“Yes, Cupido, to my cost, I do,” said Goodrick, “I don’t suppose I shall ever come across that delightful family again, for it is a far cry to Zoutpansberg, in the north of the Transvaal, and a wild enough country when you get there. But tell me, why is it that this dreadful thing is always in and out of the stables and kraals frightening the horses?”
“Well, baas, I am not certain, but I believe, for my father always told me so, that Prinsloo was very fond of horseflesh, extraordinarily so for a Boer; for you know as a rule they don’t waste much time on their horses, and use them but ill. He had the finest stud in the Colony, and took great pains and trouble with it; and they say that Jan’s ghost is still just as fond as ever of his favourites, and is always in and out of the stable in consequence. Anyhow, the horses don’t care about it, as you know, they seem just as scared at him as any human being.”
Cupido, like all Hottentots, could tell a story with the dramatic force and interest peculiar to his race, and the bald translation here given renders very scant justice to the grim legend that came from his lips. After the quaint little yellow man had finished, Mrs Goodrick gave him some coffee, and immediately afterwards the party set about loading up one waggon with a part of the furniture. This done, and Mrs Goodrick and her servant safely installed, Cupido, the oxen being inspanned, took the leading riems of the two first oxen and acted as foreloper, while Goodrick sat on the box and wielded the whip.
Twelve miles away beyond the poort that opened into the kloof there was a Kaffir kraal, and having arrived there, Goodrick was able to hire a leader, and Cupido having relieved his master of the whip and received instructions to hasten to Hemming’s farm as quickly as possible with his mistress, Goodrick saddled and bridled his horse, which had been tied to the back of the waggon, and rode back to his farm. The night passed quietly away; the two remaining Hottentots begged to be allowed to sleep in the kitchen, and this favour their master not unwillingly accorded them. Next morning, at ten o’clock, Cupido, who had trekked through a good part of the night, arrived, and with him came Mr Hemming, the farmer, and four of his Kaffirs. Hearing of his neighbour’s trouble, and having seen Mrs Goodrick comfortably settled with his own wife, he had good-naturedly come to his assistance. “So Jan Prinsloo has driven you out at last,” said he, upon meeting Goodrick. “I heard from your wife last evening what you had seen the night before. I was afraid it would happen and would have warned you in time if I had known. But I never even heard that the Van der Meulens had sold the farm till they had cleared out and I met you about a month after you had been here; and as you were a determined looking Englishman, and the half-dozen people who have tried the farm in the last twenty years have been superstitious Dutch, I thought perhaps you might succeed in beating the ghost where they failed. I haven’t been in the kloof for many years, and after this experience, which bears out what my father and others who knew the story well have always told me, I shan’t be in a hurry to come in here again. It’s a strange thing, and I don’t think, somehow, the curse that seems on the place will ever disappear.”
“Nor I,” said Goodrick, “I’m not in a hurry to try it. I never believed in spooks till the night before last, for I never thought they were partial to South Africa; but after what I saw I can never again doubt upon that subject. The shock to me was terrible enough, and what my wife suffered must have been far worse.”
With the willing aid of his neighbour and his Kaffirs, as well as his own Hottentots, Goodrick got clear of the kloof that day, and, after a few days spent at Mr Hemming’s, trekked away again for Swellendam, to his father’s house. Six months later he finally settled in a fertile district not far from Swellendam, where he and his wife and family still remain. Cupido died in his service some fourteen years since. After much trouble Goodrick sold his interest in Prinsloo’s Kloof and the farm around for a sum much less even than what he gave Van der Meulen for it; it is only fair to say he warned the purchaser of the evil reputation of the place before this was done. It is a singular fact that on his way to take possession of the kloof the new purchaser fell ill and died, and the place has never since been occupied.
Although it is nearly forty years since these events took place, and Mrs Goodrick is now an old lady, with children long since grown to man and womanhood, she has never quite thrown off the terror of that awful night. Even now she will wake with a start if she hears any sudden cry in her sleep, thinking for the moment it is the death scream of Prinsloo’s Kloof. As for the haunted kloof, it lies to this day in desolation black and utter. No footfall wakes its rugged echoes; the grim baboons keep watch and ward; the carrion aasvogels wheel and circle high above its cliffs, gazing down from their aerial dominion with ever-searching eyes; the black and white ravens seek in its fastnesses for their food, looking, as they swoop hither and thither, as if still in half mourning for the deed of blood of bygone years; and the antelopes and leopards wander free and undisturbed. But no sign of human life is there, or seems ever likely to be; and if, by cruel fate, the straying traveller should haplessly outspan for his night’s repose by the haunted farmhouse on the night of the 15th of January, he will yet see enacted, so the neighbouring farmers say, the horrible drama of Jan Prinsloo’s death.
Chapter Four.
The Bushman’s Fortune.
Kwaneet, the Bushman, had lost his wife Nakeesa, and was just now a little puzzled what to do with himself. Nakeesa, poor thing, had been slain by a lion on the Tamalakan River in an attempt to rescue her man. (See “Tales of South Africa,” by the same Author.) The attempt was successful so far as Kwaneet was concerned, but Nakeesa and the babe she carried had fallen victims. Kwaneet had quickly got rid of Nakeesa’s child by her first husband, Sinikwe. It was a useless encumbrance to him, and he had sold it for a new assegai to some Batauana people near Lake Ngami.
The Masarwa was how at a loose end. The companionship of Nakeesa during their year and a half of union—married life it could scarcely be called among these nomads—had been very pleasant. Nakeesa was always industrious, and had saved him an infinity of trouble in providing water, digging up roots and ground-nuts and picking the wild fruit when game was scarce, and a score of other occupations pertaining to the Bushman’s life. Now she was gone, and he must shift for himself again, which was a nuisance. But, chiefly, his mind was just now exercised, as he squatted by himself at a small desert fountain, as to what he should do with himself in the immediate future. Suddenly an old and long-cherished plan flashed across his mind. Years before, as a young lad, his father had taken him on a long hunting expedition to a distant corner of that vast desert of the Kalahari, in which the Masarwa Bushmen make their home. He remembered the stalking of many ostriches, and the acquisition of great store of feathers; he remembered a long, long piece of thirst country through which they had toiled; and he remembered most of all coming presently to the solitary abode of a white man, planted in that distant and inaccessible spot, an abode almost unknown even to the wild Masarwa of the desert. From this white man his father had obtained for his feathers, amongst other things, a good hunting-knife—a treasured possession which he himself now carried. That white man, his waggon—there were no oxen, he remembered, nor horses—the house he had built for himself, and its fascinating contents; the strong fountain of sweet water which welled from the limestone hard by; all these things he remembered well. But most of all he recalled an air of mystery which enveloped everything. When he and his father had approached the white man’s dwelling, they had seen him, before he set eyes on them, digging in a depression of the open plain a mile from the house. Much of the grass had been removed, and piles of sand and stones were heaped here and there, and there were heaps, too, he remembered, near the house. Kwaneet’s father had, when they left that secret and unknown place, strongly impressed upon his son the absolute necessity of silence concerning the white man and his abode. The white man gave value for feathers—good value in a Bushman’s eyes—which the harsh and bullying Batauana people of Chief Moremi at Nghabe (Lake Ngami) never did. On the contrary, the Batauana robbed the poor Bushman of all his spoils of the desert whenever they got a chance, which happily was not often.