The two waifs resumed their search for the Governor's dwelling with
feelings very different from those which had inspired them at the
beginning. Throughout the long, blistering morning they wandered about
the streets, timidly accosting any occasional passer-by whose appearance
suggested possibilities of kindness, but no one would take their
enquiries seriously. Some sent them purposely wrong, as one has seen
unfeeling persons send an ignorant native round a village on April
Fool's Day, carrying a paper with the legend: "Send the Fool on." Most
of the people they spoke to smiled and passed on; more than once Kanu
had to spring to one side to avoid a blow. He, poor savage, had a
continual dread of the whip hanging over his shuddering shoulders,
whilst cold and deepening despair lay like lead upon his blind
companion's breast.
And, truly, the appearance of the two was sufficiently _bizarre_ and
startling. Kanu, clad in a few tattered skins,--gaunt with famine, his
body and limbs scarred by brambles and his quaking soul glaring out
through his eyes,--his questions clothed in badly-broken Dutch and his
whole manner that of a wild beast at bay,--why, such a being had never
been seen in the city of Cape Town before.
Of the two, however, the blind girl was the more alarming object than
the Bushman, who made for her a most effective foil. Her face was pale
with the hue born of that fatigue and starvation against which her frail
body had been braced by a great resolve and a transcendent hope,--but
staring through this pallor was the bitter agony of disappointment and
fear. Her eyes, grown large and hollow, glowed deeply under the masses
of her hair. Her face had taken on a terrible beauty that seemed to
radiate calamity and despair.
Thus passed this day of tribulation, but it was late in the afternoon
before the full measure of their sufferings was attained. Elsie had
sunk exhausted on the pavement near an almost deserted street-corner.
Suddenly a noise of shouting was heard, and within a few seconds the
terrified waifs found themselves surrounded by a swarm of tormenting
street boys. Elsie sprang to her feet and clasped her hands around her
companion's sinewy arm. They stood close to the wall, and the boys
formed a half-circle before them. The crowd seemed ever to increase.
Although molested, neither was actually hurt. Now and then some bolder
urchin would jostle them and once or twice Elsie's hair was tugged at.
But it seemed as though the touch of the rich fibre had some strange
effect; each one who laid hands on it drew away at once, and slunk to
the outskirts of the crowd, as though ashamed.
They were rescued from this terrible predicament by three soldiers who
were evidently taking a stroll. These, seeing what was going on, laid
into the persecutors with their canes to such effect that the street was
soon clear. Kanu spoke to his rescuers, asking the old question, but
they could not understand his language, and passed on.
Kanu now tried to shape his course towards the harbour of the previous
night, trying to avoid the more frequented streets. But the instinct by
means of which the Bushman could find his way unerringly through the
desert spaces in the deepest darkness, was useless to him here, in an
unnatural environment. He had lost all perception of distance,
direction and locality.
But yonder, impassive above this scene of persecution and confusion,
towered the bastioned crags of the great mountain. This at least was a
wild, natural object Kanu turned towards it as a drowning man turns
towards an islet suddenly seen close at hand in a waste of waters, and
pressed up the steepening slope. The shouts of the horrible boys became
fainter and fainter as the waifs struggled up the rocky terraces. It
was sundown before they reached a rugged ledge at the foot of the main
precipice. Here were thick bushes and great irregular masses of rock
scattered formlessly about; between them the tough mountain grass was
thickly matted. Elsie sank to the ground and lay as if dead. She had
got beyond tears; even the sense of pain had nearly died in her.
Fortunately, Kanu still had his wallet, and in it was the piece of bread
which their kind entertainer had given them in the morning. There was a
bright trickle of cool water issuing from a cleft at the foot of the
cliff, and to this Kanu led the child after she had rested for a space.
She had been for some time dreadfully thirsty, although hardly aware of
the fact, and a drink of the cool water somewhat revived her. Then she
removed her shoes and stockings, and placed her feet on a stone where
the water splashed upon them. When Kanu placed a piece of bread in her
hand she began mechanically to eat it.
The site was suitable as a camping-place. It was hemmed in by a
loose-linked chain of great, irregular rocks, and, from the absence of
paths in the neighbourhood, was evidently not often visited by human
beings. Around were strewn soft cushions of moss and sheaves of waving
grass swayed from high tussocks. Dead wood from the fallen branches of
sugar-bushes lay about in considerable quantities. Kanu gathered a
number of these together and lit a fire at the back of the largest of
the rocks.
The weather was perfect. At the Cape, Spring performs her duties at the
time which chronologically ought to be Winter. Thus, by the time her
own proper season arrives, the flowers have already emerged to meet the
mild, cloudless, steadfast sky, which, where the ground lies at any
considerable elevation, scorches not by day nor chills by night. Thus,
the unthinking cruelty of man was, in the case of these derelicts, in a
measure compensated for by the careless kindness of the heavens.
"Kanu,--what shall we do?" asked Elsie at length, in a dejected voice.
"I do not know. It seems to be against the law down here to ask about
the Governor," replied the Bushman, reminiscent of the possibility of
the whip.
"Kanu,--have you seen the island where the prison is?"
"Yes,--it is far away across the water. If the water were land it would
take half a day to walk to it."
After some further discussion it was finally agreed that next day Kanu
was to leave Elsie on the mountain and continue his search for the
Governor's residence alone. So at break of day the Bushman stole down
the mountain side and continued his quest. At length he met one who
vouchsafed a reply to his question. This was a blind Hottentot beggar
whom he met being led by a little child to the street-corner where he
was wont to ply his trade.
"The Governor," replied the beggar, with an air of superiority, "lives
at Rondebosch, which is at the other side of the mountain, at this time
of the year. I know this, because my niece, who is a washerwoman and
washes for his coachman, told me so."
"Is it against the law to ask where the Governor lives?"
"No,--why should it be against the law?"
"Then one cannot be whipped for asking?"
"Whipped? no; what an idea. But there are many things a Hottentot can
get whipped for, all the same."
"What kind of things?" asked Kanu, starting.
"Oh, plenty; stealing, for instance, or getting drunk, or being found in
a garden at night. But who are you and where do you come from?"
Kanu was not prepared to answer on these points. However, he managed to
elicit some further particulars,--for instance that if he walked along
the main road he would pass the Governor's house on his right hand; that
the house had big pillars of stone before it; that two soldiers with red
coats and guns walked up and down in front of it night and day.
Kanu hurried away towards Rondebosch. Two things it was imperatively
necessary to do,--to locate the Governor's house, and to get something
for Elsie and himself to eat. He had left Elsie a small portion of
bread,--hardly enough to serve for the scantiest of breakfasts. His own
hunger was horrible. In spite of the tightening of his bark belt, which
now nearly cut into his skin--the Bushman tribal expedient for
minimising the pangs of famine--he was in agony. He passed the fruit
market and saw piles of luscious eatables that made his mouth water, and
the odour of which made him almost faint with longing. All this plenty
around him--whilst he and Elsie were starving. He hurried away, the
wild animal in him prompting to a pounce upon the nearest table, to be
followed by a bolt. He knew his legs were swift, but there were too
many people about and he would be sure to be caught. Stealing, he
remembered with a tingling of the shoulders, stood first in the old
beggar's category of deeds for which one might get whipped.
A thought struck him,--he would first locate the Governor's house, then
return and try, by following the course he had taken the first day, to
rediscover the dwelling of the charitable woman who kept the little
shop. But Rondebosch was on the other side of the mountain; would he be
able to go there and back without food? Well, there was nothing else to
be done. He would try it at all events.
But after he had walked a few hundred yards his hunger got the better of
him and he turned back and began to search for the woman's dwelling. He
reached the hotel with the wide stoep; from there he had no difficulty
in reaching the store which the waiter had pointed out to him as the
Governor's house. After this, however, he could no more unravel his way
among the unfamiliar lines of exactly-similar houses, than a bird could
find its way through a labyrinth of mole-burrows.
So the day drew to a close without Kanu obtaining any food. His own
agony of hunger had given place, for the time being, to a sick feeling
of weakness; it was Elsie's plight that now filled his thoughts. Food
he must have, so he decided to steal the first edible thing he saw and
trust to his swift running for escape. The whip was only a contingency,
albeit a dreadful one,--but the hunger was a horrible actuality. Kanu
made for the outskirts of the city and began to prowl about seeking for
food to steal.
In the valley between Table Mountain and the Lion's Head were the
dwellings of a number of coloured people of the very lowest class. Most
of the dwellings were miserable huts built of sacking and other rubbish,
and standing in small clearings made in the thick, primaeval scrub. In
the vicinity of some of these huts fowls were pecking about Kanu skirted
the inhabited part of the valley, marking, with a view to possible
contingencies, the huts near which fowls appeared to be most plentiful.
In a path near a hut which stood somewhat distant from any others, the
matchless eye of the Bushman discerned a well-grown brood of chickens,
evidently just released from parental tutelage. A swift glance showed
him how he might, unobserved, get between them and the hut. After
worming his way through the scrub he emerged close to the unsuspicious
poultry, into the midst of which he flung his stick, quick as lightning
and with practised hand. Two chickens lay struggling on the ground.
The others fled homeward, with wild cacklings.
Within the space of a couple of seconds Kanu had clutched the two
unhappy fowls, wrung their necks and wrapped them up in his tattered
kaross. Then he sprang aside, ran for a few yards and dropped like a
stone. A man and a boy came rushing up the pathway and then commenced
searching the thicket in every direction. Once the man passed within a
yard of the trembling Bushman, whose back began to tingle painfully.
However the danger passed, so after a short time he crept along through
the thicket to a safe distance, and then fled up to the mountain side to
where he had left Elsie.
Bitter was the poor child's disappointment when she heard that the
Governor did not live in Cape Town after all. However, Kanu was
sanguine now of being able to locate the dwelling they had so long and
so painfully sought for.
Kanu soon lit a fire and cooked the chickens, which proved tender and
toothsome. The Bushman ate hardly anything but the entrails. He lied
freely to Elsie in regard to the manner in which he had come by the
birds, and waxed nobly mendacious as to the amount of food which he
pretended to have enjoyed during the day.
Next morning Elsie's feet were still so much inflamed that she could
hardly put them to the ground. Kanu gave her the rest of the meat,--
which, as the chickens had been but small to begin with--came to very
little. Then he bade her farewell, promising to be back as early in the
afternoon as possible, and started on his way along the western flank of
the mountain to Rondebosch.
He crossed the high neck which connects the eminence known as "the
Devil's Peak" with Table Mountain. This name used then to cause great
scandal to the Dutch colonists,--the term being an unconscious
perversion by the English of the original name of "Duiven's," or
"Dove's" Peak. Then he descended the almost perpendicular gorge to the
thickets behind Groot Schuur, and soon found himself in the straggling
village of Rondebosch.
It did not take him long to find the big house with the tall stone
shafts before it, as described by the old beggar. His eye caught a
glint of scarlet through the trees,--yes, there were the two soldiers
walking up and down, armed with guns from the muzzles of which long
bright knives projected.
However, it was best to make sure, so he took up a position fronting the
house, but on the opposite side of the road. He saw people going in and
coming out, some in scarlet and some in wonderfully shiny black clothes.
Several people passed by, but they all looked too important for him to
accost. At length a miserable-looking coloured woman hobbled by and he
plucked up courage to address her:
"What are those two men walking up and down for?"
"Who are you that you don't know soldiers when you see them?"
"Are these soldiers;--and what are they doing here?"
"Taking care of the Governor, of course. That is his house."
At last. Well, he had found what he wanted, and there was nothing to do
now but to tell Elsie, and bring her out here as soon as her feet were
better.
But now that the excitement of the quest which had sustained him
hitherto was over, a sudden agony of hunger gripped his vitals like a
vice, and he felt that he must presently eat or die. Elsie, too! He
had only left her a bite of cold chicken. He would go and seek for more
prey. The whip was clean forgotten. Hunger--supremely agonising
hunger--held him by the throat. He would go and seek for more fowls.
There must be other places on the outskirts of the city where they were
obtainable. So Kanu started swiftly back along the main road to Cape
Town, with all his faculties concentrated upon fowls and the stealing
thereof.
It was early afternoon when he reached the outskirts of the city. The
sun shone oppressively; there was hardly a soul to be seen.
He passed a little shop, the proprietor of which,--a stout Malay, was
apparently sleeping under a small awning hung over the front to protect
the wares from the sun. A barrow, piled with cakes and other
comestibles, stood at his side. They were queer, outlandish-looking
eatables, such as Kanu had never seen before. The sight and the smell
made him wolfish. He looked up and down the street; not a soul was in
sight. He tightened his left arm against his side and let a fold of the
ragged kaross hang over it like a bag. Then he shuffled his feet on the
ground to test the slumber of the Malay, who gave no sign of observance.
Then he clutched as many of the cakes as his hands would hold, placed
them in his improvised bag, and hurried away on tip-toe. Just
afterwards a strong grasp compressed his neck and he was borne to the
ground. When he managed to turn his head he saw the enraged countenance
of the Malay glaring down upon him.
Kanu stood in the dock, looking like the terrified wild animal that he
was, and pleaded "guilty" to stealing the cakes. He had spent the night
in a foetid cell with a number of other delinquents who had been scummed
off the streets. The case attracted no particular attention, being one
of a class very common in, it may be supposed, every city.
The prisoner took some pains to explain to the bench how hungry--how
_very_ hungry he had been, and how he had found it impossible to pass by
the food after he had seen and smelt it.
The magistrate asked Kanu where he had come from and what he was doing
in. Cape Town. The reply came in the form of a long, rambling
statement which caused the minor officials to titter audibly, and the
obvious untruthfulness of which caused His Worship, to frown with
judicial severity. He had, come--the Bushman said--from a great
distance, but from what exact locality he begged to be excused from
saying. His business in Cape Town was "a big thing"; no less than an
interview with the Governor. If Mynheer would only let him go to seek a
companion who was waiting for him, and who must, by this time, be very
hungry indeed;--and would let him have a piece of bread--just one little
piece of bread no bigger than his hand, he would promise to return at
once.--And if Mynheer would let him and his companion be taken before
the Governor, Mynheer would soon see that the story he told was true.
Then he went on to say that he knew that he had done wrong in stealing
the cakes, and consequently he deserved punishment, but Mynheer must
please remember how hungry he had been, and how hungry his companion had
been, and not give him the whip. He had heard that "brown people" were
whipped in Cape Town if they stole, which was quite right if they stole
when they were not hungry. He had never stolen before; he had only
stolen this time because he could get nothing to eat, and had been
unable to find the Governor. Only two things he begged of Mynheer: to
let him go to his companion with a little piece of bread;--she had had
nothing to eat since yesterday morning, and must be very hungry now, and
frightened, for she had been alone all night. The other favour was that
Mynheer might spare him the whip.
By this time everyone in court,--except His Worship, who had no sense of
humour,--was almost convulsed with merriment at the quaint and guileful
fictions of the Bushman. Where, wondered carelessly some of the more
thoughtful, had this "_onbeschafte_" savage learnt to practise such
artful hocus pocus. It was, they thought, an interesting object lesson,
as proving the essential and hopelessly-mendacious depravity of the
Bushman race.
His Worship was "down on" vagrancy in all its forms. Probably, being
responsible for the good order of the city, he had to be. His official
harangue in passing sentence was not long, nor,--with the exception of
the last paragraph,--interesting, even to Kanu. This last paragraph
struck into the brain of the Bushman with a smart like that produced by
one of the poisoned arrows of his own race, for it sentenced him to
receive that whipping the dread of which had persistently haunted his
waking and sleeping dreams. In addition he was to be imprisoned for a
week--the greater portion of which had to be spent upon spare diet.
After this he had to leave the precincts of the city within twenty-four
hours, on pain of a further application of the lash.
Kanu, the Bushman thief, received his stripes dumbly, as a wild animal
should; but the bitter physical agony which he underwent when the cruel
lash cut through the skin of his emaciated body expressed itself in
writhings and contortions which, the prison warders said (and they spoke
from an extended experience), were funnier than any they had ever seen
before. The spare diet he did not so much mind, being well accustomed
to that sort of thing.
After the shock of his punishment, which had dulled every other feeling
for the time, had somewhat passed away, Kanu realised that by this time
Elsie must surely be dead, and he fell, accordingly, into bitter, if
savage, tribulation. But soon he found himself thinking, in quite a
civilised way, that it was better, after all, that the blind child
should be free from her sufferings. Then Kanu turned his face to the
wall of his cell and slept with inconsiderable waking intervals,
throughout the rest of his period of durance.
When he was released a throb almost of joy went through the Bushman's
untutored breast. Freedom, to the wild man, is as necessary as to the
sea-mew. He hurried from the gaol door and made his way up the side of
the mountain to where he had left Elsie eight days before, expecting to
find her lying white among the rocks, half-covered by her shining hair.
Bushmen, everyone says, have no hearts,--yet a spasm contracted the
throat of this Bushman as he neared the spot where he had left the blind
girl, which, in the case of a civilised man, would have been attributed
to an agony of grief.
But no trace of Elsie could he see. His keen, microscopic eye searched
the ground for a sign, but none was visible. The north-east wind had
blown; the swift springing of vegetation had affected Nature's
obliterative work--wiping away the faint traces of the tragedy from this
small theatre as completely as Time, with the assistance of lichens,
grass and a few others of Nature's busy legion, will finally obliterate
man with all his works and pomps.
No sign.--Stay,--there, floating on the slow, sweet stream of
sun-buoyant air, quivered a yellow thread,--bright as materialised
sunlight. It hung from the bough of a shrub upon which bright,
sweet-scented buds were struggling through between cruel-looking, black
thorns, and miraculously getting the best of the struggle. Kanu
carefully disentangled the precious filament, rolled it up into a
minute coil and put it into a little bag containing several
namelessly-unpleasant charms, which hung by a strand of twisted sinew
from his neck.
Swiftly the Bushman examined every nook and cranny in the vicinity, but
no other trace of the blind girl he had served so faithfully and
unselfishly could be found. Then his eyes began to swim with what in
the case of a European would certainly have been called tears, and his
throat tightened once more with the same sensation he had a few minutes
previously experienced.
Far away to the northward the great blue peaks of the Drakenstein glowed
and pulsed in the sunshine, while their hollows were dyed a more
wonderful purple than Tynan artificer ever took from the depths of the
Mediterranean. Beyond this range, albeit on the other side of an almost
interminable series of other ranges, seemingly as impassable, lay the
desert; and towards this Kanu the Bushman sighed his savage soul.
One more look round--lest, haply he might have left some sign unread or
some nook unsearched;--one more recurrence of the unaccountable (for a
Bushman) sensation in his throat, and Kanu set his face to the North,
and went forth for ever from the shadow of the dwelling-places of
civilised men.