Chapter Three.
The Search for Meat—Death of the Oryx—The Flank of the Dune—Outwitting a Jackal—Hendrick, My Guardian—Thirst—The Distant Rain—Typhon—The Southern Simoom.
Daybreak found us sitting close to the candle-bush fire, for the air of morning was chill. Soon the kettle boiled and coffee was prepared. Meat was badly needed; we had eaten the last of the sand-grouse on the previous day, and a diet of unrelieved rusks is apt to pall. So we decided that I was to take my rifle and, accompanied by Hendrick, go forth in search of something to shoot.
Hendrick and I shaped our course along the western flank of the dune-tentacle close to which we were camped, meaning to cross it near its point of emergence from the main dune. On reaching a suitable spot we climbed to the top, a height of some twenty feet vertically, and carefully scanned the plain on the eastern side. The light was yet faint and, as we were facing the east, otherwise unfavourable. While we lay prone a jackal shambled up the steep slope of loose sand and met us, face to face. The creature regarded us with quaint bewilderment for a second, and then scampered back with a yelp of dismay.
So far as we could ascertain the plain before us was empty of game. Gloom, intensified by contrast with the developing pageant of morning, still lurked among the shrubs and tussocks. In front, some six hundred yards away, lay another dune-tentacle. This did not, however, extend in quite the same direction as the one we occupied, its course being a few degrees more to the southward for the greater length, while the extremity curved slightly back towards us. The intervening space was soon crossed. Once more we clambered up through loose sand that flowed at a touch; then we lay prone on the flat top, searching with expectant eyes the new expanse revealed.
The light had now improved; a limitless plain opened to south and east. Northward, the wind-scourged side of the main dune extended like a sea-worn cliff. The faint, diaphanous suspicion of haze incidental to newborn day, which lay film-wise over the yet-unawakened desert, did not interfere with our vision.
A twenty-foot elevation gives the eye an immense range. Game was now in sight; five separate groups of ostriches could be located. These were miles apart,—their units varying in number from five to twenty, or thereabouts. Away in the dim distance southward some large animals were visible; they moved slowly westward. These were almost certainly oryx. About six hundred yards off, straight before us, was a small herd of springbuck; they were busily grazing, moving to the right as they grazed. This circumstance, combined with the fact that the oryx were moving in the same direction, indicated that out on the plains there was an air-current from westward; consequently there was some likelihood of the day being fairly cool.
The springbuck were too far away to fire at; probabilities would have been too much in favour of a miss. On foot in the desert, missing one’s shot meant that one’s chances of obtaining meat were practically at an end for the day. So there was nothing for it but to wait. Perhaps a paauw (bustard) might feed up to within range. We had seen many paauws on the wing the previous day.
What most surprised us was the number of jackals. Several of these sneaking marauders were visible, loping here and there. One approached the springbuck; a ram put down his head and charged straight at the intruder. The latter fled, yelping dolorously. The buck, his head still lowered, pursued, and gained easily upon the fugitive who, hard pressed, doubled over and over again on his devious course. At length the jackal took refuge in a burrow, and the buck trotted back to join his mates, who had apparently taken no notice of the incident.
Hendrick touched me slightly on the shoulder, and uttered a slow “s-s-t.” I glanced to the left; my heart leaped almost to my throat. There, pacing towards us at a leisurely stroll, was a lordly oryx bull. He was about eight hundred yards off; evidently he had been lying down with his horns concealed behind one or other of the bushes that here and there studded the plain. Most likely he was a rogue; an old bull turned out of the herd on account of his bad temper,—or possibly a leader deposed by a rival. However that might have been, he represented meat—a commodity we were badly in need of. Ever and anon the oryx halted and gazed anxiously along the flank of the dune; then he resumed his advance, pacing steadily on a course which should have brought him to within about two hundred yards of our ambush.
Nearer and nearer the bull approached; he seemed to be suspicious, for his muzzle was held high and his large ears moved backward and forward. Probably our camp had tainted the air for miles in every direction. “Tshok-tshok” uttered a paauw which we now noticed for the first time. The bird was sauntering on a zig-zag course and occasionally pecking among the shrubs just beneath us. Its approach was from the right; thus it was advancing towards the oryx. The moment was a critical one; should the paauw have taken alarm and flown, the oryx would undoubtedly have galloped straight out towards the plains as fast as his strong legs could carry him. If, on the other hand, the paauw passed and remained unaware of our presence, the oryx would have inferred that the coast in our direction was clear, and accordingly have come unsuspiciously within easy range. So we lay as still as mummies, Hendrick and I,—almost afraid to breathe.
The crisis passed. The paauw was soon well beyond us, and the bull, accelerating his pace slightly, advanced to his doom. O! you of the swift feet, the tireless thews and the long, sharp horns that even the hungry lion dreaded,—you had run your last course, you had fought your last fight; the sands of your lordly life were running low!
The great oryx bull was now only about two hundred and fifty yards off. Something startled him; a whiff of tainted air stung his sensitive nostrils. He stood half-facing us, his right shoulder exposed. My rifle, a long Martini, had been trained on him for some seconds, awaiting a favourable opportunity. “Crack”—and the bull fell huddled on his left haunch. He sprang up, but floundered pitifully. Hendrick and I were now over the dune and running towards him. As we approached, his struggles ceased; he no longer attempted to escape. He was standing on three legs, for his right shoulder had been smashed and the limb dangled loosely.
The bull was an awe-inspiring sight. Every separate one of the wire-like hairs on his neck, shoulders and hump stood erect and quivering. His wide nostrils shewed blood-red in their depths; his eyes blazed with agony and wrath; he swayed his forty-inch-long horns menacingly from side to side, as though to test their poise.
The brave brute was evidently co-ordinating his maimed but still formidable strength for a charge at his enemy. “Schiet, Baas—anders kom hij” (“Shoot, Sir—or he will come”) yelled Hendrick. I had the bull carefully covered, and as he swayed forward in the first impulse of attack, my bullet struck him in the middle of the neck and crashed through the vertebral column. Then the strong, tense form collapsed and sank impotently to earth.
He was a noble beast,—this creature whose life I had wasted. Why had I done it? Because I wanted meat; because I followed the law of my being in obeying the hunters’ instinct,—almost the deepest and strongest in man. The answer was, of course, not quite a good one; I felt it could not be supported on ethical grounds. But conventional ethics belonged, after all, to an environment I no longer inhabited. Where I then lived and moved and had my being, the unmoral standards of primeval man prevailed.
A shout from the top of the dune. It was from Andries and the others who, on hearing the first shot, hurried over to see what my fortune had been. We returned in triumph to the wagon, carrying the liver of the slain oryx. This would be roasted on the embers for breakfast. Hendrick and his assistants would see to it that the rest of the meat, the head and the skin were removed and properly treated. Very soon the carcase had been dismembered and carried piecemeal to the camp. After the skin had been stretched out and spalked down to dry on the hot sand, we cut up and slightly salted the meat, preparatory to its being packed together and rolled in sacking. Next day it would be hung out on lines to dry into “bultong.” The head was a beauty; the horns measured 41.5 inches. That night the jackals from far and near would pick up the scent and prowl, yonking and yowling, about the camp. The less cowardly among them would steal up—almost to our very hearth. Consequently we should have to avoid leaving unprotected anything capable of being chewed. The jackal is the Autolycus of the desert.
In the afternoon I explored the south-western flank of the main dune. So light was the sand that in parts I sank almost knee-deep. Jackals were to be seen everywhere; one wondered how such a number could manage to eke out a livelihood in so barren a locality. From one hollow,—a cup-shaped depression scooped out by some recent wind-eddy, seventeen of these animals emerged. They were too far away to fire at, for I had left my rifle in camp and brought a shotgun. There was no other sign of animal life.
Fold upon fold—utterly, unspeakably arid—the flank of the main dune sinuated away towards the north-west. On turning towards the north the abomination of desolation grew more abominable at every step, so I altered my course to the left and descended the steep side of the red-hot dust-heap. Soon I found myself on the edge of a plain lying between two dune-tentacles which were about a mile apart. In more or less the centre of this plain was a small patch of low scrub, and towards the latter a single jackal was loping. He was of the “silver” variety; consequently his pelt was of value. I felt I wanted that pelt. The only good jackal is a dead jackal. I had no qualms of conscience about taking this creature’s life.
My slinking friend whose opulent coat of silver-striped fur I coveted, reached the little patch of scrub and crouched down in it. But the bushes were so low and sparse that I could distinctly see his erect, pointed ears. Now,—I meant to have some amusement out of that marauder, that prowling scoundrel who butchered young fawns and plundered the nests of birds. So I lit my pipe and strolled,—not towards the patch of scrub; that would have been far too obvious a thing to do,—but as though I meant to pass it by some distance to the right. I did pass it, but immediately afterwards inclined my course slightly to the left, proceeding in a curve. The curve became a spiral; I walked round and round the patch of scrub, gradually edging nearer.
To look towards the jackal would have been to give myself away absolutely. My game was to pretend to be unaware that such a thing as a jackal existed in Bushmanland. However, out of the tail of my left eye I could just see the pointed ears still erect; it was clear that the owner of those ears was following my movements with careful but perplexed attention. Was it possible that that villain, with all his cunning, could have really believed that I was taking just an ordinary stroll? The fact was,—he found himself face to face with a wholly unprecedented situation.
Of course I recognised that all my trouble might be for nothing; that the jackal perhaps was sitting at the side of a convenient burrow, ready to drop out of sight at my first suspicious gesture. But, on the other hand, were no burrow available, my cunning friend’s moments were drawing to a tragic close,—his last springbuck fawn had been devoured, his last smashing of ostrich-eggs perpetrated.
I was now within sixty yards of the jackal; still there was no movement on his part,—except that of the pointed ears which followed the following eyes. The distance decreased as the spiral drew in; the Lachesis-web was being spun fine; Atropos stood ready with her shears. Fifty—forty yards—now he must be very uneasy indeed. There was evidently no burrow available; otherwise he would long since have disappeared into it. He had never seen anyone manoeuvre like this; how he wished he had bolted when I first altered my course. Thirty—twenty yards;—that was more than he could stand. He hurled himself forth—only to fall, riddled by a charge of buck-shot.
Hendrick came running across the flat, his face beaming with delight. There would be joy in the camp that night, for jackal-flesh is the Hottentots’ favourite delicacy.
Try as I might, I never—in the course of my various Bushmanland trips—had been able to shake Hendrick off, for my friend Andries had issued strict injunctions that he was never to lose my spoor. So whenever I left camp, Hendrick made careful note of the direction I had taken and, after an interval, followed me. No notice was taken of the protests I made against this, as a rule, wholly unnecessary precaution, for Andries had a strong arm and a sjambok for use when his servants disobeyed him. Westward of Gamoep, Andries as a rule did what I told him to, but in the desert he was an autocrat, and a severe one. I believe that in Bushmanland he would have sjamboked me had there been no other way of enforcing his will.
Andries distrusted my desert craft, making no allowance for that “sense of direction” which strenuous wanderings of early years in waste places had developed in me. However, hunting in the desert was undoubtedly fraught with danger. Under certain atmospheric conditions, if one had suddenly to put forth exertion sufficient to induce perspiration, the pores refused to close, and moisture was drawn out of the system at such a rate that to drink presently or die was the alternative.
The Bushmanland desert has taken a heavy toll of thirst-victims. Close to Agenhuis I was shewn a little bush under which a strong young fellow—the son of a man I knew well,—laid himself down and perished miserably within a mile of his camp. The people at Agenhuis saw him coming on, walking slowly. He turned out of the track and sank under a bush; those who watched him thought he had paused to take a rest. Wondering why he delayed so long, his friends strolled over to where he lay. The man was dead. His tongue was blackened and shrunk; his lips and eyelids cracked and caked with clotted blood. This is only one of the many dismal instances of people perishing of thirst within short distances of their camps.
The day died gloriously. Far away to eastward a thunderstorm trailed down from the north, its bastions and buttresses snow-white or ebon-black—according as to whether the sunlight touched them or not. When the last level beams smote through the banked masses of vapour, a glory of rose, purple and gold transfigured the soaring turrets. That night the firmament was clearer than ever; the satellites of Jupiter could actually be seen with the naked eye. The eastern horizon was lit by Aurora-like lightning,—soft, lambent and incessant. Eastern Bushmanland must have been drenched. Even as I watched, the springbuck, scattered over the western desert, had no doubt read the signal aright and begun their hundred-mile flitting towards the regions blest with rain. Already the Trek-Boers at Namies and Naramoep would be busy pulling down their mat-houses and packing their wagons for the trek eastward. The barometer shewed a heavy fall; this indicated unsettled weather,—probably a strong wind from the north.
Mute, ominous and black loomed the dune-devil. Who and what was he, that unspeakable entity? Was he not Typhon, Lord of Evil and Autocrat of Desert Places—that monstrous deity who was cast forth from the councils of the Egyptian gods on account of his unspeakable iniquities? Yes,—it was Typhon and none other; he wandered south in search of a kingdom to usurp, and found it there. But the rain-god, whose throne is the distant Drakensberg, stretched forth his silver sword, the Gariep, and ham-strung the intruder. Otherwise the Kalihari might now be stretching forth a hand to grasp l’Agulhas, and all the African southland be a waste.
That embodied malignity, crouched and huddled beneath the sumptuous stars—what unspeakable outrage was his bestial and inchoate rudiment of a mind devising? Perhaps that day he had sent a message bidding his hag-handmaid, the north wind, come and help him to destroy us, intruders. There was menace in the air. The temperature had hardly fallen,—as it almost invariably did at night.
At daybreak the atmosphere was tense, oppressive and phenomenally lucid. Often the desert dawn is followed by a faint semi-opacity; an opaline suggestion of vapourised moisture,—the diaphanous veil of evaporated dew. But on the previous night no dew had fallen. Heaven had withheld that gracious, healing touch with which it sometimes assuaged the scorch inflicted by the ruthless sun on the patient wilderness.
The plains lay hushed as though in anticipation of sinister happenings. Soon the east grew suddenly splendid; shafts of faint gold and delicate rose spread from the horizon half-way to the zenith. These were the wheel-spokes of the still-hidden chariot of the sun-god. The flanks of Typhon, the huddled shoulders between which his head was sunk, took on the hue of glowing bronze. The Belted Mountain shone like a bale-fire.
The sun arose; his first beams smote like the lash of a whip. In the twinkling of an eye the glamour of morning had shrunk and shrivelled,—fallen to the dust and left no more trace than would a broken bubble. The world was now a tortured plain on which the redoubled wrath of the sky was poured forth. Typhon seemed to stir in his sleep,—to expand and palpitate. The reason of his baleful and unbridled power was at hand. That day he would be omnipotent and unquestioned Lord of the Desert.
A faint, hushing breath, less felt than heard, touched us and passed on over the shuddering plain. Its course was from the north; it left increasing heat on its track. Another, not so faint, but definitely audible,—tangible as flame. It was indeed the breath of Typhon,—the suspiration of his awakening fury. A fringe as of erect russet hair plumed his hunched shoulders. Here and there immense tufts, like those of a waving, quivering mane, were hurled aloft; they fell back in the form of cataracts. Then—like the sudden smoke of a volcano, his loosened locks streamed forth on the tempest. Typhon was awake and had arisen in his blighting wrath.
His breath had not yet reached us, but it was very near. His voice was a penetrating, sibillant hiss, with a moaning undertone—the utterance of fury rendered inarticulate by its own intensity. Now the sand-spouts which had been flung upwards, rained on us in fine, almost impalpable dust, that scorched where it fell. It filled the air we strove to breathe; it blinded and baffled us as we vainly sought for shelter.
Then darkness settled down and the moaning undertone swelled to a roar. We crouched within the wagon, the tilt of which rocked and strained. The air we gaspingly breathed had a horrible, acrid taste.
Now and then a compensating current of air streamed back under the wing of the tempest that overwhelmed us, and afforded relief for a space. It was only during such intervals that we could venture to lift our eyes; it was then we saw that the red-maned tentacles around us were alive and writhing, and we knew that on the morrow their location and contours would be different from what they were that morning.
It was late in the afternoon when Typhon’s rage subsided and we emerged from our ravaged wagon, which stood half-buried in sand. The tentacle near us had stretched out a feeler and grasped it to the axles. It took several hours of hard digging before we were able to liberate the wheels enough to admit of the wagon being drawn out and taken to a spot which was free from drifted sand.
Yes, the monster had moved; his shoulders were hunched at a different curve; his long flank had taken on strange bends and bulges. But he was once more prone after his terrific but impotent uprising. Typhon slept.