The stranger rides on, enjoying the glorious beauty of this fair landscape—never fairer than when seen thus, in the almost unearthly lustre of a perfect evening. A steinbuck leaps out of the grass, and after a brief run halts and steadily surveys the intruder. Down in the hollow a pair of blue cranes utter their musical note of alarm, and stalk rapidly hither and thither, as though undecided about the quarter whence danger threatens, and the cooing of doves from yon clump of euphorbia blends in soft harmony with the peaceful surroundings as in a vesper chant of rest.
And now a strange group appears over the rise in front. It is a Kafir trek. Two men, three women, and some children, driving before them their modest possessions in live stock, consisting of three cows (one with a calf), and a few sheep and goats. The men wear an ample blanket apiece thrown loosely round their shoulders, but other clothing have they none, with the exception of a pair of boots, which however, each carries slung over his shoulder, preferring to walk barefoot. The women are somewhat less scantily clad, with nondescript draperies of blanketing and bead-work falling around them. Each has her baby slung on her back, and carries an enormous bundle on her head, containing pots and pans, blankets and matting—the household goods and chattels; for her lord disdains to bear anything but his kerries, or knobsticks, and marches along in front looking as if the whole world belonged to him. Some of the elder children are laden with smaller bundles, and even the cows are pressed into the service as porters, each having a long roll of mats fastened across her horns, and two or three mongrel curs slink behind the group. All Kafir garments are plentifully bedaubed with red ochre, an adornment frequently extended to their wearers, giving them the appearance of peripatetic flower-pots.
“Naand, Baas!” (Note 1) sing out the men as they meet the traveller, and then continue in their own tongue, “Nxazéla.” (Tobacco.)
No bad specimens of their hardy and supple race are these two fellows as they stand there, their well-knit, active figures glistening like bronze in the setting sun. They hold their heads well up, and each of their shrewd and rather good-looking countenances is lighted by a pair of clear, penetrating eyes. The stranger chucks them a bit of the coveted plant, and asks how much further it is to Seringa Vale.
“Over there,” replies one of the Kafirs, pointing with his stick to the second rise in the ground, about two miles off. With a brief good-night the horseman touches up his nag and breaks into a gentle canter, while the natives, collecting their stock—which has taken advantage of the halt to scatter over the veldt and pick up a few mouthfuls of grass—resume their way.
The sun has gone down, and the white peak of the Great Winterberg towers up cold and spectral to the liquid sky, as the horseman crests the ridge indicated, and lo—the broad roof of a substantial farmhouse lies beneath. Around, are several thatched outbuildings, and the whole is charmingly situated, nestling in a grove of seringas and orange trees. There is a fruit-garden in front of the house, or rather on one side of it, though it may almost be said to have two fronts, for the verandah and the stoep run round the two sides which command the best and widest view, while another and a larger garden, even more leafy and inviting-looking, lies down in the kloof. Close to the homestead are the sheep and cattle kraals, with their prickly thorn-fences, into one of which a white, fleecy flock is already being counted, while another, preceded by its voerbok (Note 2) is coming down the kloof, urged on by the shout and whistle of its Kafir shepherd. The cattle enclosure is already alive with the dappled hides of its denizens, moving about among whom are the bronzed forms of the cattle-herd and his small boys, who are busily employed in sorting out the calves and shutting them up in their pen for the night, away from their mothers, so that these may contribute their share towards filling the milk-pails in the morning. Behind the kraals stand the abodes of the Kafir farm servants, eight or ten beehive-shaped huts to wit, and stepping along towards these, calabash on head, comes a file of native women and girls who have been to draw water from the spring. They sing, as they walk, a monotonous kind of savage chant, stopping now and then to bawl out some “chaff” to the shepherd approaching with his flock as aforesaid, and going into shrill peals of laughter over his reply.
The traveller draws rein for a little while, till the counting-in process is accomplished, then rides down to the kraal gate and dismounts. A man turns away from giving some final directions to the Kafir who is tying up the gate—an old man, over whose head at least seventy summers must have passed, but yet stalwart of body and handsome of feature, with hair and beard like silver. He is dressed in the rough cord suit and slouch hat of the ordinary frontier farmer, and in his hand he carries a whip of plaited raw-hide. His clothes have a timeworn appearance, and his hands are large and hard-looking; but, in spite of the roughness of his aspect and attire, you need only look once into Walter Brathwaite’s face to know that you were confronting a man of gentle blood.
“Good evening,” he says, heartily, advancing with outstretched hand towards the stranger. But a curious smile upon the tatter’s face causes him to pause with a half mystified, hesitating air, as if it were not unfamiliar to him. “Why, no. It can’t be. Bless my soul, it is, though. Why, Claverton, how are you, my boy? Glad to see you back again in Africa,” and he enclosed the younger man’s hand in a strong grip. “But come in; the wife’ll be delighted. Here, Jacob,” he shouted, in stentorian tones which brought a young Hottentot upon the scene in a twinkling, “take the Baas’s horse and off-saddle him.”
Passing through a hall, garnished with trophies of the chase, bushbuck horns, and tusks of the wild pig, and a couple of grinning panther-heads, they entered the dining-room, a large, homelike apartment, plainly but comfortably furnished.
“Here, Mary, I’ve brought you a visitor,” said the settler, as they entered. “You remember Arthur Claverton?”