From Veldt Camp Fires

“Tell us the yarn, John,” clamoured a number of voices together. “Yours are always worth listening to.”

“Well, lads,” went on the stout old fellow, filling his pipe and relighting it with much care and deliberation from a smouldering ember, “it’s a long story, but I’ll cut it as short as possible. It happened in this way. I began trading up here in the early fifties. In those days, as you know, and a good deal later, it was a long and serious business, and each trip always spoilt a year. We used to trek up through Natal, climb the Drakensberg, then cross the Free State plains – there was plenty of game there in those days – and, looking in at Mooi River Dorp – Potchefstrom, as we call it now – pass on through Marico. I hunted as well as traded in those days and knew very well all the Marico Boers, with some of whom I sometimes joined forces. They were a rough but very hospitable lot of fellows, and some of them – Jan Viljoen, Marthinus Swartz, Frans Joubert, and others – some of the finest shots and pluckiest hunters in the world. I hunted elephants towards the Lake for two seasons with Gerrit Visser, husband of Katrina, the woman I’m going to tell you about. They lived in a rough ‘hartebeest house’ of wattle and reeds in a magnificent kloof on a tributary of the Marico. Well, in ’57, Gerrit and I met, as we had arranged, at one of the farmhouses near the Barolong border, prepared for a big trip towards the Tamalakan River.

“I got on, as I say, very well with the Dutch frontier fanners; my trading goods were very acceptable to the ‘vrouws’ and ‘meisjes,’ and the owner of the farm where I was outspanned kept open house during the week I was there. What with shooting gear and clothing for the men, and sugar, coffee, groceries, and trinkets, stuffs, and prints for the women, I offloaded a good part of my trading outfit while outspanned at this place, and did, as usual, a rattling good business. We had no end of junketing. Dances, dust, and liquor at night, and horse-racing and target-shooting in the day time. The bottles seemed always on the table, but these Dutchmen are pretty hard headed, and there was some tall shooting in spite of the festivities. Jan Viljoen, who had trekked with his wife from the Knysna, in Cape Colony, towards the end of the thirties, and had fought against Sir Harry Smith at Boomplaats in 1848, was, with Marthinus Swartz, about the best of a rare good lot of rifle shots. We shot usually at a yokeskey or a bottle at one hundred and one hundred and fifty yards, and then Viljoen would call for an Eau de Cologne flask, standing little higher than a wine-glass, and we blazed at that I was pretty good with the gun in those days, but two or three of the Marico Boers usually got the best of me.

“Well, after a week of this kind of thing, the trading was finished and I had had enough of Dutch festivities, and so Genit Visser and I trekked for the Bamangwato stadt, where Machen, Khama’s uncle, was then chief. Here I traded for another week, and then Gerrit and I set our faces for the north-west, crossed the Thirstland, and trekked along the north bank of the Lake River. We got plenty of giraffe, gemsbuck, eland, hartebeest, blue wildebeest, springbok, zebra, and so on, for the first month; and along the Botletli we killed some sea-cows and buffaloes, which swarmed in those days. But we had no luck with elephants till we struck the Tamalakan River. Here and along the Mababi, and from there towards the Chobi River, we did very well, bagging in four months’ hunting between sixty and seventy elephants, many of them carrying immense teeth. Towards the Chobi, where very few guns had at that time been heard, we had remarkable sport. We shot also a number of rhinoceros, some of them, the ‘wit rhenosters’ (white rhinoceros), with magnificent forehorns. Altogether we had a fine season, one of the very best I ever remember. But it was desperately hard work; the bush was awful; water was often very scarce; and every tusk we got was, I can tell you, hardly earned. Lions were sometimes very troublesome. We lost a horse and two oxen by them and had some nasty adventures ourselves.

“When we reached the Chobi River, I never saw anything like the herds of buffalo. There were thousands of them. Sometimes you might see a troop as thick as goats in a kraal. We shot eighty buffaloes on this trip, and might have got any quantity more. I had my best hunting nag killed under me by an old wounded bull, and should have been done for myself but for Visser, who came up in the very nick of time, and shot the brute as I lay on the ground almost under his horns. I was so bitten with the life of the veldt and the wandering fever in those days that I should have liked to have stayed out another year and pushed far up the Chobi, which was then as now little explored. After the parched Thirstlands we had come through, the river with its broad blue waters, its refreshing breezes, its palm islands, and the astounding wealth, not only of heavy game, but of bird life, that crowded its banks and islets, seemed a very paradise on earth. Even Gerrit Visser, as stolid, matter-of-fact a Dutchman as you should meet in South Africa, was struck by the marvellous beauty of the river scenery.

“But Gerrit hated punting about in the wobbly, crank, dug-out canoes, in which the natives took us from one island to another; and, for him, half the fun of the hunting was spoiled by the navigation necessary to obtain it. And so, very reluctantly on my part, we made our way back to the waggons, which had been standing for weeks outspanned on the southern bank of the river, in charge of our men. It was now December, the weather had become very hot, and Gerrit was fretting and fuming all the time to get back home – ‘huis-to’ (to the house), as a Boer would say. The worst of hunting with these married Dutchmen is that, after about six months in the veldt, away from their wives and ‘kinder,’ they are always fidgetting to be off home again. There never were such uxorious chaps in this world, I do believe. Get a Britisher, married though he be, once away in the veldt, and the passion for travel and adventure fairly lays hold of him – it’s in the blood – and he’ll stay out with you, knocking about, for a couple of years if you like. Look at Livingstone! Fond though he was of his wife and children, the wandering fever, the ‘trek-geist,’ as a Boer would call it, was too much for him, and he was latterly away from wife and children and home for years at a time. And so Gerrit Visser and I set our faces ‘huis-to,’ and trekked for Marico again.

“We had a long and hard spell of travel across the ‘thirst,’ and reached the Transvaal as lean as crows ourselves, and with our oxen, horses, and dogs mere bags of bones. Nothing would content Gerrit but I should go with him to his place, Water Kloof, and spend Easter there. Pushing our jaded spans along as fast as possible, and travelling from Easter Eve all through the night, Gerrit and I mounted our horses at daybreak and cantered on ahead of the waggons to rouse the vrouw and have breakfast. It was a most glorious sunrise as we entered the shallow valley, known as Water Kloof. There had been recent rains; the valley was carpeted with fresh grass and littered with wild flowers; the bush was green and fragrant; and the little clear stream that ran to join the Marico River, rippled merrily along at our feet. The mealie gardens were thriving magnificently, and the whole place looked as fair and prosperous as a man could wish to see. Gerrit was in the highest spirits. ‘Man,’ he said to me, as we rode up to the rough wattle and daub house, thatched with reeds, ‘it is a good farm this, and I shall give up elephant-hunting, build a good stone house here, and settle down. Look at the fruit trees,’ – pointing to a charming green grove below the house – ‘in two years’ time the oranges will be in full bearing. Allemaghte! It is too good a “plaats” (farm) to leave so long, this.’

“We rode up to the house very quietly. Gerrit wanted to surprise his wife. Not a soul stirred. It was now ‘sun-up.’ I was astonished that no one was moving. We dismounted, threw our bridles over the nags’ heads, and approached the house. ‘Katrina!’ shouted Gerrit in a cheery voice, ‘Katrina! Beter laat dan nooit. Hier is ekke en Jan Blakeman.’ (Katrina! Better late than never. Here am I and John Blakeman.) As we approached the door we heard at last some one stirring inside. The latch clicked, the door opened back, and Katrina Visser appeared, not cheerful and full of joy, and with little Hendrik, the child, by her side, as we had expected, but with hair dishevelled, cheeks soddened with tears, black shadows beneath her eyes, and the eyes themselves red and bloodshot with long weeping. She threw herself with a sob on Gerrit’s breast, and burst afresh into an agony of tears. ‘You are too late, Gerrit, too late,’ she sobbed forth at last. ‘The lion killed little Hendrik yesterday afternoon, and he lies there dead in the house.’ I could not help looking at Visser’s face at this moment. He had turned deadly white. He swayed. I thought for the moment he must have fallen. ‘Oh, God!’ he cried, ‘it cannot be true, wife.’ The woman felt instinctively that the blow was almost too grievous and too sudden for her husband. Her own grief was put aside for the moment. She released herself, kissed her man tenderly, and took his hand. ‘Come inside, Gerrit,’ she said softly, through her tears, ‘and see all that remains of our poor little Hendrik.’ She turned to me. ‘Come you, too, Jan Blakeman,’ – as she always called me – ‘You were always a favourite of the child.’ It was true. I was very fond of the merry, little yellow-headed chap; and had always some sweetstuff and other treasure at my waggon for him. He and I were the best of friends.

“I followed them softly into the rude dwelling, now a chamber of death. Katrina led her husband to the wooden couch in the corner. There lay the poor little chap, his once warm face, so fresh and ruddy, now cold, and marble white, his prattling mouth for ever hushed. A blanket covered the body, but the little hands had been laid outside. One of them, I noticed, had been terribly clawed by the lion. The poor mother had washed it, and the deep crimson gashes and scorings of the cruel claws showed very plainly. I suppose the poor little six-year-old child had made some effort for his life, and the fierce brute had resented it. The mother began to draw aside the blanket and show her husband the deadly wounds. Gerrit’s great frame was now racked with irrepressible sobs. I could witness their mutual agony no longer, and crept out. At the back of the house I came upon a Hottentot servant, who told me the story of the tragedy. The Marico country had by this time (1857) been fairly well cleared of lions, but stragglers occasionally wandered in from the wilder parts of the Transvaal, and a pair – lion and lioness – had been spoored up the Marico River quite lately.

“No danger, except to the cattle and goats, was, however, anticipated; the kraals had been duly strengthened, and two or three neighbouring Boers were shortly coming down to shoot the marauders. On the afternoon of the previous day little Hendrik had been playing by the stream not fifty yards from the house. Suddenly screams were heard; the Hottentot, his mistress, and a Kaffir rushed forth, and a big yellow-maned lion was seen dragging the poor little fellow by the middle into some jungle which grew alongside the water. The shouts and cries of the three as they rushed down towards the brute, and probably the report of the gun which Cobus, the Hottentot, had picked up from the house and loosed off as he ran, had driven off the brute, but too late. The child had been terribly bitten, right through the loins, and died in his mother’s arms almost before they reached the house again.

“Well, the long and short of the story was this. Nothing would satisfy Katrina but that her husband and I should follow up the lion and lake revenge for the murder of the poor child. Gerrit and I were nothing loth, and after a mouthful of bread and some coffee we went down to the stream and took up the spoor. Gerrit and I each carried our rides, Cobus, the Hottentot, had a smooth-bore ‘roer,’ and Katrina, who insisted on coming with us, brought an old flint and steel horse pistol, which she had loaded up. We spoored the lion for half a mile down the river to a piece of dense jungle, where it had lain up over the remains of a small buck, which it had killed, probably on the previous evening. It was a nasty place, but we had dogs, and presently the brute was roused. He showed himself once and Gerrit got a snapshot, which, as we subsequently discovered, wounded him only slightly – just sufficiently to render him really savage. Again the dogs went in and bayed the brute. This time the bush was more open. As a rule the Boers, good shots as they are, are extremely cautious about tackling a lion in covert. But Gerrit’s blood was up. He meant to avenge his child, and he went at once towards the sound. I was running round to assist, when I heard a report, a dull thud, and then renewed barking and fierce deep growls. I ran through the open jungle. Katrina Visser, her pistol at full cock, was close behind. We turned an angle of the bush, and there in an open glade lay Gerrit, motionless beneath the paws of the lion, which half squatted, half stood over him. At a respectable distance beyond, half a dozen big dogs dashed hither and thither, yelping furiously. The lion’s teeth were bared, and, as he caught sight of us, his tail, which had been waving from flank to flank, suddenly stiffened up behind him. I knew that signal too well, and, as Katrina cried ‘schiet! schiet!’ (shoot! shoot!), I fired. The bullet entered the fierce brute’s chest, raked his heart and lungs, and he sank quietly upon the instant, dead upon the body of Visser. Calling up the Hottentot, we dragged the lion’s body from off the Boer. The instant I saw Gerrit’s face I knew all was over. It was very clear what had happened. The lion had sprung upon him unawares. He had missed his shot, and with one blow of its fore-paw the brute had slain the big strong Dutchman. The right part of the skull was literally smashed in. Well, strangely enough, Katrina Visser was not so overcome by this horrible event as I had expected. I think the doubling of the horror of the previous evening had been too much for her, and had numbed something of her feelings. She was extraordinarily calm, and throughout the next four and twenty dreadful hours bore herself wonderfully. We buried poor Gerrit and his little lad next day under a thorn tree a trifle to the west of the farmstead and fenced the place in strongly. Few Dutchmen, as you know, are ever buried in consecrated ground in South Africa. It is seldom possible up-country.

“That’s practically the whole of the melancholy yarn. Katrina married again a few years later. Dutch women seldom remain widows very long. But she was never quite the same woman again, after that terrible Easter time. She still lives at Water Kloof. I saw her only last year. Her hair, like mine, is very grey, and she has a second family growing around her. She likes me to look round for a chat if I am ever in Marico, and so, for old acquaintance sake, I usually outspan for a day if I am anywhere near Water Kloof.

“Well, you fellows,” concluded the old trader, “that’s the true story of the saddest Easter morning I ever remember to have experienced or even heard of. Englishmen who come into this country scarcely, I think, make sufficient allowance for what the Transvaal Dutch have gone through in the conquest and settlement of their territory. Few families there are among the Boers but can tell you of some such experience as I have given you to-night. To my mind, it is scarcely wonderful that these people cling so tightly to the soil on which so much of their best blood has been spilt. Good-night, all. It’s late and I must turn in.” And the old fellow rose from the fire, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, stretched himself, and climbed into his waggon.

Chapter Thirteen.

The Mystery of Hartebeest Fontein

Upon a morning of early December in the year 1880, Arend Van Driel, the Trek Boer, stood upon his waggon-box anxiously scanning the plains for any sight of game. Leaning upon the tilt and shading his eyes from the already powerful sun, his feverish glance swept the great grass plains for the faintest token of animal life. Alas, it appeared that here the veldt was deserted. The big Dutchman’s eyes ran fruitlessly over the waste again and again, until they rested upon a little chain of brown hills, just now rose-tinted by the flush of the early morning sun, but nothing in the shape of a herd of game was to be seen. With a deep sigh the Boer climbed slowly down from the waggon and joined his family at their miserable breakfast, by the remains of the overnight camp fire. And, indeed, Arend Van Driel had good cause for dejection.

Two years before, he and his family had quitted the Transvaal with a great body of Trek Boers, who had made up their minds to leave a country upon which misrule and misfortune had long rested, and which now lay beneath the hands of the hated British Government. The misfortunes of that ill-fated Trek have long since become historical in the annals of the Transvaal Dutch. Thirst, famine, fever and dysentery were soon busy among the members of one of the most disastrous and ill-managed expeditions ever known in South Africa. The trek cattle perished by hundreds in the Thirstlands of the Northern Kalahari, the flocks and herds, left masterless, wandered and strayed, and disappeared by thousands. Along the rivers and swamps of Ngamiland and the Okavango, sickness and suffering destroyed whole families. The trek had set forth with the highest and most exaggerated hopes, chiefly based upon the gross ignorance of these misguided and fanatical farmers. They moved north-westward towards some unknown Land of Canaan, where, as they fondly imagined, great snow mountains stood, where the veldt was always rich and flourishing, where clear waters ran abundantly, and where the wild game wandered as thick as sheep in a fold. Some even believed, as their fathers had believed, when they moved into the Transvaal country, that somewhere in this new and unknown land, the great Nile river itself would be found. After more than two years of disastrous trekking, most of these vain imaginings had been rudely dispelled, but still, their faces set ever doggedly westward, these stubborn people toiled on.

During the expedition, the trekkers had necessarily become much scattered; thus Arend Van Driel and his family stood alone this December day of 1880 by a small pan of muddy water, where they had halted to recruit their exhausted trek oxen and the two horses that remained to them. They had quitted the Transvaal with two hundred head of cattle and six hundred sheep and goats. These once thriving flocks and herds were now represented by some two score of miserable sheep and goats, mere bags of bones, which could scarcely drag one limb after another. It was absolutely necessary to husband even these slender resources, and Van Driel had therefore been anxiously surveying the surrounding veldt for some herd of game from which he could secure a meal or two for his starving family. He now moved up to the camp fire with disappointment written plainly upon his gaunt, sun-tanned and bearded face. His wife knelt in a ragged old stuff dress stirring some thin porridge of Kaffir corn – their only present sustenance – in an iron pot. She looked up from underneath her sun-bonnet, and, catching the gloom upon her husband’s face, ejaculated, “Nie wilde, Arend?” (“No game, Arend?”) “Nie wilde, nie,” returned Arend disconsolately. “I think the Lord means us to die after all in this desert. Cursed was the day we ever left the Transvaal.” He sat himself down in the red sand by his children, after they had been helped to a small plateful of porridge each, and took and ate his own portion. There were four children left to the Van Driels. There had been seven when they quitted the Transvaal. Three had died of fever at Vogel Pan, a little to the south of the Okavango. Of those remaining, Hermannus, a big lad of fifteen, seemed fairly strong; the other three, a boy and two girls, ranging from five to twelve, looked, poor things, pale, weak and dispirited from fever, misery and semi-starvation. The clothes of all were tattered and ragged and hung loosely about them.

The interior of the big waggon hard by looked very bare for a Dutchman’s. But, as a matter of fact, almost all the little stock of furniture and house gear had been perforce abandoned. Ploughs, farming implements, tables and chairs, and other impedimenta, all now lay in the middle of that dire Thirstland between Khama’s and the Botletli River, where they had long since been cast away to lighten the load. Even the very waggon chairs – dear to every Boer – had been thrown away. Hermannus, the eldest lad, was the first to finish that meagre breakfast of ground millet, boiled in water. He now rose and in his turn climbed to the waggon and took a survey over the country. Suddenly an exclamation broke from his lips. “Father, there’s game half a mile away, just moving from behind that patch of bush. I think they are hartebeest.”

The stolid, melancholy-looking Boer was roused in an instant from his apathy. He climbed quickly to the waggon, and in his turn gazed intently at the game. “Yes, that’s right enough, Hermannus,” he said; “they’re hartebeest – they must have slept behind those bushes last night – and they’re coming straight this way. Ah! see, they have got our wind.” Even as he spoke the troop of game, some thirty in number, suddenly halted, turned in their tracks, and cantered in that heavy, loping fashion, which these fleet antelopes adopt in their slower paces, towards the heart of the plain.

Calling to the two Kaffir servants still remaining to him to bring in the horses, just now feeding, knee-haltered, upon the veldt a hundred yards away, Van Driel and his son looked to their saddles and bridles, filled a water bottle, reached down their Westley-Richards rifles and bandoliers from the waggon hooks, and buckled on a rusty spur apiece.

“We shall be back before sunset, wife,” said Van Driel. “I think, after all, the Heer God means us to have a right good dinner.” And so, mounting, he rode off with Hermannus.

“The Heer God be with you both,” echoed Vrouw Van Driel, “and may you bring meat – we want it badly enough.” The three younger children cried luck after their father and brother, and waved their hands, and so, watching the horsemen cantering away, gazed and gazed until the two forms presently faded from mere specks into absolute oblivion, and were swallowed up in the immensity of the great plain.

Meanwhile the two hunters rode steadily upon the spoor of the hartebeest. It was a good troop, and although the chase might be a long one the Boers were so accustomed to bagging the game they followed that they looked confidently to a dead buck or two before afternoon. Surely, they thought, as half-hour after half-hour they followed steadily upon the footprints, now clear in the firm sand, now amid the long grass, hardly to be distinguished, even by the wonderful instinct of these sons of the veldt, the hartebeest will presently stand and rest, or feed again. But no. The antelopes had secured a good start and had long since cantered at that deceptive pace of theirs clean out of sight; and the tell-tale spoor indicated, as mile after mile was reeled off, that they were still moving briskly and that their point was some far distant one.

The two ponies, rough and unkempt, and angular as they were, were perhaps in better condition than the rest of the camp – whether human beings or stock – put together. Their well-being was absolutely necessary to the safety of the party; without them game would be desperately hard to come at; they had, therefore, been fed pretty regularly on Kaffir corn, and still retained condition. Moreover, they came of that hardy Cape breed which produces some of the toughest, most courageous, and most serviceable horseflesh in the world. The nags were all right, and hour after hour they cantered steadily on.

It was now twelve o’clock, the sun was desperately hot, they had ridden nearly five hours, with but one short off-saddle, and it was absolutely necessary to give the horses another rest. Father and son, therefore, off-saddled at a patch of thin bush, knee-haltered the nags, which at once rolled and began to feed, and themselves rested under the scant shadow of the brush. For nearly an hour Arend smoked in silence. Meanwhile the lad lay prone upon his stomach, gazing straight in front of him in the direction in which the game still headed. Out there now rose before the two hunters, swelling solidly from the plain of yellowish-green grass, the low chain of hill, which, as they viewed it from the waggon-box that morning, had seemed so far away. But they had ridden eighteen good miles since breakfast; the hill stood now but four miles away, and each cleft, krantz, and precipice of its scarred and weather-worn sides, each dark patch of bush and undergrowth, now showed plain and naked before their eyes.

“That’s where the hartebeest have made for, father,” said the lad, at last; “shall we catch them there, think you?”

“Yes,” answered the big Boer, cocking his tattered, broad-brimmed hat yet more over his eyes, and looking very hard at the line of hill. “They’ve gone in there, right enough, Hermannus; in by that dark kloof yonder. But whether the kloof leads right through the hill to the country beyond I can’t tell. If it does, we shall have a long hunt and be out all night on the spoor; if it doesn’t we shall catch them in a trap, I hope. Maghte! But my stomach aches for a bit of good flesh, and your mother and the children want soup and meat badly, poor souls. Fetch in the horses, lad. They’ve had rest, and we must push on again.”

Hermannus rose, walked out on to the veldt, drove up the nags, and once more they saddled up and mounted. They went very warily now, looking keenly along the base of the little range of kopjes, to see that the hartebeests were not feeding quietly among the scattered bush that grew about the lower slopes. But no; the spoor still held straight ahead, and in half an hour they were at the entrance of the kloof. It was a narrow ravine, which appeared to have been violently rent by nature right into the heart of the hills, but which, doubtless, the action of water, erosion, and ages of time had worn slowly and with infinite quiet, century after century, deep into the hard rocks. After two hundred yards of this narrow ravine, the kloof suddenly turned at a right angle and then broadened out into an open valley about half a mile long. The spoor had told the hunters very plainly that the antelopes had entered the kloof. But it was not yet evident why they had travelled all that way thither. Father and son now settled upon a plan of action. It was clear, upon looking up the valley, that no exit was to be found at the far end. If, however, they rode straight up the kloof they would probably drive the game right over the hills, where to follow would be difficult and shooting not easy.

“I cannot make out why the buck have come in here,” whispered Van Driel, meditatively, as they stood beside their horses, and, well screened by bushes, gazed up the valley. “It’s not like hartebeest ground at all. There must be water or new grass, or some such attraction at the head of the kloof. We will leave the nags here fastened to the bush.” He took up a handful of sand and let it fall lightly through his fingers. “The wind is right enough, it blows fair down the kloof. There is plenty of cover along the bottom here. If we leave the nags and creep very quietly among the bush we shall probably get a fair shot or two each. The game here is seldom hunted, and as far as we can judge the place is never visited by man. Come along!”

The two crept slowly up the valley, moving, from bush to bush, with infinite care and caution, their soft, home-made velschoons of water-buck hide making little or no noise as they pressed forward. Now and again they crossed the neat spoor of the antelopes, imprinted deep in the smooth, red, sandy soil. Then they looked at one another and their eyes gleamed responsively. It was clear that the game had fed slowly and carelessly towards the head of the kloof; their rifles were loaded and cocked; the time of action was very near.

In a quarter of an hour, or a little more, they were drawing very close to the end of the valley; the bush grew thicker, which was all the better for their purpose. With extraordinary pains they picked their way, the spoor still guiding them. Suddenly Arend Van Driel, stretching back his hand in warning, dropped from his stooping walk down upon one knee. Hermannus instantly followed his example. Van Driel motioned his son very softly forward, and, creeping up, the lad saw through a small opening in the bush what had arrested his father’s progress.

It was a glorious sight, truly. The end of the valley, bounded on three sides by the steep and rough hill, lay before them. The ground was nearly open, and in the centre of the rich, dark red soil flowed, over a rocky bed, a sparkling stream of the clearest water, which issued from the hillside to the right, and disappeared, apparently, beneath a litter of rocks on the left. Close to the stream, within sixty to eighty yards of where the hunters were concealed, were the hartebeests, most of them lying down; some few standing with heads down in sleepy fashion; others, again, plucking lazily at some green young grass, which here and there masked the good red soil. Only one of them, a knowing-looking old cow, was really on the alert. The long, black faces, corrugated horns, and bright bay coats of the big antelopes united, with the fair surrounding scenery, to form a striking picture of feral life.

Attracted by the pleasantness of this green, charming, and well-watered spot, numbers of birds, many of them of brilliant plumage, were flitting hither and thither, crying, some sweetly, some vociferously, one to another. Here were gorgeous emerald cuckoos on their way south, honey birds, kingfishers, and bee-eaters of the most resplendent plumage, and various finches and small birds. Seldom had the two Dutchmen set eyes on a more lovely scene.

But the aesthetic charm of the place was not for the Boers, gaunt with hunger and privations. A look and a nod from father to son; the rifles were levelled; the targets selected, and the loud reports rang out, terrifying the wild life of this gem-like oasis, and rattling from krantz to krantz along the rough hill sides. Two hartebeests instantly went down and lay struggling in their death agonies. One of these staggered to its feet again; but Hermannus had shoved another cartridge into his breech, and a second shot finally stretched the animal upon the earth again, this time for good. Meanwhile, as the terrified troop sprang to their feet and tore frantically past his right front, Arend Van Driel rose quickly, slewed half round, and fired another shot. The bullet sped home, raking obliquely the lungs of another antelope, which was later on found dead two or three hundred yards down the kloof.

The two Boers walked forward to the stream, surveyed for a minute or two their dead game, a fat cow and a young bull, both in high condition, and then kneeling at the water, drank long and deep, and laved their faces, arms, and hands. The lad was now despatched at once to the bend of the kloof for the horses, which could not only drink and feed here, but were to be freighted with as much meat as they could carry for the camp. Before setting to work to skin the game. Van Driel walked along the margin of the stream to the spot whence it issued – a natural fountain among the rocks. Here, casting about, he came upon a discovery that electrified him – first the whitened bones of a man and a pair of spurs, afterwards an old weather-worn percussion gun, rotten and rusty, a powder-horn, and a good-sized and very heavy metal box. Opening this metal box with great difficulty, the Boer found it full of what he recognised instantly as gold nuggets, many of them of considerable size. Searching yet further among the rocks, the Boer discovered, just as Hermannus rode up with the led horse, a carefully laid pile of much bigger nuggets, worth manifestly a large sum of money. Who was the man whose poor remains lay bleaching in the sand there? When had he entered the kloof? How had he died? These were questions impossible to answer.

Van Driel could only surmise, from the make and shape of the old percussion smooth-bore and powder-horn, that the owner must have died there thirty or forty years before. Looking again closely at the powder-horn, Hermannus discovered the initials “H.D.,” carved neatly upon the side. But H.D.’s life and death and history lay hidden among these pathetic relics, mysteries impenetrable, insoluble. That sweet and secret valley alone knew the truth of them.

They turned out the box of nuggets, counting up their treasure. At the very bottom, half hidden among sand and rubble, lay a scrap of paper, yellow, faded, and discoloured. Hermannus, who could read, eagerly opened it. Inside, in a tottering hand, were a few lines scrawled in pencil. But the writing was not in Dutch, and, spell at the sentences as he might, Hermannus could make nothing of them.

Setting to work with a will, father and son rapidly skinned and cut up as much of the hartebeest meat as their nags could carry; the rest of the carcases they carefully covered up from the vultures and wild beasts. It was now dusk, darkness would be swiftly upon them. They determined to camp for the night and ride back to their waggon with the first streak of dawn. They made a roaring fire, tied up their horses to a tree close at hand, cooked some meat, enjoyed a hearty meal, and then smoked their pipes with stolid contentment. Then, making pillows of the inner parts of their saddles, and with their feet to the fire, they sank into profound sleep.

It must have been towards midnight that Arend Van Driel was awakened suddenly by the movement of his horse, which was tugging nervously at the branch to which its head-reim was fastened, as if startled by some prowling beast of prey. “Lions!” muttered the Boer to himself. He stirred the fire, threw on more wood, and, rising, patted and reassured his horse, which, with dilated nostrils, snuffed at the night air and stared with wild eyes out into the darkness.

Van Driel picked up his rifle, lit his pipe, and sat by the fire, watching and waiting. It was very eerie in this far and remote valley, but the Trek Boer is a man used to solitude and a wild life, and his nervous system is, happily for himself, not very highly developed. All the man troubled himself about was his horseflesh. Horses are scarce in the far recesses of the interior, and Arend had no intention of losing either of his nags by the attack of lion or leopard. Suddenly his horse snorted at the breeze again and pulled fiercely at his reim. Something approached – something that scared intensely the nervous animal. With ears and eyes strained, the Boer looked out into the darkness, beyond the ring of firelight. Hark! what was that? And then something – Van Driel could not make out what – moved past some twenty paces away on the other side of the fire. It looked about the height and size of a lion. The Boer’s rifle went to his shoulder, he took rapid aim, and fired. The report of the Westley-Richards rattled out from the rocks behind them, and, mingled with the sound, rose a strange, wild, shuddering cry, half human, half bestial. It was no lion’s or leopard’s cry, as Van Driel knew instantly. What in God’s name could it be? A baboon perhaps?

Hermannus, at the rattle of the fire arm, had sprung up from his deep slumber, and, rifle in hand, was now glaring about him. They listened. Strange moaning wails came to them on the soft night air from the blackness beyond the fire there. They were terribly human. The men looked at one another with scared faces, but uttered no word.

The sounds grew fainter and fainter and presently ceased.

“What was it, father?” asked the lad at last.

“Naam van de drommel! I cannot say,” returned the Boer. “I thought it was a lion. It is no lion, surely; it may be a baboon.”

They sat waiting, listening intently, for another ten minutes. Then Hermannus sprang to his feet. “Whatever it was,” he exclaimed, “the thing is dead. I shall see what it is.”

He plucked a big brand from the fire, and, grasping his rifle, stepped forward. His father followed his example, and with great caution they moved out beyond the flickering circle of the firelight. Thirty paces away their torches showed them something. It rested on the veldt there, silent, completely motionless. Again they advanced and stood over the thing.

It lay there at their feet, naked, hairy, something on the figure of a man, yet surely not a man. Blood was oozing softly from a big wound in the back, where Van Driel’s bullet had entered.

“An ape of some kind, father,” queried Hermannus, “but not a baboon. What do you make of it?”

“Alas, no ape, I fear,” returned Van Driel, with a shudder. “This is a bad night’s work. ’Tis a wild man. I have heard of such things, but never yet have I set eyes upon one. Pick it up by the legs there, we will carry it to the fire.”