Tales of South Africa Part 6

Refilling his pipe from colonial tobacco, carried loose in his jacket-pocket, and relighting it, the big Boer moves ma.s.sively back to his wagon, near which his daughter is busily engaged in a wash at the welcome vlei. There are three other wagons outspanned by the pool: one of them belongs to the Boer's two sons; one of them is inhabited by yet another Trek-Boer, whose vrouw is engaged in the same task of washing, and whose children--five of them--young, merry rascals, are playing in the strong sunlight upon the edge of the water.

Their voices sound pleasantly upon the sweet, warm air, and recall, even to Klaas Stuurmann's unimpressive mind, the younger days of his own children and his now dead wife. The recollection brings an unwonted tenderness to his rugged soul, and as the noisy imps, busy at their games of wagon-and-oxen, play and clamour about him, he goes to his wagon, opens his sugar-bag, fills a _kommetje_ [A small common earthenware basin, universally used by the Boers instead of a tea or coffee cup] with the dark-brown treacly stuff, and calls the tanned and ragged little company about him. Jan, Katrina, Hendrik, Gert, Jacobina, and the tiny, toddling Jacie, all receive their morsel of the sweet-stuff--not without some awe and wonderment, for the grim, burly Boer man seldom unbends so far.

The oxen are feeding quietly round the vlei; the Boer's eye follows them with contentment, for water and the rich veldt have brought fat and sleekness to their great frames. His daughter's toilet catches his eye, and he watches the girl with an air of grave and secret pleasure, for she is the last survivor of three girl children, and by no means an ill-looking maiden in a Dutchman's eye. Ruyter, the Hottentot, has brought an iron bucket from the wagon, and at the margin of the vlei he fills it with water for the _meisje_, who already has soap, a towel, and a comb. Taking off her sun-bonnet, she washes her face and hands, then, unfettering her stout plait of fair brown hair, she leans forward, and using the calm surface of the water as a mirror, combs out the somewhat tangled locks. Again the brown hair is coiled into a neat plait, drawn tightly from her temples, and her toilet is complete. As she ties on her sun-bonnet again the Boer comes up, pats her broad back, and looks admiringly at the now refreshened face. Two hundred years of South Africa have little altered the old Batavian type. The eyes are blue, but of small brilliancy, the cheeks too broad and flat for English taste, and the young figure is already stiff, waistless, and heavy. Yet in this far-off back-country women folk are scarce, and in much request, and already, at eighteen, Anna Stuurmann has found a mate. Next to her brothers' wagon there stands the wagon of her betrothed--Rodolf Klopper--who is just now away in the gra.s.s plains a little to the north, shooting springboks with the younger Stuurmanns. This wagon is newly repaired, smart, and gaily painted, and is destined in another month or two, after the flocks have been well recruited in the Bushmanland Trek-veldt, to become the home of the Boer maiden. The combined families are to trek to Calvinia village, where the marriage will take place, and thenceforth Anna becomes mistress of her own man and wagon.

His daughter's modest toilet complete, the big Boer dips a corner of the not over-clean towel in water, runs it carelessly over brow, cheeks, eyes, and mouth, dips his hands, and the trick is done. The proximity of cleanliness to G.o.dliness is no axiom of the Cape Dutch farmer, still less of the roaming Trek-Boer. A dry, parched land, and lack of water, have doubtless had a good deal to do with this trait.

At eleven o'clock, sitting in the shade of the sail suspended between two wagons, father and daughter partake, after a long grace, of the usual meal--pieces of mutton, swimming in sheep's-tail fat, boiled rice, coa.r.s.e bread, and the eternal coffee, which, however, is just now, thanks to the sweet herbage, plenteously tempered by a supply of _bokke melk_ (goat's milk). Again the big Dutchman lights his pipe, and presently, yielding to the heat and the effects of his meal, falls to sleep, sitting on the sand with his back against the wagon-wheel--a moving picture of pastoral listlessness, or, if you please, pastoral sloth. The hot day wears on. At three o'clock Anna mounts to the wagon-box, and, shading her eyes from the intense glare, scans the hot plain, now dancing and shimmering with mirage. The flocks have turned for home--she can hear the far-off tinkle of their bells, borne drowsily upon the warm air; but it is not the flocks she searches for. In another half-hour she looks forth again. This time, far in the north, she picks out from the shimmer and tremble of the atmosphere a tiny cloud of dust. That is what she is expecting, and she now gives orders to the Hottentot and another boy to tend the fire, get the pot and pan in order, and fill the great kettle.

In a while you may catch the steady trample of galloping hoofs, and presently three Boers--the girl's brothers and her betrothed--each guiding a led horse, canter up to the wagons. Following at their heels is a Hottentot after-rider, also with a spare horse heavy laden. The men are hot, dusty, and sweat-stained. Ever since yesterday morning they have been away in the gra.s.s veldt, following a trek of springboks, and their display of venison and jaded nags prove that they have hunted hard, successfully, and far. Seventy miles have they ridden; a dozen springbok have they brought in; and, greatest luck of all, the flesh, skin, and horns of a great cow gemsbok decorate the led horse of Rodolf Klopper. The gemsbok (_Oryx capensis_), one of the n.o.blest of antelopes, is rare indeed in Cape Colony nowadays, even upon the verge of the Orange River, and Anna's betrothed is proportionately elate. The gemsbok is protected, too, under heavy penalties, in the Cape Colony; but what boots this to the wandering Trek-Boer in these wild solitudes, where the echo of laws can scarce be heard, and gamekeepers are not?

At five o'clock the party are gathered beneath the wagon-sail, feasting merrily, and with some noise and laughter, on t.i.tbits of venison: the rest of the meat meanwhile being salted, to be dried for _billtong_ on the morrow. As they sit at meat, the hunting scenes are re-enacted for the benefit of Anna and her father, and, in particular, Rodolf's desperate chase of the gemsbok. Meanwhile, as the sun nears the horizon after his day's tramp, the flocks, bringing with them a cloud of red dust, come in for the night. First, they drink deeply and long at the vlei, which now reflects upon its gla.s.sy surface the ruddy glories of the sunset. Then the tired creatures are kraaled, their masters rising to count them as they file in.

Darkness falls swiftly; the huge vault of sky a.s.sumes its deep indigo hue of night; the stars spring forth in glittering array; there is a wonderful and refreshing coolness in the air; the cry of one or two night birds may be heard--the dikkop and kiewitje plovers--and the distant wail of a prowling jackal.

The Boer and his sons now move their squat wagon-chairs nearer to the warm blaze of the camp-fire; they smoke vigorously, and occasionally cast stolidly a sentence at one another. Anna and her heavy lover stroll a little beyond the firelight by the edge of the vlei; their voices intermingle curiously with the clang of water-fowl--duck, geese, widgeon, and teal--from the other end of the pool. Theirs is the old, old story, told perhaps in a rougher and less romantic fashion than in Europe; yet is its refrain as earnest and its aftermath at least as kindly as in northern lands. The South African Boer makes a true and constant husband, and a good father--some people say he is a trifle too uxorious.

At eight o'clock the day is done. The party separates for the night, after a longish melancholic prayer and a chapter of the great Bible from Stuurmann. Anna goes to her kartel-bed at the end of the big wagon, lets down the _achter-klap_, takes off her shoes and sun-bonnet, loosens a b.u.t.ton or two at the throat of her gown, pulls her blanket and sheepskin kaross well over her st.u.r.dy frame, and is almost instantly asleep. Her father snores loudly from the forepart of the wagon; the whole camp (including the native "boys" huddled beneath the wagons) is hushed; while all around broods the wonderful silence of night on the plains of Bushmanland.

CHAPTER SIX.

PIET VAN STADEN'S WIFE.

It was the year 1877. For months past the wagons of the Trek-Boers had been standing idly outspanned on the banks of the Crocodile River, [The Limpopo River is known universally in South Africa as the Crocodile]

waiting for the word to move north-westward and plunge into the unknown and dreadful deserts that lay between the trekkers and the far-off land they sought. Scattered among the great trees and bushes that margined the n.o.ble river, the white wagon-tents of these strange people might be discerned dotting the landscape for the s.p.a.ce of a mile and a half and more. Here were gathered the wildest, toughest, and most daring spirits of the Transvaal. Elephant-hunters, who longed for new and virgin lands in which to procure that ivory for which they had risked their lives so often; broken farmers, upon whom the vicissitudes of the African pastoralists' existence had fallen heavily; and sour Doppers, whose grim religious views reminded one of the savage tenets of the Israelites of old, and who now looked eagerly across the desert for a new land of Canaan.

With these men, living in wagons and tents, were their wives and children, and such furniture and worldly gear as they could carry with them. Around them, scattered over the veldt for miles, grazed the oxen, horses, sheep, and goats that should accompany the trek. Pigs and poultry littered the encampment, and were to be seen near every wagon.

All the people--elephant-hunters, malcontents, broken men, and Doppers-- were animated by one and the same sentiment. They were sick of the Transvaal. There had been too much fighting--and badly managed fighting--with Sekukuni and other Kaffirs; too many commandos; taxes, those hateful creations of civilisation, were increasing, and were actually being enforced; President Burgers had been too go-ahead, too _hoogmoedag_ (high and mighty); the seasons had been bad; and the English--those hateful English--were slowly finding their way to the north. And so the great Promised Land trek--a trek talked of for years past--was at last gathered together.

Some of these Boers, the Doppers, and they who had lived farthest from the rude semi-civilisation of that day, were possessed with the wildest beliefs. They imagined that Egypt lay just across the Zambesi River, not so very far to the north; they were convinced that they were setting forth to a land somewhere in the dim north-west, beyond Lake N'gami, where ranged snow-clad mountains beneath which sheltered a veldt rich in water, in cattle, and in corn and pasture lands, where the great game wandered just as plentifully as they had wandered in the Transvaal and Free State forty years before, when their fathers had crossed the Orange River and possessed the soil. Seventy wagons and more now stood beside the Crocodile, whose owners, heartily weary of the delays that had taken place, now anxiously awaited the return of two deputies sent to Khama, Chief of Bamangwato, through whose country they first had to pa.s.s.

One afternoon about this time a great wagon lumbered in to swell the already unwieldy proportions of the trek, and outspanned under a big tree. Word went slowly round the camp that Piet Van Staden, from Zoutpansberg, with his wife and child, had come in. Piet's arrival in itself would have created no great stir, for Piet was a very average type of Transvaal Boer--big, not ill-looking, heavy and inert, and with very little to say for himself--but Piet's wife was no ordinary person.

She was a woman of striking beauty, far surpa.s.sing the dull ruck of South African Dutch vrouws, and possessed, moreover, of so much originality and determination of character as to have scandalised more than once her sober-minded countrywomen.

The men of Zoutpansberg swore by her. Had she not taken a rifle and ridden out time after time with her husband into the low veldt towards Delagoa Bay, and shot with her own hand giraffe and buffalo--ay, and even the mighty elephant itself? Rumour had it that on more than one occasion Hendrika Van Staden had hardened her husband's heart at close quarters with a troop of half-mad elephants; and it was certain that she herself had, as they said, a "heart of steel," and feared neither lion nor elephant nor fierce Kaffir.

Hendrika was a busy, active woman; and the oxen were no sooner outspanned than she got out her poultry from the bed of the wagon, extricated a table and some wagon-chairs, set one of the native boys to light the fire and prepare for the evening meal, and then, taking her six-year-old son, little Barend, set out to call upon one or two neighbours and inspect the camp. Barend, who inherited his mother's good looks, her yellow hair, and deep blue eyes and clear complexion, was a fine, st.u.r.dy little fellow, and, clad in his short coat and loose trousers of soft mouse-coloured moleskin, a flannel shirt, and wide felt hat, looked a typical little Dutchman, a small counterpart, even to the clothes he wore, of his st.u.r.dy father. The two set off together, Barend flicking his little hide whip as he walked, and chattering to his mother with keen excitement as the various camps and outspans came into view.

While his mother was engaged in conversation with some friends from her own district, the little fellow suddenly caught sight of his father walking to the next group of wagons, and toddled hastily after him.

In half an hour Hendrika had finished her gossip and extracted as much news as could be gleaned. She had not yet been down to the water; and, as the sun was declining and she wished to set eyes on the long-sought Crocodile before dark, she turned to the left hand, and, following a cattle-path, quickly found herself on the margin of the great river.

Just at this point there was a bend or hook, and the stream, now at its low winter level, ran deep and swiftly only near the farther bank, leaving a broad spit of sand exposed upon the hither sh.o.r.e. A little higher to the left the stream again broadened into a great reach of shining water, now painted with a warm and ruddy hue by the glow of sunset. To the right, down the course of the river, a beautiful island, laden with trees and a wealth of bush and greenery, and fringed with tall yellow reeds, met the eye. Everywhere great forest trees abounded.

Yellow-billed hornbills flew hither and thither among the acacias; gem-like bee-eaters flashed among the reeds; gaudy parrots, clad in blue and green and yellow, darted with shrill whistle overhead; and pearl-drab plantain-eaters uttered their loud, human-like cries at the advent of the solitary figure. Francolins down for their evening drink were calling to one another in scores, and doves cooed softly among the branches. It was a beautiful picture; but Hendrika cared little for the aesthetic aspect, the glamour of the hour, the glowing mantle of sunset.

Her heart warmed, it is true, at the sight of the n.o.ble river, flowing with strength and volume even at this season of winter, and amid a parched country. But hers was the true, practical Dutch mind: she appreciated the scene only for the a.s.surance it gave her of illimitable watering power for flocks and herds. Two hundred yards beyond, a troop of oxen came down to drink. A Dutchman was with them, and Hendrika bent her steps that way to learn whose the cattle were. The man's back was turned, and it was not till she was within thirty yards that he heard her approach and faced her. There was a start of recognition and hesitation on either side, and then the man, a tall, good-looking Boer, furnished with a big straw-coloured beard and moustache, and dressed with rather more care than the average Transvaal farmer, came forward, and the pair shook hands in the impa.s.sive Dutch fashion. The Boer first spoke.

"And so, Vrouw Van Staden, you have come to join the trek. I scarcely looked to see you and your husband here. I had thought you were well settled on your farm in Zoutpansberg."

"No; we are tired of that country. Our farm was good enough, and the winter veldt in the low country near at hand; but there is too much fever, and the Kaffirs are very troublesome; and as the President for years has been fighting Sekukuni, we have no strength ourselves for commandos in our own country. Cattle-stealing is worse than it has been for years. And so we thought we would join the trek and try a new country, where the game is more plentiful, and one is not to be pinched up on a farm of three thousand morgen." [A _morgen_ is rather more than two acres. The usual Boer farm averages three thousand _morgen_, more than six thousand acres.]

The woman spoke stiffly, and her face had a.s.sumed a touch of pride as she answered. But she went on: "I think it is rather I who should ask why Schalk Oosthuysen, with all his wealth, has left Marico, the garden of the Transvaal, as men call it."

The man had gazed long and fixedly as Hendrika spoke. His eyes seemed to have softened, and a very visible pleasure was in them. And, indeed, Hendrika Van Staden was worth looking at. Clad though she was in a plain gown of rough brown material, bought at some up-country store and fashioned by herself, the admirable curves of her straight, well-rounded figure could not be concealed. Few Boer women can boast a figure. Here was a waist whose trim outlines would have done no disgrace to a well-set-up English girl. Matron though she was, the tall, shapely woman stood like a straight sapling upon the firm yellow sand. The broad chest and shoulders supported erect upon a strong and shapely neck a beautiful head. And the face? Well, most people would have agreed with Schalk Oosthuysen, whose eyes gazed with unconcealable admiration into Hendrika's. The parting sunlight lent a wonderful charm to the oval face and the fair, clear complexion, so unlike the muddy skin of most Boer women. The soft rosy cheeks--just touched with a suspicion of African tan,--the white forehead, straight nose and proud lips, and the dark blue eyes, all set in a frame of golden yellow hair, every strand of it now glorified by the loving sun-rays, which the great sun-bonnet (_kapje_) ill-concealed--all went to complete a picture of feminine beauty that few Transvaalers--certainly not Schalk Oosthuysen--could resist.

Hendrika had, like most Dutch girls, married young; and now, mother though she was of a child more than six years old, was in the very pride and summer of her rich beauty.

Oosthuysen, without moving his gaze, spoke again.

"No one should know better than you, Hendrika, why I am leaving Marico and going to tempt fortune in the unknown veldt. How can I rest? Ever since I saw you, ever since the sunny years of our childhood, I have thought of you, dreamed of you. I can never marry now, unless--well, unless you should ever become free again, which is not likely before we are old people. It was you, Hendrika, that broke my happiness and disturbed my lot. Allemaghte! I am sorry almost that you have joined this trek."

"Schalk, you have no right to speak like that. You know it was not my fault that I could not become your wife. My father had his reasons-- good reasons, as I suppose; and I have a good husband, and am contented.

Never speak of these things again; they are past and done with. Our ways are different, and it is better that we should see as little of one another as possible."

She spoke almost with excitement, and her hands, folded, as all good Dutch women fold them, beneath her black ap.r.o.n, to protect them from the strong African sun, had become disengaged, and lent themselves with a slight gesture of impatience to enforce her words.

She turned away, saying as she went, "Good-night, Meneer Oosthuysen,"

and took the path to her wagon.

"Good-night, and the Lord bless you, Hendrika," replied the Boer, as he moved towards his oxen.

Two mornings later the Boer envoys returned from interviewing Khama.

They brought word that the chief was willing to allow pa.s.sage for the whole trek across his country, but that he strongly advised them to proceed in small bands at a time, or the scant waters of the thirst-land between him and the Lake River would fail them. If the whole seventy or eighty wagons attempted to cross in a body, they would find barely sufficient water to supply half a dozen spans of oxen at a time, and disaster must ensue. This was Khama's advice; he had, as he sent word, no present quarrel with the Boers, and would help them through his country; but he urged them, if they wished to pa.s.s safely across the desert, to weigh well his words, and trek in parties of twos and threes.

There was much consultation over this message. Some few hunters, who knew the chief and had made the trek, were strongly for taking his advice; but against these few men there was strong and fierce opposition. All the ignorant, the obstinate, and the self-opinionated-- and they formed the majority--held that no Kaffir's word was to be trusted. Who was this Khama but a natural foe of the Transvaal? No doubt he wished them to travel in families of twos and threes, that he might the better attack their wagons and cut them up piecemeal.

After several days of hot discussion, it was finally decided that all should move together, and that the trek should begin with the following week, by which time the scattered flocks and herds would be collected.

It was a month after the beginning of the trek that Piet Van Staden and his wife and child found themselves in the middle of the thirst-land, between the waters of Kanne and Inkouane--that is to say, in about the worst bit of the Kalahari--in heavy sand, under a broiling sun, and without one single drop of water for their oxen, in a stretch of three days' and three nights' continuous travel.

There were wagons in front of them and wagons behind them; they were about the middle of the expedition. At the distance of two days and two nights from Kanne, and a whole day and night from Inkouane, their oxen could go no farther; they had had no drink at the wretched pits of Kanne, where water oozes through the sand at the rate of about half a bucket an hour; three of them lay dead in their yokes already--the rest were foundered and could trek no more. The poor brutes lowed piteously and incessantly; they came frantically round the wagon, smelling at the nearly empty water-barrel, and licking the iron tires of the wheels to give relief to their parched tongues. There was only one thing to be done.

"Hendrika," said her husband, "I must take two of the boys and go on with the oxen. We shall reach Inkouane (it was now afternoon) early to-morrow morning. I will take a _vatje_, [A little vat or hand-barrel, holding about two gallons, usually slung by an iron handle under the wagon] fill it, and ride back as fast as possible. You have enough water to last till evening to-morrow. They say there is plenty at Inkouane; I shall be here to-morrow evening again, having watered the horse; and the oxen should be in by next morning. I hate leaving you and the child, but what else can be done?"

"Nothing else can be done better, Piet," answered his wife energetically. "Get the oxen up and go on at once. Don't lose a moment; and, mind, be back here not later than sundown to-morrow.

Barend is tired and feverish already, and I shall have trouble to make the water last till then. Go at once, and the Heer G.o.d be with you."

Hendrika's blue eyes were full of hope and courage; she could trust her husband, and he would, no doubt, be back by nightfall of next day.

Taking two of their three native servants with him, and leaving Andries, a little Hottentot, behind with his mistress, with the strictest injunctions to have but one drink between that time and his return, Piet Van Staden kissed his wife and child, thrashed up the foundered oxen, and set forth as fast as he could get them along.

It was a dreary waste of country that Hendrika and her boy were left in--one of the most forbidding parts of the wild, forbidding desert between Khama's and the Lake River. Hot and sandy and flat it was; a low growth of parched Mopani trees sprang here and there, whose odd b.u.t.terfly-like leaves, now shrivelled and scorched to a brown sapless condition by months of drought, bore eloquent testimony to the nature of this terrible "thirst-land."

At evening, when the sun had set, and the air became a trifle cooler, Hendrika prepared a scanty meal. She boiled half a kettleful of very weak coffee, made some slops for Barend, ate some bread and meat herself, drank a bare half _kommetje_ of coffee, parched though she was, gave the Hottentot his rations, and then, bidding Andries to keep up a good fire, she put her little son to bed on the kartel, and, lying by his side, presently hushed him off to sleep. A little after she herself fell asleep also. Towards the small hours Barend was up and wide awake, hot and feverish, and clamouring, poor little soul, for something to quench his thirst with. Hendrika lit a lantern, got out of the wagon, procured the rest of the coffee, which, mixed with a little condensed milk, she had left to cool, and brought the beakerful that remained to her boy. The little fellow, with trembling hands, took the beaker and eagerly emptied it at two draughts. His mother had not the heart to stop him, and he lay down and went to sleep again.

Dawn came round, and the sun sprang up all ruddy, as if but too eager to send his scorching beams upon the shadeless veldt. When Hendrika, after heavy dreamful slumber, cast back the wagon-clap and looked forth, behold, a hundred yards from her was outspanned another wagon, which had evidently arrived during the night and which she quickly discovered belonged to no other than Schalk Oosthuysen. Andries the Hottentot coming up soon after, informed her that Baas Oosthuysen's oxen had been outspanned and sent on to Inkouane about four that morning, being able to trek no farther, and that the Baas himself, who had lost a quant.i.ty of stock already, was asleep in his wagon. It was very vexing, Hendrika thought. Here was the very man of all others she wished to avoid, outspanned close beside her; neither of them could move backward or forward, and a long day, perhaps even more, had to be got through somehow in this unpleasant proximity. About noon, Oosthuysen, having finished his sleep, emerged from his wagon and looked about him. He had evidently heard from his servants whose was the wagon near, but he appeared disinclined to trouble the occupants. For so much Hendrika secretly thanked him. The burning sun moved slowly across the heaven, and, as the fierce rays shifted, so Hendrika and her child moved into the meagre shade given by the great wagon. The sun at this season was north of the line, and never quite overhead. But it was terribly hot, and the scant water was all but finished now. Hendrika had but just moistened her lips, and Andries had had a bare quarter of a pint; all the rest had been reserved for poor feverish little Barend, who evidently had had a touch of the sun on the preceding day's trek, and was very ill.

Sometimes Hendrika's glance turned swiftly towards the other wagon; and there was debate and anxiety in it, and a compression of the firm red lips, as if a struggle were waking in her mind. Oosthuysen rose and shouldered his rifle once during the day, and wandered into the bush, presumably to look for a chance eland or giraffe; but nothing came of it, no shot was heard, and before sundown he had returned, and flung himself into his wagon-chair, in which he sat moodily smoking.