over the dimming pathway of the past--through the steam
of long-shed tears--through the ghastly coffin-lid and the horrible six
feet of clay. They smiled for an instant, and vanished. Winds that had
slept for years arose laden with the laughter from lips whose warm red
faded with dawns long overblown. Surely I must have strayed into some
pallid Hades such as the ancients fabled of,--some zone where shadows
only were real and real things appeared as shadows.
Mechanically I strode on, avoiding without conscious volition the shrubs
and tussocks. As the moon ascended the shadows shortened and became
less grotesque. Fancied resemblances to and suggestions of things
outside my own experience, but of which my mind had formed concepts that
had become familiar, switched thought on to other tracks; the pendulum
swung from the subjective to the objective. Imagination built up the
tiny, lithe, agile forms of that race we exterminated and whose barren
territory we annexed, but neither occupied nor made use of. I could
almost hear the sandalled, pattering feet of the aboriginal dwellers of
these plains,--those kings of the waste whose sceptre was the poisoned
dart. The Bushmen were in many respects a wonderful people. They
obeyed no chief; they had no political organisation whatsoever; each
family governed itself independently. Yet they had their fixed
customs,--their general traditional code of proprieties. They had
knowledge of the properties of plants which no others possessed; they
had a highly-developed dramatic art. As limners they excelled, and a
keen sense of humour is evinced in many of their paintings. Not alone
was this sense of humour keen, but it must have been very much akin to
our own.
How many hot human hearts have searched for a clue to the nature of that
Power which energises as much through evil as through good,--which could
foster the development of a numerous people under painful and inexorable
laws until it harmonised with its rigorous environment,--that could
implant in its units the capacity for love, heroism and faithfulness--
and then ordain or sanction its obliteration,--an obliteration so
absolute that, with the exception of one aged and senile pair, and a few
delineations on sheltered rocks, of animals that shared its doom, this
people has not left a trace behind. Literally, not a trace; hardly so
much evidence that it ever existed as afforded in the case of an extinct
sub-species of diatoms, the imprint of whose forms may be found on the
fractured face of a chalk-cliff.
Musing thus, I suddenly became aware that day was at hand, for the
pallid moonlight grew paler and the thrill of approaching dawn pulsated
through the firmament. If all my trouble were not to be thrown away, I
should at once select a spot suitable for my ambush. But first I had to
look out for a certain shallow-rooted shrub of globular form which grew
in patches here and there throughout the desert. A few such shrubs had
to be pulled out of the ground and piled in the form of a low, circular
fence enclosing a space about six feet in diameter. This is the
"scherm" or screen so often used by those who hunt in the desert.
Within it the hunter lies prone, fully concealed from any approaching
quarry.
I was in luck, for I had reached an almost imperceptible rise; a long
oval, the highest part of which was not more than thirty inches above
the general level of the plain. But those inches were of incalculable
value for my purpose, for they extended by miles the scope of my vision
in every direction and, should game have been afoot, enabled me to
prepare for the one and only shot. A single shot each day is the utmost
that the hunter on foot in the desert ever expects.
In the vicinity of the rise shrubs were fairly plentiful, so I plucked
out a sufficient number of suitable size and drew them carefully to the
spot I had selected for my lair. This was just to westward of an
unusually high shrub, a "taaibosch" which, after the sun should have
arisen, would afford temporary shade for my head. But day came on
apace; no time was to be lost.
Within a few minutes my scherm was complete, and I extended prone within
it. After consideration I ventured to light my pipe. There was no
wind; even had there been the ostrich has no sense of smell,--and on
that day I was not looking for buck. Even had an oryx approached and
sniffed at me, I would have let him go scathless. An ostrich, and a
super-excellent one at that, was what I wanted. No breeding bird with
plumes discoloured through contact with the sand, but a young, lusty,
unmarried male with peerless adornment of foam-white plumes,--the
crowning result of a long period of selection,--developed by
unrestricted Nature for the all-wise end of making him comely in the
eyes of the female of his species.
It was now day, although the sun was not yet visible. I was in my
shirt-sleeves, having left my jacket at the camp. The faint wind of
morning was chill, the dew-soaked ground dank and cold. I longed for
the sun to rise, albeit well knowing that after it had risen my
discomfort from heat would be intense, and that I would look back to the
hour of the dew and the dawn with vain regret.
Cautiously and very slowly I lifted my head until my eyes could search
the plain in the direction from which Hendrick was operating. But I
hardly expected to see him yet. Void, cold, passionless and austere the
still-sleeping desert stretched to the sky-line. The dominant note of
its colour-scheme was creamy yellow, with but a hint of sage-green,--for
the plumy shocks of the "toa" far outnumbered the sparsely-scattered
shrubs. A glance at Bantom Berg and Typhon shewed them to be touched by
the first sunbeams. The shoulder of the dune-monster shone as though a
radiant hand were laid upon it. The hand stole tenderly down the side
and flank, revealing unsuspected scars. It was as though the morning
were caressing the loathly creature,--trying to heal with pitying touch
his self-inflicted scars of yesterday. In the limitless expanse of
desert Typhon and his granite prisoner stood isolated,--the only
prominence, and the ungainly bulk of Typhon made manifest the immensity
of the kingdom he had usurped and the illimitable extent, of the
territory towards which his carking hands outstretched.
The sun was now up and the resulting warmth was a physical delight. But
I could not avoid lugubrious anticipation of what all too soon was
coming,--that fierce ardour which would cause the sand to grow red-hot
and make my couch, then so comfortable, a bed of torment. Why should
this anticipation have almost destroyed my physical pleasure? why should
mind and body thus have been set at variance with each other as the
sense of grateful warmth penetrated my shivering limbs? It is this kind
of thing that places man at a disadvantage as compared with other
animals, who live in the immediately existing time. No matter how fair
the flowers or how rich the fruits of the present may be, a menacing
hand stretches back from the future and touches these with blight. When
the Apostle of the Gentiles wrote that he died daily, he merely cried
out under the lash of that curse of foreknowledge which is at once man's
glory and his doom. And the farther the eyes of man pierce into the
future, the more terrible will be the things revealed.
A yelp; then many yelps,--faint, but clear as a tinkling bell. They
came from the side opposite the one from which I expected the game to be
driven. Cautiously I sank back, wormed myself round and looked over the
edge of the scherm in the direction from which the sound came. A
jackal, of course,--but why was he yelping? The reason was quickly
apparent. About seven hundred yards away stood two ostrich hens.
Running hither and thither, in hot pursuit of the jackal, was the cock
bird. Autolycus was hard pressed; it was only by constant and cunning
doubling and twisting that he was able to escape the sledgehammer
kicks,--any one of which, had it got home, would have broken his back or
ripped out his entrails. The chase trended in my direction; as the
pursued and the pursuer approached I had an excellent view of it. At
length the prowler reached his burrow and hurled himself incontinently
in, his brush describing a frantic arc as he disappeared. The ostrich,
fuming with disappointed wrath and flicking his wings alternately over
his back, to work off his indignation, stalked with stately gait back to
his wives.
Evidently this was a breeding trio, and the nest was not far from where
the hens were standing. No doubt what happened was this: the birds
arose from the nest for the purpose of allowing the eggs to cool. Then
the jackal, who had made his burrow in the vicinity as soon as the nest
had been established, attempted to play off his old, well known, but
often effective trick. This consists in stealing up to the nest in an
unguarded moment, pawing out one of the eggs to the top of the circular
mound by which they are surrounded, and then butting it with his nose
hard down oft the others. If the contents of an egg thus broken were
fresh, the jackal would lap it up; if the chicken should already have
been formed, so much the better for the thief.
These birds did not interest me that day; they and their nest formed a
domestic menage which should not be interfered with,--except of course,
by jackals and their confederates, the blackguardly white crows that
carry small, heavy stones high into the air, and drop them on the eggs.
An ostrich nursery in the desert requires much careful management and
must be a source of constant anxiety.
I will not say that I had begun to regret my adventure; nevertheless the
sunshine had waxed fiercely hot. My head was still within the small and
decreasing patch of shadow cast by the taaibosch, but my back--and more
especially my shoulders--suffered badly. I wished Hendrick would hurry.
That game; was afoot was almost certain; otherwise he would long since
have appeared. My trusty scout evidently had seen the advisability of
making a detour wider than the one originally proposed. He was no doubt
exercising every wile of his comprehensive veld-craft towards getting me
a shot. His work was more arduous than mine; nevertheless I wished I
could have changed places with him if only for a few minutes.
When I realised that my back was getting really overdone I turned over
and exposed in turn each side, and eventually the front of my body, to
the sun. Then I felt overdone all round. Moreover the vestige of
shadow in which my head cowered--that cast by the sparse top of the
taaibosch, through which the sunlight leaked freely--grew more and more
scanty. Oh! I breathed, for a return of that blessed coolness of
morning which my frame, softened by years of a semi-sedentary life, had
been unable to sustain without discomfort. Oh! for the gentle, healing
hand of the dew, which I so ungratefully contemned. If these desert
plants can feel and think, how they must long for the night,--for the
miracle of cool moisture which, perhaps, a beneficent planet distils in
some grove-garden of the asteroids and seals up in the crystal vats of
some celestial tavern known only to its sister spheres and the moon.
Surely there is some hostel of mercy in whose cool cellars the precious
vintage lies hidden from the rapacity of the cruel sun,--held in
readiness to be poured out from the etherial beakers of the firmament on
the tortured tongues of the leaves and grass-blades, when the tyrant of
the skies departs for a season.
My physical condition had become acutely serious on account of the
increasing heat and the more nearly vertical vantage of the sun's
arrows. The actual, immediate pain was bad enough,--but how about
consequences. Saint Lawrence no doubt ascended to Paradise from his
gridiron, but I should have to toil on foot over miles of desert after
arising from mine. Even if I thereafter soaked myself in olive oil,
days of blistered misery might have been in store for me. Oh! for a
cloud or for Hendrick. If he only had arrived within sight I might have
vacated my couch of anguish without forfeiting his respect or my own.
The loss of expected sport became unimportant. Ostrich shooting in the
desert from a scherm was far more than my fancy had painted it.
Hist! What was that? It was not a sound; hardly was it a tremor. It
was rather a thrill not perceptible to any one sense; something
apprehended by the nameless perceptions of the noumenon-area lying deep
beneath the phenomena of sensation. I risked sunstroke by discarding my
hat; then I slowly lifted my head until I could look over the edge of
the scherm. At what I saw misery hid her face; mind once more assumed
command of body.
The plain to the south-west was dotted with moving ostriches. Singly,
in twos, in threes, in tens--they were speeding north-eastward over the
desert; some on my right, some to the left. Ever and anon one or other
of the groups halted and its members stood at gaze. The ostrich cannot
keep on the move continuously for any length of time on a hot day. If
forced to attempt doing so, death from heat-apoplexy would inevitably
result. One troop, far in advance of all the others, seemed to be
approaching me, but it swerved and passed to the left. It contained
eleven birds, most of them young and immature; a few were full-grown
hens and one was a very large cock bird. However, his plumes were
sand-stained, so it is evident he had been dislodged from a nest.
Far and near there must have been nearly a hundred birds in sight. No
doubt some favourite food was plentiful in the vicinity from which they
had been stampeded; possibly a swarm of locusts might have there hatched
out. Now the birds were beginning to scud past between me and the camp,
as though following a trail known to them. But they were too far off to
fire at. Could it be that after all I was not to have a shot.
Another troop swerved to a course calculated to bring them fairly close
to the scherm; there were eight birds in it. They paused and stood at
gaze for a short interval, about a mile away. Then they resumed their
flight along a course which would, if they held it, bring them to within
less than three hundred yards of me, on my right.
On they pressed with even, steady stride. Two were young but full-grown
cocks with snow-white, sumptuous plumes. Cautiously I laid my rifle
over the edge of the scherm and adjusted the sight to two hundred yards.
The steel barrel scorched my fingers. Would the birds stand,--that was
the question of importance. A running shot is always uncertain.
They halted when some two hundred and fifty yards away. Of the two
gallant cocks one was manifestly superior; my bead was on him. I pulled
the trigger; there was a tremendous report and the recoil nearly stunned
me. My shot had missed. The birds sped away, at right angles to their
original course. They became confused and ran hither and thither, for
the near whiz of the bullet had alarmed them nearly as much as the
distant detonation. But soon the bird I had fired at was speeding
straight away from me. Within ten seconds I fired again, and he fell.
The explanation of my having missed the first and easier shot is simple:
I had foolishly allowed the cartridge to lie for a long time in the
sun-heated chamber of the rifle; consequently the powder (one of the
then new, smokeless varieties) had become too energetic. There was no
violent recoil from the second shot.
I sprang from the scherm and ran to my quarry. There he lay, breast
downward, his long neck bent and his head concealed under the black,
bulky body. The wings were expanded, with the snowy plumes outspread,
fanlike, on each side. The bird was stone dead, for the bullet struck
the base of the spinal column and shattered it throughout the whole
length. No swifter death could have been devised.
Carefully, one by one, I plucked out the lovely plumes. They were
surely the fairest and purest ornaments ever devised by that influence
which men, when the world was young, personified and worshipped as the
Goddess of Love,--the noblest concrete expression of that principle
which strives to draw sex relations to the higher planes of beauty. And
here had I, a decadent human, typical of a neuropathic age, destroyed
this exquisite embodied achievement for the purpose of reversing
Nature's plan. For I should transfer to the female, to my own
woman-kind, adornments developed naturally on the male for the
enhancement of his own proper beauty. The female ostrich, in her robe
of tender, greyish brown, is attractive enough to her prospective mate
without artificial aid. Were she to hang a wisp of human hair about her
graceful, undulating neck, she would rightly be regarded as a freak.
Schopenhauer was right,--among human beings as among other animals the
male is essentially more beautiful than the female; it is the
sex-disturbance which confuses our canons. If it were otherwise women
would not find it necessary to ransack mineral, vegetable and animal
nature for the purpose of enhancing their attractiveness.
My plucking came to an end. The long, foamy whites,--the short, glossy
blacks whose hue was deeper than that of the raven's wing,--were tied
into bundles with twine from my compendious haversack. There lay the
huddled, ruined, mangled body; there grinned the already dry and
blackened blood-clot defacing the desert's visage. Rifled of its
garment of harmonious and appropriate beauty, smitten and smashed into
an object of grisly horror,--this piteous sacrifice to woman's callous
vanity and the heartless cruelty of her mate seemed to make the
wilderness as foul as the altar of Cain.
With an effort I passed from the stand-point of a somewhat inconsequent
and inconsistent Jekyll to that of a primeval Hyde. From my flask, the
contents of which had been carefully preserved intact up to the present,
I poured out a libation to the manes of the departed ostrich. Might his
freed spirit find refuge in some Elysian wilderness unvexed of prowlers
who call chemistry and machinery to the aid of their own physical
deficiencies, and slay because slaughter stimulates their debilitated
pulses.
Far, far away to the south-west I saw faithful Hendrick approaching. I
would not wait for him; he was too distant. My paramount need just then
was shade--even if such could only be found under the tilt of a wagon
where the thermometer probably stood at 112 Fahrenheit. Hendrick's
needs were elementary; he would be delighted with the meat and the
inferior black feathers which I had not thought it worth while to pluck.
With the latter Hendrick and his kindred would adorn their disreputable
hats. But their actions would be less opposed to Nature's plan than
mine, for it was the men who would go sombrely gay, not their
woman-kind.
The tramp back to camp was long and wearisome. Could it be that I
strode along the same course whereon a few short hours ago I had paced
hand in hand with gentle dreams? There,--on that dusty, gasping
sun-scorched flat? Could it be that the stars and the soothing dew lay
beyond that expanse of flaming sky, and that the laggard night, with
healing on her dusky wings, would draw them down once more?
That day Danster was on his way from Gamoep with the horses. That
afternoon Piet Noona and his imp-like nephew would hurry the oxen over
the desert towards our camp; they should arrive the following night. On
the next day we intended to break camp and trek back westward. The
return journey would not be so arduous for the cattle; we should have
used up the greater part of the water, and the load would be
correspondingly lighter.
The horses arrived soon after sundown,--old "Prince" with his deep
chest, his powerful quarters, and his broad, shoeless, almost spatulate
feet. The other horse, "Bucephalus," was a big, raw-boned black
stallion which Andries had in training. Hendrick was, so far, the only
one able to ride him.
Night once more--with the recurrent miracle of the dew-fall and the
stars. Typhon slept. Of what was he dreaming? Of the far-off day when
the overflowing measure of his infamy caused the decree of his
banishment to be pronounced,--of the lands he ravaged and blighted on
his southward course,--of his enemy, the rain-god, who smote him with
the river-sword and thus crippled him for ever?
But man also must sleep--and on the morrow I had to journey to the
Kanya-veld.