From Veldt Camp Fires

by H. A. Bryden

But at Christina de Klerk’s camp there was no peace that night. At ten o’clock her husband’s native after-rider, “September,” a Hottentot, who had before dawn on the previous morning ridden out with his master across the plains, walked up to the camp fire, leading his lame and foundered pony behind him. The man was himself far gone with fatigue. His mistress had long since retired to her waggon, but he had ill news, and he called her up. His news was this:

They had found a good troop of giraffe soon after they entered the forest; but in a long run up to the game Adriaan de Klerk had sustained a bad fall, pitching upon his head. He recovered in a couple of hours’ time, thanks to the Hottentot’s care; but after that, September said, he had behaved like a madman. The fall had turned his brain somehow. He insisted, against September’s entreaties, in pursuing the giraffes, which had now got far too great an advantage. But de Klerk said, angrily, he wanted “kameel” skins (Kameel, literally Camel, the Boer name for giraffes), he could get 2 pounds 10 shillings apiece for them in Marico, and he would ride till he came up with them. All through the hot afternoon they rode without off-saddling; the Baas had a terrible thirst, and drank up most of the water they carried. At nightfall, with jaded horses, they off-saddled in the bush and lay down to sleep. It was a bad night, said September. The Baas was very restless, and constantly moaned and talked in his sleep. Before dawn he was up again, and insisted upon going on. September begged and pleaded. He warned his master that with failing horses and no water they might easily be cast away and die of thirst. All Adriaan de Klerk could say was that he was going on till he came up with the giraffes. He told September to ride back to camp for water. The Hottentot said he would not go without his master. De Klerk was plainly beside himself. He raised his rifle and told the man if he did not turn his horse’s head and go he would shoot him. And so September had ridden home. His horse was lame and knocked up; there was not another in camp. What was he to do? If the Baas was not rescued within forty-eight hours he would die of thirst.

Christina had a stout heart, as have most of the Afrikander Dutch women-folk, but September’s story, and above all his manner, convinced her that her husband, alone, without water, his mind wandering, was in supreme danger. She rose from the kartel—like most up-country Boers she slept in her clothes—buttoned her bodice, and came to the fire. An inspection of September’s pony at once convinced her that the animal was unable to travel further. As it was, September had been compelled to walk by its side during most of that day’s journey home. It was dead lame and suffering from the effects of fatigue and two days’ thirst.

What was she to do? Christina stood there with the Hottentot by the fire-blaze, discussing every possible plan. They might carry water by the aid of natives. But that would involve waiting till the morning, and even then a journey of probably more than forty miles would have to be taken on foot. And then, as September pointed out, it was more than likely that Masinya’s people, who were not over fond of the Boers, would point-blank refuse to go. And all this time Adriaan de Klerk, his mind unhinged by his fall and set upon one impossible object, might be plunging yet further into that waterless and inhospitable wilderness. His image rose clear before her mind’s eye: the thirsting, haggard man, the sinking horse, and then the terrible end, and the vultures streaming down from the sky! She knew but too well the danger. What, oh God! what should she do? Leaving the tired Hottentot to squat over the fire, she paced frantically up and down near the waggon, turning over impossible projects in her agonised mind.

It was a glorious night. The moon, shining in unspeakable majesty, cast its silvery spell over the distant plain and upon bush and grass near at hand; its amazing light pierced the foliage of the acacias and wrought wondrous patterns beneath her feet. The clear army of the stars, the deep blue mysterious vault above, the ineffable calm of night; all these things availed nothing to the woman’s troubled soul. Her agony of mind increased. Suddenly her eyes fell upon the white waggon tilt of the Englishman’s camp. There, of course, was a way out of the difficulty. There were fresh horses, four or five of them. With these, help and water could be carried to her husband!

But then, upon the instant, her thoughts ran back to the afternoon, to her rough, unkindly reception of the Englishwoman. She knew in her inmost soul that she had not done the right thing, thus to meet a stranger in the veldt—even if that stranger were an Englishwoman. Was her trouble a judgment upon her? But here her stubborn Dutch pride came to her aid. Could she go across to that camp and ask help?

Never! Never!

The night slowly passed, and still Christina de Klerk paced up and down the grove, sometimes resting for a brief spell upon the disselboom of her waggon. In her agony of mind it seemed that the day would never dawn, the light in the east never pale the sky.

At seven o’clock next morning, as Kate Marston, fresh and beaming, was putting the finishing touches to her toilet under the waggon sail, which, flanked by canvas screens, served as her dressing-room, her husband called to her. She came forth, and there, wan and dishevelled, her eyes red with weeping, stood Christina de Klerk. She told her piteous tale. She acknowledged that she had been unpardonably rude the afternoon before. It was a judgment upon her. A judgment sent by the Heer God to humble her pride. And now would the Englishwoman and her husband forgive and help her? She could not live without her husband. She had children. They would take pity on her in her trouble. In all her life, never had Christina de Klerk known a bitterer moment, thus to humble herself before the detested English.

The tears sprang into Kate’s eyes at the poor woman’s story, her too evident distress. “Why, Me’Vrouw de Klerk,” she said cheerfully, “of course my husband will help you. Will you not, Fred? We should be a poor kind of English folk, indeed, if we could listen to a trouble like yours without doing all we could for you.”