Chapter Twenty One.
The Boom of the Drum.
“Oh, ghoisters!” said Abe, “there’s the blamed bung come outer the vaitje and not a drop of Dop left, and all the buchu collected for the soaking.”
“Do you soak the buchu in brandy?”
“The brandy brings out the goodness from the yerb, and I tell you a dose of it gets home every time. But what’s the good—the brandy’s gone, there’s not a tickey in the stocking, and not a man in the country would offer ole Abe Pike so much as half-a-pint—not a one. The old people’s gone and the new ones, blow me—the new ones drink cold tea.”
“What about the Kaffir chief you were following Abe?”
“I ain’t follering no Kaffir chief, not me—and look here sonny, you get along home, see, ’fore it gets dark.”
“I think I could spare a gallon of brown Cango, Abe, if you come over in the morning.”
“Cango, eh! Stay right here, sonny—I’ve marked down a fine porkipine—and we’ll hunt him to-night. In the morning I’ll go over with you, arter showing you something as’ll surprise you, I bet.”
“What’s that?”
“A horn-bill sitting on her nest in a hollow tree, and the entrance built up with mud, so she can’t get out, and the cats can’t git in, by gum, an’ the ole chap a feeding her. Lor’ love yer, there’s no matchin’ animiles an’ birds for cunnin’.”
“Yet I remember you saying that young chief was very cunning.”
“So he were; lad, he were born smart; an’ them gleamin’ eyes of his’n could read the writin’ on the ground, the signs of weather, and the ways of fightin’ men better’n you could read a big print book. That’s so. I tole you how I follered him, and how he follered a chap in veldschoens all the way from the Chumie. Well, in the dark of the second evenin’ I seed a red light, and were blunderin’ on towards it, being pretty well dazed from the hunger and weakness and pain o’ my bad arm, when somethin’ in the steady glow of it brought me up with a jerk. Says I, that fire’s been long lit, there’s nothin’ but coals blazing, and whoever lit it must feel safe. Says I, who can feel safe in this yer place? Why, a Kaffir. So I slowed down to a crawl, and blow me, when I got within hearin’ distance, I seed a man by the fire. Sonny, he were the man in veldschoens.”
“The white man the chief was after.”
“’Twas a blanged half-caste, lad, that’s what he were. I saw that in the fust look by the red dook he wore roun’ his greasy head, and by the spread of his flat nose, and the sight of him kept me still, I tell you. Half-castes is mean. And to think I’d been goin’ hungry to save a thing like that, and him a sitting there with his mouth all smeared with black coal from the bried meat he were eatin’. The smell of it came to me where I lay in the shadder, an’ I tell you it made me sick with longing for a bite, but I jes’ kept there sniffin’ till the faintness left me. Well, all ov a sudden I seed his jaws stop, and his eyes had that sort o’ fixed look which they has when a man’s listenin’. Then, without movin’ his body, he reached out for his gun. Yes, sonny, he reached out for his gun with his eyes starin’ straight for me, and I kivered him. While I was gettin’ ready to shoot, outer the darkness behin’ him there come a voice callin’ in greetin’, ‘Gumela vietu!’ I giv’ a start, but that ere half-caste he never stirred. The hand that was reachin’ out for his gun stopped, his jaws began to move, but his voice were a bit shaky when he said ‘Gumela inkose!’ and there was a sort o’ hunchin’ of his shoulders as tho’ he felt the assegai going in. For a spell there was silence, then from the wall o’ blackness there stepped to the fire the young chief hisself. I see the gleam o’ his ivory bracelet. With his toe he moved the gun away. Then he reached down, took up a length of roasting flesh, caught hold of a mouthful and saw off the chunk with the blade of his assegai ’twixt his hand and his lips. He jes’ ate and ate, an’ the smell o’ the meat made my stummick heave an’ grumble most horrible.”
“They were friends, then, after all?”
“You wait, sonny—jes’ keep still an’ wait. Arter a time they began to talk. Then it came out that the half-caste was on some mission from the head chief, and the young chap was mighty curious to know all about it; but the half-caste he were too slim. They jes’ paced roun’ each other like a couple o’ strange dogs. At the end the chief he up and say, ‘I know where you’re going.’ ‘Soh?’ said the half-caste. ‘Yes,’ said the chief, ‘you’re going to the white man’s camp to give the white chief news of our coming.’ Well, the half-caste he spat in the fire. ‘You are a boy,’ he said; ‘your place is at home with the women.’ ‘My place is with you,’ said the young chief, speaking soft, so that the other laughed in his throat, and called the chief quedin—‘boy’—again, which you know is the easiest word to rile a Kaffir. ‘I know, in your heart,’ said the boy, ‘you will sell us for the white man’s money.’ The half-caste spat again. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘the white men are in terror of you—a warrior like you would be worth a whole goat to them.’ ‘I am Sandili,’ said the lad, ‘son of the head chief, and one day the Amakosa will do my bidding.’ The half-caste giv’ a start; then he grew soft all of a sudden. ‘I was but trying you,’ he said. ‘Oh, chief, forget my words, and take the path with me in the morning. We will find out where the red-coats are, how many of them, and what road they take, so that we can report to your father, and plans can be made to trap them.’ I could hear the hiss of a snake in the man’s speech, sonny; and it struck me then he had, in his heart, determined to take the young chief Sandili to the English colonel.”
“It was really Sandili?”
“It were, an’ no mistake. I could a’ shot him then, an’ put a stop to two wars; but a good many things could be done, sonny, if only we could see ahead. Well, for all they’d made friends, those two didn’t trust one another—not a bit, not they—they jes’ sat there glancing acrost the coals, nodding, an’ wakin’ up with a start, and when one on ’em moved t’other would have his eyes wide open. Long before sun-up they moved off, an’ I crep’ outer my hidin’ place to the fire, where I found jes’ a coal-blackened strip o’ meat that jes’ made me hungrier than afore. Lor’ love you, a human is a helpless crittur. There was animiles about an’ birds, but as I darn’t use my gun I couldn’t get one. I cotched a salamander and ate him, an’ a land crab by the stream, an’ ate him—an’ I ate some berries, an’ a clutch o’ young birds from the nest, and I had a bathe—and took up the spoor of the two of ’em. ’Twas easier spoorin’ now, for they was going slow, and at mid-day I had ’em in sight, and so kep’ ’em till the last. In the afternoon we were climbing a ridge among the bushes, when boomin’ along there came the sound of music that brought the three of us to a dead stop. Never had young Abe yeard any sound like that afore or since ’cept once—it went through my worn-out body until I trembled like a leaf—yes, sonny—and the wet ran down my cheeks. ’Twas the soun’ of a big drum.”
“There’s not much music in that, Abe.”
“Isn’t there, sonny? Not when you’ve been three days in the woods, skeered of every shadder; not when you’ve yeard the war-cry of the red Kaffir; not when the cries of the little ones waitin’ for the assegai are ringin’ in yer head. Only the soun’ of a drum. One, big boomin’ note, rolling clear an’ far with a message of help. The tiredness an’ the sickness fell from me, sonny, an’ I could a’ run up that hill. The other two they crept up presently, and bymby I follered and hid behind ’em. They was crouchin’ by a rock, lookin’ down, and I forgot ’em in lookin’ at the picture. Far below in the valley was the white tents, an’ the cattle, an’ a line of red where the soldiers were drawn up, bayonets flashing. Then a troop of men on horseback rode down the line, and again the drums beat and the bugles rang out. It was a picture, sonny, that I could a’ looked at all day, but I were jes’ jerked out o’ my spell o’ dreamin’ by the chief talkin’.”
“‘Yoh,’ he said, ‘they are few, but what noise is that?’
“‘Tis their witch-music,’ said the half-caste; ‘’tis kep’ in a big box, and when the man hits the top of it with a stick the witch cries out what they should do.’ ‘Yoh!’ said the chief, ‘I will kill the box! They are great warriors, these, but they are foolish to wear a red so bright, that no man of them can hide.’ ‘They do not hide,’ said the half-caste, and he shifted his gun as he looked at the chief from the corner of his eyes. ‘Let us go.’ ‘Nay,’ said the chief, ‘it is a good sight this—stay a little while. Why do they move about so?’ ‘It’s their war-dance, and he on the white horse is the chief. At his words they turn and stop, break up, and come together.’ The young chief watched like a dog straining at the leash—and, by gum, he yeard the colonel’s commands, though never a sound reached me. A smart Kaffir can smell, and see, and hear like a animile. ‘Yoh!’ he said; ‘listen to his words!’—and in his excitement he raised his head, and the half-caste he stood back and lifted his gun. But he measured his distance to the camp, and he said, ‘Let us get nearer’—for why, the cuss wanted to be near help when he went for the chief. The chief looked round, and, ghoisters! he seed my face stickin’ outer a bush. He jumped to his feet and drew back his arm to fly the assegai, but the half-caste, after one glance at me, dropped his gun, seized the haft of the assegai with one hand and hooked his other arm round the chief’s neck. ‘It was a good word you spoke, quedin,’ he said, hissing as he struggled with the boy. ‘I will sell you to the white man.’ Seein’ how it was, I stepped out, and as I went up I seed the chief’s eyes rollin’, while his nostrils were blowed out like a horse. ‘I am a boy,’ he said; ‘I give in.’ The half-caste he laughed, turnin’ to me whiles he called out in Dutch that it was he who took the quedin prisoner, but he’d give me somethin’ if I helped him—the skunk, the blanged, mangy, yeller dog. Well, sonny, that Kaffir were shamming. Soon’s he give in, the half-caste he loosed his hold, when, with a grunt, the Kaffir yanked his assegai away, and with a wriggle o’ his naked body he got a length and struck the half-caste under the armpit. ‘Dog,’ he said, and druv’ his assegai in over the blade. The half-caste he jes’ went green. ‘Ek ’es dood,’ he said, lookin’ at me; then he sat down all of a heap. The young chief he stood there eyein’ me like a tiger, with his lips curled back and his chest heavin’. It was the first man he’d killed, I guess. Well, I lifted the gun, but the left hand gave out and the barrel wobbled—then, I dunno why, but I begin to laugh in a foolish way, an’ I kep’ on laughin’ whiles the Kaffir came crouchin’ up with his assegai held back. Nex’ thing I seed the half-caste roll over, and then sit up and point his gun at the boy’s back. ‘Pass op,’ I said ’mid the laughin’, while the sweat was drippin’ off my nose; and the chief he jumped aside as tho’ there was a snake in his way, and the bullet whizzed by him. The half-caste gave a groan and rolled over dead, out of hate and disappointment, ’cause he’d missed. That’s so. The chief he looked at me, an’ he looked at the soldiers who were hurrying up from down below, then he jes’ turned and walked away; yes, he jes’ walked away with his head up, and I could a’ shot him—for the laughin’ fit had passed away. But before he could ha’ killed me easy as sticking a pig, so I watched him go; an’ when he reached the bush he said, lookin’ over his shoulder, ‘Grow fat, man who laughs, an’ you will be food for my assegai.’ The cheek of these young bucks; but I reckon, sonny, if he’d a’ known I’d killed two of his men in the Chumie he wouldn’t a’ waited, for all I was like a shadder.”
“Is that all?” I said, when the old man paused.
“Well, it were enuff, wern’t it?”
“What did the Colonel say?”
“Oh, the Colonel! He said, ‘Who the devil are you, an’ where the blazes you come from?’ That’s what he said, that time; but ’twern’t long afore he changed the tune of his remarks. ‘Who the devil are you, and where the blazes you come from?’ he sed, sittin’ in his tent with his officers by him; an’ I jes’ reached over to a black square bottle that was ahind him and put the neck to my mouth.”