Lodges in the Wilderness Part 4

But in the nights that are coming,--when the rock-python pursues the coney along the shattered pediments of the "Corner House," the unchanging desert will lie, still void under the abiding scrutiny of the stars. Bushmanland can never alter.

The fire dimmed and died. One by one my companions sank into slumber.

The horses were resting,--except unquiet Bucephalus, who stamped and whinnied at intervals. The oxen lay tethered to their yokes. Ever and anon one of them uttered the deep, pathetic bovine sigh,--that suspiration which seems to express perplexed resignation to the selfish dominance of man,--to that hopeless slavery which is the doom of the once-lordly bovine race.

I seized my kaross and climbed the steep side of the nearest dune-tentacle. Then I laboured along its soft, sinuous surface towards the gross, inert body of Typhon, until far beyond the reach of camp-sounds. In the yielding sand I made a lair. In this I laid me down--apparently the only waking thing in Bushmanland, for most utter silence reigned. Probably the soaring flames of our camp fire had frightened away even the jackals and the night-jars from a wide surrounding area. The stars seemed to sink earthward; so brightly did they glow in the vault of liquid purple that the face of the desert was masked in impenetrable gloom. That night the lips of the wilderness had no message audible to human sense.

Typhon slept--coiled about the feet of his granite prisoner, whose bulk loomed menacingly against the wheeling galaxies. Did he, the belted captive, sleep, or did he, haply, share vigil with the one solitary, futile human soul which, maimed from the stress of days and deeds, claimed with him brotherhood through pain and unrest. But slumber seemed to brood over the desert like a dove and a far-off voice to whisper across the shrouded plain: "Warte, nur--balde Ruhest du auch."

CHAPTER SIX.

HOMEWARD BOUND--FACES AROUND THE FIRE--THE BUSHMEN--PIET NOONA AND THE SNAKE--THE LOVE OF THE DESERT--MY PREHISTORIC UNCLE AND AUNT--SCRUPLES-- THE HUNTER'S INSTINCT.

The ocean-plain to the south of Typhon and the camp we had broken up, is probably the loneliest among the less frequented parts of Bushmanland.

No Trek Boer ever ventures there with his stock; the hunter pauses on its undefined margin--well knowing that should he pursue the disappearing herd of oryx much farther, he and his horse would inevitably perish of thirst. For even on the rare occasions when rain falls on this tract no water is conserved on its surface. Those sand-choked, saucer-shaped depressions of the exposed bedrock found in other parts of the desert, in which rain-water sometimes lodges, do not there exist.

The only people who ever visited the area in which we sojourned were half-breed hunters. These had developed abnormal thirst-resisting powers. They usually occupied a tract some hundred miles farther south, and were incorrigible poachers of ostriches. By means of a flying squadron of boys mounted on tough ponies, these half-breeds used to round up herds, comprising birds of all ages, and mercilessly slaughter them all on the edge of the Kanya-tract.

We outspanned after a trek of about three hours. That night we intended to take things easy,--at least I meant to try and persuade Andries to consent to our so doing. The wagon was lightly laden, owing to our having consumed most of the water,--the heat had not been excessive since the oxen started from Gamoep; therefore they were not over-thirsty. In fairly cool weather cattle bred on the borders of the desert often voluntarily refrain from drinking water for several days at a time. We were homeward bound after a prosperous voyage. Supper was being got ready; Andries was busy preparing gemsbok soup, in which to soak our rusks. The candle-bush fire flared aloft. Our pipes were alight and the peace of the desert filled us with content.

Hendrick and Danster had skinned the second jackal which, in antic.i.p.ation of the arrival of Piet Noona and his nephew with the cattle, I had insisted should be reserved for that night's supper,--for on the night previous we had trekked without a halt. The flesh of Autolycus was soon roasting on the embers; all our Hottentots were smacking their lips in antic.i.p.ation of a feast.

I formally presented both jackal skins to Piet Noona's nephew,--but under an undertaking that they were not to be sold or otherwise alienated. The skin of the first jackal was too thoroughly riddled with buck-shot to be of much use to me; that of the second was badly torn by the bullet. They were to be brayed, mended, and donned by the recipient with as little delay as possible.

This gift might have been described as an offering on the altar of decency. I was not inclined to prudery, but Piet Noona's nephew was beginning to grow up, and his sumptuary condition was shocking. In fact his only available garment was a tattered fragment of sheepskin,--a fragment so scanty that it would have barely sufficed to cover the opening of a porcupine's burrow. Even then it could not have been guaranteed to keep out the draught. The jackal skins were not large, but compared with the sheepskin fragment they would have been as an overcoat to a child's pinafore. I explained how they were to be worn: one in front and one in the rear. The coverings of the hind paws were to be joined, skin to skin, in such a way that the combined result would hang from the wearer's shoulders, and the brushes were to be wound about his neck when the weather was chilly. Piet Noona's nephew would thus be reasonably protected, fore and aft, both from Mrs Grundy and the weather. Crowned with a chaplet of Ghanna leaves and with his k.n.o.b-kerrie for thyrsus, he might have easily pa.s.sed for a youthful but disreputable Dionysus.

As we drew out towards the borders of the desert the fingers of silence seemed to press less heavily on our lips. Supper over, we laid ourselves on the soft sand and conversed. But at first our conversation was low-toned and very serious. The imminence of infinity abashed us; it was as though earth and air were full of ears bent to catch every word we uttered. I do not think anyone,--even the most feather-brained, could be garrulous in the desert.

The flames lit up the surrounding faces,--the ruddy, rugged countenance of Andries, with its blue, laughing eyes and cropped beard streaked with grey. The visage of Piet Noona was like that of an old baboon; his nephew's resembled that of a young monkey. Danster's physiognomy indicated a mixture of various strains; the result was quite insignificant.

The Mongolian features of Hendrick were distinctive and very interesting. What was it that his appearance suggested; not exactly the Chinaman, for his expression was not at all impa.s.sive; one could always read his mood by it. His eyes were slightly oblique, his cheekbones high, his head was as round as a Kanya stone. With remarkable muscular development of the chest and shoulders, heavily hipped and very slightly bandy-legged,--for long I was puzzled to discover what is was that Hendrick reminded me of. He loved a horse and rode like a Centaur--or the man-part thereof. Then I knew: it was a Hun that I was seeking for,--one of the locusts of that Asiatic horde which swept over Europe from the north-eastern steppes. I think that Attila, the Eraser of Nations, who swayed the world from his saddle-throne, must have looked somewhat like my scout. The most plausible theory as to the origin of the Hottentot race is that its progenitors migrated hither from Asia.

Even van Riebeek noticed the resemblance between the aborigines of the Cape and the Chinese. Yes, I was almost certain that Hendrick was a Hun,--or rather that the tribe he was mainly descended from and the Huns were twigs from the same bough of the great human tree.

Hendrick, to be appreciated, should have been seen on the back of an unrestrained or a vicious horse; it was then that he became a personality. He rode as gracefully bare-back as with a saddle. I could picture him galloping away from some sacked and smoking town--not on raw-boned Bucephalus, but on some thickset, s.h.a.ggy, steppe-bred mount.

Hanging limply across his tense, gripping thighs was a milk-white, gently-nurtured Ildico maiden. Her wide blue eyes were stony with horror,--her golden hair dabbled in the sweat of the horse's heaving flank. She was bound and pinioned with shreds torn from her robe of lawn. The other Huns were loaded with sacks of church plate, with weapons and with merchandise. But Hendrick looked on the face of this maiden, the daughter of what, but a few short hours before, had been a proud and n.o.ble house,--and desired her alone. But I think and hope she died of terror before the bivouac was reached. Hendrick was a tame, kindly, obedient hunting-scout, but I am sure that the fierce, conquering Hun lay sleeping within him.

There is not a watering place in the Bushmanland desert which has not some tragic story connected with it,--some reminiscence of a lonely thirst-death, some tale having for its motif the shedding of blood-- usually by treachery. But death, accidental or designed, was always the theme. Not many miles from where we were camped that night one of the earlier Wesleyan missionaries travelling from Warmbad to the half-breed settlement on the Kamiesbergen had been shot to death with poisoned arrows. This happened early in the nineteenth century. The murderer was executed some time afterwards at Silverfontein.

The first white man who crossed this tract did a venturesome thing. For although at that time the Bushmen had already been considerably thinned out by the Hottentots and half-breeds, many of them still lurked in the less accessible parts. From time to time they emerged, singly or in small parties, and wreaked a wild and often quite inconsequent revenge.

Their mode of attacking travellers was to steal up at night among the tussocks and discharge a flight of poisoned arrows at point-blank range, among those surrounding the camp fire. They would then immediately decamp and scatter in the darkness. Hours afterwards they might repeat the attack. If the travellers were deep in the desert the repet.i.tion would perhaps be delayed until the following night, for the Bushmen took no avoidable risks. Usually the oxen or horses forming the span would also be slain. One can imagine the plight of a party of travellers under such circ.u.mstances: half of them dead or dying in agony, the survivors cowering in a wagon as hopelessly tethered to a lonely spot in a trackless waste as a wrecked ship is chained to the reef that gores her side. They would have been ringed round with drought and famine; close prisoners in a solitude only mitigated by the unseen presence of implacable foes, the stroke of whose dart was as silent and deadly as that of the snake.

Yet these Bushmen had sufficient justification for all the terrible reprisals they perpetrated. They were the original dwellers of the soil; the Hottentots came, dispossessed them of their best water-places and slaughtered them without mercy. When they migrated eastward they met the Kaffirs, who proved a more formidable and quite as pitiless a foe. In the storming of the Bushmen's strongholds their women and children were speared or flung into the flames. They retired to the most remote wastes,--to the sheer, black-chasmed fastnesses of the Malutis, where snow lies thick for months at a time,--to torrid, waterless deserts. But in every retreat, no matter how remote, their foes sought them out. They invariably made a desperate resistance, and sold their lives dearly.

But the duel was between ferocity organised and ferocity deranged, so the former was bound to prevail. It was a struggle of the clan against a number of units which had no permanent cohesion; whose combinations were fitful and occasional. There is no G.o.d but strength visible on the checker-board of history. When the mighty is put down from his seat it is not the humble and meek who is exalted, but one whose strength, being of a more subtle order, is perhaps not at first recognised as such--one whose cloak of humility may cover armour of proved temper. The strength of the Bushmen, perfected through long ages of experience, was all-potent against his one-time only adversary, the animal. But when used against man, the intruder who had fought for his existence with other men and learnt in the process the utility of combination, it failed. The Bushman contended under one tremendous disability: he had no tribal organisation,--the family was the independent unit.

Piet Noona's nephew, having had the duty of collecting fuel a.s.signed to him, carried a considerable store of bushes to the vicinity of the fire and there heaped them together. With the exception of the "toa," most of the vegetation of the desert is globular in form, and, being usually rooted in more or less soft sand, is easily pulled out. Andries reached over and seized a bush-globe; one that was rather denser and larger than usual. This he flung on the fire. Out of it glided, hissing, a snake-- a horned adder. The reptile was quickly despatched. But upon seeing it Piet Noona sprang into the air to a height of about four feet; then he fled away into the darkness, bounding sideways as he ran and shrieking.

He had gone quite mad for the time being. This always happened when he found himself in close proximity to a snake, and the madness invariably manifested itself in the same way. Years ago Piet had been bitten by a puff adder and narrowly escaped with his life. Ever since the sight of a snake at close quarters has incontinently thrown his brain out of gear. How far occasional bouts of brandy-drinking at the Copper Mines has been responsible for this peculiarity, I cannot say.

Some months previously I had played--to a great extent unwittingly--a cruel trick on him. I had heard of Piet's being afraid of snakes, but had no idea that his dread of them was so intense. One day when he was saddling Prince I laid a recently-killed snake across the saddle. The creature was practically dead, but was still squirming slightly--as snakes are apt to do for a considerable time after they have been rendered harmless, no matter how badly they may have been mangled.

Piet's head, as he tightened the girth, was under the uplifted saddle-flap. When he dropped the latter and found the snake close to his face he sprang into the air and fled, bounding sideways and every now and then striking his thigh diagonally with the palm of his right hand. It was a most peculiar and uncanny manifestation. I did not see Piet for three days afterwards. Then he emerged from the veld, red-eyed and starving, but once more in his (comparatively) right mind. That night, as his cries grew fainter in the distance, we concluded that we should see no more of him during the trip.

Once more our caravan was silently moving over the trackless waste. The desert was now in one of her moods of tenderness,--the air full of soft and subtle scent that was sweeter than myrrh--more grateful than wafts from a garden of spices. A feeling of sadness gripped my heartstrings; I was leaving the mistress I loved--the mistress beneath whose stern, arid, monotonous day-mask I could discern the fair symmetry, the soft and delicately-tinted curves of perfect and eternal youth. How often had I breathlessly watched those features quicken and grow mobile as the defacing sun departed. It was then that the breath of her mouth sought mine; then that her eyes shone softly as the evening star. But it was at full night, when the great dome above us was unvexed by the least trace of day, that the desert's inhabiting soul came forth and transfigured the littleness of my cribbed and cabined spirit.

Sometimes for a season she smiled as though she relented, but the smile was not for me. At dawn, when Zephyr and Aurora couched at the hem of her robe, she let me lean against the softness of her bosom. At night she lulled me to sleep and crooned into my ear dream-songs that were great and strong with wisdom gleaned from the most ancient seasons. But when day returned she flung me to the lions of the sun. Should they have mangled me to death the mistress of my worship would not have cared. She was too strong to feel compa.s.sion, too lofty to be moved by grief or touched by any regret. My beloved was not mine, tho' I was wholly hers, and the lilies at her breast were petalled with consuming flame. "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?" It was the desert.

Spinoza's aphorism:--"Those who love G.o.d truly must not expect that G.o.d will love them in return," roots deep in human experience. The loftiest love is that which gets not nor expects requital. I used to believe that this desert I love hated me. But I thought so no longer. It was not hate nor any other emotion that she felt; she was filled with the divine attribute of infinite indifference.

I am subjectively certain that some ancestor of mine with prognathous jaw, flat forehead and enormous thews, paddled over the sea that once filled these plains and roamed over the far-separated hill-tracks. I often saw him,--usually where the stark mountain range,--which in those old days was covered with verdure,--arises like a rampart from the northern limit of the plains. I have watched him crouching behind a rock with a sling in his hairy hand and a stone-axe slung to his girdle of twisted thongs,--his fierce eyes bent on a herd of Aurochs (or whatever the local contemporary equivalent of those beasts may have been) straying down to the entrance of a certain valley. There he had constructed, and skilfully concealed, a staked pit. The mountains at Agenhuis and the high kopjes at Gaams and Namies were then islands, and he used to paddle from one to the other in a canoe made of Aurochs' hide stretched over boughs. In the gorge that splits Agenhuis Mountain he waged mighty and victorious war with such dragons of the prime as attempted to lair therein,--for Agenhuis was one of his favourite sojourning places, and in the days when he flourished, dragons had not yet disappeared from earth.

In view of the undoubted scientific foundation upon which the germ-plasm theory rests, there is no limit to be set to atavistic memory. I am quite persuaded that this ancestor of mine actually existed; as a matter of fact I have over and over again seen him on the hunting trail, attending to the all-important business of filling his larder. I have watched him as he set forth in the early morning, empty and wrathful, and as he returned towards evening--still empty but laden with extraordinary spoil of antediluvian meat, and whooping an extempore triumphal chant.

He would fling the meat down at the mouth of his cave, and bellow for the attendance of his by-no-means gentle mate. She, with the fear of the stone-axe before her prehistoric eyes, would at once conceal the prehistoric baby in a corner, and with almost feverish energy busy herself with rudimentary cooking. A big fire would be already alight,-- the embers containing stones in red-hot readiness for dropping into a pot-shaped depression in the cave's floor, half-full of water. Into this the meat and the stones would be flung together, but in the meantime a t.i.t-bit had been lightly and hurriedly broiled, cleaned of ashes, and held out to the hunter on the end of a long stick, in a propitiatory way. After this had been s.n.a.t.c.hed and swallowed to the accompaniment of savage growls, the cook seemed to be more at her ease.

All this time the baby kept as still as a mouse. Prehistoric babies did not cry when papa was about, and hungry. In the exceptional cases where they did, it only happened once.

I trust my claim to such ancient lineage may not be put down to sn.o.bbery. One always suspects those who dwell unduly on the deeds of their ancestors. But my justification is this:--a germ charged with an epitome of that creature's stormy life has come down to me through the generations. It remained dormant until it met in my brain some solvent which disintegrated its sh.e.l.l and thus set the sleeper free. Garrulous after its long imprisonment the germ has told the story over and over again to all the grey molecules of my cortex. For some time most of these have known it off by heart.

Accordingly this ancestor--or perhaps for the sake of convenience I might term him my (many times removed) uncle--and I have been for some time shouting to each other across the ages, until we have attained to almost an intimacy. I have, in fact, by this means, acquired many prehistoric forms of thought. As may be imagined this has somewhat confused my ethical canons. Much of what I have learnt is difficult to translate into terms of modern speech.

I often long with all my soul to be prehistoric in certain matters, but the prim hand of convention--otherwise the unimaginative policeman-- holds me back. However, some of my uncle's views are still more or less widely held. He was, for instance, what in modern speech would be called a strong Conservative; that is abundantly clear from many of his peculiarities. But in his day Imperialism had not yet been born; there was so far no urgent necessity to provide for the younger sons of the aristocracy. In fact there was still room in the world for everybody, and as cultivation had not yet been invented, there was no such thing as private ownership of land. Moreover, the pressure of over-population was never really felt until cannibalism went out of fashion, and that happened only quite recently.

My uncle was, of course, an aristocrat,--his three-fold patent of n.o.bility being founded on his muscular strength, his skill in wielding weapons and his unique talent for concentrating all the faculties of his prehistoric mind on what I, his degenerate nephew, would call the main chance.

My aunt--there were several of them, of course, but you may take your choice, they were all of the same type--was an extremely practical woman. But she was not a Suffragette--or if she was she carefully concealed the circ.u.mstance. She was quite devoid of any kind of sentiment. In the matter of personal adornment, she affected the jewellery of the period; this consisted of the scalps and ears of my husband's deceased enemies--more or less dessicated--and the teeth of the same persons, bored through and strung on thin thongs. Her wardrobe was not extensive; in fact she never owned more than one garment at a time, and that she only used in cold weather. My uncle's hunting provided the material, so he had neither dressmakers' nor milliners'

bills to meet.

My aunt was fiercely fond of her children so long as they depended upon her for food and protection. Afterwards she rather disliked them than otherwise. If one of them after reaching adolescence met her accidentally when she took her walks abroad, that one would utter a howl of dismay as loud as though he had met an angry odontosaurus, and flee, leaping from side to side to avoid the slung stones. For my aunt also carried a sling; she found it far more useful than a reticule.

How Nietsche would have delighted in this family; what a joy it would be to Mr Bernard Shaw. I can imagine my uncle dining with President Roosevelt,--but it would hardly have done to invite Booker Washington to meet him.

About two hours after midnight I coerced Andries into being merciful and calling a halt, for I felt that I must sleep or die. It was only when I had thrown myself p.r.o.ne on the sand and told Hendrick to picket the horses close by, that Andries relented. There was really no object in pushing on at such rapid rate; by making an early start we could easily reach Gamoep shortly after noon on the morrow.

Both Danster and Piet Noona reported the presence of springbuck in this vicinity. Mrs Esterhuizen would be disappointed and contemptuous if we returned without meat other than the half-dried oryx-flesh. When, I again asked myself, would repentance for the crimes I committed in slaying those beautiful desert creatures become final and practical, instead of intermittent? Saint Augustine once put up a prayer for the grace of continence, but added a rider to the effect that he did not desire it to be granted immediately. This somewhat suggested my state of mind. But I meant some day to lay down my rifle finally--perhaps after a particularly good bag or an unusually skilful shot. Afterwards I should never kill another animal--unless in self-defence or because I badly lacked meat. However, in the meantime, like Saint Augustine, I knew I should continue certain practices which my conscience reprehended. The hunter's instinct is the one most deeply rooted in the mind of man; it is among those tendencies which persist after the conditions which called them forth have disappeared--even from memory.

It is the true basis of that original sin over which the theologians fumble, for in the absence of other available game men hunt each other.

But I had, incontinently, to sleep. And hey--for a gallop over the plains in the morning.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE SPRINGBUCK DRIVE--THE BUSHMAN CAVES--RETURN TO GAMOEP.

Morning,--and the cool west wind, laden with refreshment, hastened over the desert's rim to where I lay, still on the border-land of sleep. The sweeping garments of the air-spirit were fragrant with the ichor of the sea on whose breast it had slept. Its sandals whispered through the swaying tussocks, its tresses trailed over the bending plumes of the "toa" shocks. It gently tried to draw me back to the mistress I loved and longed for, but was deserting because she would have slain me had I lingered at her unpitying feet.

At sunrise I gazed around for one ecstatic moment and again sank to sleep--to a zone too deep for dreams to haunt. The long trampings of the previous two nights had made further slumber an almost absolute necessity. Andries might go hang; I would not move.