THE BONA FIDE GOLD MINE
Fully two years had gone by since I bade farewell to Lord Ragnall and
Miss Holmes, and when the curtain draws up again behold me seated on
the stoep of my little house at Durban, plunged in reflection and very
sad indeed. Why I was sad I will explain presently.
In that interval of time I had heard once or twice about Lord Ragnall.
Thus I received from Scroope a letter telling of his lordship’s
marriage with Miss Holmes, which, it appeared, had been a very fine
affair indeed, quite one of the events of the London season. Two
Royalties attended the ceremony, a duke was the best man, and the
presents according to all accounts were superb and of great value,
including a priceless pearl necklace given by the bridegroom to the
bride. A cutting from a society paper which Scroope enclosed dwelt at
length upon the splendid appearance of the bridegroom and the sweet
loveliness of the bride. Also it described her dress in language which
was Greek to me. One sentence, however, interested me intensely.
It ran: “The bride occasioned some comment by wearing only one
ornament, although the Ragnall family diamonds, which have not seen the
light for many years, are known to be some of the finest in the
country. It was a necklace of what appeared to be large but rather
roughly polished rubies, to which hung a small effigy of an Egyptian
god also fashioned from a ruby. It must be added that although of an
unusual nature on such an occasion this jewel suited her dark beauty
well. Lady Ragnall’s selection of it, however, from the many she
possesses was the cause of much speculation. When asked by a friend why
she had chosen it, she is reported to have said that it was to bring
her good fortune.”
Now why did she wear the barbaric marriage gift of Harût and Marût in
preference to all the other gems at her disposal, I wondered. The thing
was so strange as to be almost uncanny.
The second piece of information concerning this pair reached me through
the medium of an old _Times_ newspaper which I received over a year
later. It was to the effect that a son and heir had been born to Lord
Ragnall and that both mother and child were doing well.
So there’s the end to a very curious little story, thought I to myself.
Well, during those two years many things befell me. First of all, in
company with my old friend Sir Stephen Somers, I made the expedition to
Pongoland in search of the wonderful orchid which he desired to add to
his collection. I have already written of that journey and our
extraordinary adventures, and need therefore allude to it no more here,
except to say that during the course of it I was sorely tempted to
travel to the territory north of the lake in which the Pongos dwelt.
Much did I desire to see whether Messrs. Harût and Marût would in truth
appear to conduct me to the land where the wonderful elephant which was
supposed to be animated by an evil spirit was waiting to be killed by
my rifle. However, I resisted the impulse, as indeed our circumstances
obliged me to do. In the end we returned safely to Durban, and here I
came to the conclusion that never again would I risk my life on such
mad expeditions.
Owing to circumstances which I have detailed elsewhere I was now in
possession of a considerable sum of cash, and this I determined to lay
out in such a fashion as to make me independent of hunting and trading
in the wilder regions of Africa. As usual when money is forthcoming, an
opportunity soon presented itself in the shape of a gold mine which had
been discovered on the borders of Zululand, one of the first that was
ever found in those districts. A Jew trader named Jacob brought it to
my notice and offered me a half share if I would put up the capital
necessary to work the mine. I made a journey of inspection and
convinced myself that it was indeed a wonderful proposition. I need not
enter into the particulars nor, to tell the truth, have I any desire to
do so, for the subject is still painful to me, further than to say that
this Jew and some friends of his panned out visible gold before my eyes
and then revealed to me the magnificent quartz reef from which, as they
demonstrated, it had been washed in the bygone ages of the world. The
news of our discovery spread like wildfire, and as, whatever else I
might be, everyone knew that I was honest, in the end a small company
was formed with Allan Quatermain, Esq., as the chairman of the Bona
Fide Gold Mine, Limited.
Oh! that company! Often to this day I dream of it when I have
indigestion.
Our capital was small, £10,000, of which the Jew, who was well named
Jacob, and his friends, took half (for nothing of course) as the
purchase price of their rights. I thought the proportion large and said
so, especially after I had ascertained that these rights had cost them
exactly three dozen of square-face gin, a broken-down wagon, four cows
past the bearing age and £5 in cash. However, when it was pointed out
to me that by their peculiar knowledge and genius they had located and
proved the value of a property of enormous potential worth, moreover
that this sum was to be paid to them in scrip which would only be
realizable when success was assured and not in money, after a night of
anxious consideration I gave way.
Personally, before I consented to accept the chairmanship, which
carried with it a salary of £100 a year (which I never got), I bought
and paid for in cash, shares to the value of £1,000 sterling. I
remember that Jacob and his friends seemed surprised at this act of
mine, as they had offered to give me five hundred of their shares for
nothing “in consideration of the guarantee of my name.” These I
refused, saying that I would not ask others to invest in a venture in
which I had no actual money stake; whereon they accepted my decision,
not without enthusiasm. In the end the balance of £4,000 was subscribed
and we got to work. Work is a good name for it so far as I was
concerned, for never in all my days have I gone through so harrowing a
time.
We began by washing a certain patch of gravel and obtained results
which seemed really astonishing. So remarkable were they that on
publication the shares rose to 10s. premium. Jacob and Co. took
advantage of this opportunity to sell quite half of their bonus holding
to eager applicants, explaining to me that they did so not for personal
profit, which they scorned, but “to broaden the basis of the
undertaking by admitting fresh blood.”
It was shortly after this boom that the gravel surrounding the rich
patch became very gravelly indeed, and it was determined that we should
buy a small battery and begin to crush the quartz from which the gold
was supposed to flow in a Pactolian stream. We negotiated for that
battery through a Cape Town firm of engineers—but why follow the
melancholy business in all its details? The shares began to decrease in
value. They shrank to their original price of £1, then to 15s., then to
10s. Jacob, he was managing director, explained to me that it was
necessary to “support the market,” as he was already doing to an
enormous extent, and that I as chairman ought to take a “lead in this
good work” in order to show my faith in the concern.
I took a lead to the extent of another £500, which was all that I could
afford. I admit that it was a shock to such trust in human nature as
remained to me when I discovered subsequently that the 1,000 shares
which I bought for my £500 had really been the property of Jacob,
although they appeared to be sold to me in various other names.
The crisis came at last, for before that battery was delivered our
available funds were exhausted, and no one would subscribe another
halfpenny. Debentures, it is true, had been issued and taken up to the
extent of about £1,000 out of the £5,000 offered, though who bought
them remained at the time a mystery to me. Ultimately a meeting was
called to consider the question of liquidating the company, and at this
meeting, after three sleepless nights, I occupied the chair.
When I entered the room, to my amazement I found that of the five
directors only one was present besides myself, an honest old retired
sea captain who had bought and paid for 300 shares. Jacob and the two
friends who represented his interests had, it appeared, taken ship that
morning for Cape Town, whither they were summoned to attend various
relatives who had been seized with illness.
It was a stormy meeting at first. I explained the position to the best
of my ability, and when I had finished was assailed with a number of
questions which I could not answer to the satisfaction of myself or of
anybody else. Then a gentleman, the owner of ten shares, who had
evidently been drinking, suggested in plain language that I had cheated
the shareholders by issuing false reports.
I jumped up in a fury and, although he was twice my size, asked him to
come and argue the question outside, whereon he promptly went away.
This incident excited a laugh, and then the whole truth came out. A man
with coloured blood in him stood up and told a story which was
subsequently proved to be true. Jacob had employed him to “salt” the
mine by mixing a heavy sprinkling of gold in the gravel we had first
washed (which the coloured man swore he did in innocence), and
subsequently had defrauded him of his wages. That was all. I sank back
in my chair overcome. Then some good fellow in the audience, who had
lost money himself in the affair and whom I scarcely knew, got up and
made a noble speech which went far to restore my belief in human
nature.
He said in effect that it was well known that I, Allan Quatermain,
after working like a horse in the interests of the shareholders, had
practically ruined myself over this enterprise, and that the real thief
was Jacob, who had made tracks for the Cape, taking with him a large
cash profit resulting from the sale of shares. Finally he concluded by
calling for “three cheers for our honest friend and fellow sufferer,
Mr. Allan Quatermain.”
Strange to say the audience gave them very heartily indeed. I thanked
them with tears in my eyes, saying that I was glad to leave the room as
poor as I had ever been, but with a reputation which my conscience as
well as their kindness assured me was quite unblemished.
Thus the winding-up resolution was passed and that meeting came to an
end. After shaking hands with my deliverer from a most unpleasant
situation, I walked homewards with the lightest heart in the world. My
money was gone, it was true; also my over-confidence in others had led
me to make a fool of myself by accepting as fact, on what I believed to
be the evidence of my eyes, that which I had not sufficient expert
knowledge to verify. But my honour was saved, and as I have again and
again seen in the course of life, money is nothing when compared with
honour, a remark which Shakespeare made long ago, though like many
other truths this is one of which a full appreciation can only be
gained by personal experience.
Not very far from the place where our meeting had been held I passed a
side street then in embryo, for it had only one or two houses situated
in their gardens and a rather large and muddy sluit of water running
down one side at the edge of the footpath. Save for two people this
street was empty, but that pair attracted my attention. They were a
white man, in whom I recognized the stout and half-intoxicated
individual who had accused me of cheating the company and then
departed, and a withered old Hottentot who at that distance, nearly a
hundred yards away, much reminded me of a certain Hans.
This Hans, I must explain, was originally a servant of my father, who
was a missionary in the Cape Colony, and had been my companion in many
adventures. Thus in my youth he and I alone escaped when Dingaan
murdered Retief and his party of Boers,[1] and he had been one of my
party in our quest for the wonderful orchid, the record of which I have
written down in “The Holy Flower.”
[1] See the book called “Marie.”—EDITOR.
Hans had his weak points, among which must be counted his love of
liquor, but he was a gallant and resourceful old fellow as indeed he
had amply proved upon that orchid-seeking expedition. Moreover he loved
me with a love passing the love of women. Now, having acquired some
money in a way I need not stop to describe—for is it not written
elsewhere?—he was settled as a kind of little chief on a farm not very
far from Durban, where he lived in great honour because of the fame of
his deeds.
The white man and Hans, if Hans it was, were engaged in violent
altercation whereof snatches floated to me on the breeze, spoken in the
Dutch tongue.
“You dirty little Hottentot!” shouted the white man, waving a stick,
“I’ll cut the liver out of you. What do you mean by nosing about after
me like a jackal?” And he struck at Hans, who jumped aside.
“Son of a fat white sow,” screamed Hans in answer (for the moment I
heard his voice I knew that it was Hans), “did you dare to call the
Baas a thief? Yes, a thief, O Rooter in the mud, O Feeder on filth and
worms, O Hog of the gutter—the Baas, the clipping of whose nail is
worth more than you and all your family, he whose honour is as clear as
the sunlight and whose heart is cleaner than the white sand of the
sea.”
“Yes, I did,” roared the white man; “for he got my money in the gold
mine.”
“Then, hog, why did you run away. Why did you not wait to tell him so
outside that house?”
“I’ll teach you about running away, you little yellow dog,” replied the
other, catching Hans a cut across the ribs.
“Oh! you want to see me run, do you?” said Hans, skipping back a few
yards with wonderful agility. “Then look!”
Thus speaking he lowered his head and charged like a buffalo. Fair in
the middle he caught that white man, causing him to double up, fly
backwards and land with a most resounding splash in the deepest part of
the muddy sluit. Here I may remark that, as his shins are the weakest,
a Hottentot’s head is by far the hardest and most dangerous part of
him. Indeed it seems to partake of the nature of a cannon ball, for,
without more than temporary disturbance to its possessor, I have seen a
half-loaded wagon go over one of them on a muddy road.
Having delivered this home thrust Hans bolted round a corner and
disappeared, while I waited trembling to see what happened to his
adversary. To my relief nearly a minute later he crept out of the sluit
covered with mud and dripping with water and hobbled off slowly down
the street, his head so near his feet that he looked as though he had
been folded in two, and his hands pressed upon what I believe is
medically known as the diaphragm. Then I also went upon my way roaring
with laughter. Often I have heard Hottentots called the lowest of
mankind, but, reflected I, they can at any rate be good friends to
those who treat them well—a fact of which I was to have further proof
ere long.
By the time I reached my house and had filled my pipe and sat myself
down in the dilapidated cane chair on the veranda, that natural
reaction set in which so often follows rejoicing at the escape from a
great danger. It was true that no one believed I had cheated them over
that thrice-accursed gold mine, but how about other matters?
I mused upon the Bible narrative of Jacob and Esau with a new and very
poignant sympathy for Esau. I wondered what would become of my Jacob.
Jacob, I mean the original, prospered exceedingly as a result of his
deal in porridge, and, as thought I, probably would his artful
descendant who so appropriately bore his name. As a matter of fact I do
not know what became of him, but bearing his talents in mind I think it
probable that, like Van Koop, under some other patronymic he has now
been rewarded with a title by the British Government. At any rate I had
eaten the porridge in the shape of worthless but dearly purchased
shares, after labouring hard at the chase of the golden calf, while
brother Jacob had got my inheritance, or rather my money. Probably he
was now counting it over in sovereigns upon the ship and sniggering as
he thought of the shareholders’ meeting with me in the chair. Well, he
was a thief and would run his road to whatever end is appointed for
thieves, so why should I bother my head more about him? As I had kept
my honour—let him take my savings.
But I had a son to support, and now what was I to do with scarcely
three hundred pounds, a good stock of guns and this little Durban
property left to me in the world? Commerce in all its shapes I
renounced once and for ever. It was too high—or too low—for me; so it
would seem that there remained to me only my old business of
professional hunting. Once again I must seek those adventures which I
had forsworn when my evil star shone so brightly over a gold mine. What
was it to be? Elephants, I supposed, since these are the only creatures
worth killing from a money point of view. But most of my old haunts had
been more or less shot out. The competition of younger professionals,
of wandering backveld Boers and even of poaching natives who had
obtained guns, was growing severe. If I went at all I should have to
travel farther afield.
Whilst I meditated thus, turning over the comparative advantages or
disadvantages of various possible hunting grounds in my mind, my
attention was caught by a kind of cough that seemed to proceed from the
farther side of a large gardenia bush. It was not a human cough, but
rather resembled that made by a certain small buck at night, probably
to signal to its mate, which of course it could not be as there were no
buck within several miles. Yet I knew it came from a human throat, for
had I not heard it before in many an hour of difficulty and danger?
“Draw near, Hans,” I said in Dutch, and instantly out of a clump of
aloes that grew in front of the pomegranate hedge, crept the withered
shape of the old Hottentot, as a big yellow snake might do. Why he
should choose this method of advance instead of that offered by the
garden path I did not know, but it was quite in accordance with his
secretive nature, inherited from a hundred generations of ancestors who
spent their lives avoiding the observation of murderous foes.
He squatted down in front of me, staring in a vacant way at the fierce
ball of the westering sun without blinking an eyelid, just as a vulture
does.
“You look to me as though you had been fighting, Hans,” I said. “The
crown of your hat is knocked out; you are splashed with mud and there
is the mark of a stick upon your left side.”
“Yes, Baas. You are right as usual, Baas. I had a quarrel with a man
about sixpence that he owed me, and knocked him over with my head,
forgetting to take my hat off first. Therefore it is spoiled, for which
I am sorry, as it was quite a new hat, not two years old. The Baas gave
it me. He bought it in a store at Utrecht when we were coming back from
Pongoland.”
“Why do you lie to me?” I asked. “You have been fighting a white man
and for more than sixpence. You knocked him into a sluit and the mud
splashed up over you.”
“Yes, Baas, that is so. Your spirit speaks truly to you of the matter.
Yet it wanders a little from the path, since I fought the white man for
less than sixpence. I fought him for love, which is nothing at all.”
“Then you are even a bigger fool than I took you for, Hans. What do you
want now?”
“I want to borrow a pound, Baas. The white man will take me before the
magistrate, and I shall be fined a pound, or fourteen days in the
_trunk_ (i.e. jail). It is true that the white man struck me first, but
the magistrate will not believe the word of a poor old Hottentot
against his, and I have no witness. He will say, ‘Hans, you were drunk
again. Hans, you are a liar and deserve to be flogged, which you will
be next time. Pay a pound and ten shillings more, which is the price of
good white justice, or go to the _trunk_ for fourteen days and make
baskets there for the great Queen to use.’ Baas, I have the price of
the justice which is ten shillings, but I want to borrow the pound for
the fine.”
“Hans, I think that just now you are better able to lend me a pound
than I am to lend one to you. My bag is empty, Hans.”
“Is it so, Baas? Well, it does not matter. If necessary I can make
baskets for the great white Queen to put her food in, for fourteen
days, or mats on which she will wipe her feet. The _trunk_ is not such
a bad place, Baas. It gives time to think of the white man’s justice
and to thank the Great One in the Sky, because the little sins one did
not do have been found out and punished, while the big sins one did do,
such as—well, never mind, Baas—have not been found out at all. Your
reverend father, the Predikant, always taught me to have a thankful
heart, Baas, and when I remember that I have only been in the _trunk_
for three months altogether who, if all were known, ought to have been
there for years, I remember his words, Baas.”
“Why should you go to the _trunk_ at all, Hans, when you are rich and
can pay a fine, even if it were a hundred pounds?”
“A month or two ago it is true I was rich, Baas, but now I am poor. I
have nothing left except ten shillings.”
“Hans,” I said severely, “you have been gambling again; you have been
drinking again. You have sold your property and your cattle to pay your
gambling debts and to buy square-face gin.”
“Yes, Baas, and for no good it seems; though it is not true that I have
been drinking. I sold the land and the cattle for £650, Baas, and with
the money I bought other things.”
“What did you buy?” I said.
He fumbled first in one pocket of his coat and then in the other, and
ultimately produced a crumpled and dirty-looking piece of paper that
resembled a bank-note. I took and examined this document and next
minute nearly fainted. It certified that Hans was the proprietor of I
know not how many debentures or shares, I forget which they were, in
the Bona Fide Gold Mine, Limited, that same company of which I was the
unlucky chairman, in consideration for which he had paid a sum of over
six hundred and fifty pounds.
“Hans,” I said feebly, “from whom did you buy this?”
“From the baas with the hooked nose, Baas. He who was named Jacob,
after the great man in the Bible of whom your father, the Predikant,
used to tell us, that one who was so slim and dressed himself up in a
goatskin and gave his brother mealie porridge when he was hungry, after
he had come in from shooting buck, Baas, and got his farm and cattle,
Baas, and then went to Heaven up a ladder, Baas.”
“And who told you to buy them, Hans?”
“Sammy, Baas, he who was your cook when we went to Pongoland, he who
hid in the mealie-pit when the slavers burned Beza-Town and came out
half cooked like a fowl from the oven. The Baas Jacob stopped at
Sammy’s hotel, Baas, and told him that unless he bought bits of paper
like this, of which he had plenty, you would be brought before the
magistrate and sent to the _trunk_, Baas. So Sammy bought some, Baas,
but not many for he had only a little money, and the Baas Jacob paid
him for all he ate and drank with other bits of paper. Then Sammy came
to me and showed me what it was my duty to do, reminding me that your
reverend father, the Predikant, had left you in my charge till one of
us dies, whether you were well or ill and whether you got better or got
worse—just like a white wife, Baas. So I sold the farm and the cattle
to a friend of the Baas Jacob’s, at a very low price, Baas, and that is
all the story.”
I heard and, to tell the honest truth, almost I wept, since the thought
of the sacrifice which this poor old Hottentot had made for my sake on
the instigation of a rogue utterly overwhelmed me.
“Hans,” I asked recovering myself, “tell me what was that new name
which the Zulu captain Mavovo gave you before he died, I mean after you
had fired Beza-Town and caught Hassan and his slavers in their own
trap?”
Hans, who had suddenly found something that interested him extremely
out at sea, perhaps because he did not wish to witness my grief, turned
round slowly and answered:
“Mavovo named me Light-in-Darkness, and by that name the Kafirs know me
now, Baas, though some of them call me Lord-of-the-Fire.”
“Then Mavovo named you well, for indeed, Hans, you shine like a light
in the darkness of my heart. I whom you think wise am but a fool, Hans,
who has been tricked by a _vernuker_, a common cheat, and he has
tricked you and Sammy as well. But as he has shown me that man can be
very vile, you have shown me that he can be very noble; and, setting
the one against the other, my spirit that was in the dust rises up once
more like a withered flower after rain. Light-in-Darkness, although if
I had ten thousand pounds I could never pay you back—since what you
have given me is more than all the gold in the world and all the land
and all the cattle—yet with honour and with love I will try to pay
you,” and I held out my hand to him.
He took it and pressed it against his wrinkled old forehead, then
answered:
“Talk no more of that, Baas, for it makes me sad, who am so happy. How
often have you forgiven me when I have done wrong? How often have you
not flogged me when I should have been flogged for being drunk and
other things—yes, even when once I stole some of your powder and sold
it to buy square-face gin, though it is true I knew it was bad powder,
not fit for you to use? Did I thank you then overmuch? Why therefore
should you thank me who have done but a little thing, not really to
help you but because, as you know, I love gambling, and was told that
this bit of paper would soon be worth much more than I gave for it. If
it had proved so, should I have given you that money? No, I should have
kept it myself and bought a bigger farm and more cattle.”
“Hans,” I said sternly, “if you lie so hard, you will certainly go to
hell, as the Predikant, my father, often told you.”
“Not if I lie for you, Baas, or if I do it doesn’t matter, except that
then we should be separated by the big kloof written of in the Book,
especially as there I should meet the Baas Jacob, as I very much want
to do for a reason of my own.”
Not wishing to pursue this somewhat unchristian line of thought, I
inquired of him why he felt happy.
“Oh! Baas,” he answered with a twinkle in his little black eyes, “can’t
you guess why? Now you have very little money left and I have none at
all. Therefore it is plain that we must go somewhere to earn money, and
I am glad of that, Baas, for I am tired of sitting on that farm out
there and growing mealies and milking cows, especially as I am too old
to marry, Baas, as you are tired of looking for gold where there isn’t
any and singing sad songs in that house of meeting yonder like you did
this afternoon. Oh! the Great Father in the skies knew what He was
about when He sent the Baas Jacob our way. He beat us for our good,
Baas, as He does always if we could only understand.”
I reflected to myself that I had not often heard the doctrine of the
Church better or more concisely put, but I only said:
“That is true, Hans, and I thank you for the lesson, the second you
have taught me to-day. But where are we to go to, Hans? Remember, it
must be elephants.”
He suggested some places; indeed he seemed to have come provided with a
list of them, and I sat silent making no comment. At length he finished
and squatted there before me, chewing a bit of tobacco I had given him,
and looking up at me interrogatively with his head on one side, for all
the world like a dilapidated and inquisitive bird.
“Hans,” I said, “do you remember a story I told you when you came to
see me a year or more ago, about a tribe called the Kendah in whose
country there is said to be a great cemetery of elephants which travel
there to die from all the land about? A country that lies somewhere to
the north-east of the lake island on which the Pongo used to dwell?”
“Yes, Baas.”
“And you said, I think, that you had never heard of such a people.”
“No, Baas, I never said anything at all. I have heard a good deal about
them.”
“Then why did you not tell me so before, you little idiot?” I asked
indignantly.
“What was the good, Baas? You were hunting gold then, not ivory. Why
should I make you unhappy, and waste my own breath by talking about
beautiful things which were far beyond the reach of either of us, far
as that sky?”
“Don’t ask fool’s questions but tell me what you know, Hans. Tell me at
once.”
“This, Baas: When we were up at Beza-Town after we came back from
killing the gorilla-god, and the Baas Stephen your friend lay sick, and
there was nothing else to do, I talked with everyone I could find worth
talking to, and they were not many, Baas. But there was one very old
woman who was not of the Mazitu race and whose husband and children
were all dead, but whom the people in the town looked up to and feared
because she was wise and made medicines out of herbs, and told
fortunes. I used to go to see her. She was quite blind, Baas, and fond
of talking with me—which shows how wise she was. I told her all about
the Pongo gorilla-god, of which already she knew something. When I had
done she said that he was as nothing compared with a certain god that
she had seen in her youth, seven tens of years ago, when she became
marriageable. I asked her for that story, and she spoke it thus:
“Far away to the north and east live a people called the Kendah, who
are ruled over by a sultan. They are a very great people and inhabit a
most fertile country. But all round their country the land is desolate
and manless, peopled only by game, for the reason that they will suffer
none to dwell there. That is why nobody knows anything about them: he
that comes across the wilderness into that land is killed and never
returns to tell of it.
“She told me also that she was born of this people, but fled because
their sultan wished to place her in his house of women, which she did
not desire. For a long while she wandered southwards, living on roots
and berries, till she came to desert land and at last, worn out, lay
down to die. Then she was found by some of the Mazitu who were on an
expedition seeking ostrich feathers for war-plumes. They gave her food
and, seeing that she was fair, brought her back to their country, where
one of them married her. But of her own land she uttered only lying
words to them because she feared that if she told the truth the gods
who guard its secrets would be avenged on her, though now when she was
near to death she dreaded them no more, since even the Kendah gods
cannot swim through the waters of death. That is all she said about her
journey because she had forgotten the rest.”
“Bother her journey, Hans. What did she say about her god and the
Kendah people?”
“This, Baas: that the Kendah have not one god but two, and not one
ruler but two. They have a good god who is a child-fetish” (here I
started) “that speaks through the mouth of an oracle who is always a
woman. If that woman dies the god does not speak until they find
another woman bearing certain marks which show that she holds the
spirit of the god. Before the woman dies she always tells the priests
in what land they are to look for her who is to come after her; but
sometimes they cannot find her and then trouble falls because ‘the
Child has lost its tongue,’ and the people become the prey of the other
god that never dies.”
“And what is that god, Hans?”
“That god, Baas, is an elephant” (here I started again), “a very bad
elephant to which human sacrifice is offered. I think, Baas, that it is
the devil wearing the shape of an elephant, at least that is what she
said. Now the sultan is a worshipper of the god that dwells in the
elephant Jana” (here I positively whistled) “and so are most of the
people, indeed all those among them who are black. For once far away in
the beginning the Kendah were two peoples, but the lighter-coloured
people who worshipped the Child came down from the north and conquered
the black people, bringing the Child with them, or so I understood her,
Baas, thousands and thousands of years ago when the world was young.
Since then they have flowed on side by side like two streams in the
same channel, never mixing, for each keeps its own colour. Only, she
said, that stream which comes from the north grows weaker and that from
the south more strong.”
“Then why does not the strong swallow up the weak?”
“Because the weak are still the pure and the wise, Baas, or so the old
vrouw declared. Because they worship the good while the others worship
the devil, and as your father the Predikant used to say, Good is the
cock which always wins the fight at the last, Baas. Yes, when he seems
to be dead he gets up again and kicks the devil in the stomach and
stands on him and crows, Baas. Also these northern folk are mighty
magicians. Through their Child-fetish they give rain and fat seasons
and keep away sickness, whereas Jana gives only evil gifts that have to
do with cruelty and war and so forth. Lastly, the priests who rule
through the Child have the secrets of wealth and ancient knowledge,
whereas the sultan and his followers have only the might of the spear.
This was the song which the old woman sang to me, Baas.”
“Why did you not tell me of these matters when we were at Beza-Town and
I could have talked with her myself, Hans?”
“For two reasons, Baas. The first was that I feared, if I told you, you
would wish to go on to find these people, whereas I was tired of
travelling and wanted to come to Natal to rest. The second was that on
the night when the old woman finished telling me her story, she was
taken sick and died, and therefore it would have been no use to bring
you to see her. So I saved it up in my head until it was wanted.
Moreover, Baas, all the Mazitu declared that old woman to be the
greatest of liars.”
“She was not altogether a liar, Hans. Hear what I have learned,” and I
told him of the magic of Harût and Marût and of the picture that I had
seemed to see of the elephant Jana and of the prayer that Harût and
Marût had made to me, to all of which he listened quite stolidly. It is
not easy to astonish a Hottentot’s brain, which often draws no accurate
dividing-line between the possible and what the modern world holds to
be impossible.
“Yes, Baas,” he said when I had finished, “then it seems that the old
woman was not such a liar after all. Baas, when shall we start after
that hoard of dead ivory, and which way will you go? By Kilwa or
through Zululand? It should be settled soon because of the seasons.”
After this we talked together for a long while, for with pockets as
empty as mine were then, the problem seemed difficult, if not
insoluble.