It is raining outside my tent. It has rained for three days and nights, and
looks quite capable of raining for three days more; everything is simply
sodden. You try to look around you at the men's camps. At every step your
boots go up to the ankle, squelch, in the black mud. You slip as you walk,
and go down on your hands and knees in the slimy filth; that brings out all
the poetry in your nature. If you have had a Christian training in your
youth, you think of David dodging Saul, and your sympathies go out towards
the stupid king. The mud is everywhere; the horses have trodden it to slime
in many places, in others the feet of the soldiers have transformed it to
batter. Everything is cold, dreary, dismal; even the tobacco is damp, and
leaves a taste in a man's mouth like the receipt of bad news from home. I
look at the soldiers hanging around like sheep round a blocked-up shed in a
snow-storm, and I feel sympathetic. Their puttees are wet, and there is a
suggestion of future rheumatism in every fold that encircles their calves;
I can't see much more of them except their weather-beaten faces. They wear
their helmets and their blue-black overcoats, but both are wet. They don't
look happy, and the cause is not hard to find: they have slept out for
three nights without tents. Their blankets are like sponges that have been
left in a tub. Each blanket seems to hold about three gallons of water.
I arrived at this computation by watching the men wringing their bedding.
Two men got hold of a blanket, one at each end; they twist it different
ways, and the water runs out in a stream. The soldiers relapse into
language. Most of their adjectives have a decidedly pink tinge, and I
shouldn't wonder if they became scarlet if this sort of weather continued.
My nigger slops along through the slush and tells me that my lunch is
ready. He is not a happy-looking nigger by any means. A white man looks bad
enough in the mud and cold, but a nigger presents a pitiful spectacle. His
face goes whitish green, with an undercurrent of slatey grey running
through it. The brilliancy leaves the coal-black eyes, and they become as
lifeless and limp as a professional politician at a prayer meeting. The
mouth goes agape, the thick lips become flabby, and fall away from the
teeth. The mouth does not seem to fit the face, but hangs on to it like a
second-hand suit on a backyard fence. My nigger is no better, and no worse,
than the rest of them. He looks like a chapter in Lamentations, and is
about as much at home in the sodden camp as a bar of wet soap in a sand
heap. Just now he is good for nothing except to sing doleful hymns in a key
sad enough to frighten a transit mule away from a bag of mealies. When he
is not singing sadly he is quoting Scripture and thinking about his
immortal soul. When the sun comes out to-morrow and the day after, he will
be dancing a most unholy dance or be making love to "Dinah," filling in the
intervals by cursing in three different languages stray horses that steal
our fodder.
It is really astonishing what a difference the weather makes to the morals
of the South African nigger. Give him plenty of sunshine, and he forgets he
ever had a soul, and throws slabs of blasphemy, picked up from the Tommies
around him, with painful liberality. When he gets tired of English oaths,
he drops into Cape Dutch, and some of the curses contained in that language
are solid enough to hurt anything they hit. Later on he drifts into his
native tongue, raises his voice a couple of octaves, and streaks the
atmosphere with multi-coloured oaths, until you imagine you are listening
to a vocal rainbow. But take away the sunshine, give him a wet hide and a
wet floor to camp on, and he straightway becomes all penitence and prayer.
His face, peering out dismally between the upturned collar of his
weather-stained coat and the down-drawn brim of his battered hat, looks
like a soiled sermon, and he is altogether woeful.
When the weather is warm he decks himself out in any piece of gaudy finery
he can lay hands upon. He loves to wear a glaring yellow roll of silk or
cloth around his hat, a blue or green 'kerchief about his throat, and a
crimson girdle encircled about his loins. Then he thinks he is a midsummer
sunset, and swaggers round like a peacock in full plumage, looking for
something to "mash." He has no sense of the eternal law of averages. It
does not trouble him if the whole seat of his most important garment is
represented by a hole big enough to put a baby in, if he only has the
artistic decorations I have mentioned above. Nor does he see anything out
of the way in the fact that one of his feet is encased in an officer's top
boot and the other in a remnant of a Boer farmer's cast-off veldtschoon.
His soul yearns towards feathers. He will pluck a grand white plume from
the tail of an ostrich if he gets a favourable opportunity, and place it
triumphantly in his torn and soiled slouch hat, or he will pick up a
discarded bonnet from a dust pile and rob it of feathers placed there by
feminine hands, in order that he may look a black Beau Brummell.
His manners, like his morals, change with the weather. When the barometer
registers "fine and clear," you may expect a saucy answer if you rate him
for a late breakast; when it registers "warm, and likely to be warmer," you
may consider yourself lucky if you get a morning meal at all. But when it
indicates "hot," and the mercury still rising, you know that the time has
arrived for you to climb out of your coat and commence cooking for
yourself, unless you feel equal to the task of spreading a saucy nigger in
sections around the adjacent allotments. It is not always healthy to adopt
the latter plan, especially if your "boy" happens to be a Basuto or a Zulu.
Should he belong to either of those tribes, threaten him as much as you
like, but don't hurry to put your threats into practice; or the nigger may
do the scattering, and you may do the penitent part of the business. You
may bully him as much as you like when the barometer is falling, for then
the life is all out of him, and he has not sufficient spirit left in him to
resent any sort of insult.
Even "Tommy" knows this, and on a cold day will call a big Zulu servant by
a name which implies that the Zulu's father and mother were never legally
married. The Zulu will only smile dismally, and tell "Tommy" that he will
pray for the salvation of his soul. Three days later, when the air is
dancing in the heat-rays, if Mr. Atkins, emboldened by former success,
repeats the speech, the Zulu will rise and confront him with blazing eyes,
showing at the same time a wide range of beautiful white teeth, set in a
savage snarl, and give Mr. Atkins a choice of titles which it would be hard
to improve upon even in a Dublin dockyard, and he will not be slow to back
his mouth with his hands should the argument become pressing, as more than
one of her Majesty's lieges have found out to their deep and lasting
humiliation.
When a combination of rain and religion has depressed him the nigger
servant is one of the most abject-looking mortals that ever wore clothes,
and makes as sad a spectacle as a farmyard fowl on a front fence in a
thunderstorm. But he must not be judged altogether by his appearance on
such occasions. He can be loyal to his "boss," and when fit and well he
will fight when roused as a devil might fight for the soul of a deacon. He
loves to ride or drive a horse, but he is not fond of horses, as I
understand the term. He has no idea of making a pet of his charge. A horse
is to him merely something to get about upon, and he cannot understand our
fondness for our equine friends. I have noticed the same trait in the Boer
character. To a Boer a horse is usually merely a means of transit from spot
to spot; not a comrade, not a companion. I was not astonished to find this
feeling amongst the niggers, because I have noticed it among the natives in
every colony in Australia, and even amongst such inveterate horsemen as the
Sioux Indians of America and the Maories of New Zealand; but I was
surprised to note how little sympathy existed between the Boer and his
equine helper.
The nigger servant is a sporting sort of party, and never loses an
opportunity to indulge his tastes in this direction. I had an excellent
chance the other day to note how fond he is of a bit of hunting. We had
camped before sundown in a rather picturesque position, and I was watching
the effect of the declining sun on the gloomy kopjes, when I noticed a
commotion in all the camps, in front, at the rear, and on both flanks. In
ten seconds every nigger in the whole camp had deserted his work and was
frantically dashing out on to the veldt. They uttered shrill cries as they
ran, and every man had some sort of weapon in his hand, either a tomahawk,
a billet of wood, or a rock. With marvellous celerity they formed a huge
circle, though what they were after was a puzzle to me. I fancied for
awhile that one of their number must have run "amuck," and the rest meant
to send him to slumber. Quickly they narrowed the circle, the whole body of
them moving as if linked together and propelled by unseen mechanism. When
the circle got about the third the size of an ordinary cricket ground I saw
what they were after. A brace of hares had caught their eyes, and this was
their method of capturing the fleet-footed, but stupid, "racers of the
veldt." First one nigger and then another detached himself from the circle,
and, darting in, had a shy at the quarry with whatever missile he had with
him. If he missed--and a good many of them missed--the speedy little bit of
fur, he returned crestfallen to the circle again, amidst jeers and laughter
from the rest. The hares darted hither and thither in that ever narrowing
circle of foes, until a couple of well-aimed shots, one with a rock as big
as a cricket ball, and one with a tomahawk, laid them out, and they became
the prize of the successful marksmen. The nigger "boy" has to be paid one
pound a week and his "scoff," and, taking him all in all, in spite of his
faults, which are many, I verily think he earns it.