Attracted by the pleasantness of this green, charming, and well-watered spot, numbers of birds, many of them of brilliant plumage, were flitting hither and thither, crying, some sweetly, some vociferously, one to another. Here were gorgeous emerald cuckoos on their way south, honey birds, kingfishers, and bee-eaters of the most resplendent plumage, and various finches and small birds. Seldom had the two Dutchmen set eyes on a more lovely scene.
But the aesthetic charm of the place was not for the Boers, gaunt with hunger and privations. A look and a nod from father to son; the rifles were levelled; the targets selected, and the loud reports rang out, terrifying the wild life of this gem-like oasis, and rattling from krantz to krantz along the rough hill sides. Two hartebeests instantly went down and lay struggling in their death agonies. One of these staggered to its feet again; but Hermannus had shoved another cartridge into his breech, and a second shot finally stretched the animal upon the earth again, this time for good. Meanwhile, as the terrified troop sprang to their feet and tore frantically past his right front, Arend Van Driel rose quickly, slewed half round, and fired another shot. The bullet sped home, raking obliquely the lungs of another antelope, which was later on found dead two or three hundred yards down the kloof.
The two Boers walked forward to the stream, surveyed for a minute or two their dead game, a fat cow and a young bull, both in high condition, and then kneeling at the water, drank long and deep, and laved their faces, arms, and hands. The lad was now despatched at once to the bend of the kloof for the horses, which could not only drink and feed here, but were to be freighted with as much meat as they could carry for the camp. Before setting to work to skin the game. Van Driel walked along the margin of the stream to the spot whence it issued—a natural fountain among the rocks. Here, casting about, he came upon a discovery that electrified him—first the whitened bones of a man and a pair of spurs, afterwards an old weather-worn percussion gun, rotten and rusty, a powder-horn, and a good-sized and very heavy metal box. Opening this metal box with great difficulty, the Boer found it full of what he recognised instantly as gold nuggets, many of them of considerable size. Searching yet further among the rocks, the Boer discovered, just as Hermannus rode up with the led horse, a carefully laid pile of much bigger nuggets, worth manifestly a large sum of money. Who was the man whose poor remains lay bleaching in the sand there? When had he entered the kloof? How had he died? These were questions impossible to answer.
Van Driel could only surmise, from the make and shape of the old percussion smooth-bore and powder-horn, that the owner must have died there thirty or forty years before. Looking again closely at the powder-horn, Hermannus discovered the initials “H.D.,” carved neatly upon the side. But H.D.’s life and death and history lay hidden among these pathetic relics, mysteries impenetrable, insoluble. That sweet and secret valley alone knew the truth of them.
They turned out the box of nuggets, counting up their treasure. At the very bottom, half hidden among sand and rubble, lay a scrap of paper, yellow, faded, and discoloured. Hermannus, who could read, eagerly opened it. Inside, in a tottering hand, were a few lines scrawled in pencil. But the writing was not in Dutch, and, spell at the sentences as he might, Hermannus could make nothing of them.
Setting to work with a will, father and son rapidly skinned and cut up as much of the hartebeest meat as their nags could carry; the rest of the carcases they carefully covered up from the vultures and wild beasts. It was now dusk, darkness would be swiftly upon them. They determined to camp for the night and ride back to their waggon with the first streak of dawn. They made a roaring fire, tied up their horses to a tree close at hand, cooked some meat, enjoyed a hearty meal, and then smoked their pipes with stolid contentment. Then, making pillows of the inner parts of their saddles, and with their feet to the fire, they sank into profound sleep.
It must have been towards midnight that Arend Van Driel was awakened suddenly by the movement of his horse, which was tugging nervously at the branch to which its head-reim was fastened, as if startled by some prowling beast of prey. “Lions!” muttered the Boer to himself. He stirred the fire, threw on more wood, and, rising, patted and reassured his horse, which, with dilated nostrils, snuffed at the night air and stared with wild eyes out into the darkness.
Van Driel picked up his rifle, lit his pipe, and sat by the fire, watching and waiting. It was very eerie in this far and remote valley, but the Trek Boer is a man used to solitude and a wild life, and his nervous system is, happily for himself, not very highly developed. All the man troubled himself about was his horseflesh. Horses are scarce in the far recesses of the interior, and Arend had no intention of losing either of his nags by the attack of lion or leopard. Suddenly his horse snorted at the breeze again and pulled fiercely at his reim. Something approached—something that scared intensely the nervous animal. With ears and eyes strained, the Boer looked out into the darkness, beyond the ring of firelight. Hark! what was that? And then something—Van Driel could not make out what—moved past some twenty paces away on the other side of the fire. It looked about the height and size of a lion. The Boer’s rifle went to his shoulder, he took rapid aim, and fired. The report of the Westley-Richards rattled out from the rocks behind them, and, mingled with the sound, rose a strange, wild, shuddering cry, half human, half bestial. It was no lion’s or leopard’s cry, as Van Driel knew instantly. What in God’s name could it be? A baboon perhaps?
Hermannus, at the rattle of the fire arm, had sprung up from his deep slumber, and, rifle in hand, was now glaring about him. They listened. Strange moaning wails came to them on the soft night air from the blackness beyond the fire there. They were terribly human. The men looked at one another with scared faces, but uttered no word.
The sounds grew fainter and fainter and presently ceased.