From Veldt Camp Fires

“Don’t move a step nearer,” said the Hottentot, “but say your prayers, for before God I am going to shoot you dead.”

Van Zyl saw that there was something more in the man’s demeanour than he had bargained for. He turned a thought paler beneath his tan.

“What do you mean, Hans?” he said.

“I mean this,” returned the Hottentot, still keeping his rifle ready. “I haven’t forgotten the cruel floggings I have had from you and your father in years gone by, and I am dog-tired of your service. Ndala has made me a good offer. We shall go halves in your goods and I am to take your wife for my own vrouw. And,” added the man, with a brutal leer, “I shall make her a very good husband, if she behaves herself.”

At that last foul insult Van Zyl clenched his fists, swore a great oath and rushed at the Hottentot. But the man was too quick for him. He levelled his rifle, pulled trigger, and a heavy bullet crashed through the brain of the unfortunate Dutchman and passed out at the back of his skull, leaving a huge gaping wound at the point of exit. Van Zyl dropped heavily upon the hot sand and never stirred again.

Regardless of the pool of blood, welling swiftly from the warm body, the Hottentot proceeded leisurely to strip his late master of his clothes, into most of which he introduced his own squat and meagre figure. Then, mounting the grey horse, which had meanwhile been patiently grazing hard by, he rode off. A quarter of a mile away, before entering a patch of bush, he drew rein and looked back. As he expected, the vultures were already descending from the sky, prepared for their foul banquet. Some of them were even now collected in a thorn tree near the body. In a few hours their task would be finished and only Karel Van Zyl’s bones would remain for the jackals and hyaenas.

An hour before sunset that same afternoon Alida Van Zyl sat in her waggon sewing. On the kartel by her side lay her little son Jan, playing with a wooden doll carved for him by April, their Basuto herd boy and foreloper. April himself was just now squatting by the camp fire, looking after the stew-pot and solacing his ease with an occasional pinch of Kaffir snuff. It was a lovely late afternoon, the heat of the day was passing, a pleasant breeze from the southeast moved upon the veldt, and as Alida expanded her lungs and inhaled the pure, invigorating air, and rested peacefully, after a day of work and washing, life, even in this remote wilderness, seemed very pleasant. Once or twice she looked up from her work and let her eyes rest upon that fair scene in front of her. The ever-moving river, running its perpetual course south-eastward, looked wondrously beautiful; its murmurs, as it swept over the low cataracts and swirled onward, sounded very sweet to the ear and suggested a perennial coolness. Bands of sand-grouse were coming in from their long day in the veldt to drink at the river’s edge. Their sharp but not unpleasing cries sounded constantly overhead as they sped swiftly to the stream and then, after wheeling hither and thither once or twice, stooped suddenly to the margin, alighted and drank thirstily. Skeins of wild duck passed up and down the stream. Now and again splendid Egyptian geese took flight and with noisy “honks” flew on strong pinions to some other part of the water or to the trees fringing the river-course. Dainty avocets, sandpipers and other wading birds were to be seen here and there in the shallows, while ashore the francolins were calling sharply to one another.

As she sat in the kartel, with her feet resting on the waggon-box, Alida Van Zyl’s thoughts ran in a pleasant current back to her Transvaal home. She pictured to herself the long, trying trek over, Lake Ngami and the weary Thirstland passed, Khama’s and Secheli’s countries traversed, and beautiful Marico in the Western Transvaal entered. And from there Rustenburg, with its fair hills and valleys and smiling farmsteads, was, as it were, but a step. Three or four months of elephant-hunting here at Ndala’s, and her man would have finished his wanderings in these regions and they would be inspanning and turning their faces for home again. And then peace from wanderings and a comfortable homestead and the faces of kinsfolk and friends. A pleasant, pleasant thought.

While she thus dreamed her day dream of the future, a canoe had, unnoticed by her, shot across the stream and made its landing on the shore a hundred yards or so behind the waggon. In a few minutes the sound of approaching footsteps made her look up from her sewing.

She saw – for the moment she believed her eyes must have deceived her – not five yards from the waggon, Hans, the Hottentot – Hans carrying her husband’s rifle and tricked out in clothing, notwithstanding that sleeves and trousers were liberally turned up, at least three sizes too big for him. There was a strange look in the man’s eyes, half guilty, half triumphant, as he glanced up at his mistress. What in the name of the Heer God could it all mean? And then a pang gripped her heart. Surely something had happened, else why was Hans here at the waggon and alone? But Alida was a stout-hearted woman; her husband had never yet met with a severe mishap. Surely, surely all was well?

“Hans,” she cried in the sharp commanding voice she always used to her native servants, “what in the name of Fortune are you back here for and dressed like a figure of fun? Whose are the clothes, and where is your master?”

Hans looked with an evil leer at his mistress and replied:

“The clothes were the Baas’s, je’vrouw, and they are now mine. Surely you can recognise them? As for the Baas, he is dead. Ndala and I have settled all that, and we have divided his belongings, and you, Vrouw Van Zyl, are now to be my wife.”

The man advanced close up to the waggon-box and again leered hatefully at his mistress. Alida turned pale as death, but she mastered herself and replied with angry scorn:

“What is this cock-and-bull story about the Baas being dead? You are drunk, man. I shall have you well thrashed for your lying when your master comes home. Be off and get under the waggon and go to sleep. Loup, yo schelm!”

“The Baas will never come back again,” returned the Hottentot, “he is dead. I shot him in the veldt.” He put his finger to a dark crimson stain upon the collar of his coat. “See, that is Karel Van Zyl’s blood. Dead he is, I say. And now get down from the waggon and let me kiss you. You are to be my wife in future and, mind you, you’ll have to behave yourself.”

Something, as she looked at the Hottentot and his absurd clothing and the dark stain of blood, told Alida Van Zyl that all this was God’s or the Devil’s truth she was listening to. But, like most of her race, she was a strong-minded woman, bred through long generations of ancestors to a life of rough toils and many dangers. She was horror-stricken, but not in the least likely to faint. Suddenly she half rose, stretched up her hand to the side of the waggon and took down from the hooks on which it rested a loaded carbine which Karel Van Zyl always left for her protection. Cocking the weapon, she pointed it at Hans and threatened to pull the trigger. Hans ducked as the carbine was levelled and sprang out of harm’s way. Darting round to the side of the waggon, he yelled in a shrill, angry voice:

“I shall come for you later on, my fine Vrouw, and when it is dark I shall know how to manage you. Put away that gun or you may come to the same end as your husband.”

He passed away down to where the canoes lay and held converse with some of the tribesmen there, and there was silence in the camp. But, as Alida felt, the silence was in itself very ominous.

In a little while, as the swift African twilight fell, April, the Basuto, crept up to the waggon and whispered to his mistress. Alida, who for the last half-hour had been very busy with certain preparations in the interior of the waggon, came to the fore-kist, carbine in hand, and listened to him. April with a scared face told her rapidly that things were so wrong that he was going to make a bolt for it and take to the veldt and so try and make Moremi’s town at Lake Ngami. Hans had threatened to shoot him, and he could expect no protection from Ndala. What to advise his mistress he knew not. She asked him if her husband was really dead, and whether she could herself expect aid from Ndala and his people. Alas! April assured her that the Baas had, indeed, been slain, so much he had gleaned from Ndala’s people. As for the chief himself, he had the worst opinion of him, and upon the whole he, April, thought his mistress had better submit herself to the Hottentot. Later on help might come, if he himself could get safely to the Lake.

But April would stay no longer, not even at his mistress’s earnest entreaty, and crept away. A minute later Alida heard the stamp of feet, sounds of a scuffle, and then a blood-curdling scream rang through the growing darkness. More struggling, the sound of thuds, a muttered groan, and then all was silence. Alida, listening with awed white face and nerves at their fullest tension, shuddered and drew back to her child. That was poor April’s death scream beyond a doubt.

She lighted a lantern and then, sitting far back in the waggon, close to her sleeping child, waited for the next scene of this dark tragedy. Who can picture the distress of this poor creature, strong, able-bodied, yet helpless against a cruel destiny. To quit the waggon would be madness. If she attempted to escape with her child into the veldt, a few hours of spooring by the morning light would bring her enemies upon her. Dark and bitter as have been the hours of many a Dutch Afrikander woman in her times of trial, few can have endured the tortures that now racked the soul of Alida Van Zyl. With pale, set face she sat there in mute, yet stubborn, despair, waiting, watching, praying to the God who, it seemed, had now clean forsaken her.

An hour after dark Hans came up to the waggon again.

“Well, Vrouw,” he said, before showing himself, “is it peace?”

“Ay,” returned Alida in a dry voice and with a strange hard look in her face, “it is peace. I am in your hands. You may climb up.”

Hans appeared at the front of the waggon and looked at his mistress. She had no gun in her hand. Apparently all was well. He climbed to the waggon-box and turned to face her. At that moment Alida Van Zyl seized the candle from her open lantern and dropped it into an open cask of gunpowder which stood ready just behind the kartel. The darkness was for one awful moment broken by a blaze of hellish fire; a frightful explosion rocked the earth and rent the air for miles; and in that dire catastrophe Alida Van Zyl, her child, Hans the Hottentot, and half a dozen natives, prying round the waggon to watch the progress of affairs, were, with the waggon itself, blown to a thousand pieces.

Thus miserably ended the last trek of Karel and Alida Van Zyl.

Chapter Eight.

The Luck of Tobias De La Rey

Tobias De la Rey was one of those pastoral, hunting Boers who are still to be found in some numbers in the remoter parts of the North and East Transvaal. His farm was a poor one, he had no great head of stock, sheep did very ill upon that veldt, and Tobias, like others of his class, finding it hard to make ends meet, was in the habit annually, as his father had been before him, of making a hunting trip beyond the Transvaal during the season of winter and bringing back as much ivory and as many skins of giraffe, hippopotamus and the larger antelopes as he could get together during six months’ hunting. This cargo he took down to Zeerust, in the Marico district, and sold there. Once or twice he had been led so far afield in search of elephants that he and the other Boers hunting with him had remained away two seasons. But still Tobias was a poor man. He had no luck with his stock, his land was not good enough to grow tobacco, and now at the age of twenty-four, when most good Boers are married and have children about them, he remained in single wretchedness; for in the judgment of the uxorious Boer, by the age of twenty-two, every Dutch Afrikander, if he is worth his salt, ought to be married and settled. It was not De la Rey’s fault by any means. He had more than once offered himself for the hand of some well-to-do neighbour’s stout daughter, but his advances had, hitherto, purely by reason of his poverty, been civilly declined.

The South African winter season was just now setting in – it was the month of April – and Tobias, who meant having another hunt this year, had already made all his preparations. His waggon was refitted and overhauled, his trek oxen were ready and his servants at hand. His hunting horses, three of them – two unsalted – including his old, salted, ewe-necked garron “Blaauwbok,” a gaunt, knowing old “blaauw-schimmel” (blue roan), which had carried him already four seasons in the hunting veldt, were pastured near the house and fed occasionally with mealies, to give them heart and condition for the hard life that lay before them.

And Tobias himself had this year obtained permission from Khama, chief of Bamangwato, to pass through his country – following the route of the Trek Boers, who had gone through two seasons before – and had determined to hunt in the wild and little known country far to the north-west of Lake Ngami.

But before setting forth, Tobias had a visit to pay. He had viewed with increasing favour this last year or two Gertruey Terblans, niece of Mevrouw Joanna Terblans, with whom she lived. Truey was an orphan and had some land and stock of her own. She was a dark, brown-eyed, sturdy girl of sixteen, and Tobias De la Rey regarded her and her farm and stock as highly desirable acquisitions. This morning, therefore, he saddled up his best looking nag and trippled briskly off, with that curious ambling gait – something between a trot and a canter – so greatly affected by the Dutch Afrikanders. Tobias had dressed himself with some care. He wore a new broad-brimmed hat, decked with a couple of short white ostrich feathers. He had struggled with immense difficulty into a collar, and was resplendent in a blue satin necktie. And he wore a suit of new corduroy store clothes, purchased for his hunting outfit. His spurs, too, were new and shining. Tobias meant to make a bit of a splash to-day, and although he was not prepared for the solemnity of an “opsitting” (that all-night form of courtship, dear to the heart of the Boer), and had therefore no candle in his saddle-bag, he wished to leave upon the minds of Truey and her aunt, on this leave-taking, the most favourable impression possible. Tobias himself was a huge, loose-limbed Boer, standing six feet two in his velschoons. He was a rough, unkempt-looking fellow, even at his best to-day. His straggling beard and moustache and long shaggy hair were of a fiery red. His broad, freckled face and smallish grey eyes were vacant and expressionless in all ordinary affairs of life – even in presence of the fair Truey herself. Only the excitement of hunting could rouse the man. Then he was, like most of his fellows, a different being, transformed from a dull, listless, stupid-looking giant to a man of action, alert, active and energetic even as an Englishman. The horse he bestrode was the youngest and best looking of his stud, a not bad-looking bay five-year-old, which to-day was resplendent in a new cheap curb bridle of that frightfully severe pattern always affected by the South African Dutch. His saddle was not new, but a gorgeous red and yellow saddle-cloth, in De la Rey’s eyes, fully atoned for that defect.

Tobias rode steadily north up the Nylstroom River, and in three hours’ time came in sight of the Terblans homestead, “Vogelstruisfontein” (ostrich fountain), an ordinary Dutch farmhouse, built of Kaffir bricks and whitewashed, and backed by goat and cattle kraals, a grove of fruit trees – peach, apricot and quince – and a weeping willow or two. Sitting in the shade of the stoep was old Jan Terblans, now turned seventy, and, from fevers and privations of early days, long past work. The old man still had the use of his eyes, however, and, catching sight of De la Rey, he called to him to off-saddle and come in. Tobias obeyed, and, after shaking hands with Terblans and chatting a few minutes, went at his host’s request indoors. In the living room, at the top of the table, by the coffee urn, sat Tant’ Joanna Terblans, second wife of the old man outside, an enormous matron of five-and-forty, whose eighteen solid stones of flesh filled to overflowing the capacious armchair that supported her. Tant’ Terblans had been a little taken by surprise, it is true, but she had had time to send for her best apron, and had smoothed her dull brown hair, and her great, full-moon face was now turned inquiringly towards Tobias as he entered.

Tobias held out his hand, took the Vrouw’s fat paw in his own, and returned her greeting with a “Dag, Tant’.”

“Why, bless the man,” remarked the matron, “how smart you are to-day. And what may you have come over about? No ‘opsitting’ mind, Tobias! Remember what I told you six months ago. Truey with her fortune is to make a good match, and a wandering elephant hunter like yourself need never think of her. We are glad to see you over, of course, in a neighbourly way, but not with any ideas of Truey.”

Tobias meekly replied that he had but come to say farewell before starting on a long hunting trip. “And perhaps,” he added, “if I have luck this time and bring back a waggon-load of ivory you may see things differently, Tant’? Remember I have more stock than I used to have. Another trip or two, with luck, should set me up fairly.”

“Nay, nay,” rejoined the Vrouw, as she handed him his second cup of coffee and pushed the tobacco towards him, “’tis not to be thought of – unless indeed you can come back from your hunt a thousand pound better man than you are now, which is not likely.” Tobias shook his head sadly, as if that tremendous sum were utterly beyond hope, and at that moment the door opened and Truey herself came in.

Truey had seen with sharp eyes Tobias De la Rey spurring across the flat in the final sharp canter up to the house. She had changed her dirty print frock for a stuff one, had brushed her dark hair, tied a pink ribbon to the thick single plait that fell down her back, and had even washed her face and hands. In truth Gertruey had a soft corner in her heart for Tobias. After all he was her devoted admirer – she knew that. And then he was a first-rate hunter, a good veldt man, who had killed many an elephant, and had met death fairly and squarely time after time these eight years past. And indeed, he was not so ill looking; there were few good-looking bachelors within a radius of fifty miles of Vogelstruisfontein, and Tobias was no worse than his neighbours. He was poor, certainly, but he was less poor than he used to be, and she had land and stock of her own – or would have when she came of age.

Truey came in, then, passably well-dressed and on good terms with herself, and there was quite a pleased look in her honest brown eyes as they caught Tobias’s first glance. Tant’ Joanna viewed her niece’s little personal preparations for the visitor with something very like disapproval, and Truey, whose countenance had, under her aunt’s dragon-like gaze, assumed a fitting humility, was soon dismissed to the kitchen to hasten on preparation for “middagmaal.” During the long afternoon, before Tobias saddled up and rode for home, he had the opportunity of exchanging but two or three sentences with Truey alone. Still those sentences carried consolation. Tobias was a terrible coward with women, but he had in sheer desperation ventured to remark that Tant’ Joanna meant her niece to marry a rich man, and that no doubt he should find her settled with her own husband on his return. Tracy had answered stoutly, with reddening cheeks, that she should have a good deal to say to that, and that for her part Tobias might be very sure she should not be married before he returned again. There was something in the girl’s voice and look that gave the faint-hearted Tobias fresh hope, and he said hastily – for he heard Tant’ Joanna coming in from the stoep, – “Then you will wait, Truey?” And Truey answered under her breath, yet very steadfastly, “Yes. I will wait, Tobias.” And there was a very warm pressure of the hand between these two – far different from the usual lifeless handshake of the Boers – as they said farewell.

Tobias climbed briskly to his saddle at four o’clock, touched his nag with the off spur to make him show himself a little, and from his safe eminence fired his parting shot at Vrouw Terblans: “Farewell, Tant’, I shall be back in twelve months a thousand pound better man, with the waggon loaded up with ivory.”

“Ach! Tobias, man, you will be too late,” rejoined the huge dame from the stoep, in her sharp voice. “Too late, I tell you. Never mind, good luck to you, and farewell.”

But behind her, as she spoke these words, stood Truey, shaking her head, and her head-shake and the look in her kind eyes, just now dim with tears, were consolations good enough and reassuring enough for Tobias De la Rey as he rode off.

It was a glorious mellow evening, that, as Tobias galloped home in a frame of mind not often usual to one of his sluggish breed. If he had killed a brace of elephants, with teeth averaging fifty pounds apiece, he could not have felt more lively. Long, long afterwards did Tobias recall that shining evening as he rode home from Vogelstruisfontein. Never had the grass veldt looked more fair, the bush more green, the distant mountains more ruddy with the flush of sunset; never had life itself seemed more worth the living.

Leaving a kinsman to look after his farm and stock, De la Rey trekked next morning for the far distant hunting grounds that were his goal. A year later he and his shooting-fellow, Klaas Erasmus, a first-rate hunter like himself, were outspanned with their waggons in a wild region, unknown even to the Trek Boers in their wanderings, towards the Cubangwe River. It was plainly apparent, from the look of their outfits, that the hunters had had a very rough time of it during these twelve months. Their waggons were worn and battered; the tents had long since been torn to shreds by the thorns and were now replaced by the hides of game. Their combined stud – they had started with seven – had now dwindled to a pair of jaded-looking nags, one of which was De la Rey’s old salted schimmel “Blaauwbok,” now looking, if possible, more gaunt and antique than ever. The two men had had no great luck hitherto. It had taken them four good months to reach the elephant country, and after eight months’ hunting they had shot and traded between them little more than fifteen hundred pounds weight of ivory. They had determined, therefore, to hunt for a second season. Twice or thrice in the unhealthy season just ended had they been each very near to death from fever and dysentery, and both looked yellow and pulled down. Yet in the last few days, luck had turned; they had stumbled by chance upon a veldt thick with elephants; they had slain three yesterday and were now hot upon the spoor of an immense troop, which on the coming morning they hoped to attack.

At seven o’clock, having supped and smoked their pipes, they turned into their waggons and slept. Hunters, and especially Dutch hunters, rise early, and seek their kartels betimes, after a hard day in the veldt. An hour before dawn they were stirring, coffee was drunk, some food swallowed, the horses were saddled up, the rifles got out, cartridge belts buckled on; the hunters mounted, and with their native spoorers, set out upon the trail just as the light was breaking through the white mist of early morning.

Three Bushmen spoored for them, and besides these, two native servants, fair shots and reliable hunters, carried rifles and accompanied the Boers on foot.

Hour after hour the keen Bushmen held upon the broad trail of the retreating herd, upon whose skirts they had now been hanging these three days past. It was a mighty troop – as near as could be judged by the trail left, at least 150 strong. The sun rose and rose and beat hotly down upon the thick bush in which the party were now involved. Hour after hour they pressed steadily on, and still the big troop kept its lead. At two o’clock, in the hottest, weariest hour of afternoon, they began the ascent of a steepish hill, up which the elephants had climbed in their retreat. Their horses were showing signs of collapse. It was a matter of absolute necessity that they should off-saddle for half an hour and give them a much needed rest. The spoorers, too, wanted rest and a drink from their calabashes and a welcome pinch of snuff – that ineffable blessing to the worn and jaded black man. While they off-saddled and the horses rested and fed a little, the native hunters were in deep consultation; the Bushmen, especially, were jabbering in their queer inarticulate language – in whispers, of course – and their gestures indicated that something very exciting was stirring in their minds. Presently Lukas, the Griqua, who carried a gun, came to the two Boers and translated. What the Bushmen wanted to point out was this. Below the hill, on the farther side, lay an immense marsh, which was just now in its most treacherous condition. A week before it was under water and no elephants would have faced it. A week later, under the influence of the fierce sun, it would have dried sufficiently to bear the weight even of an elephant. If, said the Bushmen, the elephants, which were now assuredly nearing the summit of the hill, browsing slowly as they climbed, could be driven down the steep into the marsh they would be hopelessly embogged. The big troop, the Bushmen said (they knew every herd of game in that vast veldt, just as the average Kaffir knows his own cattle), had been driven far out of their own feeding grounds and this part of the country was strange to them. The two Boers listened with a fierce intensity to this absorbing scheme. They pulled at their beards, knit their brows, and leaped hungrily at each word as it came from the mouth of Lukas, the Griqua. Here was the chance of a lifetime, and they knew it.

In half an hour the plan of campaign was settled, the horses were saddled up and the seven hunters, spreading out in a widish line, advanced upon their game. They reached the summit of the hill. There, three hundred yards below, in a broad opening of the bush, moved very slowly at least sixty huge elephants, most of them carrying long white teeth. In other parts of the thick bush the dusky forms and pale gleaming tusks of other mammoths could be counted.

The Boers dismounted, left their horses behind them, and, one upon either flank, crept in; the two natives carrying guns were in the centre; the three Bushmen, armed only with assegais, served to maintain the thin line of the advance. Half-way down the hill, the Boers fired their rifles into the herd, now close in front of them, the native gunners followed suit, and then, with loud yells, the whole party dashed in upon the elephants. It was a risk, but the plan succeeded to admiration. Half the herd tore terror-stricken down the remaining three hundred yards of hill and entered headlong upon the flat marsh in front of them. Half scattered, and, turning short round, broke back through the thin cordon of hunters. Of these, two big bulls and a cow, all bearing magnificent teeth, fell victims. Leaving these to die, as they quickly did, of their wounds, the hunters ran on and reached the edge of the marsh. Quite a respectable troop was already stuck fast in its treacherous depths. The hunters fired, and fired, and fired again, shot after shot, and as the victims fell, the remainder of the troop, in their desperate exertions to free themselves and escape, only buried themselves yet deeper in the black mud of the smooth, green-looking swamp. It was a scene never to be forgotten. The gunners, black and white, in the fiercest stage of excitement, shouting, screaming, swearing, firing; the Bushmen, mad with the lust of blood, venturing with light feet upon the swamp and spearing the hopelessly embogged elephants; the screaming and trumpeting of the great pachyderms themselves, frantic with helpless rage and terror, created in this erst silent wilderness an infernal pandemonium. By sundown the last elephant but one of all that troop was slain, and seventy-three of the great tusk bearers lay dead upon the marsh. One young bull, lighter than its fellows, had marvellously crossed the swamp in safety and escaped. Some of the finest tusks in Africa lay here under the red rays of the dying sun. Few were under thirty pounds in weight. Many were well over fifty pounds apiece. The two biggest bulls carried teeth that, when dried out, pulled the beam at over ninety pounds apiece. It took the hunters and their natives more than a week to chop out the tusks and get them stowed in their waggons. In the last few days, although the marsh had become firmer and work more easy, the two Dutchmen were unable to withstand the dreadful effluvia of the rotting carcases, and the natives completed the loathsome task alone save for the throngs of vultures that kept them company.