A call of “Kaatje. Dinner bring,” is soon productive of that meal, in so far as the remnant of a half-starved and wholly unnutritious chicken, dressed up with so insipid an ingredient as some plain boiled rice, can be said to constitute dinner. It is productive, simultaneously, of an extraordinary specimen of humanity.
A creature of mahogany hue and parchment hide, the latter hanging in flaps around her perspiring and scantily-attired person. A creature of the hideosity of one of Bunyan’s fiends—a frightful grin, horn-like ears, and a woolly skull—waddling on the abnormal hip-development of the native Bushman or Koranna. A nice sort of being to bring in one’s dinner, not of itself over-inviting! But one gets used to queer things on the High Veldt, and this hideous and repulsive object is only a harmless Koranna woman, and according to her lights a good old soul enough; and she officiates as cook and general factotum to this rough and ready household of one.
The swarming flies buzz around. The windows are black with them; the table is black with them; the air is thick with them. In they sail through open windows and open doors, fresh from the foetid stew-pans of the kitchen; fresh from the acrid, pungent dust of the goat kraals; fresh from the latest garbage, which they have been sharing with carrion birds, in the veldt. They light on the diner’s head, crawl about his face, crowd over plates and dishes and tablecloth—mix themselves up with the food, drown themselves in the drink. Everywhere flies.
The South African house-fly is identical with the British, but he is a far greater pest. He is more aggressive, and he brings to bear upon his victims the solid weight of numbers. Go where you will, you cannot shake him off. If you fit up a waggon, and dive into the far interior, there also will the common fly be with you—and with you in swarms.
Renshaw Fanning looks disgustedly at his uninviting meal, and plays with it rather than eats. Then he pushes back his chair. He has no appetite.
Again he seeks the open air. A restless mood is upon him, and broiling, stifling as the heat is outside, he cannot remain in the house. Suddenly a winged object appears fluttering in the sunlight. A quick exclamation escapes him, as he shades his eyes to watch it.
“Ha, of course! The last straw! Locusts. Here they come, by Jove! thicker and thicker to put the finishing touch on what the drought has begun. By this time to-morrow there won’t be a blade of grass left on the place, nor a hoof either.”
He stands watching the flying insects. Barely five minutes after the discovery of the first one, the air is thick with them. They seem to spring out of nowhere. Thicker and thicker they come, their gauzy wings fluttering in the sunlight, blundering into the spectator’s face, colliding with the walls, falling to the ground. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. A few starved fowls at the back of the house perk up into new life as they rush forth to fill their emaciated carcases with this unlooked-for and abundant dainty. But the watcher withdraws indoors again, as if to shut out all sight and sound of these new and fatal intruders, and, as he does so, he is conscious of terrible shooting pains in his limbs.
Though of Irish parentage on one side, Renshaw Fanning is South African born. His life, so far—and he is now thirty-five—has been a hard one. Few, indeed, are the wilder, rougher phases of South African life of which he has not had more or less experience. He has farmed and has ridden transport (Carriage of goods by waggon), he has hunted and traded in the far interior, he has been a treasure-seeker, and has also fought in the border warfare which now and then breaks out between the colonists and their savage neighbours. But profitable as some of these avocations frequently are, somehow or other Renshaw Fanning has never seemed to make a success of anything, and this is mainly owing to the extraordinary unselfishness of the man. He will divest himself of his last shilling to help a friend in need, or even a mere acquaintance—indeed, he owes the possession of his arid and uninviting desert farm to this very failing, in that he has been forced to accept it in satisfaction of a bad debt which would otherwise completely have ruined him. As a matter of course, his friends and acquaintances vote him a fool, but deep down in their hearts lies a mine of respect for the only thoroughly unselfish man they have ever known; and even the unscrupulous ones who have traded upon and profited by his failing did so with compunction.
But with all his soft-heartedness and sensitive and retiring temperament, none who knew him have ever for a moment mistaken Renshaw Fanning for a muff. No cooler brain exists, no steadier hand or keener eye in times of danger or dangerous sport—whether at a critical moment, at the mercy of some treacherously disposed barbarian tribe in the far interior, or with finger on trigger awaiting the lightning-like charge of a wounded and infuriated lion. Or on treasure-seeking enterprise, when physical obstacles combined with failure of water and scarcity of provisions to render advance or retreat a work of almost superhuman difficulty, the post of hardship and privation was that which he unobtrusively assumed; and, indeed, there are men still living who, but for this, would long since have left their bones in the desert—occupants of unknown graves. No, assuredly none who know him can ever mistake Renshaw Fanning for a muff.