From Veldt Camp Fires

by H. A. Bryden

“Baas,” whispered the Hottentot, “they’ll come no more to-night.” Quickly Goodrick raised his fainting wife and carried her into the house, where, after long and anxious tending, she was restored to consciousness. Placing her in the sitting-room upon a couch which he had himself made from the soft skins, “brayed” by the Kaffirs, of the antelopes he had shot, he at length induced her to sleep, promising not for a moment to leave her, and with his hands clasped in hers.

At length the night wore away, the sun of Africa shot his glorious rays upward from behind the rugged mountain walls of the kloof, and broad daylight again spread over the landscape. Goodrick was glad indeed to find that with the bright sunshine his wife, brave-hearted woman that she was, had shaken off much of the night’s terrors; but her nerves were much shaken. For the last time the goats were unkraaled and sent out, with the two somewhat unwilling Hottentots, to pasture. Breakfast and some strong coffee that followed this operation made things look brighter; and then, taking the couch and setting it upon the stoep (veranda), just outside the windows of their room, and placing a chair for himself, Goodrick went out to the back and called Cupido in with him to the “stoep,” where he made the little ancient yellow man squat down. “Cupido,” said he, “I am going to inspan this morning, load up one of the waggons, and send my wife and servant under your charge out of this cursed place to Hemming’s farm—the next one, twenty-five miles out on the karroo. To-morrow, with the help of some Kaffirs I shall borrow from Mr Hemming, I shall get down the horses from the mountain, load up both the waggons with the rest of the furniture and farm tackle (as soon as you return, which you will do very early), and trek out of the kloof, never again to set foot in it. But first of all, you will tell me at once, without lying, why you have never said a word to me of this horrible secret, and what it all means. Now speak and be careful.”

“Well, baas,” said Cupido, speaking in Boer Dutch, the habitual language of the Hottentots, “you have been a kind baas to me, and the jevrouw,” (nodding to his mistress) “has been good to me too; and I will tell you all I know about this story. I would have warned you long ago, but Baas Van der Meulen, when he left, made me promise, under pain of being shot, not to say anything. I believe he would have kept his word, for he often gave me the sjambok, and I dare not speak. I was born here in the kloof many years ago, many years even before slavery was abolished and the emigrant Boers trekked out into the Free State and Transvaal, and you will know that is long since.

“My father lived as a servant under that very Jan Prinsloo, whom you saw murdered last night in yonder kraal, and many a time has he told me of Prinsloo and his evil doings and his dreadful end. Well, Jan Prinsloo was a grown man years before the English came across the shining waters and took the country from the Dutch. He was one of the wild and lawless gang settled about Bruintjes Hoogte, on the other side of Sunday River, who bade defiance to all laws and Governments, and who, under Marthinus Prinsloo (a kinsman of Jan’s) and Adriaan Van Jaarsveld, got up an insurrection two years after the English came, and captured Graaff Reinet.

“General Vandeleur soon put this rising down, and Marthinus Prinsloo and Van Jaarsveld were hanged, but Jan Prinsloo, who was implicated, somehow retired early in the insurrection, and was pardoned. Some years before this, Jan was fast friends, as a younger man, with Jan Bloem, who, as you may have heard, was a noted freebooter who fled from the Colony across the Orange River, raised a marauding band of Griquas and Korannas, and plundered, murdered, and devastated amongst many of the Bechuana tribes, besides trading and shooting ivory as well. The bloody deeds of these men yet live in Bechuana story. Jan Bloem at last, however, drank from a poisoned fountain in the Bechuana country and died like a hyaena as he deserved. Then Jan Prinsloo took all his herds, waggons, ivory and flocks, came back over the Orange River, sold off the stock at Graaff Reinet, and came and settled in this kloof. He had brought with him some poor Makatese, and these people, who are in their way, as you know, great builders in stone, he made to build this house and the great stone kraal out there, where we saw him last night. He had, too, a number of Hottentots, besides Mozambique slaves, and those he ill-treated in the most dreadful manner, far worse even than any Boer was known to, and that is saying much. At last one day, not long after the Bruintjes Hoogte affair, he came home in a great passion, and found that two of the Hottentots’ wives and one child had gone off without leave to see some of their relatives, Hottentots, who were squatted some miles away.

“When these women came back in the evening, Prinsloo made their husbands tie them and the child to two trees, and then and there, after flogging them frightfully, he shot the poor creatures dead, child and all. As for the husbands, he sjambokked them nearly to death for letting their wives go, and then turned in to his ‘brandwein’ and bed. That night all his Hottentots, including seven men who had witnessed the cruel deed—God knows such deeds were common enough in those wild days—fled through the darkness out of the kloof, and never stopped till they reached the thick bush-veldt country, between Sunday River and the Great Fish River. Just at that time, other Hottentots, roused by the evil deeds of the Boers, rose in arms, and joined hands with the Kaffirs, who were then advancing from beyond the Fish River.

“Well, the Kaffirs and Hottentots, to the number of 700, for some time had all their own way, and ravaged, plundered, burned, and murdered, among the Boers and their farms, even up to Zwartberg and Lange Kloof, between here and the sea. While they were in that neighbourhood, a band of them, inspired by the seven Hottentots of Prinsloo’s Kloof, came up the Gamtoos River, in this direction, and met with Jan Prinsloo and a few other Boers, who were trekking out of the disturbed district with their waggons, and who had come to reconnoitre in a poort, fifteen miles away from here. All the Boers were surprised and slain, excepting Prinsloo; and while the Kaffirs and other Hottentots stayed to plunder the waggons, Prinsloo’s seven servants, who were all mounted on stolen horses, chased him, like ‘wilde honde’ hunting a hartebeest, for many hours; for Jan rode like a madman, and gave them the slip for three hours, while he lay hid up in a kloof, until, at last, as night came on, they pressed him into his own den here.

“It was yesterday, but years and years ago, just when the summer is hottest and the thunder comes on, and just in such a storm as last night’s, that the maddened Hottentots, thirsting for the murderer’s blood, hunted Prinsloo up through the poort. They were all light men and well mounted, and towards the end gained fast upon him, although Jan, who rode a great ‘rooi schimmel’ (red roan) horse, the best of his stud, rode as he had never ridden before. Up the kloof they clattered, the Hottentots close at his heels now; Prinsloo galloped to the great kraal there, jumped off his horse, and ran inside, like a leopard among his rocks, fastening the gate behind him, and there determined to make a last desperate stand for it.

“The Hottentots soon forced the gate and swarmed over the walls, not, however, before one was killed by Prinsloo’s great elephant ‘roer.’ Round the kraal they chased him, giving him no time to load again; at last, as you know, he fell and was slain, and the Hottentots cut off his head, and arms, and legs, and tore out his black heart, and in their mad, murderous joy and fury, smeared themselves with his blood. Then the men looted the house, set fire to what they could, and afterwards rejoined their comrades next morning. They told my father, who had known Prinsloo, the whole story when they got back. These six men were all killed in a fight soon afterwards when the insurrection was put down, and the Kaffirs and Hottentots were severely punished.

“Well, ever since that night the thing happens once a year upon the same night. Many Boers have tried to live in this place since that time, but have always left in a hurry after a few weeks’ trial. I believe one man did stay for nearly two years; but he was deaf, and knew nothing of what was going on around, until one Prinsloo’s night when he saw something that quickly made him trek I once saw the scene we witnessed last night; it was many years ago, when I was a young man in the service of a Boer, who had just come here—before then I had been with my father in the service of another Boer, forty miles away towards Sunday River. Next morning after seeing Prinsloo and his murderers, my master trekked out horror-stricken. I never thought to have seen the horrible thing again, but eight months ago, when the Van der Meulens came here, I was hard up and out of work, and though I didn’t half like coming into the kloof again, I thought, perhaps, after so many years, the ghosts might have vanished. I hadn’t been many nights here, though, before I knew too well I was mistaken. Even then I would have left, but Van der Meulen swore I should not. He and his family came here soon after Prinsloo’s night, and left before it came round again; but after the old man and his sons had twice been face to face with Jan’s spook prowling about the stable and kraals, and even looking in at the windows, they were not long before they wanted to clear out, and now you know their reason, baas.”