Peter Pienaar
Our various departures were unassuming, all but the American’s. Sandy
spent a busy fortnight in his subterranean fashion, now in the British
Museum, now running about the country to see old exploring companions,
now at the War Office, now at the Foreign Office, but mostly in my
flat, sunk in an arm-chair and meditating. He left finally on December
1st as a King’s Messenger for Cairo. Once there I knew the King’s
Messenger would disappear, and some queer Oriental ruffian take his
place. It would have been impertinence in me to inquire into his plans.
He was the real professional, and I was only the dabbler.
Blenkiron was a different matter. Sir Walter told me to look out for
squalls, and the twinkle in his eye gave me a notion of what was
coming. The first thing the sportsman did was to write a letter to the
papers signed with his name. There had been a debate in the House of
Commons on foreign policy, and the speech of some idiot there gave him
his cue. He declared that he had been heart and soul with the British
at the start, but that he was reluctantly compelled to change his
views. He said our blockade of Germany had broken all the laws of God
and humanity, and he reckoned that Britain was now the worst exponent
of Prussianism going. That letter made a fine racket, and the paper
that printed it had a row with the Censor. But that was only the
beginning of Mr Blenkiron’s campaign. He got mixed up with some
mountebanks called the League of Democrats against Aggression,
gentlemen who thought that Germany was all right if we could only keep
from hurting her feelings. He addressed a meeting under their auspices,
which was broken up by the crowd, but not before John S. had got off
his chest a lot of amazing stuff. I wasn’t there, but a man who was
told me that he never heard such clotted nonsense. He said that Germany
was right in wanting the freedom of the seas, and that America would
back her up, and that the British Navy was a bigger menace to the peace
of the world than the Kaiser’s army. He admitted that he had once
thought differently, but he was an honest man and not afraid to face
facts. The oration closed suddenly, when he got a brussels-sprout in
the eye, at which my friend said he swore in a very unpacifist style.
After that he wrote other letters to the Press, saying that there was
no more liberty of speech in England, and a lot of scallywags backed
him up. Some Americans wanted to tar and feather him, and he got kicked
out of the Savoy. There was an agitation to get him deported, and
questions were asked in Parliament, and the Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs said his department had the matter in hand. I was beginning to
think that Blenkiron was carrying his tomfoolery too far, so I went to
see Sir Walter, but he told me to keep my mind easy.
“Our friend’s motto is ‘Thorough’,” he said, “and he knows very well
what he is about. We have officially requested him to leave, and he
sails from Newcastle on Monday. He will be shadowed wherever he goes,
and we hope to provoke more outbreaks. He is a very capable fellow.”
The last I saw of him was on the Saturday afternoon when I met him in
St James’s Street and offered to shake hands. He told me that my
uniform was a pollution, and made a speech to a small crowd about it.
They hissed him and he had to get into a taxi. As he departed there was
just the suspicion of a wink in his left eye. On Monday I read that he
had gone off, and the papers observed that our shores were well quit of
him.
I sailed on December 3rd from Liverpool in a boat bound for the
Argentine that was due to put in at Lisbon. I had of course to get a
Foreign Office passport to leave England, but after that my connection
with the Government ceased. All the details of my journey were
carefully thought out. Lisbon would be a good jumping-off place, for it
was the rendezvous of scallywags from most parts of Africa. My kit was
an old Gladstone bag, and my clothes were the relics of my South
African wardrobe. I let my beard grow for some days before I sailed,
and, since it grows fast, I went on board with the kind of hairy chin
you will see on the young Boer. My name was now Brandt, Cornelis
Brandt—at least so my passport said, and passports never lie.
There were just two other passengers on that beastly boat, and they
never appeared till we were out of the Bay. I was pretty bad myself,
but managed to move about all the time, for the frowst in my cabin
would have sickened a hippo. The old tub took two days and a night to
waddle from Ushant to Finisterre. Then the weather changed and we came
out of snow-squalls into something very like summer. The hills of
Portugal were all blue and yellow like the Kalahari, and before we made
the Tagus I was beginning to forget I had ever left Rhodesia. There was
a Dutchman among the sailors with whom I used to patter the taal, and
but for “Good morning” and “Good evening” in broken English to the
captain, that was about all the talking I did on the cruise.
We dropped anchor off the quays of Lisbon on a shiny blue morning,
pretty near warm enough to wear flannels. I had now got to be very
wary. I did not leave the ship with the shore-going boat, but made a
leisurely breakfast. Then I strolled on deck, and there, just casting
anchor in the middle of the stream, was another ship with a blue and
white funnel I knew so well. I calculated that a month before she had
been smelling the mangrove swamps of Angola. Nothing could better
answer my purpose. I proposed to board her, pretending I was looking
for a friend, and come on shore from her, so that anyone in Lisbon who
chose to be curious would think I had landed straight from Portuguese
Africa.
I hailed one of the adjacent ruffians, and got into his rowboat, with
my kit. We reached the vessel—they called her the _Henry the
Navigator_—just as the first shore-boat was leaving. The crowd in it
were all Portuguese, which suited my book.
But when I went up the ladder the first man I met was old Peter
Pienaar.
Here was a piece of sheer monumental luck. Peter had opened his eyes
and his mouth, and had got as far as “Allemachtig”, when I shut him up.
“Brandt,” I said, “Cornelis Brandt. That’s my name now, and don’t you
forget it. Who is the captain here? Is it still old Sloggett?”
“_Ja,_” said Peter, pulling himself together. “He was speaking about
you yesterday.”
This was better and better. I sent Peter below to get hold of Sloggett,
and presently I had a few words with that gentleman in his cabin with
the door shut.
“You’ve got to enter my name in the ship’s books. I came aboard at
Mossamedes. And my name’s Cornelis Brandt.”
At first Sloggett was for objecting. He said it was a felony. I told
him that I dared say it was, but he had got to do it, for reasons which
I couldn’t give, but which were highly creditable to all parties. In
the end he agreed, and I saw it done. I had a pull on old Sloggett, for
I had known him ever since he owned a dissolute tug-boat at Delagoa
Bay.
Then Peter and I went ashore and swaggered into Lisbon as if we owned
De Beers. We put up at the big hotel opposite the railway station, and
looked and behaved like a pair of lowbred South Africans home for a
spree. It was a fine bright day, so I hired a motor-car and said I
would drive it myself. We asked the name of some beauty-spot to visit,
and were told Cintra and shown the road to it. I wanted a quiet place
to talk, for I had a good deal to say to Peter Pienaar.
I christened that car the Lusitanian Terror, and it was a marvel that
we did not smash ourselves up. There was something immortally wrong
with its steering gear. Half a dozen times we slewed across the road,
inviting destruction. But we got there in the end, and had luncheon in
an hotel opposite the Moorish palace. There we left the car and
wandered up the slopes of a hill, where, sitting among scrub very like
the veld, I told Peter the situation of affairs.
But first a word must be said about Peter. He was the man that taught
me all I ever knew of veld-craft, and a good deal about human nature
besides. He was out of the Old Colony—Burgersdorp, I think—but he had
come to the Transvaal when the Lydenburg goldfields started. He was
prospector, transport-rider, and hunter in turns, but principally
hunter. In those early days he was none too good a citizen. He was in
Swaziland with Bob Macnab, and you know what that means. Then he took
to working off bogus gold propositions on Kimberley and Johannesburg
magnates, and what he didn’t know about salting a mine wasn’t
knowledge. After that he was in the Kalahari, where he and Scotty Smith
were familiar names. An era of comparative respectability dawned for
him with the Matabele War, when he did uncommon good scouting and
transport work. Cecil Rhodes wanted to establish him on a stock farm
down Salisbury way, but Peter was an independent devil and would call
no man master. He took to big-game hunting, which was what God intended
him for, for he could track a tsessebe in thick bush, and was far the
finest shot I have seen in my life. He took parties to the Pungwe
flats, and Barotseland, and up to Tanganyika. Then he made a speciality
of the Ngami region, where I once hunted with him, and he was with me
when I went prospecting in Damaraland.
When the Boer War started, Peter, like many of the very great hunters,
took the British side and did most of our intelligence work in the
North Transvaal. Beyers would have hanged him if he could have caught
him, and there was no love lost between Peter and his own people for
many a day. When it was all over and things had calmed down a bit, he
settled in Bulawayo and used to go with me when I went on trek. At the
time when I left Africa two years before, I had lost sight of him for
months, and heard that he was somewhere on the Congo poaching
elephants. He had always a great idea of making things hum so loud in
Angola that the Union Government would have to step in and annex it.
After Rhodes Peter had the biggest notions south of the Line.
He was a man of about five foot ten, very thin and active, and as
strong as a buffalo. He had pale blue eyes, a face as gentle as a
girl’s, and a soft sleepy voice. From his present appearance it looked
as if he had been living hard lately. His clothes were of the cut you
might expect to get at Lobito Bay, he was as lean as a rake, deeply
browned with the sun, and there was a lot of grey in his beard. He was
fifty-six years old, and used to be taken for forty. Now he looked
about his age.
I first asked him what he had been up to since the war began. He spat,
in the Kaffir way he had, and said he had been having hell’s time.
“I got hung up on the Kafue,” he said. “When I heard from old Letsitela
that the white men were fighting I had a bright idea that I might get
into German South West from the north. You see I knew that Botha
couldn’t long keep out of the war. Well, I got into German territory
all right, and then a _skellum_ of an officer came along, and
commandeered all my mules, and wanted to commandeer me with them for
his fool army. He was a very ugly man with a yellow face.” Peter filled
a deep pipe from a kudu-skin pouch.
“Were you commandeered?” I asked.
“No. I shot him—not so as to kill, but to wound badly. It was all
right, for he fired first on me. Got me too in the left shoulder. But
that was the beginning of bad trouble. I trekked east pretty fast, and
got over the border among the Ovamba. I have made many journeys, but
that was the worst. Four days I went without water, and six without
food. Then by bad luck I fell in with “Nkitla—you remember, the
half-caste chief. He said I owed him money for cattle which I bought
when I came there with Carowab. It was a lie, but he held to it, and
would give me no transport. So I crossed the Kalahari on my feet. Ugh,
it was as slow as a vrouw coming from _nachtmaal_. It took weeks and
weeks, and when I came to Lechwe’s kraal, I heard that the fighting was
over and that Botha had conquered the Germans. That, too, was a lie,
but it deceived me, and I went north into Rhodesia, where I learned the
truth. But by then I judged the war had gone too far for me to make any
profit out of it, so I went into Angola to look for German refugees. By
that time I was hating Germans worse than hell.”
“But what did you propose to do with them?” I asked.
“I had a notion they would make trouble with the Government in those
parts. I don’t specially love the Portugoose, but I’m for him against
the Germans every day. Well, there was trouble, and I had a merry time
for a month or two. But by and by it petered out, and I thought I had
better clear for Europe, for South Africa was settling down just as the
big show was getting really interesting. So here I am, Cornelis, my old
friend. If I shave my beard will they let me join the Flying Corps?”
I looked at Peter sitting there smoking, as imperturbable as if he had
been growing mealies in Natal all his life and had run home for a
month’s holiday with his people in Peckham.
“You’re coming with me, my lad,” I said. “We’re going into Germany.”
Peter showed no surprise. “Keep in mind that I don’t like the Germans,”
was all he said. “I’m a quiet Christian man, but I’ve the devil of a
temper.”
Then I told him the story of our mission. “You and I have got to be
Maritz’s men. We went into Angola, and now we’re trekking for the
Fatherland to get a bit of our own back from the infernal English.
Neither of us knows any German—publicly. We’d better plan out the
fighting we were in—Kakamas will do for one, and Schuit Drift. You were
a Ngamiland hunter before the war. They won’t have your _dossier_, so
you can tell any lie you like. I’d better be an educated Afrikander,
one of Beyers’s bright lads, and a pal of old Hertzog. We can let our
imagination loose about that part, but we must stick to the same yarn
about the fighting.”
“_Ja_, Cornelis,” said Peter. (He had called me Cornelis ever since I
had told him my new name. He was a wonderful chap for catching on to
any game.) “But after we get into Germany, what then? There can’t be
much difficulty about the beginning. But once we’re among the
beer-swillers I don’t quite see our line. We’re to find out about
something that’s going on in Turkey? When I was a boy the predikant
used to preach about Turkey. I wish I was better educated and
remembered whereabouts in the map it was.”
“You leave that to me,” I said; “I’ll explain it all to you before we
get there. We haven’t got much of a spoor, but we’ll cast about, and
with luck will pick it up. I’ve seen you do it often enough when we
hunted kudu on the Kafue.”
Peter nodded. “Do we sit still in a German town?” he asked anxiously.
“I shouldn’t like that, Cornelis.”
“We move gently eastward to Constantinople,” I said.
Peter grinned. “We should cover a lot of new country. You can reckon on
me, friend Cornelis. I’ve always had a hankering to see Europe.”
He rose to his feet and stretched his long arms.
“We’d better begin at once. God, I wonder what’s happened to old Solly
Maritz, with his bottle face? Yon was a fine battle at the drift when I
was sitting up to my neck in the Orange praying that Brits’ lads would
take my head for a stone.”
Peter was as thorough a mountebank, when he got started, as Blenkiron
himself. All the way back to Lisbon he yarned about Maritz and his
adventures in German South West till I half believed they were true. He
made a very good story of our doings, and by his constant harping on it
I pretty soon got it into my memory. That was always Peter’s way. He
said if you were going to play a part, you must think yourself into it,
convince yourself that you were it, till you really were it and didn’t
act but behaved naturally. The two men who had started that morning
from the hotel door had been bogus enough, but the two men that
returned were genuine desperadoes itching to get a shot at England.
We spent the evening piling up evidence in our favour. Some kind of
republic had been started in Portugal, and ordinarily the cafes would
have been full of politicians, but the war had quieted all these local
squabbles, and the talk was of nothing but what was doing in France and
Russia. The place we went to was a big, well-lighted show on a main
street, and there were a lot of sharp-eyed fellows wandering about that
I guessed were spies and police agents. I knew that Britain was the one
country that doesn’t bother about this kind of game, and that it would
be safe enough to let ourselves go.
I talked Portuguese fairly well, and Peter spoke it like a Lourenco
Marques bar-keeper, with a lot of Shangaan words to fill up. He started
on curacao, which I reckoned was a new drink to him, and presently his
tongue ran freely. Several neighbours pricked up their ears, and soon
we had a small crowd round our table.
We talked to each other of Maritz and our doings. It didn’t seem to be
a popular subject in that cafe. One big blue-black fellow said that
Maritz was a dirty swine who would soon be hanged. Peter quickly caught
his knife-wrist with one hand and his throat with the other, and
demanded an apology. He got it. The Lisbon _boulevardiers_ have not
lost any lions.
After that there was a bit of a squash in our corner. Those near to us
were very quiet and polite, but the outer fringe made remarks. When
Peter said that if Portugal, which he admitted he loved, was going to
stick to England she was backing the wrong horse, there was a murmur of
disapproval. One decent-looking old fellow, who had the air of a ship’s
captain, flushed all over his honest face, and stood up looking
straight at Peter. I saw that we had struck an Englishman, and
mentioned it to Peter in Dutch.
Peter played his part perfectly. He suddenly shut up, and, with furtive
looks around him, began to jabber to me in a low voice. He was the very
picture of the old stage conspirator.
The old fellow stood staring at us. “I don’t very well understand this
damned lingo,” he said; “but if so be you dirty Dutchmen are sayin’
anything against England, I’ll ask you to repeat it. And if so be as
you repeats it I’ll take either of you on and knock the face off him.”
He was a chap after my own heart, but I had to keep the game up. I said
in Dutch to Peter that we mustn’t get brawling in a public house.
“Remember the big thing,” I said darkly. Peter nodded, and the old
fellow, after staring at us for a bit, spat scornfully, and walked out.
“The time is coming when the Englander will sing small,” I observed to
the crowd. We stood drinks to one or two, and then swaggered into the
street. At the door a hand touched my arm, and, looking down, I saw a
little scrap of a man in a fur coat.
“Will the gentlemen walk a step with me and drink a glass of beer?” he
said in very stiff Dutch.
“Who the devil are you?” I asked.
“_Gott strafe England!_” was his answer, and, turning back the lapel of
his coat, he showed some kind of ribbon in his buttonhole.
“Amen,” said Peter. “Lead on, friend. We don’t mind if we do.”
He led us to a back street and then up two pairs of stairs to a very
snug little flat. The place was filled with fine red lacquer, and I
guessed that art-dealing was his nominal business. Portugal, since the
republic broke up the convents and sold up the big royalist grandees,
was full of bargains in the lacquer and curio line.
He filled us two long tankards of very good Munich beer.
“_Prosit_,” he said, raising his glass. “You are from South Africa.
What make you in Europe?”
We both looked sullen and secretive.
“That’s our own business,” I answered. “You don’t expect to buy our
confidence with a glass of beer.”
“So?” he said. “Then I will put it differently. From your speech in the
cafe I judge you do not love the English.”
Peter said something about stamping on their grandmothers, a Kaffir
phrase which sounded gruesome in Dutch.
The man laughed. “That is all I want to know. You are on the German
side?”
“That remains to be seen,” I said. “If they treat me fair I’ll fight
for them, or for anybody else that makes war on England. England has
stolen my country and corrupted my people and made me an exile. We
Afrikanders do not forget. We may be slow but we win in the end. We two
are men worth a great price. Germany fights England in East Africa. We
know the natives as no Englishmen can ever know them. They are too soft
and easy and the Kaffirs laugh at them. But we can handle the blacks so
that they will fight like devils for fear of us. What is the reward,
little man, for our services? I will tell you. There will be no reward.
We ask none. We fight for hate of England.”
Peter grunted a deep approval.
“That is good talk,” said our entertainer, and his close-set eyes
flashed. “There is room in Germany for such men as you. Where are you
going now, I beg to know.”
“To Holland,” I said. “Then maybe we will go to Germany. We are tired
with travel and may rest a bit. This war will last long and our chance
will come.”
“But you may miss your market,” he said significantly. “A ship sails
tomorrow for Rotterdam. If you take my advice, you will go with her.”
This was what I wanted, for if we stayed in Lisbon some real soldier of
Maritz might drop in any day and blow the gaff.
“I recommend you to sail in the _Machado_,” he repeated. “There is work
for you in Germany—oh yes, much work; but if you delay the chance may
pass. I will arrange your journey. It is my business to help the allies
of my fatherland.”
He wrote down our names and an epitome of our doings contributed by
Peter, who required two mugs of beer to help him through. He was a
Bavarian, it seemed, and we drank to the health of Prince Rupprecht,
the same blighter I was trying to do in at Loos. That was an irony
which Peter unfortunately could not appreciate. If he could he would
have enjoyed it.
The little chap saw us back to our hotel, and was with us the next
morning after breakfast, bringing the steamer tickets. We got on board
about two in the afternoon, but on my advice he did not see us off. I
told him that, being British subjects and rebels at that, we did not
want to run any risks on board, assuming a British cruiser caught us up
and searched us. But Peter took twenty pounds off him for travelling
expenses, it being his rule never to miss an opportunity of spoiling
the Egyptians.
As we were dropping down the Tagus we passed the old _Henry the
Navigator_.
“I met Sloggett in the street this morning,” said Peter, “and he told
me a little German man had been off in a boat at daybreak looking up
the passenger list. Yon was a right notion of yours, Cornelis. I am
glad we are going among Germans. They are careful people whom it is a
pleasure to meet.”