We had passed at least a dozen better prospects en route without taking the trouble to turn aside from the path! This was heart-breaking, and I never felt more homicidal in my life. We could get nothing out of the brute: he spoke no word of any language but the “click,” and old Ezaak’s (our other guide) few words of English and Dutch were quite unequal to the occasion.
So we retraced our steps to the river, with the intention of following its tortuous course to Zendling’s Drift, where we had been told Preuss’s guide was living—for this man was plainly an impostor. That night we spent by the solemn, lonely Orange, bathing and revelling in the cool water to our hearts’ content. We had brought but very little food with us, hoping for game; but we came across nothing, and regretfully resorted to the unsportsmanlike practice of putting a stick of dynamite in one of the deep pools, in the hope of getting some fish. About half a dozen little chaps the size of small herrings (a variety of springer) was the only result, and they were so absolutely full of bones as to be quite uneatable. We grilled them, and tried to imagine they were trout, but the only thing good about them was the smell!
A moonlit river is always beautiful; the Orange (possibly because of its contrast with the wilderness of barren and forbidding mountains through which it has burst a way) seems incomparably so.
Before turning in, I walked up the bank to a beautiful grassy spot, where I could see for some distance, and sat down, and looked at the majestic sweep of the water upstream. There was not a sound, for the nearest rapids were miles away, and not a ripple disturbed the mirror-like surface of the water, as the big volume of it swept slowly by, from the black, towering portals of the Tatas Berg mountains in the far distance. Above that gorge for at least a hundred miles its course is almost unknown, as for miles it is penned into a cañon between precipitous cliffs.
It was all very tranquil and lonely, and I lay on the sweet turf and smoked, and pondered on the fact that, with the exception of Ransson and the guides, there was probably not a soul within many days’ journey. It made me feel quite sentimental, and I thought of the crowded towns I had known, and the crowded bars ... and the beer.... Then I heard a concertina ...! and I wondered if the sun had been too much for me. A concertina! here, in the most solitary spot imaginable!
It appeared sheer lunacy, but there was no doubt about it, and I got up and cleared back to camp, prepared for any old thing. Ransson was sitting by the fire, smoking, and before him were capering two little stark naked Hottentot “boys,” imitating the antics of monkeys—in fact, dancing the so-called “baboon dance” of the Bushmen.
But the musician! He was away ahead of the gaudiest buck-nigger I had ever seen! On his head was a German uniform “smasher” hat, about three sizes too large for him, and covered with sweeping ostrich plumes, a tight-waisted, wide-skirted uniform coat was left open to show what had once been a very décolleté white waistcoat, which in turn was finished off with a broad athlete’s belt of red, white, and black. Then his costume ended till you came to his feet, on which he wore a brand-new pair of glaring yellow elastic-sided boots, with spurs! Oh! he was a peach, and he knew it. His concertina was also German, spangled beyond belief, and quite new. He only used about three notes of the considerable number there appeared to be on it, but the Guards’ Drum Major, Sarasate, Paderewski, and several other virtuosi rolled into one could not have approached that buck-nigger for style. After a while we got him to stop his music and talk. He spoke a little alleged English and Dutch, and several German cuss-words, and led us to understand that he had been working in German South-West some months, and had now decided to retire and get married. We wondered where the lady was, and gave him some tabaki and wished him luck, and he cleared off. But we had scarcely got to sleep when that infernal concertina started again, and there was “His Nibs” back again, with the two “coryphées” capering away for all they were worth, and evidently prepared to keep it up all night. The more tabaki I gave them, the more energetic they became; the more I swore, the more they seemed to think I appreciated their efforts; and at last I had to turn out of my blankets and go for them with a sjambok. Then only did they quit, and I turned in again. But I had got a big thorn in my foot, and when I had got that out a scorpion got into my bed, and objected to my being there. Altogether, a nice, quiet, idyllic night by the river.
In the morning, the musician turned up with a tin full of goat’s milk, and informed me that he knew a magnificent copper-mine close at hand, and wanted us to pay him for showing it. As he pointed in the direction we were going, we took him along, and, as I expected, he led us to an outcrop that we had pegged on our previous visit.
He then danced about six steps, played a pæan of joy on his infernal concertina, grinned from ear to ear, and held out his hand. “’Undred pounds,” said he. “Duizand pond, Zwanzig mark!” He got it.
We gave him a plug of tobacco, and a little tea for his bride, and he stood on a peak and played us out of sight. He was certainly the most cheerful and original Christy Minstrel I ever met in a wild state, and I remember him with gratitude.