Tales of South Africa

by H. A. Bryden

“The first time I met Pierre Cellois—‘Klein Pierre’ we used to call him—I was about a day east of our camp, shooting water-buck for velschoens. We had worn out our foot-gear, and wanted fresh supplies of skin. Never shall I forget the little Frenchman’s appearance. He was tricked out in a big slouch hat smothered with great white ostrich feathers—enough to frighten half the game of the country away. Then he had a bright blue jacket with gilt buttons, a pink flannel shirt, a red silk sash round his waist—something like what your officers wore across their shoulders at Boom Plaats, when we fought Sir Harry Smith—white breeches, and long, shiny, black English hunting-boots. In his sash he had stuck a long knife and a pair of pistols. At his side he wore a wonderful powder-horn, decked with silver, and over his back a brown leather bag, smothered with steel mountings, the flash of which you might see a mile off. He carried a good English rifle. His Hottentot boy, besides a fowling-piece, carried a green net and a lot of boxes. The little Frenchman collected butterflies and bird-skins, and he never went abroad without his full paraphernalia. I have seen some funny sights in the veldt, but never have I seen such a figure of a sportsman as Pierre Cellois.

“Well, the little Frenchman, it seems, had come up to the Transvaal to shoot game and to collect specimens for a museum. He had read a book by your English army officer, Captain Harris, who was up in the country just before we turned out Moselikatse and his Matabele. Though he was an Englishman, Harris was a right good sportsman. I saw him in our laager in 1837, and his wagons were crammed with horns and skins and ivory. Cellois had Harris’s book with him, a great book—I saw it afterwards on Gordon Cumming’s wagon in Bamangwato—full of capital coloured pictures of game. Little Cellois used to rave over that book, and fling his arms about, and slap his rifle, and altogether send me nearly dying with laughter. But, bless you, Pierre was no sportsman; I could see that at once with half an eye. He had the best of rifles, powder-horns, knives, pistols, everything else—but he hadn’t the pluck, without which a man in the veldt in those days might surely turn his wagons and go home. I have seen him peppering away at a rhinoceros at a hundred and a hundred and fifty yards—teasing the great beast, and tickling its hide, and making it mad, but doing nothing more.

“Well, we hunted together during the afternoon of the day I met him, and I shot a big white rhinoceros bull—about the easiest beast a man could shoot. The Frenchman hadn’t seen a rhinoceros shot before, and he nearly went out of his mind. He danced about, cried out with joy, and then rushing up to me, put his arms round my neck and kissed me—yes, kissed me, the little fool! Pah! I couldn’t stand that, and I gave him a bit of a push, and sent him over on his back. He picked himself up and seemed rather angry, but we became good friends afterwards. Next day we came across elephants, and I shot three good bulls, and a cow with long teeth. I was finishing off the last bull, when Pierre Cellois, who had kept very much in the background so far, came up and fired his piece two or three times into the beast, which was now at a stand, just about dying. Then it fell, and the little fellow climbed up on to its back, screaming and waving his arms, took off his hat and cried out something about ‘La France.’ Laugh! I nearly split my sides with laughing at that little jackanapes fellow dancing about up there on the big elephant.”

And the old man, as he recalled that absurd scene of forty years agone, laughed in his hearty, massive way so heartily that I, too, was impelled to join him.

“Well,” went on Cornelis, “that evening Cellois’ wagon came on to the spot where the elephants lay, and the little Frenchman wrote home a long letter to his wife. He had picked up Dutch at Cape Town, and he told me in his excitable way how he had headed his letter. He wrote: ‘From the camp upon the Crocodile River, upon the day we slew four elephants.’ I laughed, and didn’t say much; but I thought the little man a bit of a liar, considering that I had shot the elephants, and that he had done no more than fire two or three bullets into a bull which was already as good as dead. However, bless you, I didn’t much mind, and I reckoned it would please his vrouw at home. These Frenchmen, I understand, are rather queer in their ways compared to us Boers, or even to you English folk.

“A day or two after, having chopped out the tusks, we trekked back to my camp, and the little Frenchman met my vrouw. I can tell you she didn’t much appreciate him, in spite of his fine clothes and his prancing ways. If he was highly dressed before, he was a thousandfold more gay now. In the evenings, after coming into camp, he would deck himself up in all sorts of finery—silk waistcoats covered with flowers, white shirts with frills—frills, I tell you—collars, blue neckerchiefs, and I can’t tell what. Then he was for ever paying my wife compliments, which she hated. The vrouw then was, I can tell you, a very handsome young woman, and although she wore but simple clothes, and her big kapje (sun-bonnet), it was very plain that he admired her strongly. But then, where a woman was concerned little Pierre was a perfect fool. Why, I have heard him paying compliments and talking nonsense to his Hottentot driver’s wife, Kaitje—such trash as that!

“What my wife couldn’t stand was the habit the little fellow had of holding her hand when they met, and sometimes even of kissing it. Almighty! that sent her mad. I could see the angry flush rise to her cheeks and neck, and at last one day she snatched her hand from his and slapped his face pretty smartly.

“Not long after, we were outspanned together on the Crocodile River, in a clear place where there was no tse-tse fly for some miles. It was a pleasant camp, and we stood there some time. Here the Frenchman collected birds and butterflies, and I was often away shooting game. One day the little Frenchman was fishing from a high spit of sand below the banks. He had, it seems, waded into the water a little to get his line further out, and a young crocodile, about five feet long, made a grab at him, and caught him by the leg. The reptile was not big enough and strong enough to pull the little fellow in, and a pretty tussle the two had. The vrouw, who was on the wagon close by, hearing some dreadful cries for help, snatched up a gun and ran down. There she saw the crocodile and the Frenchman pulling and hauling and kicking on the spit of sand. She at once let off the gun close into the beast’s side. It was my big elephant roer, carrying four balls to the pound. It made a great hole in the crocodile’s side, so that it quitted its hold, turned over belly upwards, and lay there dead in the shallows. Well, a pretty fuss Cellois made about this affair. He wasn’t much hurt; he had his high boots on, and the crocodile had only given him a few pinches in the calf and side of the leg. He was all right again in a day or two. But he pestered the vrouw nearly to death with his speeches and grimaces, called her his angel, his deliverer, and what not. I was away a good deal just then, and being a veldt-man, and knowing my wife, and not wasting much thought upon the little Frenchman, except when he amused me in camp, I took little heed of what was passing, so to speak, beneath my nose. It seems then that the foolish fellow began to make love to my wife after the crocodile episode. At last, two or three evenings after, when Pierre had gone to his wagon for the night, the vrouw said to me,—

“‘Cornelis, you are a fool. This little jackanapes of a Frenchman is making love to me, and you see nothing and do nothing. If you don’t tell him to pack up and trek to-morrow, I shall. I will put up with it no longer.’

“‘Wait till to-morrow night, Anna,’ I said. ‘I am riding at dawn to-morrow after zwart-wit-pens (sable antelope). I will see to the matter when I come in. I am sorry this little French ape has been teasing you.’