Chapter Four.
Abe Pike and the Whip.
I don’t know what degree of truth there was in old Abe’s account of his adventure with the black tiger, but I certainly learnt to my cost that whether the brute had or had not given a domicile to a witch-doctor, it was too cunning for any efforts on my part to get even with it for the heavy toll it levied on the young cattle. I was driven once more to seek out his assistance, but I thought I would get him over to the homestead on some other pretext, being firmly persuaded that once he was there his hunting instincts would lead him on the tiger’s spoor. One afternoon, therefore, I drove over in the “spider,” and found him busily engaged waxing a stout fishing line for “kabblejauw,” a very large, but coarse sea fish, which loved to venture up the Fish River with the tide.
“Holloa, sonny!” he cried; “climb out an’ make yerself at home. Got any baccy?”
I stepped out, and handed him a cake of golden leaf, which he just smelt, then turned over and over.
“Sugar stuff,” he growled, with a queer look of disgust, wrinkling up his nose.
“Good American leaf, Uncle.”
“Well, well; what’s the race comin’ to? Sugar—all sugar. Sugar with tea, sugar with coffee, so that the spoon stands up; sugar with pumkins, sugar with grog, sugar with baccy, until the stummick which nature gives us revolts an’ cries out for salt an’ the bitterness o’ wholesome plants. Bitterness ’ardens, my boy—bitterness in food, bitterness in life—an’ sugar softens. Jes’ you hole on to that as you plough the furrer thro’ the ups an’ downs o’ your caryeer.” He cut a slice from the cake and stowed it away in his cheek. “Well! ha’ yer cotched that tiger yet?”
“He’s prowling around yet, Uncle.”
“Soh! An’ you want ole Abe Pike to settle ’im, eh!—but ’taint no use.”