By Veldt and Kopje

William Charles Scully

"By Veldt and Kopje"

Dedication.

To
Lieutenant-General
SIR WILLIAM FRANCIS BUTLER
This Book is Inscribed

(Ecclesiastes, VII. 5)

Prologue.

VOICES OF AFRICA

AFRICA
Sphinx among continents,—the Nations strive
To guess my ancient riddle; Greece essayed—
She drooped to death; upon me Rome set gyve—
She sank in her own bonds. The Persian laid
His life down ’mid my deserts. For a day
I smiled on each, then tore them for my play.
THE SAHARA
The ghosts of buried cities scale the air
When Day wakes my mirage. The lion keeps
My iron hills. The bones of men lie bare
Where my thirst-sickle its rich harvest reaps.
Time, like a little child, amid my sands
Builds and unbuilds with feeble, listless hands.
EGYPT
The gods who dwell ’mid equatorial snows
Bade Nilus cleave the waste, and I awoke.
A giant, robed in mystery, I arose;
The young world listened, breathless, when I spoke.
My Sphinx Time’s sister is; her brood lies hid
Where dream the dead ’neath rock and pyramid.
CARTHAGE
Sidon sent forth her sons, her sons sent Tyre;
The Desert’s daughters bore a mighty race.
The God whose brazen hands sloped to the fire
Reared o’er me the red terror of his face.
Rome, vengeful, trod me to the dust, and strowed
With salt the site where once my powers abode.
ALEXANDRIA
The godlike Alexander wav’d his sword;
Beneath its spell rose palace, mart and school,
No gold so precious as my lightest word;
My logos still the Faith of Man doth rule.
Greek, Roman and Barbarian, East and West,
Drank lore like milk from my most bounteous breast.
MOUNT ATLAS
Time haled the great Globe from my aching back
And hung it ’mid the stars. Content I rest,
The ocean’s murmured music at my feet,
The foldless flocks of cloudland round my crest.
Pan walks with Faunus through my dreaming woods,
And Dryads pace my leafy solitudes.
RUWENZORI
A diadem of changeless snow lies light
Upon my regal head; my locks I shake,
And, straightway, living waters take their flight.
The iron bonds of Ancient Drought to break.
A virgin, new-unveiled, I stand alone;
Aeons will pass, but none unclasp my zone.
THE LAKES
Hand seeking hand, a peerless sisterhood,
We watched for dawn through dark of murd’rous years
Our sky-pure fringes mired with human blood,
Our rain-sweet wavelets salt with human tears.
Our tideless glasses gleam resplendently
High o’er the rockings of the restless sea.
THE CONGO
Through jungles spawned from fever-drunken sod
Where, sleeplessly, the foul man-hunters hide.
The bitter lees from God’s dread wine-press trod
By desperate feet, drain down my tepid tide.
Leviathan there wallows in his wrath;
There range the hordes of mighty Behemoth.
THE ZAMBEZI
The spoils the sky had of the world-wide main
I bear, new-gathered from ten thousand rills
To where the thund’rous gates my steps enchain,
Clogged with the wastage of a million hills.
Thence, breaking forth in triumph, full and free,
I render back my booty to the sea.
ZIMBABWE
I housed the brood of Carthage; they the earth
Deep rifled for its treasure. On me fell
The hand of Doom. No rumour speaks my birth,
No legend shrines my death. My citadel
Glares at the cold fane of my obscene god,
O’er which the feet of ancient ruin trod.
THE SOUTHERN DESERTS
The wayward Spring, in dalliance afar,
Forgets us for long seasons, till the sky
Weeps for our burning woe; then, star on star,
Rich blossoms from our glowing dunes arise.
Thirst, with his legioned agonies, still stands
Warding the barren empire of our sands.
THE BLACK PEOPLES
God smote us with an itch to dip our hands
In one another’s blood. Our long travail
The ages hearken to. The ocean sands
Than we are not more myriad. Men hale
Us forth in chains o’er every moaning sea
Foul with the trails of Man’s iniquity.
KIMBERLEY
I sprang from ’neath the desert sand, and cast
A double-handed shower of living gems
I’ the world’s astonished visage. In my vast
Black, echoing chasm, whence the bright diadems
Of half Earth’s thrones are furnish’d, I can hear
The lost souls wander, wailing, far and near.
JOHANNESBURG
A maenad seated on a golden throne;
My plaything is a nation’s destiny;
My feet are clay, my bosom is a stone;
The princes of the Earth are fain of me,
But, stark, before the splendour of my gates,
The grim Boer, leaning on his rifle, waits.
THE WHITE COMMONWEALTHS
To-morrow unregarded, clean effaced
The lesson of unhallowed yesterday,
We rail against each other; interlaced
Albeit are our fortunes. So we stray,
Blind to the lurid writing on the wall,
Deaf to the words Fate’s warning lips let fall.

(1899)

Chapter One.

The Lepers.

“All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.”—Leviticus XIII. 46.

One

The Magistrate sat in his office, deep in thought. Before him, on his desk, lay a pile of documents of foolscap size—clinical reports as to some forty odd natives in the district, who had been cursed by God with the most bitter of all curses—the disease of leprosy. The Magistrate noted that the documents were livid white in colour—a variation from the orthodox blue of the ordinary printed form, and even this trivial circumstance seemed to have an unpleasant significance.

It was a month since the receipt of the circular from the Government, directing that the long-dormant “Leprosy Repression Act” be put in force, and the District Surgeon had, in the interval, been busy riding from kraal to kraal in these locations where the disease existed, obtaining the voluminous data required in each individual case. This data had now been transferred to the fateful livid forms, the imposing pile of which the Magistrate was regarding with troubled eyes.

In response to a touch upon the bell a smart-looking native constable entered the room, and a message sent through him brought Galada, sergeant of the native police, and four of his men, who stood before the desk in an attentive line. After the Magistrate’s order had been explained to them, Galada and his men left the room, went to where their horses stood, ready saddled, and rode forth respectively in five different directions. The sun was shining brightly. The season was early summer, but a light, refreshing breeze was making glad the land. The previous day had been hot, but a short thunderstorm at sunset had cleared the atmosphere and lowered the temperature, so the morning was sweet, as only a South African morning can be when cool, sea-born wind and gently ardent sunbeams flatter and caress.

Galada, the sergeant, took his course along the footpath which leads over the bush-covered “Black-water” Ridge. To his right arose, in precipitous terraces, the noble mass of the Umgano Mountain. The valleys were full of long lush grass, on which the sleek-limbed kine were greedily browsing. The long-tailed finches lilted over the reeds in anxious pursuit of their short-tailed, and therefore more nimble, mates; the crested lories called hoarsely from the mysterious depths of the jungle.

As the Sergeant reached the higher slopes of the ridge, the late flowers of retreating spring became more and more plentiful. The pink shields clustering around the orchid stems were full of struggling bees half-smothered in yellow pollen, while over each golden mass of mountain-broom a small cloud of butterflies hovered. Around the towering crags wheeled the chanting falcons, whose wild cries seemed to voice the very spirit of the mountain wilderness.

But Galada had neither eye nor ear for these things; his thoughts were almost wholly engrossed by the “beer-drink” which he knew was that day being held at the kraal of Headman Rolobèlè—an hour’s ride away—among the foothills of the Drakensberg Range. He knew that there he would find all the headmen to whom he had to convey the Magistrate’s message, as well as other good company, and an excellent brew of beer. Thus would be afforded a most fortunate opportunity of combining business and pleasure.

When Galada arrived at his destination he found the “beer-drink” in full swing. The men were all sitting in a circle before the main entrance to the cattle kraal, which was half-surrounded by a crescent of beehive-shaped huts. In the centre stood several immense earthenware pots full of the pink liquor, while several smaller pots, each with a cleft-calabash spoon floating in it, were circulating among the guests. Galada removed the saddle from his horse, let the animal loose to join the horses of the other visitors—which were being herded by a couple of boys. Then, after greeting the giver of the feast, he joined the circle of drinkers.

But the Sergeant was far too sensible a man to allow pleasure to interfere with duty to his own disadvantage, so after quenching his immediate thirst by emptying one of the largest of the secondary pots, he drew Rolobèlè and the other headmen aside for the purpose of communicating to them the Magistrate’s message, while all were yet in a state of sobriety.

“This, then, is the word of Government,” said he. “The people who have ‘the sickness’ (the Kaffirs have no name for the disease of leprosy) are to be gathered together at Izolo. From there they will be sent on in wagons to Emjanyana, where they will henceforth dwell. The Magistrate tells me to warn you that this word is a word which must be listened to and obeyed.”

The four headmen looked at each other in silence for awhile. Then Rolobèlè spoke—

“Yes, we knew of the coming of the word and we will obey. With the old men and women there will be no difficulty, but with the young men—the son of Makanda, for instance—he will be a difficult bull to drive into the Emjanyana kraal.”

“What! Makanda’s son, Mangèlè,” exclaimed Galada in a tone of surprise; “he that I saw among the drinkers; has he got it?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Rolobèlè. “The doctor was here last week and found ‘the sickness’ in his hand and his knee. But you knew, surely, that his mother died of it three years ago.”

Across the heavy features of the youngest of the headmen—a man named Xaba—the ghost of a smile seemed to flit. Xaba had quite recently been appointed to the headmanship in succession to his father. There was enmity and jealousy between him and Mangèlè. Both had been paying their addresses to the same girl, and the suit of Mangèlè had prospered. He had, as a matter of fact, already paid more than one instalment of the “lobola” cattle (Note 1), and the wedding was expected to take place within a few months.

After giving full instructions as to the collection of the unfortunate sufferers, Galada, accompanied by the others, returned to the beer-feast with a clear conscience. After removing his uniform to prevent its getting soiled, he borrowed a blanket from Rolobèlè and gave himself up to enjoyment.

Mangèlè was the “great son” of his father, who was so old and infirm that he slept away his days and took no further interest in life. When the weather was cold he lay all day long on his mat next to the fireplace in his hut—a little boy being always on duty to prevent the fire either going out or setting the old man’s mat or blanket alight. In mild weather he lay outside in the open. When the sun stung he sought the shady side of the hut, and groaned grievously when the pursuing sunbeams forced him to shift his quarters.

Makanda was a rich man, and, as the greater portion of his riches belonged to his “great house,” such would, consequently, fall to Mangèlè. The latter had many half-brothers who were older than himself, but, his mother having been the “great wife,” he took precedence of the rest of the family.

A few years previously Mangèlè’s mother, who had been afflicted with leprosy for many years, died miserably. Mangèlè, when little more than a boy, had quarrelled with his father and run away from home, meaning to return no more. He wandered far and near—sometimes working at the docks at Cape Town or East London—sometimes at the gold or diamond mines. The love of home is always very deep in the Kaffir, and Mangèlè came to find the longing to return to his father’s kraal so strong, that he could no longer withstand it. For some months previously he had suffered from a feeling of painful weakness in his left hand and wrist, which had made it difficult for him to use pick or shovel.

Upon his return Mangèlè found that his mother had died recently, and that his father had become very feeble in mind and body. But the old man welcomed him with open arms. Makanda had been badly treated by his other sons, who, after the fashion in such cases, had begun to despoil him of his property in the most barefaced manner. Soon after his “great son’s” return old Makanda formally abdicated the headship of the family in his favour and thenceforth spent most of his days and all his nights in peaceful, dreamless slumber.

Mangèlè’s hand became weaker and weaker. He found that he could not exert it in the least degree without suffering dull, gnawing pain for days afterward. Then the hand began to swell and the knuckles became distorted. Shortly after this a weakness, followed by a swelling, appeared in the left knee.

A cloud seemed to settle down upon his face, and his features gradually took on that strange, pathetic, and by no means repellent, look which one so often sees in strongly marked cases of tubercular leprosy before the frightful disfiguring stage has set in. This look distinctly suggests the face of a lion in repose. In strongly marked cases the resemblance cannot fail to strike the most careless observer. There is nothing in it suggestive of ferocity, but rather of a deep, dignified, and sombre sadness, with a touch of that sublimity which belongs to everything that appalls.

Mangèlè knew well that he was smitten with the incurable disease of which his mother had died. He became solitary in his habits and would sometimes sit on a stone outside his hut the whole night through. And the sombre, leonine look deepened upon his face with the passing of the months.

At first Mangèlè had, as is usual in such cases among the Kaffirs, put down his own as well as his mother’s illness to the malevolence of an enemy, and believed that if he could counteract the spell woven against him, he would recover his health, but he no longer deceived himself on this score. The Kaffirs are, as a rule, utterly ignorant of Nature’s laws as such affect the human body, but Mangèlè was intelligent to a degree far above the average of his race. Moreover, his sojourn among the Europeans had given him enlightenment. Recently the dire significance of his situation had struck him to the heart. Now and then he would appear among his fellows at a “beer-drink” or other function, but as a rule he remained at home and brooded in solitude over his doom.

A Kaffir “beer-drink” is a very curious and distinctive feature of South African native life. One peculiarity of the “beer-drink” is that the drinkers pass through several definite stages corresponding with the amount of their potations. In the earlier the utmost good-humour prevails. Soon, however, comes a period of boasting which, if different clans are represented at the gathering, shortly changes into one electric with possibilities of strife, for vaunting leads to irritation, recrimination, and eventual blows.

A fierce quarrel may arise from something utterly trivial; any two men present who dislike each other never being at a loss for a casus belli. The mere mention of an old garden dispute, or a lawsuit of half a century back between the respective grandfathers of two men who have reached the critical point, is quite enough to set the sticks whirling. Indeed, beer seems to act like a kind of sympathetic ink in bringing every ancient and half-obliterated grievance to the surface.

After the quarrelsome stage succeeds one of torpor, and from this the revellers arise with appetites which only meat, and plenty of it, can assuage. Then, unless the giver of the feast be rich and liberal enough to kill for his guests, the flocks and herds of the stock-owners in the vicinity are apt to suffer.

The stage of boasting had been reached when Galada and the headmen returned to the banquet. On different sides men were declaiming loudly of the wealth and greatness of their relations, ancestral and contemporary—several talking at the same time. Galada’s eye at once sought out Mangèlè, the son of Makanda, who had just been mentioned to him as being a leper. Mangèlè was a most splendid specimen of manhood. As he lay naked on his blanket in the bright sunshine, his splendid torso and muscular limbs seemed to be the very embodiment of health and reposeful strength. Looking more closely, however, the Sergeant was able to notice the signs of the disease which had been mentioned by Rolobèlè. Superficially, all that was wrong with the knee was a slight thickening on the outside—so slight, indeed, that Galada would certainly never have noticed the thing had his attention not been drawn to it. Mangèlè’s left hand was, however, distinctly swollen and distorted. He kept it concealed as much as possible, hiding it under a fold of the blanket he lay upon.

Mangèlè’s voice was not heard among those of the boasters. He lay silent and abstracted, slightly apart from the others, drinking deeply and apparently taking no notice of the Babel around him. For an instant he looked up as Xaba joined the circle, and the glances of these two seemed to flash at each other like spears. Then Mangèlè took another long draught of beer and bent his head lower than before.

“We of the Radèbè,” shouted ’Mzondo, a fierce-looking savage, who had a heavy ivory armlet above his left elbow, “hau—there are none like us; we are the black cattle of the pastures. My father was a bull with a strong neck and I am his calf. Look at our sticks in a fight—look how the strangers come to seek our daughters in marriage. Wau—but we are a race of chiefs—a great people.”

“We of the Amahlubi,” shouted one ’Mbulawa, “were never tillers of the fields of the Amagcaleka, nor were our daughters taken as concubines by the sons of Hintza. We were bulls when the Radèbè were oxen.”

At this reference to the captivity of the Radèbè, half a century previously, all present of that clan leaped to their feet and seized their sticks. Rolobèlè, however, managed to restore tranquillity. The majority of those present were Hlubis. The headman rebuked ’Mbulawa for his rudeness. Then, in the course of a long and eloquent speech, he adroitly led the thoughts of his guests to an episode in which both clans had equally covered themselves with glory. Thus was the anger appeased and the danger of a breach of the peace averted for the moment.

Xaba, who had for some time been drinking heavily in silence, began to dispute with one Fodo over the merits of some old family quarrel which had been settled many years previously. The sombre eye of Mangèlè followed every gesture of his enemy. Fodo was a small man, and Xaba, who in spite of his size was rather cowardly, began to address him in most insulting terms. Suddenly Mangèlè sprang to his feet, seized his sticks, and strode across the circle toward the bully. Xaba drew back before his assailant, while a number of Mangèlè’s friends threw themselves in his course and prevented him from reaching his enemy.

Under the Territorial Law, the giver of a beer-party is responsible for any breach of the peace that may occur at it. This circumstance, and the fact of the Sergeant’s presence, impelled Rolobèlè to strain every nerve to prevent fighting. After some difficulty the two furious men were forced away in different directions; they, all the time, shouting insult and defiance at each other. At length Xaba called out—

“You—bull with the water in your bones—your days are over. To-morrow you will be tied up with the sick oxen at Emjanyana. If you do not believe me, ask Galada. Good-bye; I am now going to see Nosèmbè.”

Mangèlè at once ceased from shouting and struggling, and allowed himself to be led away without resistance. His head was bent, and his heavy, leonine features set themselves into a sombre, tragic mask, out of which his eyes seemed to blaze.

Two

On the day after the transmission of the Magistrate’s message the different headmen concerned went round among their respective locations and warned the lepers to assemble at a certain spot near Izolo in ten days’ time. Mangèlè received the message in silence. His relations, who hated him for having prevented their spoliation of old Makanda, were delighted at the prospect of getting rid of him, but they wisely refrained from expressing their feelings on the subject in his presence.

Nosèmbè and Mangèlè were attached to each other in a manner somewhat rare among the uncivilised natives. She was the handsomest girl in the neighbourhood, and several other men besides Xaba had wished to marry her. She had never suspected for a moment that her lover was suffering from the dread, nameless disease that filled the bones with water, and when in the course of the next few days it came to be whispered that Mangèlè was one of those who had to go into confinement at Emjanyana, she laughed at the report. Later, Xaba spoke of it to her and she spat at him in her fury at the insult. When, however, she heard her father and brothers discussing the question of the return of the dowry cattle, she knew that the rumour was true, and her whole soul revolted at the injustice. Mangèlè was the strongest and handsomest man in the neighbourhood—why should he be locked up like a criminal because he happened to have a sore place upon his hand? She at once made up her mind that if her lover had to go, she would follow him into captivity.

Three days Nosèmbè waited in the hope that Mangèlè would visit her, but she waited in vain; so, on the fourth night, she arose from her mat after all the others had gone to sleep, crept out of the hut, and sped along the pathway which led over the divide beyond which his kraal was situated.

The night was sultry and the sky was brightly starlit as Nosèmbè glided between the patches of scrub which dappled the hillside at the back of the kraal. She knew the hut which Mangèlè occupied by himself; all she feared was that the dogs might give the alarm and some of the people come out and see her. As she crouched behind a bush the dogs suddenly set up a chorus of barking and rushed down the hillside on the opposite side of the kraal in pursuit of a supposed enemy. Here was her chance; she sprang up and ran swiftly down the slope to Mangèlè’s hut.

Mangèlè was sitting on a stone in front of the doorway, in an attitude expressive of the deepest dejection. His head was bowed upon the arms which rested upon his bent knees, and the corner of his blanket was drawn over it as though he could not bear even the light of the gentle stars. He heard Nosèmbè’s footstep, and lifted his sombre face. For a few seconds the two regarded each other silently; then the girl flung herself to the ground at the man’s feet and broke into a passion of tears.

Mangèlè lifted Nosèmbè from where she lay and clasped her closely to him. Her sobs ceased, but it was long before either spake a word. The girl was the first to break the silence.

“It is not true that you have to go to Emjanyana.”

“It is true.”

“But you are not sick,” she rejoined, passionately. “You are stronger than other men. And you have done no wrong. How, then, can they put you in prison?”

“I am sick,” he replied, in a heart-broken voice; “my bones are filling with water. It is right that I go away. I am a dead man.”

“Then I will go with you.”

“No, that cannot be,” he replied, in a voice broken by emotion; “no woman can go to Emjanyana unless she have ‘the sickness’; and then the men and women have to dwell apart.”

“Moimamo,” she wailed. “You cannot leave me—your child quickens even now. You have paid the dowry and I am your wife. I will sit at the gate at Emjanyana until they let me in.”

Day was almost breaking when Mangèlè led Nosèmbè back into the scrub to the footpath by which she had come. They bade each other farewell, after arranging to meet on the following night in the same way.

Nosèmbè had not gone very far before she met her father and two of her brothers, who, when they had discovered her absence, guessed where she had gone to and started out to seek for her. She met their railing and reproaches with the utmost composure. However, when night again came she found herself so carefully guarded that escape was impossible, so she was unable to keep the appointment with her lover.

Mangèlè waited the whole night through, hoping against hope that she would come. He correctly guessed the cause of her absence. When day broke he took his sticks and went forth to carry out a design he had formed in the course of his long vigil.

During the next forty-eight hours he personally visited every one of the lepers belonging to his clan in the district, and arranged with them to meet a day later in the vicinity of the Residency.

In the morning, just after the Magistrate had reached his office, he received a message asking him to meet the lepers under a certain tree, where, by tacit understanding, they had been accustomed to assemble on the rare occasions when they required to communicate direct with the authorities. Soon afterward he walked to the spot, which was situated in a kloof about three hundred yards distant.

There they sat, twenty-four in number. Ten of them were women. All, with the exception of Mangèlè, were old. What an awful spectacle they afforded, these four-and-twenty human creatures; all save one crushed almost out of human semblance by the wheels of the chariot of pitiless, unregarding Nature. There, against the lovely background of graceful fern and fragrant clematis, beneath the twinkling, poplar-like leaves of the spreading erethryna-tree—through which the blue sky smiled—were huddled these poor sufferers without hope of relief, guiltless vessels marred by the mysterious hand of The Great Potter. Twisted limb and crumbling stump, visages from which the gracious human lines had been obliterated by a slow, fell process more awful than the snake’s fang or the lightning’s stroke.

Over what remained of nearly every countenance seemed to hover a suggestion of that strange, leonine look which was so strongly marked in the case of Mangèlè; and to the Magistrate it seemed as if this were the only relief from a horror almost too absolute to look upon for long and keep his senses. It was as though what Schopenhauer called “the genius of the genus” had arisen from the depths of being to protest mutely against this piteous desecration of its temple by unregarding Nature and iron-visaged Fate. It was the very sublimation of tragic pathos, in the presence of which pity seemed to die of its own intensity.

All but Mangèlè sat upon the ground and endeavoured to hide, so far as possible, their worst individual disfigurements, but he stood forth as though proudly conscious of his almost perfect symmetry, and met the Magistrate’s sympathetic glance with his sombre, lion-like gaze. Then, after the usual salutations, Mangèlè began his speech. As is usual with natives to whom oratory is an inborn art, his delivery was excellent and full of dignity.

“We, men and women who are dead, though living, come to our Father, the Government, to ask for a little thing.

“God, whom the White Man has taught us to know, smote us with this sickness which has filled our bones with water for marrow, and caused our quick flesh to rot slowly, like dead wood. We acknowledge that it is only right we should be separated from other men, so that we may not give the disease to those who are clean, but we cannot dwell apart from our kindred, our cattle and the fields wherein our fathers saw the corn growing when they were little children—therefore we wish to die now, this day. Then will the sickness die with us, and our Father, the Government, will not be put to any further trouble on our account.

“What we ask of the White Chief, our Magistrate, is this: that he now, before the sun has begun to fall, send hither his policemen with rifles, and bid them shoot us skilfully so that we may suffer little pain.

Then turning to his companions, who had heard him in silence, he added—

“My brothers and sisters—children of my Father—tell our Chief if I have spoken the right word.”

An eager murmur of assent followed.

“Yes, our Chief, he has spoken the one word which is in all our hearts: kill us here, but send us not to dwell apart from our homes and our kindred.”

It was some little time before the Magistrate was able to command his feelings sufficiently to admit of his speaking. When they saw that he was about to reply, his miserable hearers leant forward with every appearance of the keenest interest. In his heart he knew that what the poor creatures asked for was for them the best. His compassion was so deep that he could have slain them with his own hand.

“The word you have spoken,” he said, “has gone through my heart like the bullet you have asked for. What can I say for your comfort? Go, my poor brothers and sisters whom God has afflicted so sorely. In the place to which your Father, the Government, is sending you, neither hunger nor cold will afflict you; you will have many friends and your days will be passed in peace. The thing you ask for I may not give, for the Law allows it not. My heart will be with you in your exile.”

Then a wail of anguished protest went up from the miserable crowd—

“Law—what have we to do with the Law—we who are dead already? We cannot dwell in a strange place. Kill us and put us under the ground on which we have lived our lives. Send the policemen with the rifles to us here at this spot—we will not shrink.”

After the Magistrate had withdrawn, the poor creatures continued their lamentations for some time. Then they seemed to fall into a condition of apathy. Mangèlè sat silently apart, with the corner of his blanket drawn over his head. This, of late, had become his habitual attitude. Eventually he arose and called for attention—

“Listen, O brothers and sisters of the sickness; the thing which the Magistrate may not do on account of the Law we may yet do for ourselves... To-morrow night at sundown let us meet at the Wizard’s Rock. There we may die as painlessly as by a rifle. To-day and to-morrow let us look our last upon our kindred, our cattle, and the land our fathers dwelt in. To-morrow night we will go down with the sun.”

Three

The Wizard’s Rock derives its name from the circumstance that in the old days—before the advent of civilised government—it was the place of execution of those hapless creatures who were condemned for the supposed practice of witchcraft.

Before the rule of the European in South Africa there was, among the natives, a strong recrudescence from time to time of the lamentable belief that the land was full of malevolent wizards and witches, who spent most of their time in weaving deadly spells against man and beast. The consequences were terrible; men and women were put to death upon the flimsiest suspicion; torture of the most horrible kind was freely resorted to, and the wildest confession wrung from the agonised lips of some was taken as absolute confirmation of the most preposterous apprehensions.

Not more than thirty years ago many a dolorous procession wended its way up to this jutting peak, from the base of which, hundreds of feet below, a slope, covered with noble forest, fell away to a deep and rapid river. The doomed wretch would be blindfolded and placed, standing, at the edge of the precipice. Then the executioner would deal him a smashing blow on the side of the head with a heavily knobbed stick, and thus hurl him into the abyss.

Among the broken rocks below, the curious may, even at this late day, find fragments of human bones. The place has an evil reputation; no native boy cares to go near it; no bribe would induce one to visit it alone. Now and then a few of the bolder spirits, finding themselves in the forest, make an excursion to the foot of the great rock, but they steal along breathlessly from tree to tree and from stone to stone, taking cover at each and listening fearfully lest the restless “imishologu”—the spirits of the wicked ones who have died violently—should be unseasonably awake. Then the fall of a dead bough, the rush of a troop of monkeys through the branches, the slightest unfamiliar echo from the beetling crag, will send them flying toward the open in speechless terror, with ashen-grey faces and staring eyes. Afterward they will boast loudly to their friends of the bravery evinced in the visit, omitting, of course, all reference to the invariable panic.

The day following the assembling of the lepers at the Magistracy died splendidly. To seaward the milk-white thunderclouds which marked the track of the monsoon towered into the deep azure, and when the sun began to sink behind the great mountain range to westward, every stately vapour-turret took on a changing glory, while in the inky vaults between incessant lightnings played.

Since early in the afternoon the poor lepers had been laboriously ascending the mountain by the different footpaths. Many were hardly able to hobble, but these were assisted by others whose legs were not so badly affected. Mangèlè bore upon his broad back an old man whose feet had completely crumbled away. Leaving this poor creature at the summit, he returned and helped the weaker among the others to ascend. The sun was still some little distance above the horizon when the last of the self-doomed band sank panting at the edge of the cliff. Of the four-and-twenty who had come to the Residency to interview the Magistrate, twenty had assembled at the Rock. The others, three women and a man, had felt their courage fail them, so had decided to accept their less violent, though dreaded, fate and go to Emjanyana.

’Mpofu, the oldest of the men, dragged his shapeless frame to a stone, against which he leant, supporting himself by his stick at the same time. He trembled violently and made several attempts before he succeeded in speaking. Then his voice came in a husky quaver. The others turned toward him with an air of expectancy.

“It is,” he said, “a long time since I last stood on this spot. I was then hardly a man; Hintza was Chief. We came here to look upon the killing of Gungubèlè, who was ‘smelt out’ for having bewitched his elder brother. I leant my head over the edge of the rock and listened for the thud of his body as it struck the stones, far down. I thought the wind had borne it away, but at length it struck me like a club. Many seasons have since passed, but that sound has ever since been in my ears. And now—when my body falls—”

A shudder passed through the crouching creatures; one or two of the women began to whimper and a few near the verge drew back with looks of terror. Mangèlè sprang to his feet.

“What is this?” he cried in an angry voice; “has ‘the sickness’ filled your heart as well as your bones with water, O ’Mpofu, my father? Is yours the voice that calls dogs thirsty for death back from the fountain? Was it not your word that made me the leader of this army of dead men who are yet alive—and will you now turn them back on the day of battle? Shame on you. Listen to me, oh, my brothers, and not to this old man whose heart shrinks because of a sound he heard on a day before we were born. I am young, and death is more bitter to the young than to the old. My kraal is full of cattle; the dowry has been paid for my bride, yet I stand here to-day and am not afraid to die. Listen now to a new word in a strange tongue, but a word which you nevertheless may understand if you will:

“For a long time I have known that my sickness was like your own—the sickness that no doctor can cure. Through the long nights, when others slept, I have sat alone under the stars, and the voices of the darkness have taught me many things. Now, the greatest and strangest of these things was this: that I loved you who have suffered through your long lives what I am but beginning to suffer, and it is out of that love that I have brought you here to-day to put an end to your pain. Out of the darkness came another strange word—a word which has taught me how to die, to die with my eyes open; but I could not bear to die and leave you helpless in the pain you have endured so long. All this is the wisdom which I have learned from those voices of which the darkness is full.”

When Mangèlè ceased speaking his hearers broke out into loud wailing. One of the women crept shrinkingly to the verge of the precipice, glanced over the edge, and drew back with a shriek. Then she covered her face with her blanket and lay upon the ground, grovelling. The others, who had silently watched her, broke into renewed and terror-stricken wails as she drew back. Mangèlè once more began to speak, a note of thunder in his voice; all at once shrank into silence.

“This will I do for the sake of the love I bear you, and for that ye know not your own minds, nor what is good for you; this will I do because my heart is strong where yours is weak: I will hurl you one by one over the rock and then follow you myself. Look your last upon the sun, oh my brothers and sisters whom I love, for you are about to die.”

At this the wretched creatures grovelled about Mangèlè’s feet, beseeching him to spare their lives. They would, they said, go to Emjanyana and live peacefully like cattle in the kraal of their father, the Government. Their hearts were full of water; they were old and weak. They would not have minded death by shooting, at the Residency, but this was an evil place which bore a bad name from the most ancient days. The House of Death was cold and the road to it, over the steep cliff and the sharp stone beneath, painful. Even though they were sick they still could feel the warmth of the sun. If he loved them, let Mangèlè leave them until Death came of his own accord and sought them out.

Mangèlè stood with bent head in the middle of the prostrate crowd and listened to their piteous pleadings. When at length he lifted his face a change had come over it—a wistful, transfiguring gentleness had taken the place of the look of stern indignation it had borne when he last spoke. Silencing the wailing creatures with a gesture, he said:

“Peace, peace; your words have made me weak. Live, then, since you fear to die.”

Mangèlè stepped from among the crouching throng and took his stand on the very verge of the cliff. The sun was just about to disappear; its last level beams swept across the world and seemed to search out and reveal every noble curve and graceful line in the ebon limbs and trunk of the splendidly proportioned man who was about to destroy his beauty to save it from loathsome decay—they lit the noble face and head until these took on a sublime look of leonine anguish and the sombre eyes seemed to glare a tremendous indictment against Nature and Fate.

“Farewell, brothers and sisters who have not been taught how to die. Tell the girl Nosèmbè that my thoughts were of her as I sped to the sharp rocks.”

As he spoke the last word Mangèlè sprang backward over the cliff. Old ’Mpofu and a woman shut their eyes and bent their heads sideways toward the verge. A few seconds afterward a heavy thud from below smote on the ears of all. A low groan broke from their lips—

A sound of approaching footsteps and laboured breathing was heard, and just afterward a tall young woman stepped in among the huddled throng. It was Nosèmbè, who, having heard a rumour of the impending tragedy, hastened to join the man she loved and die with him.

“Ho, ye who are here,” she said, after her eye had swept around the circle, “how is it then that your leader has not come? But there is his blanket and his stick; speak; where is Mangèlè, my lover?”

No one dared to answer; all sank their faces to the earth.

“Ha!” Nosèmbè cried, “I see the truth ye dare not speak—he is dead and ye are not ashamed to be alive... He waits for me... I take him his unborn child.”

Then, with a long, shrill call upon her lover’s name, Nosèmbè leaped into the abyss.

Shortly after these events, on a day that was a dream of beauty, a couple of wagons drawn by long teams of oxen crossed the Lunda Divide by the road to Emjanyana. In the wagons were seated those of the lepers who were unable to walk. Hobbling after them came the rest, a dreary band, their heads bent, their whole appearance suggestive of stolid and hopeless misery. None attempted to turn back. They had attained the calm of consent.

When the top of the divide was reached the drivers called a halt for the purpose of breathing the oxen. The poor lepers gazed back long and lovingly at the valleys wherein they had dwelt all their lives and which they never more would see.

No tear was shed; not a word was spoken; not a sigh or a groan broke the silence. The police who formed the escort had dismounted for a space at the side of the road.

After a few minutes Sergeant Galada signed to the drivers to proceed, and the wagons rumbled heavily down the slope. The lepers sat on the ground, still gazing backward, and seemingly unconscious that the wagons had gone forward.

Then the policemen came up and gently—very gently—urged the exiled and disinherited creatures to continue their journey.

Note 1. The dowry paid by the bridegroom to the bride’s father after the manner of the ancient Spartans.

Chapter Two.

The Writing on the Rock.

A few years ago I happened to be detained for several weeks in a somewhat remote village in the Cape Colony. Having very little to do I availed myself of an invitation received from a certain Boer named Jacobus van der Merwe—to visit his farm for the purpose of shooting.

The farm, “Honey Krantz,” was about twenty miles away; it lay in the midst of the grandest mountain scenery. The only road was a very rugged one along the course of a devious gorge, with frequent crossings of a brawling stream. Each of the many sharp turns was marked by an immense rock-buttress, hundreds of feet in height. The mountainous sides of the gorge were thickly strewn with mighty boulders, whilst here and there wide moraines extended from summit to base.

I at once became very much interested in the members of the household. My host was about forty-five years of age and, even for a Boer, extremely stout. In fact he was obliged to excuse himself, on the score of his size, from accompanying me to the hunting-grounds, which lay so high that reaching them involved considerable and steep climbing. Accordingly, an alert-looking Hottentot was assigned to me as after-rider and guide. This “boy” knew every corner of the great mountain mass and was thoroughly familiar with the haunts and habits of the game.

Mrs van der Merwe was almost as stout as her husband, who was also her cousin. It was, however, evident that when young she must have possessed great beauty. The house was full of children; these were of all ages and they strongly resembled each other in appearance. All were blue-eyed, flaxen-haired and rosy-cheeked. There was one grown-up daughter—Gertrude—a girl of eighteen. She only lacked animation to be a most beautiful woman. Her dead-gold hair lay in a dense mass upon her shoulders; her calm, deep eyes of a most tender blue were set beneath a broad, smooth, white brow; her teeth were dazzlingly white and her face pure oval in shape.

It was just after sundown when I arrived at the homestead. Supper over, I was invited to visit Sarei van der Merwe—the old, blind grandfather—who had not left his room for many years. I found him sitting in a very large home-made chair, with his feet upon a wooden stool containing a pan of charcoal. His bulk was huge; in fact, he was, probably, the biggest man I had ever seen. He had a long white beard and a mass of silvery hair. On a table, within reach of his hand, were several pipes and a large tobacco-pouch—the latter made out of a portion of the stomach of a sheep, brayed. Close to his feet a diminutive Hottentot crouched upon a sheep-skin. The face of this creature was old-looking and monkey-like. His duties were to attend to the old man’s needs; more especially to hold a burning coal, when required, to the often-replenished pipe. This he did with a skill evidently born of long practice—picking up the glowing lumps in his naked fingers with the utmost unconcern.

The room was comfortably furnished; almost everything in it appeared to be home-made. There were no blankets on the bed, their place being taken by karosses made of the skins of the fat-tailed sheep. Unlike the other rooms, this one had no ceiling, the thatch being visible between the rafters. Upon the rafters lay a coffin, evidently, from its size, built to accommodate old Sarei’s prospective mortal remnants.

I grasped the old man’s outstretched hand. He retained mine for a few seconds, feeling first the palm, then the back and lastly the fingers carefully over. I looked the while into his eyes; these were clear and blue and gave no suggestion of blindness.

“You work your brain too much and your body too little,” said he, dropping my hand. “Your mind travels without rest on an endless road.”

I was somewhat startled; it was so unexpected and at the same time so tersely true.

“It is clear,” I replied, “that you do not need eyes to see. My brain is busy turning out barren thoughts, like a mill grinding sawdust.”

“When young, one runs after thoughts; but when you grow old the thoughts will come and wait, like servants, until you wish to use them.”

“My thoughts are less like servants than like dogs hunting me to death,” I replied.

“A dog will obey if he be trained; if you do not train him he will bite you.”

“Yes, I can see that. But if you have let them grow big without using the whip—what then?”

“Watch and pray; call the Lord to your help and He will deliver you. When I was young I rioted in my pride; I called my strength my own and told God I could do without His help. Then He struck me with blindness, and I repented. For a season the thoughts I had bred tore at my soul, but I slew them after bitter combat. Now others of a different kind have taken their place.”

It was amazing to find such philosophy in one of a class usually supposed to be both ignorant and illiterate. Here was one who had solved the Great Enigma, who was at peace with himself, who apparently thought strongly and with originality, and who, although stricken with a misfortune that might well bring despair, was probably happier than nineteen-twentieths of his fellow-creatures. There was no trace of self-righteousness about the man. The unmistakable seal of peace was upon him.

“If I could feel as you do,” I replied, “I should not care whether I lived or died; I should know no fear. Can you not teach me how to put the house of my mind in order and to train my dogs?”

“That none can teach but yourself—your own soul—and then only when God touches you with His finger.”

Shortly afterwards the family assembled for worship in the old man’s room. He recited one of the Psalms and then offered up a prayer. His language was very simple, but it breathed the most fervent Christianity. The servants of the household were present. Then, after bidding old Sarei “Good-night,” all left the room but his son and the little Hottentot. These remained to assist him to bed.

It was evidently the practice of the household to retire early, so I went to my room at once. It was large and lofty. The snowy linen upon the great feather-bed looked tempting, and I felt a deep sense of satisfaction in sinking into the downy abyss.

My window looked out upon the valley; through the wide-open casement I could see the black rampart of mountain crested with twinkling stars. Here, if anywhere, one could realise—

“The silence that is in the starry sky,
And sleep that is among the lonely hills.”

Shortly after daylight a most delicious cup of coffee was brought to my bedside; it was keen enjoyment just to lie and inhale the aroma, but the aroma was nothing to the taste.

Soon a weak shaft of sunlight touched the wall above my head, so I sprang up and went to the open window. The beauty of the scene was incomparable. To the southward arose the stark, rugged mountain mass which formed the culmination of the range—its topmost crags touched with gold; all else was clothed in a diaphanous purple veil; every hollow was brimming with mystery. Here and there a faint wreath of mist clung like departing sleep to the eyelids of the mountain. As I looked, the sun climbed through a gap, and straightway the lesser summits grew golden.

Not a breath of the slightest breeze disturbed the sacred stillness. The only sound was the faint murmur from the distant stream foaming over the grey boulders at the bottom of the valley. From the stream the hillside sloped steeply up, dotted thickly with dark green trees. But an undercurrent of very real sadness flowed through all this beauty. I could not forget the blind man in the next room; did he ever recall this scene—which he must often have gazed upon—and repine? Although his peace seemed to be as deep and changeless as the vault of the blue sky, the memory must, surely, often strain his heartstrings.

I leant upon the window-sill and looked to the right. There I saw Gertrude standing, her dead-gold hair unbound, her pure, calm visage bathed in the sunlight. She appeared to gaze at the sun as unconcernedly as an eagle might have done. She afforded the one touch necessary to complete the harmony of the scene.

After an early breakfast I took my rifle and, accompanied by the Hottentot guide, went forth in search of game. The mountain was so steep that our ponies could only ascend by scarping, zigzag fashion. It took nearly two hours to reach the central plateau lying between the two highest summits of the range.

From here the view was superb; billow after billow seemed to surge away in every direction—each crested with a fringe of cliff like the foam of a breaking wave. Every now and then a faint cloud-wreath would form around one or other of the higher crags, then float away to leeward like a tress, until dissolved by the sunshine.

Having shot a couple of rheboks, I felt disinclined for further slaughter, so laid myself down among the late mountain flowers and basked in the light. The heat was deliciously tempered by a steadily-streaming breeze. Thus were spent several hours.

It was only when the sun had sunk considerably in to the afternoon that I regretfully began to think of returning to the homestead. The ponies were grazing a short distance away, so after telling my after-rider to replace the saddles, load up the game and make his way homeward by the nearest available course, I took a bee-line on foot for the farmhouse.

My course led across the head of a gorge, the sides of which were steep, grassy slopes, interspersed with patches of moraine. Here and there immense angular fragments of stone—which had, ages back, slid down from the crowning cliffs—protruded from the earth. Passing one of these, something peculiar in its appearance caught my eye, so I approached more closely. Upon its flat face the following inscription had been roughly cut:—

“HIER WORDT EEN ZONDENAAR BEKEERD.”

Having thought much of old Sarei during the day, I involuntarily connected him with the strange inscription—“Here a sinner became converted.” The letters were deeply carved into the stone, and the way the dents were overgrown with lichen showed that the carving had taken place many years ago. Somehow the legend seemed quite congruous; if a special revelation ever came from the Divine to the human, what place could be more appropriate for its happening than this—the undefiled heart of the everlasting hills, where the hand of man had as yet wrought no desecration? Like Moses before the Burning Bush, I felt as though standing upon holy ground.

I reached the homestead just as dusk was setting in. After supper I again went to pay my respects to old Sarei. He greeted me with cheerfulness—

“Well, they say no Englishman can shoot, yet I hear you killed two bucks to-day.”

“Yes,” I replied, “I killed two bucks, and I almost wish I had not done so. It seemed to be a sin to shed blood in such a place and on such a day.”

Old Sarei turned his mild, inquiring, blind eyes upon me, but made no reply. We sat and smoked in silence for a while.

“Can you tell me anything about an inscription I saw upon a rock to-day—‘Here a sinner became converted’?”

“Yes,” he replied, after a pause, “I am the sinner. My son cut the words upon the stone at my wish.”

I held silence, so he shortly afterwards asked—“Would you like me to tell you of what happened?”

“Yes, I should be most grateful.”

“I was born on this farm,” he said; “my father was one of the first to take up land about here. When a young man, hunting was my passion. I made friends with the wild Bushmen who then dwelt on the mountain, and they used to drive the game for me. I built a hut near the spring just below the summit, and there I sometimes stayed for weeks together.

“I was proud of my eyesight and my skill with the rifle. I did not care for the society of others; I neglected my wife and children; I neither feared God nor regarded man. The mountain I looked upon as my home. Living so near the sky makes one different to others. The sins of the Flesh lose their breath and cannot climb so high, but those of the Spirit beset you sorely. You will remember that Satan tempted the Lord on the top of a high mountain.

“One day in summer, about forty years ago, I was riding across the head of the kloof where the stone stands whereon you read those words to-day. A thunderstorm was sweeping down from the north-west, but I took no heed, for I had never known fear of lightning nor anything else. The Bushmen were driving on a troop of elands, and I expected them to cross the saddle at the head of the kloof; so I left the horse concealed in a hollow and took my stand, with the rifle on my arm, at the foot of the rock.

“Soon the elands appeared; they ran for a short distance down the kloof, then halted just opposite where I was standing. One great bull stood apart from the others. As I lifted my rifle to take aim a flash leaped out of the cloud and struck the ground close to where the bull was standing, igniting the grass. The animal sprang back in terror. I fired—and it rolled over, dead.

“Then I laughed aloud and shouted that my aim was more true than that of the Almighty. An instant afterwards the heavens opened and flame enveloped me like a sheet. I fell, senseless, to the ground.

“When I recovered I thought night had fallen. I could smell that my clothing was scorched, but I felt no hurt. The rain had ceased and I was conscious of a sensation of warmth. I still thought it was night, but night blacker than I had ever known. After a while I stood up and groped about in terror, for I now imagined that the end of the world had come and that the sun had been quenched. Then I heard a bird singing: I still wondered; but when I heard the Bushmen calling to me from the other side of the kloof, where the dead eland lay, the truth struck me in all its terror: I was blind.

“I shrieked and blasphemed as I staggered about. I found my gun and tried to shoot myself, but the lightning had twisted it as you might twist a handful of straw. The Bushmen led me down to the homestead.

“Afterwards, I spent many days and nights in hell, but the day arrived when my pride lay broken in the dust, and I came to acknowledge that God’s Angel was sitting on that thundercloud, charged to save my soul.”

That night I lay long awake, thinking of old Sard’s tale. I had a very clear recollection of the inscribed stone and its surroundings, so tried to picture the tremendous episode of forty years back. The sultry summer day; the white thundercloud curdling into shape upon the hot north-western horizon and towering into the ether, until its spreading tentacles seemed to seize the world in a mighty grip. Later, the low muttering of thunder, pulsing from the monster’s baleful heart, and the thin streak of fire darting out far in advance of the rain and igniting the dry grass. Then the blasphemous jest of the strong man proud of his skill. Lastly, the thunderbolt winged to smite but not to slay, touching not so much as a hair of the head of the defiant human atom, but crushing the gun in his hand as though it were a reed, and filling his eyes with such excess of light that nothing less vivid could stir their sense for evermore.

Chapter Three.

Tommy’s Evil Genius.

“Greater love hath no man than this.”—S. John XV. 13.

His name was Danster. His age might have been anything between fifteen and forty-five. His cheekbones were high, and his eyes oblique like those of a Mongolian. Scattered unevenly over his bullet-shaped skull were thin tufts of wool, each culminating in a minute, solid pellet. His only clothing was a noisome sheep-skin kaross which had formerly belonged to a great-grandfather—long since deceased.

Danster was a Hottentot—or rather what is called by that indefinite term at the Cape. In his much-mixed blood that of the Bushman evidently preponderated. An anthropologist would have valued his skull, which seemed to epitomise the results of a criminal ancestry extending through many generations.

Tommy, surnamed Winwood, was very different. He was a blonde, blue-eyed, yellow-haired lad of eight years of age, somewhat slight and undersized, but agile and capable of endurance when under the stimulus of excitement. Five children had nested in the Winwood nursery, but only Tommy survived. The others had all succumbed to congenital delicacy before reaching the age of seven. With Tommy the Winwoods had come to South Africa in the early eighties, and had taken a farm near the coast in one of the eastern districts of the Cape Colony. Mr Winwood was a nervous, retiring man of literary tastes. Having enough money to live upon, his farming was hardly a serious pursuit. In fact he left the management of the place almost solely in the hands of a somewhat dour but conscientious Boer, who managed to run the concern at a profit.

Mrs Winwood suffered from extreme delicacy. She was an accomplished musician, but the climate had sapped her energy to such an extent that when the weather was warm she hardly ever touched the piano. When the days were cool, she often played for six or seven hours a day, and thus seriously overtaxed her strength. Both she and her husband were moody and morbid. Although much attached to each other, their life was a series of misunderstandings.

It may be imagined what a lonely life poor Tommy led. He received three hours’ instruction every day—two from his father and one from his mother. His nursery was full of toys, but the very number and variety of these had rendered them valueless as a resource. The homestead stood on the steep south slope of a valley through which a stream ran between fringes of timber rooted in rich, fern-bearing soil, and commanded a grand view of interspersed forest and grassy slopes. But, unfortunately, snakes abounded, so poor Tommy was restricted to the cleared area immediately surrounding the house. So his face took on that expression of pathos which haunts the looks of children debarred from the companionship of their kind.

When the tempter appeared Tommy fell an easy prey. Danster was a calf-herd. He, too, felt lonely. His avocations kept him in the vicinity of the homestead, so he soon found an opportunity of making friends with the lonely child. The intimacy grew, unnoticed by Tommy’s parents, and was for some time tacitly acquiesced in. However, one day Mrs Winwood came upon the two sitting behind the big water-tank, and found Danster engaged in extracting the eyes of a living bird with a mimosa thorn, while Tommy looked on, fascinated. Danster was thereupon severely flogged by the overseer, under Mr Winwood’s supervision, and earnestly warned never to show his ill-favoured face near the homestead again.

Tommy was a thoroughly truthful child. When questioned he freely admitted that the removal of the bird’s eyes was the last of a long series of hideous vivisectional experiments at which he had assisted, and which had been organised for his delectation. Like most highly-strung people, Mr and Mrs Winwood were morbidly sensitive to physical suffering, either in themselves or in other sentient beings. The keenness of their distress may therefore be imagined. Horrible though the thing was, they took far too serious a view of it. In fact, they imagined that their child’s character had been irreparably ruined.

Tommy had not realised how attached he was to the disreputable Danster until after the separation. One night, about a week after the dreadful discovery, Tommy confessed to his mother that he loved Danster very much indeed. Soon he began to mope visibly. His father and mother were horribly annoyed at the turn things had taken. They always referred to Danster as their son’s evil genius.

Something had to be done, so it was decided to employ a governess. In due course a highly certificated lady came to undertake the regeneration of Tommy’s morals as well as the development of his mind. She had much erudition, but little sympathy, so Tommy and she were antipathetic towards each other from the very start, and the starved heart of the lonely child went out more and more towards the banished Danster.

Drought had lain heavily on the land for many months. The season was autumn. During early spring copious rains had fallen, but throughout sultry January and blistering February the heavens had been as brass and the wind as the blast from a furnace. The grass which had sprung up rank and luxuriant withered again, and now the farm, which was much under-stocked, lay like a clay potsherd covered with tinder.

One afternoon the sun smote the earth with more than usual fury. Away to the westward irregular fragments of thundercloud, which seemed incapable of cohering sufficiently to produce a storm, coquetted with the quivering mountain-tops. Ever and anon irregular gusts from the eastward would trail over glowing hill and gasping vale with a sound as though the tortured earth were sobbing an appeal to the skies for the withheld mercy of rain. It was one of those days on which the beast seeks, gasping, for a cool lair, and the bird pants with half outstretched wings, deep in the densest foliage.

Mr and Mrs Winwood had collapsed completely; the governess retired to her darkened room; the servants had disappeared. Tommy only was awake. He tried all sorts of devices for passing the time, but the walls of his comparatively cool room became an irksome prison as the afternoon wore on; so he opened the glass door quietly, to avoid wakening his father in the next room, and stepped quietly on to the back stoep. Here he was in the shade. The air had taken on that suspicion of coolness which, in seasons of drought, nearly always tempers the afternoon.

Tommy leant upon the verandah rail, and the wind, as it stirred his yellow locks, seemed to be charged with some odour that stimulated his languid pulses. He sniffed at it wonderingly; what did it remind him of? Then he suddenly knew, and his cheek crimsoned with a guilty flush: it was the smell of Danster’s kaross, its grosser elements subdued by distance, which assailed his nostrils.

Tommy cast his eyes around, and they fell upon an object which sent the blood coursing wildly through his veins. There, emerging from a bush only a few yards away, was the bullet-shaped head and Mongolian face of the Hottentot, his eyes filled with appeal and his wide mouth distended into a white-toothed smile. Tommy gazed spellbound, and the evil genius cautiously held out at arm’s length a stick from which a small water-tortoise hung by one tortured leg. After this had been dangled for a few seconds it was withdrawn and then the nest of a loxia was held forth. The loxia suspends its nest from boughs overhanging dark, forest-nurtured pools, and the nest has a long, woven tube, cunningly devised for the purpose of keeping out snakes, lizards and other enemies that prey upon the eggs and young of wild birds. Tommy had often gazed at these works of woven art as they hung from the whip-like acacia boughs, and had longed to possess one. A vision of the cool forest grot where he had seen them swaying in the wind arose in his mind. Duty was forgotten in an instant; Nature, like a long-banished king, came back and claimed his own. An old hat belonging to his father hung upon a nail close at hand. Hurriedly placing this upon his head he tripped down the steps into the garden and followed the beckoning tempter.

Tommy hurried after his evil genius along the pathway which led through the orchard down to the bottom of the valley. In passing, Danster skilfully snatched a supply of half-ripe peaches from the laden trees, and hid the loot in a fold of his odoriferous kaross. This grated on Tommy’s sense of honour; his conscience lifted his head. To salve it, he mentally resolved not to eat any of the fruit.

They climbed over the orchard fence and pressed through the rustling Tambookie grass, which filled the air with its sharp, sweet scent. Then they reached the strip of forest at the bottom of the valley. From the heart of its charmed mystery stole the delightful murmur of falling water.

Just where the pathway crossed the stream was a rocky ledge over which a thin gush of crystal water trembled down through the air and, smiting a boulder, resolved itself into fine spray. A vagrant sunbeam pierced this, and the miracle of a tiny rainbow hung over the pool. This is a phenomenon only seen in severe droughts, and when the sunlight smites through a gap in the greenery at a certain angle. The impressionable Tommy become intoxicated with delight; the smell of Danster’s kaross, which had always offended his sensitive nose, was forgotten. The evil genius became a wood-god and Tommy his humble votary.

The wind, heated once more to furnace pitch, moaned threateningly along the hillside, but here all was cool, grateful and quiet. The unruffled water slept beneath the shadowing trees from which, ever and anon, sounded the peevish twitter of drowsy birds. A large iguana slowly dragged its scaly length over the stones, pausing now and then to snap at an insect, which it swallowed, gulping solemnly. A flash of vivid blue seemed to fill the gloom—a kingfisher skimmed out of the darkness across the surface of the pool and perched on a stone. Quick as thought Danster flung his short, knobbed stick with unerring aim, and the bird fell, mangled, its bright plumage scattered over the surface of the crystal pool. This broke the spell. Grasping the dead bird in his hand, Tommy followed his evil genius across the stream and through the fringe of woodland on the other side.

Now came the main effort of the enterprise; the steep, grassy hillside had to be climbed. Beyond, high up, stood the enchanted forest in the depth of which the red-winged, green-crested lories flitted with noiseless undulations from tree to tree or waked strident echoes with their hoarse-throated calls. There the satyrs of the South—the black-faced, green-backed monkeys—tore swinging along from bough to bough, scattering leaves, flowers and berries from sheer love of mischief. There the great woodland butterflies flitted like ghosts through the nether gloom or circled like fairies around the tree-tops. From there the raucous barking of the rutting bushbucks sounded at midnight across the valley. There were hidden wonders—untold, transcendent—stinging imagination into ecstasy.

The hillside had once been covered with forest, but the timber had, on the lower slopes, disappeared under the blighting hand of man. Now the high, waving Tambookie grass lay thick upon it, and through this the path wound and zigzagged aimlessly, after the manner of South African footways. A stream had once flowed down the decline, but being no longer nurtured by the growth of timber, had shrunk to an underground trickle, the course of which was here and there marked by a funnel-shaped opening filled with bracken. Here a careful ear might discover the musical tinkle of semi-subterranean water.

Tommy became very tired, but pushed bravely on, following the lead of his evil genius. The air became hotter and hotter. A few belated cloudlets, very high up, sailed slowly against the wind. From some of these a few heavy gouts of rain occasionally fell, only to be immediately evaporated by the glowing earth. Now and then a remote metallic clashing of thunder could be heard. A sudden and furious succession of gusts sprang up and joined in a mad whirl from eastward. This covered the hillside with dust, and sent leaves and twigs flying over the billows of the swaying grass.

Tommy looked longingly at the dense forest, which now lay but a couple of hundred yards ahead. The wind blew his hair bewilderingly into his eyes; the hot, acrid dust filled his throat. His legs trembled under him, but he still struggled bravely on. His evil genius stood between him and the worst of the gusts, and the unsavoury kaross proved an acceptable shield against the stinging missiles with which the air was filled.

At length a lull—but the wind was only pausing to gain strength for a burst of wilder fury. Then a dense cloud of dust and detritus arose to windward and advanced with a strident moan.

A small, solid-looking cloud hung above them, shaped like a pear. From this a thin blade of white lightning flickered down and ignited the grass to windward, just in front of the advancing tempest. Immediately the dustcloud closed down on the ignited spot; in an instant the hillside was a hell of roaring, whirling, leaping flame.

Danster did not hesitate for an instant. Dropping the tortoise, the loxia’s nest and the stolen fruit, he seized Tommy by the hand and dragged him swiftly back down the hillside towards the last of the subterranean openings they had passed. It was a race for life with the springing, vaulting flame, which was hurled onward by the wind in immense flakes, pausing for the fraction of a minute here and there as though to gain strength for the next leap. Soon it became apparent that the fire must win. Then a hissing tongue of flame darted out and cut the fugitives off from their goal.

Without pausing for an instant Danster denuded himself of his kaross, wrapped Tommy in it, and, picking him up, dashed naked into the fire with a wild yell, hurling himself and his burthen into the gulf beyond. They sank together into the burning mass of bracken, Tommy beneath and his evil genius above. Then the world went out for Tommy in a wild turmoil of heat, smoke, suffocation and crackling explosions.

The first thing that struck Tommy’s awakening senses was a strong smell of burnt leather. He was lying in a mass of slimy ooze. After a violent struggle he sat up, his head piercing the charred kaross, which had been his shield against the devouring fire. He looked around him with smarting eyes. The sides of the depression in which he lay were jet-black, with here and there a thin whorl of smoke eddying upwards. The strong, amber-tinted sunshine dazzled him. Close by he noticed a pair of yellow, pain-shot eyes, with brown vertical slits. A wild cat with all its fur scorched off was painfully crawling out of the water. He felt a movement at his feet; a half-scorched snake was loosely coiled about his ankles. He turned to look behind him, wondering where Danster was... But what was that blackened, shrivelled, crackling mass contorted so horribly beside him among the charred stumps of the fern? Alas! it was the body of his evil genius, who had died in agony that Tommy might live.

Tommy staggered to his feet. Not so much as a hair of his yellow head had been touched by the fire. He climbed out of the hollow and fled down the blackened hillside, still holding the dead kingfisher in his hand.

Chapter Four.

The Wisdom of the Serpent.

In the good old days in Southern Africa distinction of any kind on the part of a Kaffir was a decided subjective disadvantage. Any man among the southern Bantu tribes possessing to a remarkable degree such attributes as strength, valour in war, or skill in the hunting-field, or who distinguished himself by any especially notable deed, was liable to be waylaid by the myrmidons of his chief and expeditiously killed. His skull would then be taken to the principal of the Royal College of Witch-doctors, who would fill it with a potion and give the gruesome cup to be quaffed by the head of the tribe just before dawn next morning at the gate of the calf-pen. It was held that the chief would thus acquire in a simple, easy, and expeditious manner the much envied qualities of the distinguished deceased.

Occasionally portions of such physical organs as were supposed to have been specially concerned in the distinguished man’s supremacy in his particular line would be pounded up with the ashes of magical roots to form an ingredient of the potion. Like the phrenologist, who thought to localise certain faculties under various bumps upon the human skull, the Kaffir doctor inferred that different organs of the human body were respectively the seats of different mental qualities, and, further, that it was possible to assimilate the latter through the digestive apparatus.

When the late Kreli, chief of the Gcaleka tribe, was a young man, he was thought to be somewhat dull and lacking in power of initiative, so a great council of the tribe was held to decide as to what should be done to improve the chief’s understanding and sharpen his wits generally. After long and anxious deliberation the council decided that the best way to endow Kreli with the missing qualities was to cause him to drink a potion out of the skull of one of the councillors—an old man of great parts who had been an ornament to the tribal senate since long before the death of Hintza, Kreli’s father. The proposition was carried by acclamation, there being only one dissentient. Certain rites had, however, to precede the killing, and during the celebration of these the distinguished possessor of the coveted skull managed to make his escape across the colonial boundary.

The elders, no doubt shocked at the want of patriotism displayed by their colleague, once more met, and it was then decided as an alternative to remove the first phalanx of the little finger of the young chiefs left hand. That the operation had the desired effect there can be no doubt, for Kreli became astute in peace and valiant in war—facts which the British and Colonial Governments ascertained to their joint cost on several subsequent occasions. Since the date of that momentous operation every youth of the Gcaleka tribe has, on reaching a certain age, been similarly mutilated, and several other tribes have adopted the same custom.

Half a century ago, more or less, a certain trader named John Flood had developed a flourishing business in the present district of ’Mqanduli, then, as now, the territory occupied by the Bomvana tribe. Flood was a man of keen business instincts. He had, at a time when no one else dreamt of doing such a thing, established a trading station in the very heart of independent Kaffirland. There being no competition of any kind, the surrounding tribes were solely dependent upon him for their supply of civilised goods, for the general use of which they rapidly acquired a taste. It was desperately hard work conveying the merchandise from Cape Colony through a very rugged and absolutely roadless country, but the large profit made quite justified the expenditure of labour and money. Beads, brass wire, iron hoes, and blankets were the principal lines in which this trader dealt. In exchange he obtained large herds of cattle, which he periodically despatched to the colonial markets.

The trading station consisted of three large huts of native make, one of which was used as a shop, the others being respectively the trader’s sleeping apartment and kitchen. Flood had, of course, a native wife—a girl named Nolai, daughter of a petty chief in the vicinity. I regret to have to record that his domestic conditions were not quite satisfactory. Nolai happened to prefer a certain young man of her own race, who had wooed her in the days of her spinsterhood, but had been too poor to pay the number of cattle which her astute father had required as dowry. Twice during the first year of her married life had Nolai absconded from the dwelling of her spouse, only, however, to be ignominiously brought back by her brothers. Had they failed in this duty a return of the dowry cattle would have been claimed by the deserted husband. Flood, as a matter of fact, would have much preferred the cattle to the uncongenial Nolai, but, apparently, her relations shared in this preference. He had serious thoughts of taking another and, as he hoped, more suitable wife. This, no doubt, he would have done had it not been for the python.

The trading station was situated near the boundary of the Gcaleka territory, the chief of which, Kreli, exercised suzerainty over and imposed tribute upon the chief of the Bomvanas. In the vicinity of the station was a large, dense forest full of noble timber and swarming with wild beasts.

Among the natives of those days certain animals were looked upon as Royal game, and the chiefs were as strict in enforcing their rights in this respect as ever was William the Conqueror or the Plantagenets. Each tribe had its special laws relating to this privilege, and some of these laws were very peculiar. Of course, different tribes selected different animals for this distinction, but among the Gcalekas and the various clans which acknowledged Kreli as their head, “Munyu,” the python, was regarded as being more than ordinarily the special game of the paramount chief. As a matter of fact, pythons seldom ventured so far south as Gcalekaland, and it was probably the fact of their extreme rarity which accounted for these creatures being so jealously reserved for the use of the highest in the land.

The gall is well known by witch-doctors to be the seat of fierceness in all animals. Matiwamè, chief of the destroying horde of Fetcani, drank the gall of every chief he slew, with the view of increasing that very liberal endowment of ferocity which nature had given him. Moreover, the gall of snakes is supposed not alone to endow the drinker thereof with ophidian rancour and malice, but to give immunity from the effects of snake-bite.

The wisdom of the serpent is proverbial among all the sons of Ham. Upon several grounds, therefore, a potion made of the gall of the King of Snakes is a thing much to be desired by any chief.

Should the chief have been fortunate enough to succeed in killing a python he would use the skull of the creature as a cup out of which to drink the potion. Nevertheless, the chief was by no means sorry if someone else, allowing his passion for sport to overcome his regard for the law, did the killing; but in such a case he would cause the courageous sportsman to be killed as well for the purpose of obtaining his skull and gall. The two galls would then be mixed together, divided, and quaffed in equal parts out of the respective skulls of the python and the python’s slayer.

The advantages of this arrangement must, of course, be obvious. At the expense of probably not more inconvenience than the average Briton undergoes in crossing from Dover to Calais when on his annual holiday, the chief would imbibe the wisdom, the subtlety and the ferocity of the serpent, as well as the prowess of the mighty man who had conquered it. What, indeed, could be simpler or more satisfactory.

One fateful day in middle spring the trader happened to be riding along the edge of the big forest, looking for a horse which had strayed. He carried his double-barrelled gun, for guinea-fowl abounded, and he was desirous of shooting a couple for his supper. Suddenly his pony swerved wildly to one side with a violent snort, and John Flood measured his length upon the ground. The pony galloped homeward mad with fright.

The trader rose to his feet, recovered his gun and looked quickly in the direction of the spot from which his pony had recoiled in such terror. There he saw an immense python climbing sinuously and with deliberation into a large thorn-tree. The snake was so intent upon a monkey which sat, fascinated and rigid, in the upper branches, that it appeared to take no notice of the man. It was a monster, and had evidently quite recently sloughed its skin after the long winter’s sleep, for its scales gleamed gloriously in the brilliant afternoon sunshine. Rhythmic muscular tremors ran up and down its coiling length, bringing the vivid brown, green, and golden patterns into changing prominence.

Flood, who was not wanting in either courage or coolness, watched his opportunity, and poured a charge of shot into the python’s neck, just behind the head, at point-blank range. Then the monstrous creature crushed the branches of the tree like a wisp in its death agony during one appalling minute, and the monkey, relieved from its fascination, made off into the forest with voluble chatterings, in which, no doubt, miscellaneously profane monkey language was mingled with uncomplimentary remarks about ophidians in general and pythons in particular.

John Flood, exceedingly stiff from the effects of his fall, obtained assistance and dragged his quarry home in triumph. The shop happened at the time to be surrounded by customers waiting patiently for the return of the proprietor. Through the medium of these the half of Bomvanaland was apprised of the doughty deed within a few hours. Among others who heard the important news was the head witch-doctor of the Bomvana chief, who at once sought an audience with his master. The chief was a young man who had as yet found no opportunity of distinguishing himself.

A council was at once called hurriedly together. The deliberations of this body were short but decisive. Within half an hour a strong body of armed men were on their way to the trader’s, with strict orders to seize the carcase of the python at all costs and convey it to the “Great Place.” The witch-doctor, clad in the varied and alarming insignia of his office, acted as leader.

John Flood was extremely proud of his achievement, and Nolai thought far more of her husband than ever before. He had done a notable deed; one which would be talked of at all the kraals in the land for years to come, and she would shine with reflected glory. She had been planning another and more determined effort to break the galling conjugal yoke, but under this new development she determined to postpone action. Her lover, brave as he no doubt was, had never killed a python—nor could she hope he was likely ever to do so. She glanced at the gleaming coils of the dead monster, and shuddered with mingled terror and enjoyment—a complex sensation well known to the feminine bosom, no matter what be its colour. The cold, dead, lidless eyes fascinated her almost as much as they had the monkey. There is a widespread belief among natives to the effect that women often have snakes as their lovers. Nolai wondered how any woman could love such a terrific creature. All the same, she made up her mind that should she ever bear a son she would call his name “Munyu.”

The party from the “Great Place” was overtaken by night before it reached the trader’s. The witch-doctor, who stalked majestically in front, found it necessary to call a halt every now and then for the purpose of letting off his excitement by violent dancing, during which the bones and bladders which were festooned all over him made an appalling rattle, and by loud yellings. The party found the trader engaged in skinning the snake by the light of a fire in front of his shop, and in the presence of a large number of spectators. The witch-doctor ordered the proceedings at once to stop, and then seized hold of the python’s tail. A wild wrangle ensued. The rest of the party, who rather liked the trader, stood aside whilst he and the witch-doctor engaged in a sort of tug-of-war, in the course of which—Flood being by far the stronger man of the two—the witch-doctor was hauled ignominiously around the premises. The trader, rendered mettlesome by his exploit, absolutely refused to give the carcase up, so the witch-doctor called upon his companions, in terms of their allegiance to the chief, to assist him. A compromise was eventually arrived at. Flood only valued the skin, whereas the witch-doctor knew that the parts most valuable for magical purposes were the head and the gall. Moreover, he did not quite know if the terms of his commission included the killing of the trader in the event of a refusal on his part to give up the prey, especially as the trader was known to be more or less of a favourite with the powerful Gcaleka chief. It took until nearly midnight to settle the difficulty, and then the witch-doctor marched off in somewhat qualified triumph with the python’s head in his skin wallet and the gall-bladder tied securely at the end of a small stick, which he held carefully before him at arm’s length. The Bomvana chief, although he grumbled somewhat at not getting the complete carcase, was, on the whole, fairly well satisfied.

After making his report the witch-doctor at once went to work upon his magical rites, and he worked with such effect that he was able to administer the gall of the python, in its skull, to his august master next morning. The function took place, with all due solemnity, before daybreak, at the gate of the calf-pen. History does not record whether the potion acted as an emetic or not, but it may be safely assumed that the chief made an exceedingly wry face.

But this by no means closed the incident. Kreli, the Bomvana chief’s suzerain, came to hear of the slaying of the serpent, and his indignation waxed great when the seizure of the skull and gall by his vassal was reported to him. The head of the Royal College of Gcaleka Witch-doctors worked upon the chief’s feelings to such an extent that his indignation grew to fury. How, he asked, in a wrathful message, could his vassal dare to infringe upon the Royal prerogative in such an unheard-of manner? The message followed with a demand for immediate surrender of the skull, and ended with a threat of war in the event of non-compliance. It was, in fact, an ultimatum.

The ideas of the Bomvana chief on the subject of suzerainty were probably as different from those of Kreli as President Kruger’s were from those of Mr Chamberlain, but he wisely refrained from arguing the point. In a penitent and conciliatory message he apologised for what had occurred, and expressed deep regret that, quite outside his orders on the subject, the python’s skull had been burnt into powder for medicinal purposes by his witch-doctor.

A portion of the powder—all, in fact, that was left—he begged leave to send to his suzerain in the horn of a bushbuck, and he could only hope, loyally, that the same would turn out as efficacious as such medicine was generally supposed to be. This powder had, on the approach of Kreli’s party becoming known, been prepared from the bones of a crow knocked over for the purpose by one of the boys at the kraal with his stick.

Kreli was by no means taken in by the bushbuck horn and its contents. His indignation at being tricked was boundless, and the only thing which prevented him from sending an army into Bomvanaland to “eat up” the chief was the fact that he was in daily expectation of a declaration of war on the part of Umtirara, chief of the Tembu tribe. But the matter was far too important to be allowed to drop, so he called a great council of the “Izibonda” (literally “poles,” such as those which support the roof of a hut) or elders, as well as the numerous petty chiefs who owned his sway and basked in the reflection of his power.

A few days afterwards the great council met at Kreli’s “Great Place,” the exact spot of assembly being the “inkundhla,” or gate of the big cattle enclosure. One by one the grey-headed peers arrived, each with a face of extreme gravity, as suited the momentous occasion. Deliberative assemblies of this class are much enjoyed by natives, especially by those who have passed the age of exuberant physical vitality. They give opportunity for the exercise of those faculties of oratory and argument which the Kaffir possesses to such a remarkable degree.

The matter had now assumed national importance. That the paramount chief should have been tricked out of so favourable an opportunity for adding to his wisdom, his subtlety and his fierceness, particularly at the time when he was on the eve of going to war with another powerful potentate, was unfortunate and inopportune in the last degree. It was subversive to the dignity of the tribe which proudly derived its name from the mighty Gcaleka; it was revolutionary, socialistic, or whatever the current equivalents of these terms happened to be. Why, if such a thing came to be talked of among the surrounding clans, not alone would it bring the Gcaleka nation into contempt, but Kreli would probably lose allies in his coming struggle with the Tembus. Something, clearly, must be done—but what?

The councillors deliberated for three days without coming to a decision, and it was then that the principal witch-doctor showed a way out of the condition of dead-lock. In the middle of a wild babel, in which everyone was shouting his opinion as he could, this great man arose to his feet and discarded his kaross. Then he aimed a glance of scathing contempt at the war-doctor, with whom he had been bickering considerably throughout the meeting. A hush at once fell upon the assembly as he spoke—

“O chief and councillors of the Gcaleka nation, we are all agreed that the matter of the python cannot be allowed to rest, but we have been unable to agree as to what action should be taken. Hear, then, my words, and let the chief say if they be not words of wisdom.

“I am, as you all know, not a fighting man; my wars are with the secret evil-doer, so I cannot give an opinion as to your decision to refrain from ‘eating up’ the Bomvana chief. But this thought comes to me: we have all heard the words of the war-doctor. Now, if those words be true, what is the ground for your hesitation? Did he not say that after the warriors had been sprinkled with the boiling root-broth, and had sprung through the magic smoke, they would become so terrible that a hundred of the enemy would flee from one of them? But let that pass. The chief has decided in his sagacity—or, perhaps, owing to your advice—which his father, the great Hintza, urged him to follow in important matters, that he will not make the python an occasion of war at the present time.

“It is not for me, a servant, to question the decisions of my chief, or to ask how it is, in view of the promises of the war-doctor, that you hesitate from advising that the warriors be at once led to victory. But it is my duty to reveal what was told to me in a vision. Know, then, that ‘Munyu,’ which was slain by Folodi, the European, was a messenger sent by the ‘Imishologu’ (Ancestral spirits) to convey tokens of their favour to Kreli, and that if the qualities of the serpent be wholly lost to our chief, the ‘Imishologu’ will turn their faces from us in the hour of danger.

“As to this”—here he produced the bushbuck horn sent by the Bomvana chief, and scornfully scattered its contents upon the ground, after which he hurled the horn away over the heads of his hearers.

“What, then, must be done?” he continued. “Why, this: If the chief cannot obtain the skull and gall of ‘Munyu,’ there is nothing to prevent him getting the skull and gall of ‘Munyu’s’ slayer. The European has vanquished the snake, therefore is he greater than the snake. Bring unto me this man’s head and gall, and I will prepare a draught for Kreli which will make him so wise and subtle that you will all be as children before him, and so fierce that the warriors of Umtirara will flee from before his face.”

The witch-doctor resumed his seat amid guttural murmurs of approval, and the councillors, glad to have such an easy way indicated out of a thorny situation, adopted his proposal on the spot. Nothing now remained to be done but to organise a killing party and despatch it to the residence of the unsuspecting trader.

The witch-doctor pronounced the current state of the moon to be propitious, so messengers were at once sent to warn a sufficient number of men from the surrounding kraals for immediate duty.

It is usually and mistakenly considered that Kaffirs are absolutely deficient in gratitude. If such were the case John Flood would have come to a sudden end, most probably, since his skull was required intact, by strangling with a thong. But there happened to be present at the council a man whom the trader had once successfully treated for a serious illness after the native doctors had pronounced his case to be hopeless. In the middle of the night Flood was awakened by a tap at the door of his sleeping hut. Without opening the door he asked who it was that wanted him.

“It is I, Fanti. Open the door.”

Flood at once admitted the man, who, immediately upon entering, blew out the candle which the trader held in his hand.

“Folodi,” he said, in an agitated whisper, “put the saddle on your best horse, and get to the other side of the Kei River as soon as you can.”

“Why—what have I done?” queried the astonished trader.

“It is the matter of the python which you killed, and of which the Bomvana chief drank the gall. Kreli is going to war, and he means to have your skull and to drink your gall out of it on the day the army is doctored. You are now a very great man because you slew ‘Munyu,’ and the chief wants your greatness for himself.”

“But Kreli is my friend,” said Flood, with a considerable tremor in his voice, “and I am not one of his own men to kill at his pleasure. I never heard of such a thing in my life—I—I—”

“Folodi,” interrupted Fanti in a tone which carried conviction, “the men are now on the way to kill you, led by the witch-doctor. Go or stay as you please, but I have told you the truth, and I can wait no longer to risk having my neck twisted.”

As he spoke the last words Fanti glided out of the hut, and vanished like a ghost. John Flood knew the customs of the natives better, I fear, than he knew his prayers, so he stood not upon the order of his going. He pulled down the bars of the kraal entrance so as to let the cattle go free. After this he hurriedly put on his best suit of clothes, and took down his trusty double-barrelled gun and its appurtenances from where they hung to the wattled roof. Then he saddled his best pony.

He took a last look at the goods upon his shelves. The stock had recently been added to; it was very hard to have to abandon it.

He did not awaken Nolai, who slept in the kitchen. He knew that her father would take her home, and that the law of the land required that she should be comfortably maintained until she again married, out of the dowry cattle. He was glad there were no children to complicate matters.

After he had mounted his pony, John Flood sat for a moment and gazed with emotion upon the spot where he had spent several contented years. Just as he was about to start he bethought himself of the python’s skin. He had carefully dried it, and it lay in a coil upon one of the shelves in the shop. That, at all events, he determined they should not have, so he dismounted, re-entered the hut, and fetched the trophy, which he tied with a thong to the side of his saddle. Then he turned and rode sadly, though swiftly, away.

Flood knew every inch of the country, so he had no difficulty in reaching the Colonial boundary. His first halt was made at a forest which he reached shortly before daybreak, and in which he mournfully spent the long summer’s day. The only thing which consoled him in his tribulations was the thought that he had managed to remove the skin of the python out of the reach of Kreli and the witch-doctors.

In spite of the fact that he kept this skin till the day of his death, which happened at a ripe old age, John Flood, ever after his flight, disliked pythons probably as much as the monkey whose life he was unfortunate enough to be instrumental in saving.

Chapter Five.

Rainmaking.

One

Drought had weighed heavily upon Pondoland for many weary months, and when more than half of what was usually ploughing season had passed, leaving the ground as stone to ploughshare and pick, the people began to groan at the prospect of having to do without beer; for the millet, from which it is brewed, having no leaf-sheath to protect the grain (such as covers the maize-cob), if sown late often is ruined by an early frost. When, however, a month afterwards, the weather was still dry and hotter than ever, they realised that even the maize crop was in serious danger. Then the women followed the men about with wailings, saying that they and their children would perish. The men bent anxious eyes upon the hollow-flanked cattle that wandered about lowing with hunger and stumbling among the stones on the scorched hillsides, often falling to rise no more.

A deputation representing the Pondo chiefs, headmen and men of influence appeared before Umquikela, the paramount Chief at Qaukeni, his “Great Place,” and besought him to send for Umgwadhla, the great tribal “inyanga ya’mvula,” or “rain-doctor,” and order him to make rain. A somewhat similar step had been taken more than a month before, but without the desired result. Much indignation was consequently felt against Umgwadhla, who was, as a matter of fact, generally blamed for the deplorable condition of the country.

Umgwadhla was looked upon as very expert in his particular line of business; he had hitherto given the greatest satisfaction. Since his appointment in succession to Kokodolo, who had been “smelt out” and killed for obvious neglect of duty just before the break-up of the last great drought, ten years previously, the spring rains had not until now failed in Pondoland. Moreover, no hut around which he had inserted the “isibonda ze’zula,” or “lightning pegs,” had ever been damaged in the heaviest thunderstorm. As a matter of fact, Umgwadhla was looked upon as a veritable “Prince of the Power of the Air.”

Umquikela was, as usual, very drunk when the deputation arrived. His councillors, however, recognising the seriousness of the extent to which popular feeling was moved, kept all traders and others likely to supply him with liquor away from his hut for twenty-four hours. Consequently the Chief was, next day, quite capable of transacting State business. He heard what his lieges had to say, approved of their suggestions, issued the necessary orders, and then returned to his cups with a clear conscience.

A message was accordingly sent to Umgwadhla notifying him that the “guba,” or “rain-dance,” would be held on a certain day, and that his presence at the function was required. This notification was accompanied by a very significant message to the effect that if the function were a failure he would be held responsible. Word was circulated among the people, in terms of which they had to appear at the “Great Place” on the day in question, armed, and each bringing a contribution of “imitombo,” or millet, which, after having been allowed to germinate partially under the influence of damp, has been dried and ground to fine powder. It is from this, after it has been boiled and fermented, that the liquor known as “Kaffir beer” is made.

Umgwadhla fell into the deepest dismay; mindful as he was of the fate which had, under similar circumstances, overtaken a long line of predecessors. He could not help feeling that the length of his tether had now probably been reached. A drought protracted to a certain degree invariably had caused the “smelling out” and shameful death of whatever “rain-doctor” happened to be in office at the time, and, as droughts invariably do come to an end eventually, the fact of rain falling soon after the immolation of an unsuccessful practitioner had raised the irresistible presumption that each of these had, by the malicious use of magical arts, deflected the rain-clouds from their proper course.

There was no sign of the weather’s breaking. The red soil, especially along the footpaths, was cracking into fissures; the fibre of the herbage was giving way and leaf and blade were turning into dust. In the minor watercourses the water began to run more freely. This is an unexplained phenomenon which invariably accompanies severe South African droughts. It is probably due to pressure upon the underground reservoirs, caused by local shrinkage of the earth’s surface.

Umgwadhla day by day turned an apprehensive eye to the westward, the quarter from which thunderstorms might be expected, but the sky remained as brass. A steady, scorching wind arose every forenoon, blew all day, and sank with the sun. So long as this continued, Umgwadhla, who was in his way genuinely weather-wise, knew there was no chance of the weather breaking. He shuddered with dread day and night. He saw by the demeanour of those he came in contact with that all held him in detestation, and he continually suffered from the foretaste of a cruel death. Through the instrumentality of a few trusted friends he sent a number of his cattle out of Pondoland, but these he knew he would have great difficulty in recovering—even in the unlikely event of his managing to make his escape.

The day appointed for the “rain-dance” drew near with terrible rapidity, and at length arrived. At early morn the “ukuqusha,” or driving in of the cattle at a run from every kraal for miles around to the “Great Place,” began. When all the oxen had been collected the Chief selected one from his own herd for slaughter, and every petty chief, headman, and “umninizi,” or head of a kraal, selected one of those driven in by him, for the same purpose. All doomed oxen were kraaled together, and then the important ceremony of doctoring the Chief began.

Umgwadhla had arrived secretly during the previous night, with his stock of roots, herbs, and other medicines, and from these he proceeded to concoct the “isihlambiso,” or magico-medicinal wash. He broke up the roots and herbs and placed them in a large earthen pot nearly full of water. Then he got a three-pronged stick about eighteen inches in length, and placing the pronged end in the mixture he twirled the stick rapidly between his palms until the liquid frothed and seethed over the edge of the pot. Then he notified the Chief that the medicine was ready.

The Chief, accompanied by his “isicaka se ’nkosi,” or “medicine boy,” now stalked majestically forward. The “medicine boy,” lifted the pot and carried it slowly into the large kraal, out of which the cattle had now been driven, the Chief following, naked and with stately steps. Upon reaching the centre of the kraal the Chief crouched slightly forward, and the “medicine boy” lifted the pot and poured a liberal quantity of the contents over his shoulders. The “rain-doctor” and the Chief smeared this all over the body of the latter, and rubbed it in with the palms of their hands.

After this the pot, containing what remained of the mixture, was carried back to the Chief’s hut, there to be kept until the end of the ensuing feast, when the washing process would be repeated, and any balance of the liquid then remaining would be spilt in the middle of the cattle kraal.

The grand ceremonial dance, known as “ukuguba,” then began. The men, with faces painted red, danced in a row in front of the women, who sat on the ground clapping their hands rhythmically and singing a song full of monotonous repetition. This song related to feuds, fights, and the greatness and prowess of ancestral chiefs, but contained no reference to rain or to anything supernatural.

When the song and the dance were over the “rain-doctor” announced that on the fifth day following, thunderclouds would arise in the north-western sky in the afternoon, and that heavy rain would immediately follow.

Then the oxen were slaughtered and the feasting began. Under the influence of their excitement the people fully believed that the promises of the “rain-doctor” would be fulfilled. The beer flowed like water, and the meat, although rather poor in condition, was satisfying—a Native is never particular about the quality of beef. Many fights took place, many skulls were cracked—some fatally, and, taking it all round, the function was a grand success; that is, of course, if we leave out of sight the main object of the gathering, which, however, had been totally forgotten for the time being.

Four days were spent in feasting, and on the morning of the fifth the people dispersed to their homes and began at once to get ready their picks and hoes against the coming rain. But the skies were still like lurid brass, and the sun as a pitiless, consuming fire.

Two

On the afternoon of the third day after the feast Umgwadhla went quietly home. He was now almost in despair. He had, under the heaviest pressure, committed himself definitely to the production of rain at a given hour on a specified day, trusting to his luck to redeem the promise. The day was now terribly close. Twice more had the sun to go down in wrath and twice to rise in fury—and then—before it sank again? He now knew, by the absence of signs of its approach, that the rain would not come on the day he had named. The evening of the fourth day came, and the sun went down a bar of rusty, red smoke, the result of inland grass-fires. Then the cool stars came out, twinkling mockery at the shuddering earth and the unhappy wizard, who felt as though the woes of the suffering land were heaped upon his head.

Umgwadhla’s hut was situated close to the edge of the Umsingizi Forest. This hut was his official residence, where he dwelt in retirement when engaged in practising the mysteries of his profession. He had carried home a large lump of meat from the feast. Part of this he cooked, but he found it quite impossible to eat. He sat all night on a rock a few yards distant from the hut, watching the hollow, light-punctured shell of night winding over him with horrible rapidity. Then the dawn flushed over the sea, and he realised that the dreaded day had arrived without the slightest prospect of rain. Already, in anticipation, he felt the choking strain of the thong by which his feet would be bound to his neck, preparatory to his being flung to drown in the nearest deep river-pool.

The sun, although only just risen, smote hotter than ever through the sultry drought haze undisturbed by a breath of wind. Umgwadhla could stand it no longer; he determined to fly for his life. This he had been thinking of doing for some days past, but he knew that such a course would mean social suicide and the loss of his wealth and influence; that he would henceforth be an alien and a wanderer over the face of an unfriendly land. It was not that life seemed to him sweet under such circumstances, but that death after the manner of a strangled puppy flung into the water by mischievous boys was too bitter to face; so he seized a spear and a club, and plunged into the depths of Umsingizi. The only food he carried was a small skin bag of boiled corn which, during the oppressive hours of the previous night, he had prepared without admitting to himself for what purpose.

The scorching day dragged on to noon, and the people began to bend anxious glances towards the north-west. The sun began to sink, but, except for thin wisps of smoke from distant grass-fires, the pitiless sky was void. The sun sank into a long, low bank of orange-coloured haze, and then hope departed from the wretched people.

Before daylight next morning the hut of Umgwadhla was surrounded by the killing party sent by Umquikela to seize and slay the wizard who had worked the ruin of his nation; but the bird had flown. Umgwadhla was already on the Natal side of the Umtamvuna River, making his way in the direction of the Baca and Hlangweni Locations in the Umzimkulu District.

A week afterwards the rain came in exactly the manner predicted by Umgwadhla. Early in the afternoon a great crudded cloud of snowy whiteness towered high over the north-western mountains, and then, drawing other clouds in its train and on its flanks, swept over Pondoland in the teeth of a raging gale. (In South Africa thunderstorms almost invariably advance against the wind.) Then with lightnings and thunderings the long-sealed fountains of the sky burst open, and every kloof and donga became a roaring river. Umgwadhla was cursed with fervour and fury throughout the length and breadth of the land. He, the wicked sorcerer, had kept the clouds away by means of his evil arts; now, directly he had taken his departure, the rain-bearers, no longer bridled, had hurried down with their life-giving stores. On the first clear day another “rain-doctor” came before the Chief and claimed to have, by means of his potent incantations, counteracted the evil spells cast by Umgwadhla. This man was looked upon as the saviour of his tribe. Umquikela killed a large ox in his honour, and sent him home with gifts of value.

Umgwadhla had been only two days at Umzimkulu when the rain, which happened to be general, fell. He felt that the rain-spirits, in whose service his life had been spent, had treated him very unfairly. Why could not the rain have fallen a week sooner? He hated to think of the future; the contrast between the wealthy and influential position he had hitherto enjoyed, and an obscure and poverty-stricken existence as an alien suspected of the deadliest of all crimes, among the Amabaca and Hlangweni, which now awaited him, was painful in the extreme. Soon, however, a bright idea struck him, and, being a man of considerable force and character, this he determined to carry into effect. He knew that the course he resolved upon involved large risks, but these he felt it worth while to take. As soon as ever the weather cleared he started on a return journey to Qaukeni.

Early one morning a few days later Umgwadhla, accompanied by a few influential friends, whom he had taken into his confidence, appeared before Umquikela, who happened just then to be moderately sober. The Chief was giving audience before the gate of his cattle kraal to a number of visitors. Umgwadhla strode boldly among the people assembled, who maintained an ominous silence, and saluted his master. Before anyone had time to recover from the astonishment felt at his temerity in thus, as it were, putting his head into the lion’s mouth, the “rain-doctor” spake—

“O Chief, I greet you on thus coming to claim my reward for having caused the rain to fall over the length and breadth of the vast territory that owns your sway.

“Rumour has told me that during my absence, in obedience to orders from the ‘imishologu’ (ancestral spirits), evil men have said that by spells did I prevent the rain from falling, and that only when I was no longer in the land to work evil, were the clouds able to revisit Pondoland.

“Hear now the truth, O Chief, and judge:

“On the night before the day on which I declared that rain should fall, the ‘imishologu’ revealed to me in a vision a dreadful secret. There dwells, I was told, a powerful wizard in the land of the Ambaca, who, by means of his medicines, drives back the rain-clouds when these are called up by the spells of your servant. This is done in revenge for that your illustrious father Faku slew Ncapayi, the Great Chief of the Ambaca, in battle. Seek, said the ‘imishologu,’ the root of a certain plant that grows in the depths of the forest; eat of it, and then go forth without fear to the Baca country. Find there the hut of the wizard; before it stands a high milkwood-tree and bound in the branches thereof is the skull of a baboon with the dried tail of a fish in its teeth, facing the land that is ruled by ‘the young locust.’” (The word ‘Umquikela’ means ‘young locust.’) “Remove the skull, and within a day the rivers of Umquikela will be roaring to the sea.

“Here, O Chief, is the baboon’s skull.” (Here Umgwadhla produced the article from under his kaross.) “Touch it not for fear of evil; ye who have not been doctored against poison; more especially touch not the fish’s tail, which has been soaked in very direful medicines by the Baca Magician.”

Umgwadhla was reinstated in all his honours, powers, and privileges, and his influence became very much greater than it had previously been. A song was composed in his honour by the most celebrated of the tribal bards, and sung at a great feast held at the “Great Place” to celebrate the breaking up of the drought. He lived long and amassed much wealth, and he never again failed to produce rain at the due season. His supplanter retired into obscurity, but this did not save him from an evil fate. When Umgwadhla died, in extreme old age, the supplanter was “smelt out” and put to death on suspicion of having bewitched him. The unhappy pretender was taken to the top of the Taba’nkulu Mountain and placed standing, blindfolded, on the crest of the “Wizard’s Rock”—a high cliff just to the left of the footpath leading to “Flagstaff” where it crosses the top of the mountain. The executioner then struck him with a heavy club on the side of the head, and he fell among the rocks at the foot of the krantz. His bones, mingled with those of many others, may yet be seen by the curious.

Rainmaking is a profitable profession, but it takes a man of genius to carry it on successfully.