From Veldt Camp Fires Part 9

Arrived at the island, he was conducted to the chief's hut, and there alone with Ndala he sat in deep and secret colloquy for a full hour or more. Presently he was ferried back very quietly to the south sh.o.r.e again, where, creeping into his own camp, he regained the shelter of his blanket without having awakened a soul.

Next morning a canoe came across early from Ndala, laden with a number of sweet water melons, some more grain and another goat as a present to the Van Zyls. At the same time the chief sent a message to Van Zyl to say that, if he were ready for a hunt on the following day, some of his tribesmen would be ready to act as spoorers and show him a troop of elephants which was known to be frequenting some bush about half a day's journey from the kraal. This was excellent news, and Van Zyl brightened up instantly.

"Myn maghtet, Alie!" he said to his wife, after taking a huge pull at his kommetje of coffee, "the carle is not so bad as I thought him. Tell his headman, Hans," he said to his Hottentot, "that I'll swim the horse across as soon as day breaks to-morrow and go after the elephants."

For the remainder of that day the whole camp was busily employed; Van Zyl and his two men in completing a big and strong thorn kraal for the cattle, against the attack of lions; Alida Van Zyl in finishing off some bultong (dried meat), cooking bread, tidying up the stores and putting together various articles required by her husband while away hunting.

Towards afternoon Van Zyl, having finished his work at the ox-kraal, opened a keg of powder, heated some lead and zinc, and sat himself down to the work of reloading some cartridges for his elephant rifle.

Near him, in the shade of the spreading acacia tree by which the waggon was outspanned, crawled on a couple of blankets little Jan, his two year old child. Now and then the big Boer would pause from his work to admire the strong, chubby limbs of his little son, or would stretch forth a big hand to tickle the restless little rascal, eliciting from him crows, gurgles and screams of childish laughter. Once Alida came from her cooking to look at the pair.

"Maghte!" said her husband, as he looked up at her from playing with the boy. "How the child grows. If he goes on like this, he will be strong enough to carry a rifle by the time he is ten years old."

They retired early that night--before eight o'clock--and at the earliest streak of dawn Karel Van Zyl had drunk his coffee, eaten some meat and a rusk and said farewell to his wife and child. He kissed Alida's broad, smooth cheek and, yet more tenderly, his sleeping child, lying there up in the waggon, on the kartel-bed, in the big hole which his sire had lately quitted. And then, taking with him Hans and his horse, he went down to the stream. The good grey had swum rivers before and understood the business; yet he paused for a moment on the brink, looking forth over the broad, swift stream, and snuffed the air once or twice.

"Crocodiles, _oude kerel_ (old fellow)?" said his master, patting him on the neck. "They shall not harm you."

The grey tossed his head, shook his bit, and Hans, looking at him, said to his master:

"He is all right, Baas. He trusts you. Witfoot will swim."

So, unfastening the long raw-hide reim from the head stall, they lead Witfoot down, got into a couple of canoes and pushed off. Witfoot swam quietly and cleverly between the two canoes, and presently, pa.s.sing below Ndala's island, they reached the northern bank. Here Ndala was waiting for them with a number of his tribesmen. They exchanged greetings, and then the Cubangwe captain picked out a dozen of his best hunters to accompany Van Zyl and his Hottentot and show them where the elephants were. And so, bidding friendly farewells, they parted.

Hans marched just ahead of Van Zyl, carrying, as he always did, till game was known to be near, his master's rifle and a bandolier full of spare cartridges. One of Ndala's men carried the second rifle, with which Hans himself was usually intrusted. For three hours they marched north-west under the blazing sun, over heavy sand-belts, through bush and thin forest, until high noon, when Van Zyl reined up his horse, pulled off his broad-brimmed hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with his big cotton print handkerchief.

"Hans," he said, looking round for Ndala's hunters, "those schepsels are surely spreading out very wide for the spoor. I haven't seen one of them for half an hour past." As he spoke he climbed leisurely from the saddle and loosened the girths. Hans, who alone knew why the men had vanished, answered him:

"I don't think you will set eyes on them again, Baas. You may say your prayers, for your last hour is nigh and I am going to shoot you."

Van Zyl heard the clicks of two hammers being c.o.c.ked and turned swiftly round.

"That is a verdomned impudent joke of yours, Hans," he said, "for which I shall welt you handsomely when we get back to camp. Give me the gun."

But Hans, standing within ten feet of his master, had the rifle at the ready, and there was a fiendish look in his eyes which Van Zyl had never before remarked.

"Don't move a step nearer," said the Hottentot, "but say your prayers, for before G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing, 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 pa.s.sed 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 ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 G.o.d 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 c.o.c.k-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 G.o.d'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. c.o.c.king 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sured 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.lish 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.