OTTER GIVES COUNSEL
When the burial was finished and Thomas Outram slept his last sleep
beneath six feet of earth and stones, his brother took out the
prayer-book that Jane Beach had given him, which in truth formed all
his library, and read the funeral service over the grave, ending it by
the glare of the lightning flashes. Then he and Otter went back to the
cave and ate, speaking no word. After they had done their meal Leonard
called to the dwarf, who took his food at a little distance.
“Otter,” he said, setting the lantern between them, “you are a faithful
man and clever in your way. I would tell you a story and ask you
something. At the least,” he added to himself in English, “in such a
matter your judgment is as good as mine.”
“Speak on, Baas,” said the dwarf; “my ears are open;” and he squatted
down on the further side of the lantern like some great toad, watching
his master’s face with his black eyes.
“Otter, the Baas who is dead and I journeyed to this country about
seven years ago. Before we came here we had been rich men, chiefs in
our own place, but we lost our kraals and cattle and lands; they were
sold, others took them and we became poor. Yes, we who were fat grew
lean as trek oxen at the end of winter. Then we said to each other,
‘Here we have no longer any home, the shame of poverty has come upon
us, we are broken vessels, empty men of no account; also we are chiefs
by blood, and here we cannot let ourselves out to labour like the
common people, lest both the common people and the nobles should make a
mock of us. Our great stone kraal that has been ours for many
generations is taken from us, others dwell in it, strange women order
it, and their children shall move about the land. We will go away.’”
“The blood is the blood,” broke in Otter, “the wealth is nothing; that
comes and goes, but the blood is always the blood. Why did you not
gather an impi, my father, and put these strangers to the spear and
take your kraal again?”
“In our land this may not be, Otter, for there wealth is more than
race. So we should have been brought to still greater shame. Riches
alone could give us back our home, and we had none left. Therefore we
swore an oath together, the dead Baas and I, that we would journey to
this far country and seek to win wealth that we might buy back our
lands and kraal and rule over them as in past years, and our children
after us.”
“A good oath,” said Otter, “but here we should have sworn it otherwise,
and there would have been a ringing of steel about that kraal, not the
chink of yellow iron.”
“We came, Otter, and for seven years we have laboured harder than the
lowest of our servants; we have travelled to and fro, mixing with many
peoples, learning many tongues, and what have we found? The Baas yonder
a grave in the wilderness—I the food that the wilderness gives, no
more.”
“A poor wage so far,” said Otter. “Ah! the ways of my people are more
simple and better. A red spear is brighter than the red gold, yes, and
it is more honest.”
“The wealth is unwon, Otter, and I have sworn to win the wealth or die.
But last night I swore it again to him who lies dead.”
“It is well, Baas; an oath is an oath and true men must keep it. But
riches cannot be gathered here, for the gold, most of it, is hid in
those rocks that are far too heavy to carry, and who may charm gold out
of the rock? Not all the wizards in Zululand. At the least you and I
cannot do it alone, even should the fever spare us. We must trek, Baas,
and look elsewhere.”
“Listen, Otter, the tale is yet to tell. The Baas who is dead dreamed
before he died, he dreamed that I should win the gold, that I should
win it by the help of a woman, and he bade me wait here a while after
he was dead. Say now, Otter, you who come of a people learned in dreams
and are the child of a dream-doctor, was this a true dream or a sick
man’s fancy?”
“Nay, Baas, who can tell for sure?” the dwarf answered; then pondered a
while, and set himself to trace lines in the dust of the floor with his
finger. “Yet I say,” he went on, “that the words of the dead uttered on
the edge of death shall come true. He promised that you should win the
wealth: you will win it by this way or that, and the great kraal across
the water shall be yours again, and the children of strangers shall
wander there no more. Let us obey the words of the dead and bide here
awhile as he commanded.”
Seven days had passed, and on the night of the seventh Leonard Outram
and Otter sat together once more in the little cave on Grave Mountain,
for so they named this fatal spot. They did not speak, though each of
them was speaking after his own fashion, and both had cause for
thought. They had been hunting all day, but killed nothing except a
guinea-fowl, most of which they had just eaten; it was the only food
left to them. Game seemed to have abandoned the district—at least they
could find none.
Since his brother’s death Leonard had given up all attempt to dig for
gold—it was useless. Time hung heavy on his hands, for a man cannot
search all day for buck which are not. Gloom had settled on his mind
also; he felt his brother’s loss more acutely now than on the day he
buried him. Moreover, for the first time he suffered from symptoms of
the deadly fever which had carried off his three companions. Alas! he
knew too well the meaning of this lassitude and nausea, and of the
racking pain which from time to time shot through his head and limbs.
That was how his brother’s last sickness had begun.
Would his own days end in the same fashion? He did not greatly care, he
was reckless as to his fate, for the hard necessities of life had left
him little time or inclination to rack himself with spiritual doubts.
And yet it was awful to think of. He rehearsed the whole scene in his
mind again and yet again until it became a reality to him. He saw his
own last struggle for life and Otter watching it. He saw the dwarf
bearing him in his great arms to a lonely grave, there to cover him
with earth, and then, with a sigh, to flee the haunted spot for ever.
Why did he stop to die of fever? Because his brother had bidden him to
do so with his dying breath; because of a superstition, a folly, which
would move any civilised man to scorn.
Ah! there was the rub, he was no longer a civilised man; he had lived
so long with nature and savages that he had come to be as nature makes
the savage. His educated reason told him that this was folly, but his
instinct—that faculty which had begun to take the place of educated
reason with him—spoke in another voice. He had gone back in the scale
of life, he had grown primitive; his mind was as the mind of a Norseman
or of an Aztec. It did not seem wonderful to him that his brother
should have prophesied upon his dying bed; it did not strike him as
strange even that he should believe in the prophecy and act upon it.
And yet he knew that in all probability this obedience would result in
his own death.
Those who have lived much with nature will in some degree be familiar
with such sensations, for man and nature are ever at variance, and each
would shape the other to its ends. In the issue nature wins. Man boasts
continually of his conquests over her, her instincts, her terrors, and
her hopes. But let him escape from out his cities and the fellowship of
his kind, let him be alone with her for a while, and where is his
supremacy? He sinks back on to her breast again and is lost there as in
time to be all his labours shall be lost. The grass of the field and
the sand of the desert are more powerful than Babylon; they were before
her, they are after her; and so it is with everything physical and
moral in their degrees, for here rules a nurse whom we human children
must obey at last, however much we may defy her.
Thus brooded Leonard as he sat, his hands in his pockets and an empty
pipe between his teeth. Their tobacco was done, and yet he drew at the
pipe, perhaps from habit. And all the while Otter watched him.
“Baas,” he said at length, “you are sick, Baas.”
“No,” he answered, “that is, perhaps a little.”
“Yes, Baas, a little. You have said nothing, but I know, I who watch.
The fever has touched you with his finger, by-and-by he will grip you
with his whole hand, and then, Baas——”
“And then, Otter, good night.”
“Yes, Baas, for you good night, and for me, what? Baas, you think too
much and you have nothing to do, that is why you grow sick. Better that
we should go and dig again.”
“What for, Otter? Ant-bear holes make good graves.”
“Evil talk, Baas. Rather let us go away and wait no more than that you
should talk such talk, which is the beginning of death.”
Then there was silence for a while.
“The truth is, Otter,” said Leonard presently, “we are both fools. It
is useless for us to stay here with nothing to eat, nothing to drink,
nothing to smoke, and only the fever to look forward to, expecting we
know not what. But what does it matter? Fools and wise men all come to
one end. Lord! how my head aches and how hot it is! I wish that we had
some quinine left. I am going out,” and he rose impatiently and left
the cave.
Otter followed him. He knew where he would go—to his brother’s grave.
Presently they were there, standing on the hither edge of a ravine. A
cloud had hidden the face of the moon, and they could see nothing, so
they stood awhile idly waiting for it to pass.
As they rested thus, suddenly a moaning sound came to their ears, or
rather a sound which, beginning with a moan, ended in a long low wail.
“What is that?” asked Leonard, looking towards the shadows on the
further side of the ravine, whence the cry seemed to proceed.
“I do not know,” answered Otter, “unless it be a ghost, or the voice of
one who mourns her dead.”
“We are the only mourners here,” said Leonard, and as he spoke once
more the low and piercing wail thrilled upon the air. Just then the
cloud passed, the moonlight shone out brilliantly, and they saw who it
was that cried aloud in this desolate place. For there, not twenty
paces from them, on the other side of the ravine, crouched upon a stone
and rocking herself to and fro as though in an agony of despair and
grief, sat a tall and withered woman.
With an exclamation of surprise Leonard started towards her, followed
by the dwarf. So absorbed was the woman in her sorrow that she neither
saw nor heard them. Even when they stood close to her she did not
perceive them, for her face was hidden in her bony hands. Leonard
looked at her curiously. She was past middle age, but he could see that
once she had been handsome, and, for a native, very light in colour.
Her hair was grizzled and crisp rather than woolly, and her hands and
feet were slender and finely shaped. At the moment he could discern no
more of the woman’s personal appearance, for the face was covered, as
has been said, and her body wrapped in a tattered blanket.
“Mother,” he said, speaking in the Sisutu dialect, “what ails you that
you weep here alone?”
The stranger let drop her hands and sprang up with a cry of fear. As it
chanced, her gaze fell first upon the dwarf Otter, who was standing in
front of her, and at the sight of him the cry died upon her lips, and
her sunken cheeks, clear-cut features, and sullen black eyes became as
those of one who is petrified with terror. So strange was her aspect
indeed that the dwarf and his master neither spoke nor moved; they
stood hushed and expectant. It was the woman who broke this silence,
speaking in a low voice of awe and adoration and, as she spoke, sinking
to her knees.
“And hast thou come to claim me at the last,” she said, addressing
Otter, “O thou whose name is Darkness, to whom I was given in marriage,
and from whom I fled when I was young? Do I see thee in the flesh, Lord
of the night, King of blood and terror, and is this thy priest? Or do I
but dream? Nay, I dream not; slay on, thou priest, and let my sin be
purged.”
“Here it seems,” said Otter, “that we have to do with one who is mad.”
“Nay, Jâl,” the woman answered, “I am not mad, though madness has been
nigh to me of late.”
“Neither am I named Jâl or Darkness,” answered the dwarf with
irritation; “cease to speak folly, and tell the White Lord whence you
come, for I weary of this talk.”
“If you are not Jâl, Black One, the thing is strange, for as Jâl is so
you are. But perchance it does not please you, having put on the flesh,
to avow yourself before me. At the least be it as you will. If you are
not Jâl, then I am safe from your vengeance, and if you are Jâl I pray
you forget the sins of my youth and spare me.”
“Who is Jâl?” asked Leonard curiously.
“Nay, I know not,” answered the woman, with a sudden change of manner.
“Hunger and weariness have turned my brain, and I spoke wandering
words. Forget them and give me food, White Man,” she added in a piteous
tone, “give me food, for I starve.”
“There is scant fare here,” answered Leonard, “but you are welcome to
it. Follow me, mother,” and he led the way across the donga to the
cave, the woman limping after him painfully.
There Otter gave her meat, and she ate as one eats who has gone hungry
for long, greedily and yet with effort. When she had finished she
looked at Leonard with her keen dark eyes and said:
“Say, White Lord, are you also a slave-trader?”
“No,” he answered grimly, “I am a slave.”
“Who is your master then—this Black One here?”
“Nay, he is but the slave of a slave. I have no master, mother; I have
a mistress, and she is named Fortune.”
“The worst of mistresses,” said the old woman, “or the best, for she
laughs ever behind her frown and mingles stripes with kisses.”
“The stripes I know well, but not the kisses,” answered Leonard
gloomily; then added in another tone, “What is your errand, mother? How
are you named, and what do you seek wandering alone in the mountains?”
“I am named Soa, and I seek succour for one whom I love and who is in
sore distress. Will my lord listen to my tale?”
“Speak on,” said Leonard.
Then the woman crouched down before him and told this story.