“There be no way to make tings better,” he replied fiercely. “I knows noting ’bout your laws. Only knows dey don’t work somehow. Allers de same wid me anyhow, kick and cuff and lash w’en I’s wrong—sometimes w’en I’s right—and nebber git tanks for noting.”
“But that is because your master is an unusually bad fellow,” replied Considine. “Few Cape farmers are so bad as he. You have yourself had experience of Hans Marais, now, who is kind to every one.”
“Ja, he is good master—an’ so’s him’s fadder, an’ all him’s peepil—but what good dat doos to me!” returned the Hottentot gloomily. “It is true your laws do not allow us to be bought and sold like de slaves, but dat very ting makes de masters hate us and hurt us more dan de slaves.”
This was to some extent true. At the time we write of, slavery, being still permitted in the British colonies, the Dutch, and other Cape colonists, possessed great numbers of negro slaves, whom it was their interest to treat well, as being valuable “property,” and whom most of them probably did treat well, as a man will treat a useful horse or ox, though of course there were—as there always must be in the circumstances—many instances of cruelty, by passionate and brutal owners. But the Hottentots, or original natives of the South African soil, having been declared unsaleable, and therefore not “property,” were in many cases treated with greater degradation by their masters than the slaves, were made to work like them, but not cared for or fed like them, because not so valuable. At the same time, although not absolute slaves, the Hottentots were practically in a state of servitude, in which the freedom accorded to them by Government had, by one subterfuge or another, been rendered inoperative. Not long before this period the colonists possessed absolute power over the Hottentots, and although recent efforts had been made to legislate in their favour, their wrongs had only been mitigated,—by no means redressed. Masters were, it is true, held accountable by the law for the treatment of their Hottentots, but were rarely called to account; and the Hottentots knew too well, from sad experience, that to make a complaint would be in many cases worse than useless, as it would only rouse the ire of their masters and make them doubly severe.
“You say de Hottentots are not slaves, but you treat us all de same as slaves—anyhow, Jan Smit does.”
“That is the sin of Jan Smit, not of the British law,” replied Considine.
Ruyter’s face grew darker as he rejoined fiercely, “What de use of your laws if dey won’t work? Besides, what right hab de white scoundril to make slave at all—whether you call him slave or no call him slave. Look at Jemalee!”
The Hottentot pointed with violent action to the Malay, who, with a calm and sad but dignified mien, stood listening to the small-talk of Booby, while the light of the camp-fire played fitfully on their swarthy features.
“Well, what of Jemalee!” asked Considine.
“You know dat him’s a slave—a real slave?”