Perils in the Transvaal and Zululand Part 25

"But I don't look as though I had lived in England,--that is what you mean, I think? Well, I'll tell you my history. It ill.u.s.trates what we were talking of at dinner,--as to what is the truth respecting the treatment of the natives by the Boers. My father and mother were English. They came out to the Cape Colony somewhere about 1830, and they settled on a farm in Namaqualand. It didn't pay. Their cattle were continually driven off by the bushmen, and their fruit plundered and their guns and hoes and the like stolen by the Hottentots. Nothing they could do would prevent it. The native servants were often as not in league with the thieves. Every now and then they would run off and take anything of value with them."

"As for the cattle-stealing," remarked George, "that is an old story. A man must be a good deal wiser than I am who can say how it is to be prevented. But I wonder, I must say, if you treated the Hottentots well, as I have no doubt you did, that they didn't stay with you."

"Perhaps they might," said Prestcott, which they afterwards found to be their host's name,--"perhaps they might, if they had been left to themselves. But there were always a lot of Hottentots going loose about the country; and they threatened our servants with their vengeance if they didn't give them food and drink. They didn't dare refuse, and then they expected to be severely punished, and ran off. Anyhow, they couldn't keep any servants, and their property was continually pillaged.

They must have left the country if they had lived. But one day my father was speared by a party of bushmen, whom he had caught driving off a bull. My mother, who had seen the transaction, ran screaming out, and they speared her too. They then entered and pillaged the house. I was a child of eight years old, and they no doubt would have killed me along with my parents, if it hadn't occurred to them that old Potgieter, a Boer farmer a few miles off, would give them something handsome for me.

They took me to him, and he did buy me."

"You don't mean that he bought you of them, knowing how they had come by you?" exclaimed Redgy, horror-stricken.

"No, sir. They were too clever to tell him that, and he was too clever to ask. They merely said they had found me, and they believed my father and mother were dead."

"And they had excellent reasons for believing so," remarked Redgy.

"True, sir. Well, old Herman Potgieter took pity on me, as he was pleased to express it. He took me over to the field-cornet's house, and apprenticed me, after their fashion, to himself, until I should be one-and-twenty years old."

"Ay, I have heard of that before I left England," remarked Margetts.

"But I thought the age was five-and-twenty, and it was further remarked that it was astonishing how long these apprentices are in reaching their five-and-twentieth year."

"Just so, sir. The natives seldom know how old they are; indeed, they are seldom able to keep any account of time; and they are obliged to prove that they are five-and-twenty before they can claim their freedom.

I have known a native kept in service until he was nearly forty. But though I was not nine years old before I was taken before the field-cornet, I knew something of their ways, having heard my father talk about it. I produced a Prayer-Book he had given me on my eighth birthday, insisting upon it that in a little more than twelve years'

time I should be free. I suppose when they found out I was really an English boy, on my father's side at all events, they were a little frightened, and thought it best to be cautious."

"I have no doubt of it," a.s.sented Hardy. "I suppose you took good care of your Prayer-Book?"

"Old Potgieter contrived to get hold of that," said Prestcott; "but I was not to be beaten. The house where my father had lived stood only a few miles off, or rather had once stood, for no one had lived there since it had been wrecked by the Hottentots, and it was a mere ruin.

But I knew my father had buried a box under the stone paving in one corner of the room, and that it contained among other articles my baptismal certificate. One day, when I wanted but a few weeks of becoming one-and-twenty, I took a pick-axe with me, went over to my old home, and dug up the box. There was my baptismal certificate, sure enough, and a good bit of money besides, as well as shares in an English company at Cape Town. I put these back into the box, which I buried again, but I took the certificate with me, and on my twenty-first birthday went over to the field-cornet's again. Old Potgieter thought he had destroyed the evidence of my age, and was dumb-foundered when he saw the signatures to the papers, and durst say no more.

"I repossessed myself of my money and shares, and sold the latter at Cape Town, where they fetched a good price. Then I bought this land here and built this house, where I have lived ever since. I married, but never had any children. A few years ago my wife died, and I have never cared to marry again."

"What became of old Potgieter, the old wretch?" inquired Redgy.

"Poor old Potgieter!" said Prestcott. "He wasn't unkind to me after all; and when I heard how barbarously he had been murdered, I was as hot as any one to punish his slayers."

"How was he murdered?" inquired Hardy.

"He was making a journey somewhere, I forget where. It was only for trading purposes, but I suppose the Kaffir chief, near whose kraal he halted for the night, thought otherwise. And it can't be denied that there was some reason for his thinking so. Old Potgieter had been on a great many commandos, and had killed more natives than he would find easy to reckon up. Makapan, as the chief was called, attacked the camp by night and killed them all. I have been told that they flayed him alive, and the story was generally believed, though I have great doubts whether it was true. The Dutch, when they heard of it, ordered a general commando, which was joined by a large party of Potgieter's relatives and friends, and I, as I told you, went with them. We were several hundreds in number, with waggons containing military stores, and a cannon or two. Makapan and his tribe were quite unable to resist.

They retired into the broken country adjoining the kraal, and there a.s.sailed us with arrows and a.s.segays from behind their rocky fastnesses.

But we continually forced them back; and at last they retired into a cavern, which was some hundred yards in depth, and so dark that it was impossible to see anything, except close at hand."

"It wouldn't have done to have followed them there," said George. "You would have been an easy mark for their poisoned arrows."

"No doubt, and we might have fired as many rounds of ammunition as we pleased and hit nothing but the rocks. Praetorius and the others knew better than to try that."

"What did they do?" asked George.

"They first tried to blast the rocks, but that had no effect but that of wasting powder. Then a sort of blockade was established. Guards were set at every opening, and nothing allowed to come out or go in. But either the Kaffirs had collected large stores of food, or they had some way of going out and getting in which we could not detect. At last the Dutchmen came to the conclusion that the only thing to be done was to build them in."

"Build them in! What, build a wall in front of the cave, do you mean?"

"Build up the mouth of the cave itself. They had pretty clearly determined that there was but one mouth,--the fact that the cave ran deeper and deeper into the hillside seemed to prove that,--and if so, there could be no way out."

"Why, that is very much what I remember reading in my history of Scotland," said Margetts, "that a very barbarous Highland tribe did to another. It was in prehistoric times, so that there was only a legend about it."

"As for barbarity, Redgy," observed George, "I don't fancy the Boers of the nineteenth century are much behind the McLeods of whom that story is told. And the French performed nearly the same feat in Algeria forty years or so ago. Only they, I believe, smoked the Arabs like bees in a hive."

"That would have been much more merciful," observed Prestcott. "These Kaffirs died of hunger, the most dreadful of all deaths, and no quarter was given them. Whenever any of them made their appearance at the mouth of the cave, they were shot down. More than a thousand were killed in that way. The blockade was maintained for nearly a month. After that no Kaffirs appeared, and there came so dreadful a stench from the cave that the Dutch could endure it no longer, and made their way in. I had gone away some time before that, not being able to endure the horror of it. But I am told that they found no living thing. The whole tribe had been destroyed."

"Then, I suppose, they went home and celebrated their victory," said George.

"Yes, and boast that peace has been maintained in that district ever since," replied Mr Prestcott.

"Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant," said George, who had not forgotten his cla.s.sics. "I did not know the Boers were as bad as that!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"I should like to ask you, sir," said Margetts after a pause, "the rights about the presence of the larger animals--wild animals, I mean-- in these parts. In Zululand, which is very nearly on the same parallel as this, they were certainly to be found. Some of the horses were attacked by lions while we were actually in the country. We had been informed that it was very much the same state of things in the Transvaal. But here we have been journeying several days, and we have not come upon the slightest trace of elephant, or lion, or giraffe, or rhinoceros. We did hear a roaring one day, which we thought was that of a lion, but it turned out to be only an ostrich,--so Matamo said, at all events."

"If you heard the roaring by day, Mr Margetts," said Prestcott, "it was pretty sure to be that of an ostrich. As a rule, the lion only roars by night. The two roars are certainly very much alike, though a practised hunter could distinguish between them easily enough. As for the great game of which you speak, it has certainly left the lower parts of the Transvaal. If a solitary specimen here and there is to be met with, the animal in question has been driven southward by some accident. It is a different thing in Zululand from what it is here. The natives do not hunt the lion or the rhinoceros, as the European settlers do. After they have once begun to people a land, the big game soon disappears. We have, however, still herds of antelopes of all kinds, springboks, gemsboks, elands, koodoos, hartebeests, and gnus. The lion preys upon all these, and where they are to be found in great numbers he might be looked for also. But the white hunter is too much for him, I expect."

"They are old acquaintances of yours, I perceive, sir," suggested George. "Have you ever had any perilous encounters with them?"

"Well, sir, I have had one or two brushes--narrow escapes they may be called. I had one in Namaqualand some years ago--no one ever had a narrower, I may say."

"Please let us hear it, sir," said Redgy. "If one can't see the lions themselves, as I had hoped, at all events one may hear about them."

"Well, I'll tell you my adventure, sir, if you like it," said Mr Prestcott, who had evidently no disinclination to relate his personal experience. "I had gone to Walfisch Bay, where some English traders had settled, with whom I wished to establish business relations. I had to pa.s.s through the Hottentot country. At that time there were a good many villages scattered about, and there I could procure food and lodging.

There were few or no white men at that time in the country, and the lions had never been disturbed in their occupation. One evening I reached a kraal on the Fish river, and there I found all the Hottentots in a terrible state of alarm about a very big lion, which was lurking somewhere in their neighbourhood and had taken to man-eating. I daresay you may have heard that when a lion once does that, the only chance is to kill him at once. He gets so fond of human flesh that he won't eat any other, and he will lie in wait near one of the villages for days and weeks together, hiding himself in one place or another, and springing suddenly out on some unwary traveller."

"Isn't that fact disputed, Mr Prestcott?" asked Hardy. "I have met with old hunters who say that the man-eating lion is merely an old animal, who has become too stiff in the joints to run his victims down, and that he only preys on men in the way you have described, because they can't run away from him in the way that an antelope or a gnu would."

"Yes, I have heard that," a.s.sented Mr Prestcott, "and think it may very possibly be true. Certainly such man-eating lions as I have seen killed were very wretched, mangy-looking creatures. That was attributed to the fact of their living on human flesh, but I don't know why that should cause such a result. Their appearance is certainly consistent with their being old, worn-out animals. Any way, the Hottentots were in a state of great disquietude about this lion. No less than five victims-- two men and three children--had been killed and carried off into the long jungle gra.s.s, where he princ.i.p.ally took up his abode, within the last week or two. Several times the whole of the men had gone out to spear him. But though they had seen him at a distance, they could not get near enough to wound him with their shots or arrows. They implored me so earnestly to deliver them from this terrible pest, that I agreed to remain for a day or two and see what I could do for them. Well, I stayed with them a week, and made several excursions, but could see nothing of him. At last it was supposed that he had been killed or had left the neighbourhood. I had delayed there longer than I liked, so I took my leave one morning, and, having loaded both barrels of my gun, I set off on my way for Walfisch Bay. About a mile from the Hottentot village there was a clear spring of water. As the day was very hot, I resolved to bathe my hands and feet and take a good draught before going farther. I took off my coat and shoes and stockings and laid them at the foot of a large mootjeeri that almost overhung the pool, but I retained my gun in my hand. I was just stooping to take a draught of water, when I heard a stealthy movement in the long tambookie gra.s.s, like that of a large animal creeping towards me, and at the same moment my horse, which I had fastened to the bough of a small tree, broke away and rushed off at full speed I sprang up and swung myself round the mootjeeri, only just in time to escape the spring of a large lion, which struck against the tree and was thrown by the shock on its side. Before it could regain its legs I had dropped my gun and skimmed up into the tree, the lower limbs of which were only six feet or so from the ground.

I seated myself on a branch, and took a good look at my a.s.sailant, who was now standing only a few feet below me, eyeing me with a hungry look, and every now and then giving vent to his impatience at being kept from his supper in short, angry roars. There could be no doubt that it was the man-eater, and that he had tracked me, waiting his opportunity. It was a good job for me that the mootjeeri was so close at hand, and that lions cannot climb, or he would have made short work with me. But though I thanked Heaven for my escape so far, I was by no means out of the sc.r.a.pe. If I had been able to take my gun up into the tree with me, I could soon have rid myself of him, but it was lying on the brink of the spring. Nor could I even recover my coat and shoes, which I had placed at the foot of the tree, a couple of yards below the branch. I could only reach them by hooking them up with a long stick. I did try this. I cut a long wand with a crook at the end, and let this down.

But the lion instantly seized my coat in its teeth and tore it away. It was the same with my shoes, and I was presently obliged to give up the attempt. He instantly clutched anything which I attempted to move.

"I was obliged to remain quite pa.s.sive, but my condition was getting very uncomfortable. My arms and feet were bare, and the leaves of the mootjeeri afforded me a very insufficient shade from the blazing heat of the sun overhead. I also became very hungry as the evening came on.

What food I had had with me was all in the bags attached to my saddle.

My only chance, I felt, was that the lion might get tired of waiting for me and go off to seek food elsewhere. But I was sensible that this was not worth much. It was clear that he wanted me, or he would have sprung on my horse when he first made his attack; and I knew how eager the craving of the man-eater is for human flesh. He would wait as long as nature would allow him to hold out, in the hope of making his meal on me, and he would probably be able to last out much longer than I could.

"Presently he left the foot of the tree and went back to the spring, where he took a long draught, and then lay down on the gra.s.s under the shrubs, keeping his red and angry eye still fixed on me, and every now and then displaying his terrible teeth. The whole afternoon pa.s.sed thus. I was in hopes that some of the Hottentots might pa.s.s that way, and repeatedly shouted at the top of my voice for help.

"By and by it grew dark, and some of the smaller animals which were accustomed to resort to the fountain to drink made their appearance in the distance, and again I hoped that he would pursue and make his supper on one of them. But no, it was quite plain that he had made up his mind to have me and nothing else. At last it grew quite dark, only a few stars being visible in the sky, and the lion, so far as I could make out, was sound asleep. I attempted to creep stealthily down from the branch, but the moment I moved he started up with a short roar, and rushed up to the tree so quickly that I had only just time to regain my former position.

"Daybreak came at last. I was worn out for want of sleep and ravenous with hunger. I foresaw that I should soon get weak and dizzy and drop from my perch into the jaws of my enemy. Suddenly it occurred to me, that although my supply of tobacco, was in my saddle-bags, I might have a small quant.i.ty in my belt, which would for the moment relieve my hunger. I felt accordingly, and drew out--not, alas! any tobacco, but my match-box. I usually carried this in my coat pocket, but by good luck I had thrust it into my belt at starting. The matches were of an unusually good kind, and when once ignited would burn for two or three minutes quite to the very end. The moment I saw them, I felt I had found a mode of deliverance if I could only accomplish it. I took my powder-flask, which was fortunately quite full, and dropped some loose powder on the ground. I then took one of the matches and fastened it to the end of the long stick by which I had endeavoured to hook up my coat and shoes. Having firmly secured it, I lighted it, and then dropped the flask on the heap of powder which I had scattered below. The lion, as before, rushed instantly up and put his head down to lay hold of the flask. Quick as lightning I thrust the stick down and applied it to the powder. The flask exploded directly in the lion's face, setting his mane and whiskers on fire and severely scorching his mouth and nose.

With a yell of terror and pain, he galloped off at the top of his speed, while I crawled down so exhausted that a long draught from the fountain and a feast of some wild medlars, which I fortunately found growing by the fountain, only restored me so far as to enable me with a great effort to get back to the Hottentot village, where I had to rest several days before I was fit to resume my journey."

"What became of the lion?" asked Redgy.

"Nothing more was, I believe, ever heard of him. I inquired about him on my way back, but the Hottentots said he had entirely disappeared from the neighbourhood. They fancied that the fright he had had prevented his returning to his old haunts. But my opinion is that his eyesight had been completely destroyed by the explosion, and that, being rendered unable to provide himself with food, he had soon died of hunger."