Between Sun and Sand: A Tale of an African Desert

William Charles Scully

"Between Sun and Sand"

"A Tale of an African Desert"

Preface.

Lest the account given in this book of the “trekking” springbucks should be considered an exaggeration, it may be mentioned that in 1892, when the author held the appointments of Civil Commissioner for Namaqualand and Special Magistrate for the Northern Border of the Cape Colony, he was obliged to issue a hundred stand of Government arms to the Boers for the purpose of driving back the game which threatened to overrun those parts of Namaqualand where ground is cultivated. As it was, there was some difficulty in repelling the invasion.

The term “Bushman,” strictly speaking, only applies to the diminutive former inhabitants of the Desert, who are now practically extinct to the south of the Orange River. The Trek-Boer, however, usually calls every Hottentot of low stature a Bushman.

Chapter One.

The Land of the Trek-Boer.

Immediately to the south of the great Orange River for three hundred arid miles of its course before it sinks through the thirsty sands, or spooms in resistless torrent into the Atlantic Ocean, lies a region of which little is known, in which dwell people unlike any others in South Africa, or possibly in the world.

This region is known as Bushmanland—the name having reference to its former inhabitants who, proving themselves “unfit,” were abolished from the face of the earth. Bushmanland is at present intermittently inhabited by a nomadic population of Europeans of Dutch descent, who are known as “Trek-Boers.” To “trek” means, literally, to “pull,” but its colloquial significance is—to move about from place to place.

The Trek-Boers are, so to say, poor relations of the sturdy Dutchmen who have done so much towards reclaiming South Africa from savagery. The conditions under which they live are not favourable to moral or physical improvement.

These people are dwellers in tents and beehive-shaped structures known as “mat-houses,” a form of architecture adopted from the Hottentots. The latter are constructed of large mats made of rushes strung upon strands of bark or other vegetable fibre, and are stretched over wattles stuck by the larger end into the ground in a circle, the diameter of which may vary from fifteen to twenty-five feet, and which have the thin ends drawn down over each other until a dome is formed. Such structures are lighter and more portable than the lodges of the North American Indians—in fact one may easily be erected and pulled down within five minutes. Strange to say they are almost completely water-tight.

A wagon and a couple of tents or mat-houses constitutes the camp and castle of the Trek-Boer. He has never known anything else in the shape of a dwelling; it satisfies all his architectural aspirations, it fulfils his ideal of comfort in a tenement, and he harbours contempt for any structure which cannot be moved about to suit the convenience or caprice of its owner.

The Trek-Boer owns no land. He wanders with his flocks and herds over the vast, unsurveyed tract which is all the world to him, following the uncertain courses of thunderstorms which happen to have been deflected from their ordinary beat and strayed across the desert. The rain from these intermittently fills the shallow, cup-like depressions in the underlying rock with water. Such depressions are invariably choked with sand, but by digging at certain known spots a scanty supply of water may sometimes be obtained.

The Trek-Boer occasionally becomes rich in flocks and herds, but every eight or ten years the inevitable drought occurs. Then his stock dies off from thirst and starvation, and he has to begin the world again, a poor man.

The Trek-Boer is a being sui generis. He is usually ignorant to a degree unknown among men called civilised. He is untruthful, prejudiced, superstitious, cunning, lazy, and dirty. On the other hand he is extremely hospitable. Simple as a child in many things, and as trusting where his confidence has once been given, he cannot be known without being loved, for all his peculiarities. The desert life, which has filled the Arab with poetry and a sense of the higher mysteries, has sapped the last remnant of idealism from the Trek-Boer’s nature, and left him without an aspiration or a dream. The usual lack of fresh meat and the absence of green vegetables as an item in his diet, has reacted upon his physique and made him listless and slouching in gait and deportment, as well as anaemic and prone to disease. This is especially true of his womankind, who, besides being extremely short-lived have, as a rule, lost nearly all pretensions to beauty of face or form.

Bushmanland might be described as a desert, the aridity of which is tempered by occasional thunderstorms. Its bounds begin immediately to the eastward of the rugged mountain chain which runs parallel with the coast-line, about eighty miles inland, and it stretches on for hundreds of miles until merged with the central Karoo plains. These also form its indefinite boundary to the southward. It is, for the most part, almost absolutely level. To the northward, however, a chain of mountains, occasionally very lofty, arises. For stern, uncompromising aridity, for stark, grotesque, naked horror, these mountains stand probably unsurpassed on the face of the globe. Composed of deep brown granite, with here and there immense veins, or patches many miles in extent, of jet-black, shining ironstone, they absorb the torrid sunshine all day, becoming almost red-hot in the process. At night this heat is radiated rapidly at high sunlight power, until the furnace of midnight becomes like an ice-house at dawn.

The only vegetation to be found among these mountains is a species of deadly Euphorbia—formerly much used by the Bushmen in poisoning their arrows—and a few stunted shrubs which are rooted deep down in the crannies, and which put forth a little timid foliage in the cooler season. The only animals are “klipspringers”—antelopes very like the chamois in form and habit; leopards which prey upon these; badgers, wild cats, jackals of several kinds, an occasional hyaena, desert mice, snakes, gorgeously hued lizards and fierce tarantulas. A few large brown hawks hover above the gloomy gorges and wake weird and depressing echoes with their shrill screams.

To the north of this almost impenetrable region the great “Gariep”—the “Yellow River” of the Hottentots—now called the “Orange” in honour of a former Stadtholder of the Netherlands, has carved out a gorge for its devious course, thousands of feet in depth. Allowing for its many and abrupt windings, this gorge, from the point at which the river hurtles into it over an obstinate stratum of rock at what is known as the Augrabies Falls, must be over four hundred miles in length. The greater part of this gorge is unexplored, being totally inaccessible.

Like the Nile, the Orange River drains an immense area of fertile country which is subject to heavy summer rains. It flows down in a raging, brimming flood, which is charged with rich alluvium, during several months of the year. Unlike the Nile, it has carved for itself a deep and narrow channel, through which it hurls its fertilising load with resistless momentum into the ocean which needs it not. Under different circumstances its valley might have been the cradle of another civilisation, and another Sphinx, of Hottentot or Bantu physiognomy, might have stood, gazing through forgotten centuries, across the waste of Bushmanland.

No more dreary prospect can be imagined than that afforded by Bushmanland in its normal condition of drought. After rain, however, it turns for a few short weeks into a smiling garden. This is especially the case around the northern and western margins where, among the rocky kopjes forming the fringe of the plain, gorgeous flowers cover the ground with vivid patches of colour, and climb and trail over the grey stones. This combination always suggests to the traveller a skull crowned with flowers. The stark rocks, blasted by aeons of burning sunshine, are always in evidence, and the wanton luxuriance of the garlands seem to mock at and accentuate their death-like rigour.

The grass with which the greater part of the plain is covered grows in thick shocks some thirty inches in height, from raised tussocks about six feet apart. In dry weather the fibre of the grass crumbles away in dust and the tussock turns black. After rain, however, the new blades shoot out with marvellous rapidity, and the Desert becomes a sea of waving plumes, which are tinted a beautifully delicate green. Between the tussocks spring up flowers of marvellous colour, scent, and form. It has been libellously affirmed that the flowers of the Desert have no scent. It is true that in the hot, midday glare all are more or less scentless, but in the early morning or when the afternoon cools the heliophilas, the pelargoniums, the many species of lily, and others too numerous to particularise, often make the Desert a veritable “scented garden.”

The great plain is almost absolutely treeless. Only in one or two localities are a few acacias found. These are of very large size. They are called “Camel-thorns,” for the reason that the camelopard was fond of browsing upon their foliage. Amongst the branches are often found the enormous nests of the sociable grosbeaks, sometimes ten feet in diameter. These nests are veritable cities—inhabited by countless numbers of birds. Woe betide the exhausted hunter who seeks the deceitful shade of these trees, for the ground beneath is full of the dreaded “sampans,” which bury themselves in the flesh and cause serious injury.

In the fringe of kopjes grow immense aloes (Aloe dichotoma—probably closely allied botanically to the almost extinct “Dragon Tree” of Teneriffe). These sometimes reach a height of sixty feet, and may measure twenty feet around their ridged and gnarled trunks. This tree is locally known as the “koekerboom,” or “quiver-tree,” a reminiscence of the fact that the Bushmen used to remove the fibrous wood from a section of a bough and utilise the cylinder of tough bark as a quiver for their poisoned arrows. The koekerbooms are believed to be of immense age; the oldest Trek-Boers will point to small trees growing close to their favourite camping-places, and tell you that they have not sensibly increased in size in upwards of half a century. Their appearance is extremely belated and archaic.

Running through Bushmanland from north-east to south-west is a curved ridge which is known as the “Jacht Bult,” or “hunt-ridge,” from the plentifulness of game upon it. This ridge rises so gradually from each side that its very existence is not apparent except for a few minutes at morning and evening—and then only if one happens to be on the top of it. Here occurs a curious phenomenon; for, just as the sun is touching the western horizon, if one looks eastward he will be startled at seeing half of the immense plain shrouded in almost complete darkness. The illusion is due to the western plain being flooded with sunlight whilst from the other the sunlight is suddenly and completely cut off. When the sun sinks the illusion vanishes and the eastern plain appears to be no darker than the western. At sunrise these conditions are, of course, reversed.

This region is the home of the “springbuck,” which still survives in countless myriads. After a large “trek,” as the annual migration of these animals across the Desert is called, has taken place, the wake of the host looks like an irregularly-ploughed field. Every vestige of vegetation is beaten out by the small, sharp, strong hoofs. It seems at such times as if all the springbucks in the Desert were suddenly smitten by a mad desire to collect and dash towards a certain point.

The springbucks as a rule live without drinking. Sometimes, however—perhaps once in ten years—they develop a raging thirst, and rush madly forward until they find water. It is not many years ago since millions of them crossed the mountain range and made for the sea. They dashed into the waves, drank the salt water, and died. Their bodies lay in one continuous pile along the shore for over thirty miles, and the stench drove the Trek-Boers who were camped near the coast far inland.

The oryx, or, as it is called in South Africa, the “gemsbok,” is still to be found in considerable numbers in the vicinity of the great and almost inaccessible sand-dunes which encroach into the desert at several points along its northwestern margin. The gemsbok manages to live without drinking water, finding a substitute in a large, succulent root which grows in the driest parts of the dunes, and which the animal digs up from deep in the sand with its hoofs. A few hartebeests are also to be found. Immense wild bustards, or, as they are called, “paauws,” come over from the Kalihari Desert in large flocks. From the same place the desert grouse, which strongly resembles the sand-grouse of Central Asia, throng over in countless myriads. These collect around the open water-places every morning when the sun begins to sting. One dip of water they must have. If the sportsman is hard-hearted enough to remain close to the water-hole, they circle round and round uttering their plaintive cry in a myriad-voiced chorus of strange twitterings. Should the day be hot and no other water obtainable in the neighbourhood—as is often the case—they will drink at one’s very feet. From their cry the colloquial name of “kalkivain” is derived.

In hot weather one may trace the zigzag spoor of many a yellow cobra across the sands. By day these creatures remain underground among the mouse-burrows—for they could not live upon the scorching sand—but at night they wander far and near. The horned adder—identical in species with the “worm of old Nile” with which Cleopatra eased herself of her burthen of life—abounds at the roots of the small shrubs and grass-tussocks, where it burrows into the sand to escape the heat, or when hibernating.

Above all, however, Bushmanland is the home of the wild ostrich. Here, in spite of the number of their enemies, human or other, these noble birds are still to be found in considerable numbers. Their booming note heard at night across the waste strongly suggests the distant roar of a hungry lion. When one thinks of the number and ingenuity of the ostrich’s enemies one wonders that any still exist. Around every nest that one finds are sure to be several jackals and white crows. The jackal rolls the eggs about by butting them with his nose, and thus dashes, them against each other until they break; the white crow carries stones up into the air and drops them from a height among the eggs, smashing them and befouling the nest with what it is unable to gorge of the contents of the shell; the prowling Hottentot, or half-breed, will follow for days on the spoor until he finds the nest and rifles it.

This region was once the favourite haunt of the Bushman, and long after that unhappy race had disappeared from other parts it here maintained itself. At every water-place may still be seen the polished grooves in the rocks wherein they sharpened their arrows and bone skinning-knives; fragments of their rude pottery lie thickly strewn around. Mixed with the latter may be found, sometimes in considerable quantities, the broken weapons of stone which belonged to a still older race, and which, perhaps, was driven from the face of the land by the Bushmen, as we have driven the latter, and as we ourselves may be driven by some race developing a “fitness” superior to our own.

These water-places would thus seem to be of immense antiquity, and the inference suggests that the climatic conditions of this end of the African continent have not changed appreciably for ages.

The names of a few of these places in the Bushman tongue still survive. Some are very suggestive, and indicate that the Bushman was not totally devoid of sentiment. The following are specimens of local Bushman topography: “Place of Bleeding,” “Withered Flower,” “Eggshell Cheeks,” “Reed-Possessor,” “Take-away-from-me-what-I-have-gained,” “Place-where-you-may-dig-out-a-little-pot-of-water.”

The Bushman used poisoned arrows. He obtained the poison usually from three distinct sources, namely, the poison gland of the puffadder, the black tarantula, and the deadly euphorbia which grows in the river gorge. These he mixed in a paste and smeared upon the sides of his arrow blade. This poison is extremely deadly in its effects, but it works far more rapidly in the system of a ruminating animal than in that of a man. The Bushman could also, however, run game down by sheer fleetness of foot—running until blown and then handing the chase over to another hunter who had posted himself upon the course which, by instinct, he had known the animal would most likely take.

The ostrich was the Bushman’s favourite and most profitable quarry. Dressed in the plumes of a former victim he would stalk into the midst of a troop and lay its members low one by one. When he found a nest he would pierce the ends of each egg and blow out the contents. Then, after carefully washing out the shell, he would fill it with water and close up each aperture with a wooden peg. The shell would be buried deep in the sand against contingencies of drought. By some secret sign the members of each clan would know the exact spots where water had thus been buried by their friends, and thus often avoid death by thirst when travelling or hunting.

The Bushman was the true Ishmaelite; he was bound to be eliminated. As a matter of fact there is no room for a Bushman and any one else in any given area, no matter how large.

In the region described the Bushmen have left no record in the shape of paintings on the rocks, which are so common in other parts. This may perhaps be accounted for by the porous nature of many of the low krantzes in which the caves they occupied are situated. It may be, however, that the plants from which their pigments were obtained do not grow in this arid region.

When rain has fallen freely, as it occasionally does, the Trek-Boers flock into Bushmanland from its fringe, upon which they are always hanging. A few weeks of dry weather, however, suffices to dry up the moisture from the shallow, sand-clogged basins, and the country once more becomes a solitude.

For some natures this region possesses a deep and abiding charm. The fresh, crisp air of early morning; the peace which sinks like a benediction upon the wearied earth when the scorching sun has fallen from the sky, and the sand gives off its heat in rapid radiation; the sense of immensity made manifest in the wide, wide plains by day, and in the almost supernaturally bright skies at night; the booming of the ostriches, the bellowing of the rutting springbucks; the queer, snarling yelp of the jackals and the “tshok-tshok” of the paauw as it shakes out its plumes to the rising sun—and who can define the vivid delight which these have brought? Who that has ever been fortunate enough to experience it can recall without a quickening pulse the mad gallop for miles across the plains after a herd of gemsbok, or the fierce rapture of meeting the noble brute at bay, and slaying the only animal of the antelope tribe that has heart enough to face a lion?

It is among the dwellers of this region that the scene of the following tale is laid. These people have but few ideas, and a vocabulary of little more than three hundred words to express these ideas in. The Bible is the only book they ever read, and of that they do not understand more than half the sense. In all essentials, however, they are of the same mould as other men. They live and love, hate and die, in very much the same manner as do other human creatures. It is in the incidentals that the reader may find some difference between these people and the dwellers in more fortunate climes.

Chapter Two.

The Patriarch of Namies.

There was only one camp at Namies (pronounced “Namees”), for all the wells but one had run dry. It was somewhat early in summer, and as yet no thunderstorms had visited the immediate neighbourhood. The camp consisted of a wagon with a fore-and-aft canvas hood, or, as it is called in South Africa, a “tent.” On either side of it stood, respectively, a mat-house and a square tent. The particular Trek-Boer who was the owner of this establishment was a somewhat distinguished specimen of his class. Old Schalk Hattingh had, like his father before him, lived his life upon the fringes of the Bushmanland Desert. Tall and corpulent, with a long, silvery-white beard, he spent his days sitting in a big, cushionless, wooden chair. This chair would, according to the weather, be placed either just inside or just outside the mat-house. His legs had become too weak to sustain his large body, so he was only able to walk with the assistance of a long, strong Stick, which never was out of the reach of his hand. In the coldest weather he wore no warmer clothing than a shirt of unbleached calico—always open at the throat, and thus revealing a large area of red skin—a cheap and very thin corduroy coat, a pair of breeches, much too short for him, of tanned sheepskin, and a jackal-skin cap. These clothes he invariably slept in; in fact, the tradition as to when he had last taken them off had been long since lost. On his extremely large feet he wore “veldschoens” of his own make. Socks he would have looked upon as a criminal luxury; pocket-handkerchiefs he had never used in the whole course of his life. Winter and summer he sat, drinking weak coffee all day long, smoking strong tobacco at intervals, and continually expectorating in all directions.

Namies was his headquarters, and had been so for nearly forty years. His well was the best there. Even that, however, ran dry during the early part of summer about once in three years, and he would then shift his camp to some more fortunate spot. But he was always the last to leave and the first to return. No one ever dreamt of camping upon Old Schalk’s favourite spot or taking possession of his well, yet to these he had no special right which could be legally enforced.

Old Schalk was a well-known character, and was looked upon as a patriarch and an oracle by the Trek-Boers for hundreds of miles around. He had been a famous man in his day, and could tell interesting, semi-veracious anecdotes of adventures with Bushmen, lions, and other things—predatory or preyed upon. He had never seen a village in his life, excepting the adventitious assemblages of the Trek-Boers. He was known to be a hard man at a bargain, and extremely avaricious; nevertheless he was poor. A few years previous to the period at which this tale opens he had been rich in flocks and herds. Then came the inevitably recurring drought, this time one of exceptional severity. The sheep and goats became thinner and thinner, until they were too weak to go abroad and seek for pasturage. They lay on the sand all day long, eyeing piteously the troughs to which their diminishing dole of water was lifted from the well by the creaking derrick. At last the maddened cattle flung themselves down the well, and their ruined owners were hardly able to drag themselves to the arid banks of the Orange River down the sand-choked gorge at Pella. Here was at least water to drink.

Old Schalk, like most of his neighbours, found himself a poor man. Since the famine he had managed to get a little stock together again, but he was in debt to several Jew hawkers, and had some difficulty in keeping his head above water.

He held the appointment under Government of Assistant Field Cornet. It was his duty in this capacity to report all crimes to the Special Magistrate, to arrest criminals, and to hold inquests in cases of deaths by violence in regard to which there was no suspicion of foul play. This office gave him a certain position among the Trek-Boers and added considerably to his influence.

Old Schalk’s wife was only a few years younger than himself, but, as is especially the case with Boer women, she looked much older. His special grievance against Providence was that Mrs Hattingh had lived so long, and thus kept him out of the enjoyment of the charms of younger women.

“There is my brother Gert,” he would say in moments of confidence, and without considering whether his wife were present or not, “he has now married his third wife; Willem only the other day lost his second; Jan, who is fifteen years younger than I, buried his first wife only five months ago and is going to marry a fine young girl at the next Nachtmaal—and here I am still sitting with my old ‘Bogh’,”—a word which may be freely translated as “frump.”

From Old Schalk’s point of view he undoubtedly had a grievance, for one rarely meets an old Boer—and more especially a Trek-Boer—who has not been married several times.

Mrs Hattingh never appeared to be hurt by such outbursts against unpropitious Fate. She had no intention of dying just yet; sentiment was to her unknown, and she had always taken life philosophically.

“Ja,” she would sometimes rejoin, “it is true that I am an old ‘Bogh,’ but there’s not a woman in Bushmanland who can sew karosses as well as I; and if it had not been for the money you got from the Jews for those I made from the skins of the sheep that died in the drought, you would not have any stock to-day.”

“Ja; that is true,” Old Schalk would grudgingly admit.

“And you would be a fine one to follow a young wife about and keep her in order; with those legs you could not walk the length of the trek-chain.”

Old Schalk always resented any reference to his unserviceable legs, so his wife usually had the last word at these discussions.

The junior members of the Hattingh family consisted of two granddaughters and a grand-niece. The sons and daughters of the camp had married and were scattered over the fringe of the Desert. The three girls were orphans. The two granddaughters were tall, listless-looking girls, with dark hair and eyes, and that transparent and unhealthy complexion which sometimes gives a fugacious beauty and is often found in young women whose diet does not embrace a sufficiency of green vegetable food. Their chests were hollow, their shoulders drooped, and they looked incapable of taking much interest in anything. Their ages were respectively, eighteen and nineteen; their names—Maria and Petronella.

Their cousin, Susannah, was a girl of a different type. She was small of stature, well built, and had a keen and alert look. Her features were strongly marked, her eyes and hair were black, and the redness of her lips was rendered more striking by the pallor of the rest of her face. Her movements were distinguished by an energy which was in striking contrast to the listlessness of the other girls. She suggested a well-favoured squirrel among a family of moles. Her features had a strongly Jewish cast. Although not much admired by the young Boers with whom she came in contact—probably because she did not reach their standard of stoutness—she would have been in other surroundings considered a very pretty girl. There was some mystery in connection with her parentage which gave rise to whisperings among the women. It was, however, certain that she was the daughter of one of Old Schalk’s nieces.

The spot known as Namies is marked by a few stony, irregular kopjes which lie like a small archipelago in the ocean-like waste of the Bushmanland Desert, not far from its northern margin. The highest of these kopjes is less than four hundred feet above the general level of the plains; a circle two miles in circumference would enclose them all. They are formed of piles of granite boulders, between which grow a few hardy shrubs and koekerbooms.

Chapter Three.

Max.

Max Steinmetz stood in the doorway of the little iron shanty at Namies, which was built near the foot of a kopje about three hundred yards from the Hattingh camp. Above his head was a signboard bearing the legend: “Nathan Steinmetz, Allegemene Handelaar.” (General dealer.) He looked out over the wide, wide Desert and watched the smoke-like courses of the violent gusts against which a thunderstorm was labouring from the north-east. The unsavoury odour of half-dried hides assailed his nostrils; the ramshackle iron roof rattled to the blasts over his head. The season was February, and the tortured plains glowed with absorbed heat like Milton’s burning marl.

Over the intermittent moaning and howling of the wind could be heard, at intervals, the mutterings of thunder. The Desert now became a roaring blast-furnace, fanned by the sand-laden gusts which raged fiercer and ever fiercer. Max closed the door and barred it from the inside. A few gouts of rain began to thud on the roof. Then a jagged shaft of lightning shot from the zenith, shattered itself into coruscating splinters against some tempest-packed sheaf of air, and seemed to fill the universe with a blinding blaze. At the same instant the winds were stunned by a crash so awful that the solid earth reeled from the shock. Then came the rain in dense, white, lashing waves, and in a few moments the wide plain became a hissing sea.

The storm-cloud rolled away as quickly as it had come, leaving only a few torn wisps of fleecy cloud to mark its wake. Through these the purified sky seemed to open in vaults of azure that pierced the infinite. For a short time the sun flooded the plain with gold and rubies; then it sank, and the cool, quickening evening died in peaceful splendour in the transfigured west.

The storm over, Max opened the door and stepped outside. His first glance was towards the Hattingh camp. Then he brought a chair and a book out of the shop and sat down where, pretending to read, he could look over the top of the page in the same direction. Soon afterwards Susannah came out of the mat-house and superintended the lighting of a fire by the Hottentot maid in the kitchen-scherm, the bushes of which, scattered by the storm, had been rearranged. She had discarded her cappie, and her luxuriant black hair was blown about by the moist breeze. She gave one hurried glance towards the shop and then stood with her back towards it. Max saw this and, in his inexperience, felt saddened.

Max had a face which, had Raphael seen it through the bars of the Ghetto gate at Rome, would have made him take pains to secure the young Jew as a model. It was one of those faces which one only—and that but very rarely—sees in the youth of Israel. Its shape was a pure oval. The skin was a clear olive, and the eyes were large, dark, and melting. His jet-black hair clustered over a broad, low forehead, and his full, red lips were arched like the bow of the Sun-God. As yet the stress of trade had not awakened the ancestral greed which would one day dominate his blood and modify his physiognomy. Small in stature and of perfect symmetry, he did not give one the idea of possessing either strength or activity; in feet he looked like a languorous human exotic who had strayed from the canvas of some “Old Master” whose brush was dedicated to physical beauty. His age was twenty-one, but he looked several years younger.

Max was a clerk at a very small salary in the employ of his brother Nathan. The business was a paying one, but the carrying of it on involved extremely hard work. Nathan spent most of his time in moving about from camp to camp among the Trek-Boers and the half-breeds who dwelt among the saltpans in the central and southern portions of the Desert. He travelled with a small, strong cart, which was drawn by six hardy but debilitated-looking donkeys. His practice was to leave Namies with a load of hucksters’ merchandise and to return, generally about two months afterwards, with a quantity of ostrich feathers. The Desert abounded in wild ostriches which, although protected by law, were ruthlessly hunted down for the sake of their feathers. There was, of course, a certain risk of discovery involved, and this would have been followed by heavy penalties, but Nathan was prepared to take this risk for the sake of the large profits which he made. The feathers of the wild ostrich fetch a much higher price than those of the domesticated bird. In many of the waste places of South Africa the protecting law is often but a name. Nathan knew that the risk of his being convicted was very small. Just now he was absent upon a trip, but his return was daily expected. In the meantime Max had charge of the store.

Nathan and Max were orphans, and had been brought up by an uncle—a pawnbroker of the East End of London. Their parents were German Jews who had settled in England. They had no brothers or sisters. Eight years previously the uncle had given Nathan a hundred pounds and sent him to the Cape to seek his fortune. Four years afterwards Max followed. In the meantime Nathan had made a little money as a “smouse,” or hawker. With Max’s assistance he was able to extend his operations considerably. For the first two years the younger brother had worked without any salary; then, at the instance of the uncle, who made particular inquiries upon the point, Max was given a small stipend.

Chapter Four.

Spring’s Idyll.

The next day was a dream of delight. The evaporation from the sand counteracted the heat of the sun, and the pungent air was full of germinating energy. Cool, gentle breezes awoke now and then, wandered vaguely to and fro, and then laid themselves down to rest, rising anon to play in a circle of mimic whirlwinds. Old Schalk sat in the doorway of the mat-house with his feet in the sun and the large Bible open upon his knees. The combination of Old Schalk and an open Bible meant either that he was in extremely good humour and felt at peace with all mankind and in general harmony with his environment—or else the direct reverse. In the former case he would usually have the volume open at the Song of Solomon; in the latter, at the 109th Psalm. To-day he prayed, although he knew it not, for his heart was lifted up in involuntary thankfulness and appreciation of the feast which was so lavishly spread around him. His happiness was even beyond the terms of his favourite Psalms, which he knew off by heart—even the numbers of the great lyric poets of Israel seemed to fall short of the music which Nature was making upon his worn heart-strings.

Mrs Hattingh was sitting boiling soap inside the kitchen-scherm, her failing eyes rendered more than usually red and rheumy by the steam arising from the acrid lye. She, too, felt the benign influences with which the Desert was rich; the labour she was engaged in was not as irksome as usual. As she broke the bushes into the soap-pot she might have been a rapt sorceress brewing a love-philtre, or a priestess sacrificing at the shrine of the God of Cleanliness.

Maria and Petronella were sitting on the wagon-box crooning a weird song in a minor key. They felt sleepy and happy, for Mother Nature had a word for them too. It was a word very softly spoken, and in a language which they did not yet fully understand, but it made them dream vague, sweet dreams. Susannah heard the voice, and, low as it was spoken, it awoke her and she hearkened to it. She, too, failed to understand the words, but the cadences were sweet and seemed to be full of an infinite promise.

Nature, in her spring guise, has to do her work in the Desert, when she does it at all, in a hurry. There the seasons do not follow the regular course. At the end of her summer revel in other southern lands she sometimes suddenly bethinks her that away to the northward she has been for long neglectful of her duties, so she flies to the arid plains, where perhaps the very traces of her footprints have been long since forgotten. Then with a sudden dower of riches she tries to make amends for her forgetfulness; she tarries for a few sweet, pregnant hours, and the ardours and burgeonings of a season are consummated in one delicious day.

Susannah felt the rapid sap of sudden springtime rise in a sweet storm to her heart and to her brain. It seemed to her as though she had wings, and she longed to fly out over the infinite waste and beyond the blue, mysterious haze in which it merged with the horizon in a sapphire ring. The highest of the little group of kopjes stood just at the back of the camp, and her senses bounded at the thought of climbing quickly to the summit and thus getting so much nearer the sky. A tall koekerboom which stood on the very top quivered in the wind, and every cluster of leaves at the ends of its dichotomous branches seemed to beckon to her to come.

She climbed into the wagon, opened the camphor-wood box in which she kept her limited wardrobe, and selected her best dress. This was a cheap print, delicately flowered, and of soft hues. It thus afforded a pleasing contrast to the gaudy and crudely coloured habiliments of her cousins. After she had put it on one might have seen that the dress fitted her neat figure like a new glove. Her ample hair she rolled into a knot, but, after a moment’s consideration, she uncoiled it again and shook it back over her shoulders. Then she put on a “cappie” made of print of the same pattern as her frock. A cheap necklet of coral completed her toilet. She clasped this hurriedly about her throat as she sprang to the ground from the back of the wagon. She panted with desire to get away to the high peak where the solitary koekerboom, which had defied the sun for centuries, stood beckoning to her, and any delay was a pain. She sped away among the aromatic shrubs that clustered among the impassive granite rocks on the side of the kopje, and the brown stones she trod on seemed to be as buoyant as the air that filled her veins with ecstasy. In a few minutes she had gained the top of the kopje, when she sank down in pleasant exhaustion at the foot of the hoar-ancient koekerboom.

As she ascended the kopje the breeze freshened, and the stiff, awkward branches of the archaic tree seemed to be seized with excitement unfitting its age and experience; it beckoned violently, and until Max, who was standing at the door of the shop, saw not alone its signal, but the flutter of the delicately flowered print dress which at that moment was rippling against its gnarled knees.

Max hurriedly locked the shop and sped up the side of the kopje towards the antiquated tree, which now seemed to have fallen asleep, so still it was. Schalk Hattingh’s was the only camp then at Namies, and as Nathan had given strict injunctions that the Hattinghs were to have no more credit, nothing was to be lost in respect of their custom. Max would, he told himself, be able to descry any approaching customers from the top of the kopje.

Susannah heard the nearing footstep. She had now taken off her cappie, and was lying back between two of the shapeless roots which were continuations of flanking buttresses thrown out by the tree towards the north-east, from whence the storms had been trying to uproot it—probably ever since the days when the galleys of Pharaoh passed down the Red Sea and returned to Egypt through the Pillars of Hercules. The girl arose into a sitting posture and turned towards the boy a face flushed with exercise and eyes liquid with delight. Max put out his hand in mute greeting, and she clasped it silently. Then he threw himself on the ground at her feet.

These two had for some time attracted each other. On Max’s side the attraction had lately begun to ripen into something very like love. But of this as yet he was unaware. To-day the universe seemed to breathe of music, the boughs of the old tree and the granite rocks were as the strings of a sounding harp, touched by the wind as a plectrum.

Spring, in a graciously capricious moment, resolved to crown her holiday with an idyll. Max arose and held out his hand to the girl. She took it, and he drew her gently to her feet. They wandered on together with scanty, broken speech and averted eyes, through lately arid nooks and hollows made sweet and full of the promise of verdure by yesterday’s rain. The faint-green spear-points of strange vegetation were already piercing the brown earth; quaint beetles crawled out from under the stones and beat their soft “tok-tok-tok” on the ground, signalling to prospective mates; lizards of a deeper and more vivid blue than anything else in Nature’s storehouse, sunned themselves on the rocks, panting with enjoyment.

They came to a flowering mass of gethyllis—that strange plant the curled leaves of which wind out their spirals in winter to catch the dewdrops and conduct them down their tube-like channels to the deep-underground bulb, which waits until the fiercest sun of summer shines before it sends up its lovely, tulip-like cup of snowy white or vivid crimson. The luscious scent filled the air and caused a faint, delicious intoxication. They bent over the blossoms and began gathering them. In doing this their hands met by accident and they started apart suddenly, thrilling with unknown confusion.

Their faltering speech died away altogether, and they more than ever avoided each other’s gaze. After retracing their steps for a short distance they again paused. The vague horizon seemed to become of absorbing interest. Each felt to blame for the abashment of the other, and both seemed to drink of a cup of humiliation. The old tree waved sympathetically over them its topmost branches, in which the wind seemed to waken a sigh.

Careless Nature, to bring them together, sacrificed a life. She sent a message down through a cleft in the rock against which Susannah was dejectedly leaning, and called from the depths where it had long been sleeping a poisonous red centipede. The creature crawled down over the girl’s shoulder and endeavoured to enter her sleeve at the wrist. Then Max saw it. He sprang forward in a spasm of terror, brushed the centipede aside with his hand; not, however, before it had given him a venomous nip. In an instant he had crushed the life out of the creature with his foot; then, with an exclamation of pain, he turned towards the girl. His hand was already beginning to swell. Susannah tore a piece off the curtain of her cappie and began to bind up the injury. As she did so she came so close that she leant slightly against Max. Then the opportunity triumphed over the pain—he passed his arm around her, drew her to him, and kissed her on the quivering lips.

The centipede and its sting were soon forgotten. Nature held them, embraced and embracing, for a blissful eternity; they saw the face of happiness smiling in the rosy gloom under Love’s wing.

The koekerboom became wrapped in a whirlwind of excitement, its gaunt boughs swayed until they clashed, and the sap rose in its slowly beating heart until the yellow buds which a few of its less mature twigs had put forth tentatively, as though half ashamed of such frivolity, burst open and sent forth a faint shower of pollen, which fell like a spangling of gold-dust upon Susannah’s hair.

As they paced away, hand in hand, a small army of fierce desert ants were dragging away the still writhing body of the centipede to their underground storehouse. Nature, so very lavish in large matters, is extremely economical in trifles.

Chapter Five.

Gert Gemsbok.

Gert Gemsbok prowled along the bank of the Orange River and bent an attentive eye upon the brimming flood. The great stream, swollen by the summer rains in far-off Basutoland, sped roaring down the rapids just above the Augrabies Falls, over which it would plunge into that mysterious, unexplored gorge through which its secret way lay for some four hundred miles to the Atlantic Ocean. Brown with the gleanings of tens of thousands of square miles of loamy hill and dale swept by furious thunderstorms, clogged with the detritus gathered from flooded flat and spate-ravaged kloof, foul with the rubbish from many a distant mining camp on the banks of its tributary, the Vaal, the torrent swept irresistibly on with a growling roar, the might of which could not be realised without receding for some distance from the bank. Then it would be felt that the air was filled with continuous thunder and that the very earth shuddered with the throbbings of this mighty artery, as the body of a man quivers after unwonted effort.

Flotsam and jetsam abounded in every cranny of the bank and on the down-stream side of every point and headland. Strange objects might be here and there seen—broken packing-cases, dead cattle, sheep, and goats, pumpkins, skins, and old rags. In every bay of still water lay an unsavoury jumble. Gert examined the swollen carcases one by one in the almost vain hope of finding one not too decomposed to eat.

Walking upstream he crossed a promontory covered with scrub. Behind this lay an inlet in the bank which was filled by a slow swirl generated by a rapid immediately above. He paused and cast his eye over the different objects which were slowly circling round and round. One of these soon riveted his attention: it was a rough wooden framework superimposed upon a strong raft, on which was stretched the body of a man dressed in European clothing. Gert walked round the bend of the inlet until he reached a convenient spot on its opposite face. His practised eye recognised this as the place where the object of his scrutiny would most probably ground or come close enough to the bank to be caught hold of, if necessary. Having reached the spot in question, he sat down on a willow stump and waited. The wooden raft with its gruesome burden kept for some time circling slowly round and round the pool, but Gert noticed that at each revolution it seemed to sweep in a little nearer the bank. He began to note the details. The body was that of a very tall man with a full, red beard. He was dressed in a grey flannel shirt, which being slightly open at the throat, revealed a brawny chest covered with russet hair. The nether limbs were clad in moleskin trousers and strong, thick-soled boots such as miners often wear. The feet and arms were securely bound to the sides of the framework.

At length the raft caught against a submerged stump. To this it hung for a moment; then it heeled over and swayed itself loose, and the current washed it slowly against the bank, where it grounded at the watcher’s feet.

The body was horrible to look upon; the eyes were sunken out of sight or had decomposed away—the flesh was livid. The wrists were cut by the cords that bound them, showing that the man had been bound living upon the raft. Into the flesh of his forehead the letter “V,” about an inch in length, had been cut. Gert waded into the water up to his waist and paused close to the horrible object. His feet were sore from constant wanderings over the stony mountains, and he coveted the dead man’s boots. Conquering his repugnance, he drew his knife and severed the laces. Then he pulled the boots off and flung them high on the bank behind him. After pausing for a few seconds he searched the trouser pockets, but found that they contained nothing. As he did this he averted his eyes from the dead face. His search over, he waded along the shore towards the outside limit of the inlet, where the current was strong, drawing the raft after him. Launched forward with his full strength, the raft was caught by the current and swirled out into the mid-stream, where it passed from view into the confused mass of wave-tossed rubbish.

Gert then climbed up the bank and returned to where he had flung the boots. Upon examining these he found that the layers of leather forming the sole of one were gaping widely at the side. He tried to press the layers together, but found that he could not do so owing to the presence of some object which had evidently been inserted between them. He pulled this out and found it to be a piece of rag in which was wrapped a diamond as large as a hazel-nut. Searching farther, he found that in each boot holes had been scooped out in the thick mass of leather above the outer layer, and diamonds inserted. He found six altogether—three in each boot. The stones were pure white, and of that peculiar crystallisation which characterises the gems found on the banks of the Vaal River, as distinguished from those found in what are known as the “dry diggings.”

Gert looked at the shining gems as they lay upon his hand and marvelled exceedingly. He knew right well that the stones were diamonds, for he had worked for a year in the Kimberley mine. He also knew that the law forbade him to have such things in his possession, and that if caught with them he would be liable to severe punishment. Yet here, he thought, was the means of attaining riches; surely there must be some way of turning to account the prize which he had honestly obtained? With a spasm of exultant dread he slipped the stones into his skin wallet. Then he placed a heavy pebble into each of the boots and flung them as far as he could into the stream. He sat in thought for a few moments; then he retraced his steps, down-stream, to a spot where had been deposited the only half-decomposed carcase of a goat which he had raked out of the flood. This he shouldered and carried up the rocky gorge in which the cave was situated, in which he dwelt with his mother and his wife.

By this time the wooden raft with its dread enigma had been whirled down the rapids and dashed to pieces over the Augrabies Falls. What dread tragedy had resulted in the voyage of this ark with its single gruesome passenger upon the bosom of the brown flood through the scorched Desert—what terrible act of crime or retribution had sent this sign to be revealed for an instant to the startled ken of a prowling savage, will probably never be explained until all mysteries are unlocked!

Gert Gemsbok, the Koranna Hottentot, was a remarkable man. In the rebellion of the Griqua and Koranna Clans, which broke out upon the northern border of the Cape Colony in 1879, he had taken a prominent part. Captured with arms in his hands and identified as having led a certain band of rebels which was concerned in some serious depredations, he was sentenced by the Special Court to a severe flogging and a long term of imprisonment. He served the first part of his sentence at the Breakwater Convict Station, Cape Town, but was afterwards transferred to one of the Diamond Mining Compounds at Kimberley. Upon his discharge he took service as a labourer at the mines, with the view of making sufficient money to enable him to return half-way across the continent to the Desert which he loved, and somewhere within the indefinite bounds of which he hoped to find traces of his family. He attained his object; he found his old mother and his wife living close to Namies in Bushmanland, in great misery from want, and suffering from incurable disease. His two children were dead. The two women were unwholesome and in every way unpleasant to look upon, besides being almost helpless, but Gert, no less than they, was happy in the reunion.

Having still a few pounds left from his earnings at the diamond fields, he bought a few articles of clothing for the two women from a wandering hawker. Then the problem as to how they were to exist loomed up. Gert could easily get work among the Trek-Boers, as a shepherd, but how was he to support the two helpless women out of his earnings, which only amounted to eight fat-tailed sheep per annum? The thing was almost impossible, but he succeeded in doing it.

Soon, however, he again fell upon evil days. This time he suffered for righteousness’ sake. The Hottentots are, probably, the most untruthful race under the sun, but this Hottentot invariably made a point of telling the truth, and misfortune fell upon him in consequence. A certain Trek-Boer named Willem Bester was charged with a serious crime before the Special Magistrate for the Northern Border. Gert, unfortunately for himself, had been a witness to the act, and was, accordingly, called upon to give evidence. Instead of sensibly lying, and thus exonerating the accused, who was related to his master, poor Gert injudiciously told the truth. As a result Bester was convicted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. The consequences were disastrous to the veracious exception to the rule of his race. He was dismissed from his employment and turned adrift. He tried to obtain service everywhere, but found that he was boycotted—driven away with contumely from every Trek-Boer’s camp at which he applied.

So the three miserable beings wandered about the Desert from water-place to water-place, digging for “veld-kost”—the generic name by which the many species of edible bulbs, leaves, and tubers with which the fringe of the Desert abounds, are known. In the short and adventitious spring, when the leaves appearing through the sand indicated the proper spots to dig at, life was comparatively easy, but after the northern winds had scorched away the herbage it was only by a bitter struggle that body and soul could be kept together. Each year, when the Orange River came down in flood, the three wretched creatures would occupy a cave close to its southern bank just above the Augrabies Falls. Here, especially when the rains had been very heavy in the Orange Free State or the upper reaches of the Vaal River, they used to reap a rich harvest of garbage.

Six years of this life had passed prior to the finding of the mysterious corpse and the diamonds.

The cave was an oval chamber in the sheer granite wall in which the flank of a mighty mountain ended. The floor was of dry sand, and there was no drip from the smoke-stained roof to cause inconvenience. Here it was cool in the hottest weather, and when the cold eastern winds shrieked in arid wrath down the black gorges, the three waifs lay snug and warm. The furniture of the cave consisted of a few miserable skins, two or three earthern pots of native make, a bow and a quiverful of poisoned arrows, and a few blunted iron spikes, the latter being used in the root-digging operations. A musical instrument, which will hereafter be described, completes the inventory.

Gert was an old man. His limbs were half-crippled by rheumatism, and his sight had begun to weaken. The Hottentots are a thin-skinned race, and flogging is to them a very terrible punishment. Gert had never fully recovered from his experience of the lash. Had his physical vigour been greater he might have been able to kill game from time to time, especially when the trek-bucks crossed the Desert. As things were, his hunting never yielded him more than a few snakes and lizards and an occasional jackal. On very rare occasions he managed to get a shot at a klipspringer antelope; only, however, after lying in wait for hours at a time in a red-hot rock-cleft, on the faint chance of the bucks being startled in one of the hollows and running past him on their way to the next. But these waitings were usually unsuccessful and he could not afford to lose the time which they took up.

Gert Gemsbok reached the cave with his unsavoury burthen. This he flung down on the ground outside, for its stench would have made the air of the cave unbearable. It was bad enough to have to eat such stuff without breathing it as well. Having skinned the leg of the carcase he cut up some of the meat and put it into one of the pots. From a crevice in the wall he took out a handful of strong-smelling herbs; these he broke up and added to the stew with the object of deadening the effluvium.

After supper he related his adventure to the two women. The mother was half in her dotage, and had almost reverted to the animal in the course of the years of misery which she had lived through. The wife became wild with excitement at the idea of once more having money and being able to purchase longed-for luxuries. She tried to persuade Gert to start at once on a journey across the Desert to Kenhardt for the purpose of realising his property and obtaining coffee, sugar, and tobacco. The memory of these things, none of which had been tasted for years, continually tantalised her. Gert, however, mindful of former experiences, had no intention of placing himself within the power of the law again.

The old woman had originally come from Great Namaqualand; she belonged to the Bondleswartz Clan. She was continually urging her son to remove to the land of her birth; but this he could never be persuaded to do. He always clung to the hope of being able to remove to some civilised locality where coffee and tobacco would be obtainable.

One mitigation of all this misery existed. This Hottentot was an artist, carrying in his heart a spark of that quality which we call genius, and which might be called the flower that bears the pollen which fertilises the human mind, and without which the soul of man would not exist, nor would his understanding have sought for aught beyond the satisfaction of his material senses. Gert Gemsbok was a musician. His instrument was of a kind which is in more or less common use among the Hottentots, and which is known as a “ramkee.” The ramkee is very like a banjo rudely constructed. In the hands of a skilful player its tones may be pleasing to the ear. One peculiarity of the performance is that a great deal of the fingering—if one may use the term—is done with the chin. There are usually four strings, but some instruments contain as many as seven.

In Gert Gemsbok’s ramkee the drum was made from a cross section of an ebony log, which had been hollowed out with infinite labour until only a thin cylinder of hard, sonorous wood was left. Across this was stretched the skin of an antelope, and inside were several layers of gum—this for the sake of enriching the tone. The bridge was the breast-bone of a wild goose; the strings were made of the sinews of a number of wild animals, selected after a long series of experiments as to their respective suitability to the different parts of the gamut.

The elder woman was almost totally deaf, and the younger too much preoccupied by her physical ailments to pay much heed to the music. The musician, however, required no audience to enable him to reap the fullest enjoyment from the exercise of his art. He loved music for its proper sake, and under its influence could soar away above his sordid surroundings into a heaven of his own creation.

His favourite air was one which ran somewhat as follows. Upon it he would improvise and invent fantastic arabesques and ingenious variations:—

The old woman became more and more feeble, until at length she seemed to lose every faculty except an appetite for certain kinds of food. She lay for weeks without speaking. One night she surprised the others by complaining, in a very distinct voice, of feeling cold. Gert stirred up the embers and threw a few twigs upon them. Soon after this she said—

“Now I am going over the river.”

Next morning they found she was dead.

Gert walled up the mouth of the cave with the heaviest stones he could move, leaving the body inside. Then he and his wife departed. He made up his mind to attempt once more to obtain employment. Perhaps after six years his crime of truth-telling might have been forgotten or condoned. He now had an object in life—the realisation of the property which Fate had thrown in his way. He would first return to Namies, which was a place of congregating for Trek-Boers. Possibly he might be able to get employment there. Even if unsuccessful, however, there was still veld-kost to be had, and there were only two mouths to feed now. Alone, he might easily have made his way to other parts and disposed of the diamonds—even a tithe of their value would have made him a rich man—but his wife could only hobble a couple of miles a day at the very most. He could, of course, have left her to starve, but the thought of doing this never so much as crossed his mind.

So Gert Gemsbok, as stout-hearted as any paladian who ever carried a lance to the Holy Land, packed up his bundle of worn, dirty skins, and tied the pots on the top of it with some withes of twisted bark. He hid his bow and arrows in a dry crevice against the possibility of future needs—they would have been regarded, and rightly so, as the Mark of the Beast among the Trek-Boers. Then, with his ramkee slung under his arm and his miserable old wife hobbling upon cranky legs behind him—blinking in the sunlight to which she had been long unaccustomed—he struck boldly back to renew the battle of life among the men who had driven him forth to herd with the wild beasts.

His six diamonds, wrapped in a dirty rag, were sewn in a row along the bottom of his skin wallet.

Chapter Six.

Too General to be Specified.

When Susannah reached the camp with the afterglow of her lover’s kisses still upon her lips, she found that dinner was over. There was a new look upon her face and a light in her eye, which were not lost on any member of the family. She took a rusk from the cupboard and then went to the scherm for a cup of coffee which Katryn, the Hottentot servant-girl, had saved for her. Katryn had seen Max follow Susannah to the kopje, and, as she noticed the new look upon the girl’s face, had drawn her own conclusions. After pouring out the coffee she shot an extremely sly glance at Susannah’s face and then turned away, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

Old Schalk turned to his wife, who was sitting beside him in the mat-house, hemming an apron—

“Wife, did you see how strange she looked? I wonder what she and the Jew have been doing on the kopje?”

“Let us call her and ask. Susannah!”

“Yes, aunt.”

“Where have you been that you did not come to dinner?”

“At the koekerboom on the top of the kopje, aunt.”

“Who was with you?”

“Max, aunt.”

“What happened to make you look so strange?”

In the most self-possessed manner possible Susannah replied—

“He told me he loved me, and I promised to marry him.”

Old Schalk and his wife both gasped; then the old man broke out—

“You promised to marry him—a Jew—one of those who denied the Lord Jesus and crucified Him?”

“I am sure Max did not do that; for one thing, he was not born at the time.”

“Don’t tell me! If he did not do it himself his forefathers did, and the Lord laid a curse on the Jews.”

“Who ever heard of such a thing as marrying a Jew?” broke in Mrs Hattingh. “I am sure the minister would refuse you the sacrament if you were to do it.”

“I love him, and I will marry no one else,” replied Susannah composedly.

“It is not even as if he were rich,” continued Mrs Hattingh; “but he has nothing—he is only a servant. The shop belongs to his brother.”

Maria and Petronella, were just on the other side of the mat-house wall, listening to all that was said, and giggling and making signs to each other. Old Schalk bethought him of his overdue account at the shop, and wondered how this unexpected development would affect his relations with Nathan, with whom he could not afford to quarrel. But Max was often, as at present, in charge of the business; he also had to be considered. The old Boer came to the conclusion that his safest course was to ignore the whole affair, at all events for the present, until after Nathan’s return.

“The idea of her wanting to marry a little boy like that! A nice joke, indeed! When Nathan comes back he will soon put him right.”

“And to think of her looking at a fellow of his size when a fine man like Jan Roster, who has plenty of stock and a farm of his own, just wants but a little encouragement to make him have the banns put up for the next Nachtmaal.”

Susannah turned away indignantly and left the mat-house. Jan Roster was a young farmer who owned land on the opposite fringe on the Desert, many arid miles from Namies. His business, the peculiar methods of which will be explained later on, sometimes brought him to northern Bushmanland. Recently he had cast looks of tenderness at Susannah. This, however, was not much of a distinction; he was known to be very anxious indeed to get married—in fact, he had proposed to nearly every good-looking girl within two hundred miles of his farm. In spite of his flourishing circumstances, his bulky build, and his not specially ill-favoured appearance, no girl could ever be got to take him seriously. He had spent a few months at a college at Stellenbosch, and thus received what, by courtesy, was termed an education. Theology was his speciality, and could he have conveniently combined the ministry with farming as carried on upon his peculiar lines, he would undoubtedly have attempted to enter the Church. As things were, he was in the habit, when on his rounds, of preaching to the Trek-Boers and half-breeds. It was understood that he was ambitious of entering Parliament eventually, and that he looked upon sermons as a preparation for debating in the senate of his country.

“Is it true that you are going to marry the little Jew?” asked Maria, as Susannah left the mat-house.

Susannah passed on indignantly without deigning an answer. She was not going to stand having her lover referred to in such slighting terms.

It was past eight o’clock when the waning moon looked over the eastern rim of the Desert. Max was sitting on a packing-case outside the shop, trying to make up his mind as to whether he ought to walk over to the camp and see Susannah or not. His heart said “Go,” but his reason said “Stay.” He instinctively divined that there would be opposition to any connection between himself and Susannah on the part of the Hattinghs. He wondered whether Susannah had told about what had happened. It seemed to him impossible that such a thing could be kept concealed—the clucking lizards which came out of their sand-burrows after the sun had gone down, and the green pneumoras squeaking on the bushes, seemed to be discussing nothing else—to be proclaiming their opinion of the occurrence far and wide. When the moon arose Susannah happened to be watching it as well. Perhaps he saw her face reflected on the gleaming, pearly surface. Max arose from his seat and walked over to the Hattingh camp.

He went straight to Susannah and took her shyly outstretched hand. She returned his ardent pressure slightly, and a spasm of bliss went through him. Then he turned and greeted the others with nervous effusiveness, but his advances were very coolly received. No one volunteered a remark for some little time. The silence became oppressive; it was broken by Old Schalk, in evident pursuance of a conversation which Max’s visit had interrupted. He addressed the visitor—

“What is the real belief of the Jews and the Roman Catholics about Christ?”

“I—I don’t exactly know,” replied Max hesitatingly; “I was very young when I left home.”

“But you know well enough,” said Mrs Hattingh. “Jan Roster told us all about it in his last sermon: Pontius Pilate and the soldiers were Roman Catholics, and—and—”

“Well, wife, we are waiting.”

“Ach, Schalk, you heard the sermon as well as I. At all events the Jews and the Roman Catholics between them crucified the Lord.”

“I know that as well as you do, woman; but what I asked about was their belief. Oom Dantje van Rooyen says that he heard from the minister that the Jews and the Roman Catholics do not believe quite the same thing.”

“Oh! what should I know about that? But surely” (turning to Max) “you can tell us about your faith?”

Poor Max did not know what to say. Nathan had, over and over again, impressed upon him that, although there was certainly no truth in any religion whatever, he must be sure to keep all the Jewish feasts and observances—with the exception of fasts, which he was to pretend to keep—all the days of his life. He had heard other Jews discussing ritual and religion in the same strain. He wished heartily that he knew the details of Susannah’s faith, so that he might believe what she believed. He replied, lamely enough—

“You must ask my brother about these things.”

“Another thing I should like to know,” said Old Schalk; “that is, why they eat children in the synagogues?”

It was strange to hear this echo of one of the lying cries of the Judenhetze in this remote corner of an African Desert.

“You must wait and ask my brother,” repeated Max.

“Yes; they are a wicked lot in their religion,” continued Old Schalk. “Fancy a religion that forbids one to eat pork and teaches you to eat children—not their own children, oh no, but Christian children that they steal in the streets of the big towns, and then fatten up for the Passover!”

“But, uncle, I don’t think they do so any more,” said Susannah, moved by the pain in Max’s face. “It was long ago that they used to do that.”

“What does a girl like you know about such things? Did we not read about it in the book which Uncle Sarel lent us, and didn’t Jan Roster say it was quite true, and that they caught the Jews doing it in Russia the other day? Why, even Max cannot say it isn’t true.”

“I—I never heard of it,” faltered Max.

“Never heard of it?” said Mrs Hattingh in low but indignant tones. “What a dreadful thing to be so ignorant of one’s own religion!”

Max went home slightly consoled in his humiliation by another gentle pressure from the hand of Susannah at parting. But some of the bloom had already been rubbed off the blossom which had unfolded in such radiant fairness only a few hours before. He could see that Susannah’s secret had been surprised from her, and that opposition and danger loomed ahead. He anticipated that Nathan would make his life a burthen, would torture him with coarse allusions and unpleasant jokes. This he was prepared for, and the prospect was a sickening one. The future was heavily clouded, and behind the clouds visible he foreboded others. But “the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” His love was sure, and he knew it to be returned. Sleep knit up the ravelled fabric of his happiness, and memories of the new bliss he had tasted haunted his dreams.

The next morning brought trouble. Shortly after breakfast Max saw, to his dismay, three members of the Hattingh family labouring heavily across the sand towards the shop. Mrs Hattingh was in the centre—she leant heavily on the arms of her granddaughters. As the three entered the shop, the two girls looked at Max with an expression of indescribable slyness. Max groaned in spirit; Nathan had given him strict injunctions that on no account whatever were any members of the Hattingh family to get any more credit. He knew instinctively that this was what they had now come to ask for.

Mrs Hattingh sat down heavily upon a packing-case, panting from the exertions of her walk. Maria and Petronella lifted the flap of the counter quite unceremoniously and walked in. Then they began to pull down the goods from the shelves and examine them. Mrs Hattingh beckoned to Max to come to her. In a low tone and with meaning looks she told him that she wanted to buy some material for a dress for Susannah. Max knew this to be a lie, but he did not dare to show his knowledge. She eventually selected enough material for two dresses; but, from the number of yards ordered, Max could see that his attachment was being used for the purpose of providing the two large specimens of young womanhood present with frocks which they badly needed. Other articles were selected by the girls, who kept darting meaning looks at him and uttering whispered hints about their cousin. When they left, carrying several large parcels, the Hattingh account had been increased on the debit side by upwards of two pounds sterling, and the fact pressed like an indigestion upon the already laden breast of poor Max.

Within a few days the Trek-Boers began to flock into Namies. Pasturage was now plentiful, and the gregarious instinct, which is present to a certain extent even in a Trek-Boer, prompted them to draw together. A week after the rain there were fully a dozen camps grouped around that of Old Schalk.

A good deal of flirting of a sort went on among the young men and maidens. Music nightly startled the coneys until they scuttled away among the rocks of the kopje, for “Oom Schulpad” turned up from no one knew where with his old fiddle, and played reels and polkas which made the feet of the young people itch to be dancing.

Oom Schulpad was an elderly and deformed man who owned a disreputable-looking cart and three small donkeys, by means of which he used to make extremely long journeys through the Desert, which he knew as well as he knew his instrument. In many places where another would have died of thirst, Oom Schulpad could find water. Music and hunting were his two passions, and he loved his rifle as much as his fiddle. Sometimes he would penetrate deep into the dunes, and return with a load of gemsbok bultong. He was a thorough vagrant by disposition, and hardly ever settled down at one spot for more than a fortnight at a time. His music made him a persona grata at all the camps, so he simply passed from one to another—always a welcome guest.

Being very clever and versatile as a mechanic, he could mend harness, repair a gun, make veldschoens, or replace a broken spoke in the wheel of a wagon. His name, which means “Uncle Tortoise,” was given him on account of the shape of his back. He had a real talent as well as a passionate love for music. His tongue was an extremely bitter one, and he was accordingly feared by those whom he disliked. He had never married. He said that he hated women; nevertheless he was usually to be found, when not away hunting, in the company of young girls. These, as a rule, liked and trusted him.

It was with the advent of the Trek-Boers that the real troubles of poor Max began. The relations between himself and Susannah formed the standing joke at Namies for weeks. Every day the shop would be filled with idle young men and women whose only purpose was to joke at the expense of the unhappy lover. Many of these jokes were coarse, and made Max burn with shame. He often longed for muscle so that he might revenge his wrongs. Sometimes the supposed prospective domestic arrangements of the young couple with reference to the extremely limited accommodation at the back of the shop would be discussed in realistic and distressing detail. Attached to the shop was a little room about twelve feet square, which formed a lean-to. This, with the shop and a small room at the back which was used as a store for hides, formed the whole extent of the premises. The back room was occupied by the brothers jointly as a sleeping chamber. Their meals were cooked by a Hottentot boy behind a bush, and were eaten upon the counter.

Susannah also had her troubles, but she did not suffer nearly as much as Max, for she had an extremely bitter tongue, and in the game of chaff was more than a match for any one who attacked her.

These two thus underwent a discipline which stood them in good stead afterwards. In the course of a couple of weeks they became more or less callous, and were it not for the dread of Nathan’s return, which oppressed him like a nightmare, Max would have been happy enough. But Nathan was now a fortnight overdue, and was daily expected to arrive.

On the afternoon of the second Sunday after the meeting at the foot of the koekerboom on the top of the kopje, Max suddenly made up his mind and did what was for him a very heroic deed. He put on his best clothes, went boldly over to the Hattingh camp, at which there was a large miscellaneous gathering. He walked around the circle and shook hands with every one present. Then he took his seat next to Susannah, who blushed with pleasure at her lover’s daring. She had been rather hurt at the way in which he had kept aloof from her, and his vulnerability to the banter which she despised had annoyed her.

After a few minutes the company was electrified mildly by seeing these two walk off together. This time they did not make for the kopje, but strolled across the flats, where a few springbucks were playing about unconcernedly as though they knew it was Sunday.

Old Schalk snorted violently, and began to mutter questions at his wife. She—her conscience gripping her over the credit which, by virtue of her tacit approval of his addresses towards her niece she had induced Max to give—whispered audibly—

“Ach! what does it matter? Let the children alone.”

The conversation soon glided back to the channel in which it had been flowing when the interruption came. A certain stranger—a man who was travelling through Bushmanland for the purpose of buying cattle for the Cape Town market—was discussing astronomy with Old Schalk, who was a strong supporter of the geocentric theory. The cattle-dealer was not by any means well up in his subject; as a matter of fact, he was simply retailing certain notions which he had picked up in a crude state from a young relative of his who had been to a college, and which he had not been able properly to digest. Nevertheless he stoutly maintained his thesis.

“Ach! what?” said Old Schalk. “These star-peerers, what do they know? Are their eyes better than mine? Can they shoot springbucks better than I can? Don’t I see that the sun gets up every morning there” (he pointed to the east), “and don’t I see every evening that it goes down there?”

He shook the long stick towards the west, as though threatening an astronomer with the consequences of his folly.

“Ja, Oom; but you see it’s this way—”

“Ach! don’t tell me about your this way and that way. You find me a star-peerer who knows his Bible or has better eyes than I have, and I’ll listen to him. Doesn’t the Bible say that Joshua told the sun to stand still? Doesn’t the Prophet Isaiah say that the Lord stretched the sky over the earth like a tent? These star-peerers are all rogues and Romanist heathens.”

“But, Oom,” said the cattle-dealer, who was, as it were, blowing the fuse of a torpedo which he had in reserve, “how is it that these star-peerers are able to tell long before the times when the sun and the moon will be darkened?”

“How are they able to tell? Why, they find it out from the almanack, of course.” The only almanack with which the Trek-Boer is acquainted is one issued by the Dutch Reformed Church. This document is adorned with the Signs of the Zodiac, and is heavily garnished with Scripture texts. It is believed by certain classes of the Boers that the almanack is annually deduced from the Bible by a committee of Church ministers.

The cattle-dealer, blown up—to change the old metaphor—by his own torpedo, had to own himself vanquished. Old Schalk’s reputation for wisdom rose higher than ever, and a deadly blow was dealt to the heliocentric theory in Bushmanland.

The lovers strolled away over the sandy plain, which was now covered with a rich carpet of variously hued flowers. Gorgeous gazanias of the tint of the richest mahogany, and with the base of each petal eyed like a peacock’s tail; blue, sweet-scented heliophilas, purple and crimson mesembryanthemums, and lovely variegated pelargoniums brushed their feet at every step. They said little to one another, and that little could interest none but themselves. Both were ignorant and illiterate to a degree; their range of ideas was more limited than it is easy to describe, or even to realise; but their hearts were young and full of vague, sweet, unutterable thoughts. The springbucks—the advance detachment of a large “trek”—were scattered, singly or in small groups, over the illimitable plain. They sheered off, feeding tamely, to either side. The meerkats scuttled back to their low, burrow-pierced mounds, where they sat erect on a tripod, formed by hind legs and tail, ready to dart underground. The striped-faced gemsbuck-mice dashed wildly into their burrows in terror, and then out again in uncontrollable curiosity.

As they walked homeward in the short gloaming Max asked Susannah if she would always be true, even if her people were against him and his brother drove him away. The girl looked straight into his eyes and answered “Yes,” in a clear, low tone. Max, believing her, saw Hope shining through the clouds of uncertainty that filled the future, and was happy.

When they reached the camp the short Desert twilight had nearly faded and the eastern stars were burning brightly. The gathering had dispersed, and Old Schalk, sitting smoking in his chair before the mat-house, was the only person visible.

“Well,” he said, “what is this they tell me about you and my niece?”

“I want to marry her, Uncle; I am very fond of her.”

“Marry her? You will have to become a Christian before you marry my niece?”

This was meant sarcastically. No Boer believes in the possibility of a Jew becoming a Christian.

“Yes, Uncle, I’ll do that at once.”

“Hear him, now. He thinks a Jew can become a Christian as easily as a man can change his shirt. Did you ever hear of a jackal turning into a tame dog in a day?” Max flushed hotly but made no reply. “I never heard of such a thing in all my life,” continued the old Boer. “It is not even as if you were rich and had a shop of your own; but you are only a poor little boy without anything. Look here, I do not want your brother Nathan to think that I have had anything to do with this foolishness.”

Just then a diminutive Hottentot approached from behind the camp, saluted Old Schalk, and squatted down on the ground close by upon his hams. The man was clad in a few ragged skins and looked weak and emaciated.

“Well, schepsel, where do you come from?”

“Out of the veld, Baas.”

“And where are you going to?”

“I have come to the Baas.”

“For what?”

“I have come to the Baas to look for work.”

“Ja, and what is your name?”

“I am old Gert Gemsbok, Baas.”

“What! Are you the vagabond Bushman who got Willem Bester into the tronk?”

“I am he, Baas.”

“And you come to ask me to give you work?”

“I only told the truth, Baas.”

“Ach, what does a Bushman know about truth?”

“If I did a sin when I spoke the truth, Baas, I have had my punishment: for six long years I have lived like a badger in a hole. I am a human being, Baas; let me come back and live among other human beings.”

“No, no, schepsel; not a Boer in Bushmanland will give you work. Willem Bester died in the tronk. No, no!”

“I have a sickly old wife, Baas, and she cannot live any longer on the veld-kost. Give me work, Baas, and I will serve you faithfully.”

“No, no, schepsel; go back and live with the badgers.”

Max heard and wondered. His awakening soul was shocked at the unreasoning cruelty of the old Boer’s conduct. The Hottentot had arisen slowly and feebly from the ground and was walking away; the young Jew followed and soon overtook him. Max had been bartering fat-tailed sheep for goods with some of his customers and he wanted a herd. He told Gert Gemsbok to follow him to the shop.

That night the old Hottentot told his tale, or most of it, to Max. They sat up in the shop until late, Gemsbok happy in the enjoyment of a pipeful of good tobacco. He had lacked the means of smoking ever since he had been driven into banishment. The suffering which this deprivation must have entailed can only be realised by those who know the Hottentot’s dependence upon his pipe.

Max burned with wrath at what he heard; his ingenuous soul revolted at the tale of injustice and stupid cruelty. By instinct he could tell that the old man’s story was ingenuous and, so far as it went, unreserved. He called to mind that Old Schalk had not attempted to deny Gemsbok’s plea that the evidence given by him against Willem Bester was true.

Max engaged Gemsbok at a salary of eight shillings per month, with rations for himself. This was a fair rate of remuneration for Bushmanland. The work which the old Hottentot had to do was to look after the flock of three hundred fat-tailed sheep which Max had recently acquired, to herd them all day in the Desert, and to haul water for them with a derrick out of the well when he drove them home every night. Gemsbok knew that he could every day gather enough veld-kost to supplement his ration and make it suffice for his wife as well as for himself. He had left her under a bush a few miles away. Before daylight next morning he was well on his course to fetch her, with hope and gladness filling his heart.

The Gemsbok ménage was established in a cleft of the kopje-side about fifty yards behind the store. The habitation consisted of a movable screen of loose bushes about two feet high and shaped like a crescent. This was shifted from one side to another of the fireplace as the wind changed. A vagrant dog which Gert had found far out in the Desert, half-famished for want of water, was added to the strength of the establishment, and became the devoted slave of its rescuer.

The old couple now tasted happiness probably far greater than any they had previously experienced. Max was kind to them. Presents of old sacks and a few articles of cast-off clothing, fragments of food from his scanty table, an occasional pinch of tobacco,—such things filled the hearts of these belated creatures with deep joy and thankfulness. A pot of salve for the old woman’s legs was provided, and the result was satisfactory.

Max found Gert a most intelligent and entertaining companion, and mentally far in advance of any of the inhabitants of the Desert whom he had met. The old man’s experiences had been varied and his life full of the tragic, and he seemed not to have forgotten anything he had ever seen or heard in the course of his long struggles against adverse Fate.

The ramkee was much in evidence. Oom Schulpad, with a true artist’s generous appreciation of the art of a fellow craftsman, often brought his violin to the shop at night. There the two musicians would contend, like two troubadours, in a kind of tournament of song. Sometimes they would play duets, and it was then that Gemsbok proved his skill, for he accompanied without difficulty any air played upon the violin after he had heard it once. He would sit and listen attentively whilst Oom Schulpad played it slowly over. Then the notes of the ramkee would second the more civilised instrument as truly as if the music lay printed before the player and he could read it.

On the night when this occurred for the first time, after Gemsbok had returned to his scherm, Oom Schulpad sat silently on the counter for a few minutes. Then, as he took his departure he said, in a musing tone—

“Ja, he knows more music than I, that old Bushman.”

As Gemsbok’s poor old wife was entirely helpless, it was he who fetched, wood and water and attended to all the domestic duties. The old woman slept most of the day, but at night the cheerful firelight from the scherm lit up the kopjes long after the last of the Boers lay snoring. Then the old couple would sit, toasting themselves at the cheerful blaze, and chatting happily together, except when some lively tune from the ramkee startled the ancient silence of the Desert.

One of the Boers camped nearest the shop was a man named Koos Bester, cousin of the Willem Bester who had died in prison after being sentenced upon old Gemsbok’s evidence. Koos was a very big, sallow, dark-haired man with a scraggy fringe of coarse, black beard around his chin, and eyes of a very peculiar shade of light grey. His usual mien was melancholy, his strength was prodigious, his hands and feet were of enormous size and looked as if they belonged to some one else.

Koos Bester was a man who seldom either spoke or smiled; nevertheless he could hardly be called morose. He was by no means a bad fellow in his way, and was devotedly attached to his comely wife and his three small children. His father-in-law, a very old man, lived with him. The Besters usually camped at a water-place on the other side of the dunes. As, however, no rain had fallen in that vicinity for some time, they moved over to Namies, meaning to return to the spot they had come to regard as their home as soon as circumstances permitted.

Koos had been much attached to his cousin Willem and had felt the latter’s imprisonment and death very keenly. He hated the sight of Gert Gemsbok, who continually reminded him of Willem’s fate; the very fact of knowing that the old Hottentot was in the neighbourhood was sufficient to make him miserable. One day he asked Max to dismiss Gemsbok, but Max indignantly refused.

The scherm was in full view of the Besters’ camp, and the sight of the cheerful camp-fire with the old couple sitting next to it was a nightly affront. Then the ramkee got upon Koos’ nerves to such an extent that he became very unhappy indeed. Gert’s tune, with its endless variations, became absolutely hateful to the melancholy Boer. One day, in the course of a discussion on the subject, Koos had the bad taste to insult Oom Schulpad by a reference to his physical defects. The old fiddler had spoken in terms of admiration of the Hottentot’s skill as a musician, and Koos lost his temper. Oom Schulpad said nothing at the time, but he scored up a grudge against Koos. Whenever Oom Schulpad felt that he owed another anything in this way, he took a pride in devising means to pay the debt.

At length Koos found that he could stand the ramkee no longer, so he shifted his camp to the other side of the kopjes, where the tune could not reach his disgusted ears. A few days afterwards a thunderstorm passed over the eastern fringe of the dunes, and he returned to his favourite camping-place. But Gert Gemsbok’s air haunted him for weeks with deadly persistency.

Chapter Seven.

How Jan Roster was Twice Interrupted.

One day four sleek mules drawing a light buggy came trotting along the sandy road from the southward to Namies. In the vehicle were sitting Jan Roster and his half-breed servant, Piet Noona. They came from that part of Bushmanland in which no European can dwell, on account of the extreme brackishness of the water—from an area the only inhabitants of which are a few dozen families of half-breeds, who live by poaching wild ostriches in defiance of the law. These people are very like human red-herrings in appearance—probably from the amount of salt which they constantly imbibe.

The right of occupation of the district had been leased by Roster from Government, and he, in turn, sublet his rights to the half-breeds. The rent was paid in ostrich feathers; these the landlord collected himself, and took over at his own price.

The unique method practised by these people in hunting the ostrich may be worth describing shortly. The ostrich runs probably swifter than any other description of game. It has, however, one peculiarity—if kept moving, even with comparative slowness, for more than a couple of hours on a hot day, it gets heat-apoplexy, and suddenly dies. The manner of its dying under these circumstances is peculiar. It drops in its tracks, rolls over three times upon the sand, turns on its back and expires, with legs extended vertically.

The half-breeds sent out boys mounted on ponies, sometimes for a distance of seventy or eighty miles, into the Desert. These start in two parties, each taking a different direction. After reaching ground where, from the spoor, it can be seen that ostriches abound, the two parties converge towards each other, leaving, at intervals, individuals stationary at certain points. A chain, the links of which are several miles long, is thus formed around a large space, into the centre of which all the ostriches which it contains are gradually coaxed. As soon as the cordon is complete, the birds are started at a run towards the saltpans, where the camps of the half-breeds are. As the horses of the hunters actually engaged in chasing become exhausted, their places are taken by others waiting along the wide-apart lines, between which the hapless birds are being driven. After a time the birds begin to drop, one by one. The hunters who made the running at the beginning, and who now come slowly along on the spoor of the chase, pick the carcases up, one by one. Then the feathers are carefully plucked out and tied in bundles, whilst the meat is cut from the bones and hung across the saddles of the weary horses.

Jan Roster’s buggy was of unusual make. It had a skeleton frame, and, where the well ought to have been under the seat, was fitted an ample tin case, which could be easily unshipped. The reason of this was well known to every Trek-Boer in Bushmanland. The box was the receptacle of the feathers collected as rent from the half-breeds, and, in the rare event of Jan’s meeting a policeman or the Special Magistrate upon his rounds, it could be slipped off and buried in the sand. Once he had reached home with his collections Jan felt himself quite safe. He farmed tame ostriches himself, and the possession of the feathers could always be accounted for as being the result of legitimate pluckings.

Jan’s tin box was full of feathers as he drove up to Namies, but this fact did not cause him the least embarrassment. He pulled up within a few yards of Old Schalk’s camp, and, while Piet Noona was outspanning the mules, he untied the tin box and carried it at once into the mat-house. From the way in which he did this, it could be seen that he had evidently done the same kind of thing before. He knew that he ran no risk of being betrayed—“Hawks dinna pyke out hawks’ een.”

It was Saturday afternoon when Jan arrived; he was soon sitting in the mat-house drinking coffee, munching Boer biscuit, and glancing tenderly at Susannah from time to time. Maria and Petronella sat on the big bed giggling, whispering together, and nudging one another. Mrs Hattingh, exhausted by the heat, was sitting near the door fanning her perspiring face with her cappie.

Susannah’s countenance shone with a new light which made it very good to look upon. Ever since her engagement she had become much neater and more tasteful in her dress. In this respect she had always been in strong contrast to her cousins, who, in spite of their taste for pronounced colours, were utter slatterns. To-day they were dressed out in finery of a distressing type. Maria wore a new light-pink cashmere dress, a purple-flowered cappie, and around her neck a dark-blue handkerchief. Petronella’s frock was light blue, her kerchief was scarlet, and her cappie was of the same kind as her sister’s. Both sisters wore white cotton stockings and new veldschoens—the latter just finished for the occasion by Oom Schulpad. The dresses were made of the material which had been obtained upon Mrs Hattingh’s fraudulent representations to the effect that it was required for Susannah.

There was a reason for all this splendour of attire. Maria and Petronella had just made a double conquest, and the double-conquered were immediately expected to call. These were two young men who had recently come to Namies on a courting expedition, from eastern Bushmanland. They came, saw, and succumbed, all within the space of a week. They had not yet declared themselves, but were expected to do so that afternoon. These two hunted in a couple; one never came without the other, and they did not feel the slightest embarrassment in making love ardently in each other’s immediate neighbourhood.

It was about the middle of the afternoon when the expected swains arrived. Both were tall, loose-jointed young men. They had been to the shop and there purchased suits of “reach-me-downs” of distressing texture, pattern, and cut, as well as flabby-rimmed “smasher” hats. They had rather vacant faces, with good-natured expressions. Christoffel (commonly called “Stoffel”) van Lell, Maria’s admirer, wore a tweed coat, which was much too small for him, and the sleeves of which severally revealed half a foot of red, bony wrist. His trousers were of brown corduroy of the most fragrant quality. Willem Henrico, the willing slave of Petronella’s charms, wore a suit of Bedford cord, the jacket of which was double-breasted and adorned with white delft buttons as large as cheese-plates. New veldschoens and cheap, glittering spurs adorned their extensive feet. Spurs serve as a sort of trade-flag in courting on the high plains; a young man with a new pair is known to be in search of a wife.

A walk was proposed. This Mrs Hattingh agreed to with the proviso that the road over the plains was taken and strictly adhered to, and that the couples kept close together. The young men wanted to wander among the kopjes, and the girls seemed to approve of that route. Mrs Hattingh, however, was inexorable. When she emphatically repeated her injunction about keeping close together, Maria said, deprecatingly: “Ach, Ou’ Ma,” (Ou’ Ma, grandmother) and pouted. Susannah flatly refused to go, although Jan’s request that she should do so was ostentatiously seconded by Mrs Hattingh. Jan, accordingly, decided to remain at the camp, so the other couples started by themselves.

Mrs Hattingh soon afterwards stood up and waddled to the scherm, leaving Jan and Susannah alone together. Old Schalk was sitting in his chair on the other side of the wagon, in the shade.

Jan became very nervous. After a few minutes he got up hesitatingly, and moved his chair close to the little cross-legged stool on which Susannah was sitting. He cleared his throat several times before he could force himself to speak. Susannah was pale, but quite unembarrassed. She regarded her unwelcome admirer with eyes that had a wicked snap in them, and he became demoralised under her disdain.

In vain did he speak of his house, his flocks, his horses, and the places he had seen—not to mention the important people with whom he was on terms of intimacy. None of these things moved Susannah. Her hands were closed into two shapely little fists—so tightly that there was not a vestige of blood to be seen in the knuckles. Jan ought to have noticed her hands, and taken warning accordingly, but he rushed blindly upon his fate.

“Susannah,” he said, beseechingly, “I have come a long way to see you.”

“So? Was that why you brought the tin box?”

He floundered; in spite of the practice he had had, proposing was difficult. Besides, Susannah’s last remark was not calculated to set him at his ease.

“Are you not glad to see me, Susannah?”

“Why should I be?”

“Well, I—you see—I wanted to tell you about my new house.”

“What have I to do with houses? I live in a mat-house.”

“But wouldn’t you like to live in a big house with rooms, and a stoep, and a harmonium inside, and furniture brought all the way from Clanwilliam?”

Susannah’s thoughts wandered. In a dreamy tone she replied—

“I don’t know; perhaps I might.”

Jan took this for a sign of yielding. He bent over and passed his arm around the girl’s waist.

Susannah’s dreaming was over. She sprang up and, in the act of doing so, swung round and dealt Jan a swinging blow on the ear with her small, but firm and nervous fist. Jan felt as if the thunders of the Apocalypse had discharged themselves over his left shoulder. He put his hand up to the side of his head to ascertain whether his ear was still there or had been burnt off. Susannah had hurt her hand so much that the tears started in her eyes. However, she managed to escape from the mat-house without showing her distress.

Jan, very much crestfallen and with a bad singing in the left side of his head, strolled away among the other camps. He could see, far out on the plains, the two double dots which indicated the respective pairs of lovers, and the spectacle made him sigh with envy. As the violent pain in his ear calmed down to a sensation more like that of being gently roasted, he began to make excuses for Susannah. Perhaps, he thought, he had been too precipitate. At all events he would go back to tea, Mrs Hattingh having invited him to do so.

When Jan returned at dusk he found van Lell and Henrico sitting on the big cartel bed in the mat-house—the nuptial couch of Old Schalk—with their arms around the waists of their respective charmers. On each of the four faces was an expression of fatuous bliss. The lovers took not the least notice of Old Schalk or Mrs Hattingh, or, for the matter of that, of Jan himself.

At table the lovers did not allow their affections to prevent their all making excellent suppers. The expected proposals had been duly made that afternoon. During the meal each of the affianced maidens passed little tit-bits into her lover’s mouth with her own fair fingers from time to time. These were munched with expressions of rapture by the recipients. Susannah was still indignant, and glanced at Jan from time to time in a manner that made him lose his appetite. The pain in her hand had lasted longer than that in Jan’s ear; of course she blamed him exclusively for the hurt.

After supper another walk was proposed, but this was uncompromisingly vetoed by Mrs Hattingh. Max came in later, and, as usual, sat down as far from every one as possible. Jan wondered at the black looks which the visitor got from the old couple. By and by, however, Susannah brought her little stool close to where Max was sitting, and then a glimmering of the true state of affairs came to Jan. The pain seemed to come back to his ear with renewed intensity. Ere long he found he could stand the strain no longer, so he said, “Goodnight,” and rose to depart. In response to a question from Old Schalk, he said that he would hold a religious service on the following day.

Next morning at about ten o’clock there was a considerable gathering of Boers at the Hattingh camp. Stout, frowsy “tantas” and portly “ooms” strolled up with dignity or waddled laboriously through the sand. Gaudily arrayed maidens followed with their attendant swains. A general requisition for stools and benches, had been made, and these were arranged in a semicircle in front of the wagon. The children of the congregation sat on the ground where sheepskins had been stretched at the feet of the elders. Old Schalk’s chair was placed apart, immediately below the wagon-box, in a position from which he could note the effect of the exhortations on the faces of the others. The service began with a psalm sung after the fashion followed in the Scotch kirks of a century ago—very slowly, and much through the nose. Old Schalk followed with a prayer, which might be described as so much denunciation of people in general, clothed in the phraseology of the Prophet Jeremiah, when the utterer of the Lamentations was most exercised over the sins of Israel. There was a rumour afloat to the effect that the Government was about to tax the Trek-Boers to some slight extent, in proportion to the number of stock they depastured in Bushmanland, so Old Schalk was the mouthpiece of the general indignation.

The prayer over, Jan Roster mounted the wagon-box and began his sermon. His text was a wide one—it embraced the whole of the Ten Commandments. In an unctuous and impassioned manner he fulminated against all sorts and conditions of transgressors. Some of the Commandments he slurred over—others he expounded at great length. When he reached the fourth he glanced menacingly at Max, who stood outside the circle, opposite where Susannah was sitting. The breaking of the Sabbath was, according to Jan, the root of all evil. He called upon the legislators of the land to impose the heaviest penalties for all contraventions of the Divine ordinance on the subject. He spoke in the most opprobrious terms of the Jews, who, out of the wickedness of their unregenerate hearts, desecrated this most holy day, and kept Saturday as a day of devotion in its stead. He, Jan, was a sinner, but among all the faults which his conscience laid to his charge, Sabbath-breaking was not to be found. No, he had always kept holy the Lord’s day—never travelled on it—never attended to worldly concerns between midnight on Saturday and the morning of Monday.

Just then an interruption came. Piet Noona, Jan’s driver and confidential servant, forced his way along the side of the wagon until he reached the front wheel, just over which Jan was holding forth from the wagon-box.

“Baas, Baas!” said he, in an agitated whisper. Jan glanced down with displeasure in his eye, frowned, shook his head, and proceeded to the discussion of the fifth commandment Piet, however, was not to be put off. He caught hold of the leg of Jan’s trousers between his finger and thumb, and began to tug at it.

“Baas, Baas!” said he again, in a tone almost of agony.

“Go away—wait until I have finished,” said Jan, in an irritated whisper.

“Baas, Baas!” reiterated Piet, in a whisper which could be heard by all the congregation, “die Magistrate zijn wa’ kom aan.” (“The Magistrate’s wagon is approaching.”)

Jan reeled and staggered as if he had received a blow. Then he bent down towards the agitated Piet and whispered hysterically the word “Inspan!”

Piet darted off. From the curt and summary way in which Jan dealt with the remaining Commandments one might have thought that they were of comparatively little importance. He brought the service to a close in almost indecent haste, and then dived from the wagon-box behind the canvas curtain, in front of which he had been holding forth. From there he rushed to the mat-house, whence he emerged in an incredibly short space of time, carrying the box of feathers. This he ran with to the buggy. He shoved it under the seat, and over it he draped a sheepskin kaross with ostentatious carelessness. In a few minutes the astonished congregation, which had scattered into interested groups, was scandalised at seeing Jan Roster, the strict Sabbatarian, disappear in a dusty cloud on the road which led southward through the Desert.

However, Jan had got safely away with his tin box and its incriminating contents, and there was not the slightest fear of any of the Boers giving information to the authorities on the subject.

The Spedai Magistrate’s wagon brought the Namies mail from Kenhardt. The mail consisted of three letters—two of which were for Max—and a few circular advertisements from enterprising promoters of patent medicines.

Max’s letters filled him with joy. One was from his brother Nathan, saying he had made so successful a trip—having secured a large quantity of feathers of the very best quality—that he had decided to visit Cape Town for the purpose of disposing of his spoils and buying a fresh stock of “negotie,” or trading truck. Consequently he did not intend returning for about another six weeks.

Nathan gave minute directions upon many points connected with the management of the business—more especially with reference to the giving of credit to the Boers, who, as he knew, would soon be collecting at Namies in considerable numbers. The Hattingh account was, if possible, to be closed at once; in no case was any more credit to be given in that direction. Max sighed with deep relief. After the daily dread of Nathan’s arrival which had overshadowed him for so many weary weeks, this long respite seemed like a prospective eternity.

The other letter bore a foreign post-mark. It was from a notary in Hamburg, informing him that an uncle, of whose very name he had but a faint recollection, had recently died and left him a legacy of about 150 pounds. It seemed a fortune. Why, with that sum he could open a store for himself, as large as the one he was managing on a pittance for another. What a relief it was to find himself independent of Nathan—to realise that there was now some prospect of his being able to make a home for Susannah.

Chapter Eight.

The Trek-Bokken.

The great annual “trek” of springbucks began, and Namies fell into a state of ferment. For about a week small droves of bucks had been seen passing to the westward. One morning clouds of dust were noticed arising into a windless sky about ten miles away to the south. By this it was known that the “trek” had really begun, and that the drove of game was passing unusually far to the northward. Within an hour after sunrise the Wagons were emptied of their contents, whilst every male of European descent above the age of ten was furbishing up a gun.

All sorts and conditions of firearms were to be seen, from the flint-lock of three-quarters of a century ago to the modern Martini and Express.

Breakfast over, the wagons, drawn by teams of oxen which had been standing in the yoke since early morning, moved off towards different points on the trek-line. No horses were taken; a waterless country was now to be entered, and a horse becomes useless in hot weather after a day and a half without water. On the other hand, an ox can endure thirst for a week without becoming incapable of work.

Each wagon carried a couple of small kegs of water, a pillow-case full of Boer biscuits, a small bag of ground coffee, and a kettle. The more luxuriously inclined among the hunters took with them karosses, made of the skins of fat-tailed sheep, to lie under at night. The majority, however, took nothing whatever in the way of bedding.

As the wagons cleared the circle of low kopjes it could be seen that the trek was an unusually large one. As far as the eye could range from north-east to south-west the horizon was obscured by rising clouds of dust. Here and there in the immense vista, a particularly dense cloud could be seen ascending slowly. This indicated a locality where a mob of more than average compactness was pressing westward, impelled by the strange trek instinct.

Old Schalk was a keen sportsman—as that term is understood among the Trek-Boers. In fact the “trek-bokken” were the only things he ever got very excited about. Sitting in his chair—which had been tied in the wagon—and accompanied by a youth whom he had provided with an old gun and some ammunition, and who had agreed to give up half of what he shot in payment, he was drawn towards the trek as fast as a fresh span of oxen could go with the almost empty wagon. Besides his gun Old Schalk took two large “slacht eizers,” or iron traps—cruel things with toothed iron jaws that would smash the leg of a horse.