FURTH! FORTUNE!
In this plain story of mine there will be so many wild doings ere the
end is reached, that I beg my reader’s assent to a prosaic digression.
I will tell briefly the things which happened between my sight of the
man on the Kirkcaple sands and my voyage to Africa. I continued for
three years at the burgh school, where my progress was less notable in
my studies than in my sports. One by one I saw my companions pass out
of idle boyhood and be set to professions. Tam Dyke on two occasions
ran off to sea in the Dutch schooners which used to load with coal in
our port; and finally his father gave him his will, and he was
apprenticed to the merchant service. Archie Leslie, who was a year my
elder, was destined for the law, so he left Kirkcaple for an Edinburgh
office, where he was also to take out classes at the college. I
remained on at school till I sat alone by myself in the highest class—a
position of little dignity and deep loneliness. I had grown a tall,
square-set lad, and my prowess at Rugby football was renowned beyond
the parishes of Kirkcaple and Portincross. To my father I fear I was a
disappointment. He had hoped for something in his son more bookish and
sedentary, more like his gentle, studious self.
On one thing I was determined: I should follow a learned profession.
The fear of being sent to an office, like so many of my schoolfellows,
inspired me to the little progress I ever made in my studies. I chose
the ministry, not, I fear, out of any reverence for the sacred calling,
but because my father had followed it before me. Accordingly I was sent
at the age of sixteen for a year’s finishing at the High School of
Edinburgh, and the following winter began my Arts course at the
university.
If Fate had been kinder to me, I think I might have become a scholar.
At any rate I was just acquiring a taste for philosophy and the dead
languages when my father died suddenly of a paralytic shock, and I had
to set about earning a living.
My mother was left badly off, for my poor father had never been able to
save much from his modest stipend. When all things were settled, it
turned out that she might reckon on an income of about fifty pounds a
year. This was not enough to live on, however modest the household, and
certainly not enough to pay for the colleging of a son. At this point
an uncle of hers stepped forward with a proposal. He was a well-to-do
bachelor, alone in the world, and he invited my mother to live with him
and take care of his house. For myself he proposed a post in some
mercantile concern, for he had much influence in the circles of
commerce. There was nothing for it but to accept gratefully. We sold
our few household goods, and moved to his gloomy house in Dundas
Street. A few days later he announced at dinner that he had found for
me a chance which might lead to better things.
“You see, Davie,” he explained, “you don’t know the rudiments of
business life. There’s no house in the country that would take you in
except as a common clerk, and you would never earn much more than a
hundred pounds a year all your days. If you want to better your future
you must go abroad, where white men are at a premium. By the mercy of
Providence I met yesterday an old friend, Thomas Mackenzie, who was
seeing his lawyer about an estate he is bidding for. He is the head of
one of the biggest trading and shipping concerns in the
world—Mackenzie, Mure, and Oldmeadows—you may have heard the name.
Among other things he has half the stores in South Africa, where they
sell everything from Bibles to fish-hooks. Apparently they like men
from home to manage the stores, and to make a long story short, when I
put your case to him, he promised you a place. I had a wire from him
this morning confirming the offer. You are to be assistant storekeeper
at—” (my uncle fumbled in his pocket, and then read from the yellow
slip) “at Blaauwildebeestefontein. There’s a mouthful for you.”
In this homely way I first heard of a place which was to be the theatre
of so many strange doings.
“It’s a fine chance for you,” my uncle continued. “You’ll only be
assistant at first, but when you have learned your job you’ll have a
store of your own. Mackenzie’s people will pay you three hundred pounds
a year, and when you get a store you’ll get a percentage on sales. It
lies with you to open up new trade among the natives. I hear that
Blaauw—something or other, is in the far north of the Transvaal, and I
see from the map that it is in a wild, hilly country. You may find gold
or diamonds up there, and come back and buy Portincross House.” My
uncle rubbed his hands and smiled cheerily.
Truth to tell I was both pleased and sad. If a learned profession was
denied me I vastly preferred a veld store to an Edinburgh office stool.
Had I not been still under the shadow of my father’s death I might have
welcomed the chance of new lands and new folk. As it was, I felt the
loneliness of an exile. That afternoon I walked on the Braid Hills, and
when I saw in the clear spring sunlight the coast of Fife, and
remembered Kirkcaple and my boyish days, I could have found it in me to
sit down and cry.
A fortnight later I sailed. My mother bade me a tearful farewell, and
my uncle, besides buying me an outfit and paying my passage money, gave
me a present of twenty sovereigns. “You’ll not be your mother’s son,
Davie,” were his last words, “if you don’t come home with it multiplied
by a thousand.” I thought at the time that I would give more than
twenty thousand pounds to be allowed to bide on the windy shores of
Forth.
I sailed from Southampton by an intermediate steamer, and went steerage
to save expense. Happily my acute homesickness was soon forgotten in
another kind of malady. It blew half a gale before we were out of the
Channel, and by the time we had rounded Ushant it was as dirty weather
as ever I hope to see. I lay mortal sick in my bunk, unable to bear the
thought of food, and too feeble to lift my head. I wished I had never
left home, but so acute was my sickness that if some one had there and
then offered me a passage back or an immediate landing on shore I
should have chosen the latter.
It was not till we got into the fair-weather seas around Madeira that I
recovered enough to sit on deck and observe my fellow-passengers. There
were some fifty of us in the steerage, mostly wives and children going
to join relations, with a few emigrant artisans and farmers. I early
found a friend in a little man with a yellow beard and spectacles, who
sat down beside me and remarked on the weather in a strong Scotch
accent. He turned out to be a Mr Wardlaw from Aberdeen, who was going
out to be a schoolmaster. He was a man of good education, who had taken
a university degree, and had taught for some years as an under-master
in a school in his native town. But the east winds had damaged his
lungs, and he had been glad to take the chance of a poorly paid country
school in the veld. When I asked him where he was going I was amazed to
be told, “Blaauwildebeestefontein.”
Mr Wardlaw was a pleasant little man, with a sharp tongue but a
cheerful temper. He laboured all day at primers of the Dutch and Kaffir
languages, but in the evening after supper he would walk with me on the
after-deck and discuss the future. Like me, he knew nothing of the land
he was going to, but he was insatiably curious, and he affected me with
his interest. “This place, Blaauwildebeestefontein,” he used to say,
“is among the Zoutpansberg mountains, and as far as I can see, not
above ninety miles from the railroad. It looks from the map a
well-watered country, and the Agent-General in London told me it was
healthy or I wouldn’t have taken the job. It seems we’ll be in the
heart of native reserves up there, for here’s a list of chiefs—”Mpefu,
Sikitola, Majinje, Magata; and there are no white men living to the
east of us because of the fever. The name means the ‘spring of the blue
wildebeeste,’ whatever fearsome animal that may be. It sounds like a
place for adventure, Mr Crawfurd. You’ll exploit the pockets of the
black men and I’ll see what I can do with their minds.” There was
another steerage passenger whom I could not help observing because of
my dislike of his appearance. He, too, was a little man, by name
Henriques, and in looks the most atrocious villain I have ever clapped
eyes on. He had a face the colour of French mustard—a sort of dirty
green—and bloodshot, beady eyes with the whites all yellowed with
fever. He had waxed moustaches, and a curious, furtive way of walking
and looking about him. We of the steerage were careless in our dress,
but he was always clad in immaculate white linen, with pointed, yellow
shoes to match his complexion. He spoke to no one, but smoked long
cheroots all day in the stern of the ship, and studied a greasy
pocket-book. Once I tripped over him in the dark, and he turned on me
with a snarl and an oath. I was short enough with him in return, and he
looked as if he could knife me.
“I’ll wager that fellow has been a slave-driver in his time,” I told Mr
Wardlaw, who said, “God pity his slaves, then.”
And now I come to the incident which made the rest of the voyage pass
all too soon for me, and foreshadowed the strange events which were to
come. It was the day after we crossed the Line, and the first-class
passengers were having deck sports. A tug-of-war had been arranged
between the three classes, and a half-dozen of the heaviest fellows in
the steerage, myself included, were invited to join. It was a blazing
hot afternoon, but on the saloon deck there were awnings and a cool
wind blowing from the bows. The first-class beat the second easily, and
after a tremendous struggle beat the steerage also. Then they regaled
us with iced-drinks and cigars to celebrate the victory.
I was standing at the edge of the crowd of spectators, when my eye
caught a figure which seemed to have little interest in our games. A
large man in clerical clothes was sitting on a deck-chair reading a
book. There was nothing novel about the stranger, and I cannot explain
the impulse which made me wish to see his face. I moved a few steps up
the deck, and then I saw that his skin was black. I went a little
farther, and suddenly he raised his eyes from his book and looked
round. It was the face of the man who had terrified me years ago on the
Kirkcaple shore.
I spent the rest of the day in a brown study. It was clear to me that
some destiny had prearranged this meeting. Here was this man travelling
prosperously as a first-class passenger with all the appurtenances of
respectability. I alone had seen him invoking strange gods in the
moonlight, I alone knew of the devilry in his heart, and I could not
but believe that some day or other there might be virtue in that
knowledge.
The second engineer and I had made friends, so I got him to consult the
purser’s list for the name of my acquaintance. He was down as the Rev.
John Laputa, and his destination was Durban. The next day being Sunday,
who should appear to address us steerage passengers but the black
minister. He was introduced by the captain himself, a notably pious
man, who spoke of the labours of his brother in the dark places of
heathendom. Some of us were hurt in our pride in being made the target
of a black man’s oratory. Especially Mr Henriques, whose skin spoke of
the tar-brush, protested with oaths against the insult. Finally he sat
down on a coil of rope, and spat scornfully in the vicinity of the
preacher.
For myself I was intensely curious, and not a little impressed. The
man’s face was as commanding as his figure, and his voice was the most
wonderful thing that ever came out of human mouth. It was full and
rich, and gentle, with the tones of a great organ. He had none of the
squat and preposterous negro lineaments, but a hawk nose like an Arab,
dark flashing eyes, and a cruel and resolute mouth. He was black as my
hat, but for the rest he might have sat for a figure of a Crusader. I
do not know what the sermon was about, though others told me that it
was excellent. All the time I watched him, and kept saying to myself,
“You hunted me up the Dyve Burn, but I bashed your face for you.”
Indeed, I thought I could see faint scars on his cheek.
The following night I had toothache, and could not sleep. It was too
hot to breathe under cover, so I got up, lit a pipe, and walked on the
after-deck to ease the pain. The air was very still, save for the whish
of water from the screws and the steady beat of the engines. Above, a
great yellow moon looked down on me, and a host of pale stars.
The moonlight set me remembering the old affair of the Dyve Burn, and
my mind began to run on the Rev. John Laputa. It pleased me to think
that I was on the track of some mystery of which I alone had the clue.
I promised myself to search out the antecedents of the minister when I
got to Durban, for I had a married cousin there, who might know
something of his doings. Then, as I passed by the companion-way to the
lower deck, I heard voices, and peeping over the rail, I saw two men
sitting in the shadow just beyond the hatch of the hold.
I thought they might be two of the sailors seeking coolness on the open
deck, when something in the figure of one of them made me look again.
The next second I had slipped back and stolen across the after-deck to
a point just above them. For the two were the black minister and that
ugly yellow villain, Henriques.
I had no scruples about eavesdropping, but I could make nothing of
their talk. They spoke low, and in some tongue which may have been
Kaffir or Portuguese, but was in any case unknown to me. I lay, cramped
and eager, for many minutes, and was just getting sick of it when a
familiar name caught my ear. Henriques said something in which I caught
the word “Blaauwildebeestefontein.” I listened intently, and there
could be no mistake. The minister repeated the name, and for the next
few minutes it recurred often in their talk. I went back stealthily to
bed, having something to make me forget my aching tooth. First of all,
Laputa and Henriques were allies. Second, the place I was bound for had
something to do with their schemes.
I said nothing to Mr Wardlaw, but spent the next week in the assiduous
toil of the amateur detective. I procured some maps and books from my
friend, the second engineer, and read all I could about
Blaauwildebeestefontein. Not that there was much to learn; but I
remember I had quite a thrill when I discovered from the chart of the
ship’s run one day that we were in the same latitude as that
uncouthly-named spot. I found out nothing, however, about Henriques or
the Rev. John Laputa. The Portuguese still smoked in the stern, and
thumbed his greasy notebook; the minister sat in his deck-chair, and
read heavy volumes from the ship’s library. Though I watched every
night, I never found them again together.
At Cape Town Henriques went ashore and did not return. The minister did
not budge from the ship the three days we lay in port, and, indeed, it
seemed to me that he kept his cabin. At any rate I did not see his
great figure on deck till we were tossing in the choppy seas round Cape
Agulhas. Sea-sickness again attacked me, and with short lulls during
our stoppages at Port Elizabeth and East London, I lay wretchedly in my
bunk till we sighted the bluffs of Durban harbour.
Here it was necessary for me to change my ship, for in the interests of
economy I was going by sea to Delagoa Bay, and thence by the cheap
railway journey into the Transvaal. I sought out my cousin, who lived
in a fine house on the Berea, and found a comfortable lodging for the
three days of my stay there. I made inquiries about Mr Laputa, but
could hear nothing. There was no native minister of that name, said my
cousin, who was a great authority on all native questions. I described
the man, but got no further light. No one had seen or heard of such a
being, “unless,” said my cousin, “he is one of those American Ethiopian
rascals.”
My second task was to see the Durban manager of the firm which I had
undertaken to serve. He was a certain Mr Colles, a big fat man, who
welcomed me in his shirt-sleeves, with a cigar in his mouth. He
received me pleasantly, and took me home to dinner with him.
“Mr Mackenzie has written about you,” he said. “I’ll be quite frank
with you, Mr Crawfurd. The firm is not exactly satisfied about the way
business has been going lately at Blaauwildebeestefontein. There’s a
grand country up there, and a grand opportunity for the man who can
take it. Japp, who is in charge, is an old man now and past his best,
but he has been long with the firm, and we don’t want to hurt his
feelings. When he goes, which must be pretty soon, you’ll have a good
chance of the place, if you show yourself an active young fellow.”
He told me a great deal more about Blaauwildebeestefontein, principally
trading details. Incidentally he let drop that Mr Japp had had several
assistants in the last few years. I asked him why they had left, and he
hesitated.
“It’s a lonely place, and they didn’t like the life. You see, there are
few white men near, and young fellows want society. They complained,
and were moved on. But the firm didn’t think the more of them.”
I told him I had come out with the new schoolmaster.
“Yes,” he said reflectively, “the school. That’s been vacant pretty
often lately. What sort of fellow is this Wardlaw? Will he stay, I
wonder?”
“From all accounts,” I said, “Blaauwildebeestefontein does not seem
popular.”
“It isn’t. That’s why we’ve got you out from home. The colonial-born
doesn’t find it fit in with his idea of comfort. He wants society, and
he doesn’t like too many natives. There’s nothing up there but natives
and a few back-veld Dutchmen with native blood in them. You fellows
from home are less set on an easy life, or you wouldn’t be here.”
There was something in Mr Colles’s tone which made me risk another
question.
“What’s the matter with the place? There must be more wrong with it
than loneliness to make everybody clear out. I have taken on this job,
and I mean to stick to it, so you needn’t be afraid to tell me.”
The manager looked at me sharply. “That’s the way to talk, my lad. You
look as if you had a stiff back, so I’ll be frank with you. There is
something about the place. It gives the ordinary man the jumps. What it
is, I don’t know, and the men who come back don’t know themselves. I
want you to find out for me. You’ll be doing the firm an enormous
service if you can get on the track of it. It may be the natives, or it
may be the takhaars, or it may be something else. Only old Japp can
stick it out, and he’s too old and doddering to care about moving. I
want you to keep your eyes skinned, and write privately to me if you
want any help. You’re not out here for your health, I can see, and
here’s a chance for you to get your foot on the ladder.
“Remember, I’m your friend,” he said to me again at the garden gate.
“Take my advice and lie very low. Don’t talk, don’t meddle with drink,
learn all you can of the native jabber, but don’t let on you understand
a word. You’re sure to get on the track of something. Good-bye, my
boy,” and he waved a fat hand to me.
That night I embarked on a cargo-boat which was going round the coast
to Delagoa Bay. It is a small world—at least for us far-wandering
Scots. For who should I find when I got on board but my old friend Tam
Dyke, who was second mate on the vessel? We wrung each other’s hands,
and I answered, as best I could, his questions about Kirkcaple. I had
supper with him in the cabin, and went on deck to see the moorings
cast.
Suddenly there was a bustle on the quay, and a big man with a handbag
forced his way up the gangway. The men who were getting ready to cast
off tried to stop him, but he elbowed his way forward, declaring he
must see the captain. Tam went up to him and asked civilly if he had a
passage taken. He admitted he had not, but said he would make it right
in two minutes with the captain himself. The Rev. John Laputa, for some
reason of his own, was leaving Durban with more haste than he had
entered it.
I do not know what passed with the captain, but the minister got his
passage right enough, and Tam was even turned out of his cabin to make
room for him. This annoyed my friend intensely.
“That black brute must be made of money, for he paid through the nose
for this, or I’m a Dutchman. My old man doesn’t take to his black
brethren any more than I do. Hang it all, what are we coming to, when
we’re turning into a blooming cargo boat for niggers?”
I had all too little of Tam’s good company, for on the afternoon of the
second day we reached the little town of Lourenco Marques. This was my
final landing in Africa, and I mind how eagerly I looked at the low,
green shores and the bush-covered slopes of the mainland. We were
landed from boats while the ship lay out in the bay, and Tam came
ashore with me to spend the evening. By this time I had lost every
remnant of homesickness. I had got a job before me which promised
better things than colleging at Edinburgh, and I was as keen to get up
country now as I had been loth to leave England. My mind being full of
mysteries, I scanned every Portuguese loafer on the quay as if he had
been a spy, and when Tam and I had had a bottle of Collates in a cafe I
felt that at last I had got to foreign parts and a new world.
Tam took me to supper with a friend of his, a Scot by the name of
Aitken, who was landing-agent for some big mining house on the Rand. He
hailed from Fife and gave me a hearty welcome, for he had heard my
father preach in his young days. Aitken was a strong, broad-shouldered
fellow who had been a sergeant in the Gordons, and during the war he
had done secret-service work in Delagoa. He had hunted, too, and traded
up and down Mozambique, and knew every dialect of the Kaffirs. He asked
me where I was bound for, and when I told him there was the same look
in his eyes as I had seen with the Durban manager.
“You’re going to a rum place, Mr Crawfurd,” he said.
“So I’m told. Do you know anything about it? You’re not the first who
has looked queer when I’ve spoken the name.”
“I’ve never been there,” he said, “though I’ve been pretty near it from
the Portuguese side. That’s the funny thing about
Blaauwildebeestefontein. Everybody has heard of it, and nobody knows
it.”
“I wish you would tell me what you have heard.”
“Well, the natives are queer up thereaways. There’s some kind of a holy
place which every Kaffir from Algoa Bay to the Zambesi and away beyond
knows about. When I’ve been hunting in the bush-veld I’ve often met
strings of Kaffirs from hundreds of miles distant, and they’ve all been
going or coming from Blaauwildebeestefontein. It’s like Mecca to the
Mohammedans, a place they go to on pilgrimage. I’ve heard of an old man
up there who is believed to be two hundred years old. Anyway, there’s
some sort of great witch or wizard living in the mountains.”
Aitken smoked in silence for a time; then he said, “I’ll tell you
another thing. I believe there’s a diamond mine. I’ve often meant to go
up and look for it.”
Tam and I pressed him to explain, which he did slowly after his
fashion.
“Did you ever hear of I.D.B.—illicit diamond broking?” he asked me.
“Well, it’s notorious that the Kaffirs on the diamond fields get away
with a fair number of stones, and they are bought by Jew and Portuguese
traders. It’s against the law to deal in them, and when I was in the
intelligence here we used to have a lot of trouble with the vermin. But
I discovered that most of the stones came from natives in one part of
the country—more or less round Blaauwildebeestefontein—and I see no
reason to think that they had all been stolen from Kimberley or the
Premier. Indeed some of the stones I got hold of were quite different
from any I had seen in South Africa before. I shouldn’t wonder if the
Kaffirs in the Zoutpansberg had struck some rich pipe, and had the
sense to keep quiet about it. Maybe some day I’ll take a run up to see
you and look into the matter.”
After this the talk turned on other topics till Tam, still nursing his
grievance, asked a question on his own account. “Did you ever come
across a great big native parson called Laputa? He came on board as we
were leaving Durban, and I had to turn out of my cabin for him.” Tam
described him accurately but vindictively, and added that “he was sure
he was up to no good.”
Aitken shook his head. “No, I don’t know the man. You say he landed
here? Well, I’ll keep a look-out for him. Big native parsons are not so
common.”
Then I asked about Henriques, of whom Tam knew nothing. I described his
face, his clothes, and his habits. Aitken laughed uproariously.
“Tut, my man, most of the subjects of his Majesty the King of Portugal
would answer to that description. If he’s a rascal, as you think, you
may be certain he’s in the I.D.B. business, and if I’m right about
Blaauwildebeestefontein you’ll likely have news of him there some time
or other. Drop me a line if he comes, and I’ll get on to his record.”
I saw Tam off in the boat with a fairly satisfied mind. I was going to
a place with a secret, and I meant to find it out. The natives round
Blaauwildebeestefontein were queer, and diamonds were suspected
somewhere in the neighbourhood.
Henriques had something to do with the place, and so had the Rev. John
Laputa, about whom I knew one strange thing. So did Tam by the way, but
he had not identified his former pursuer, and I had told him nothing. I
was leaving two men behind me, Colles at Durban and Aitken at Lourenco
Marques, who would help me if trouble came. Things were shaping well
for some kind of adventure.
The talk with Aitken had given Tam an inkling of my thoughts. His last
words to me were an appeal to let him know if there was any fun going.
“I can see you’re in for a queer job. Promise to let me hear from you
if there’s going to be a row, and I’ll come up country, though I should
have to desert the service. Send us a letter to the agents at Durban in
case we should be in port. You haven’t forgotten the Dyve Burn, Davie?”