Beneath lay the huddled, bleeding figure of an old man of hideous aspect, clad in a garb unknown at the Cape but which, it was afterwards thought, suggested some wood-cuts in an old book brought out by the last-deceased van der Walt from Holland. A sheet was thrown over the horror, and the trembling family sat up, waiting for, but dreading, the light of day. It was not until after the sun had arisen that they ventured to go out and visit the scene of the tragedy,—but no trace of the body could be seen; nor was there any sign of the blood which had so much horrified the beholders on the previous night.
There appeared to have been no doubt as to the main facts having occurred; slaves, servants, and, in fact, every member of the household except the sick man, had seen the body. The mystery was never solved; no body was ever found; no one from the neighbourhood was missed, nor, so far as could be ascertained, had any man resembling the description of the body ever been seen in the neighbourhood.
Cornelius van der Walt died during the following night, but without altering his will. Tyardt, however, took the matter so much to heart that he became a changed man. He came to hate the neighbourhood, and, leaving the farm in the hands of his mother and a younger brother, he set his face to the northward. He purchased two wagons, packed them with his goods, and, with his young wife and three small children, plunged into the unknown wilderness. After having passed some distance beyond the farthest outposts of civilisation, he at length halted high up near the head of a valley where the Tanqua River gorge cleaves the southern face of the Roggeveld mountain range. Here he built a homestead and took possession of the ground surrounding it for some miles. From the large numbers of elands which haunted the hills he named his new home “Elandsfontein.”
For some time he was left to enjoy the solitude for which his nature craved; but he lived long enough to feel himself inconveniently crowded when neighbours established themselves at distances of from fifteen to twenty miles from him on each side. However, he still drew comfort from the thought that beyond the mountain chain which frowned down upon his homestead on the northward, the vast, unoccupied desert lay—and appeared likely to lie for ever unappropriated. Moreover, it was certainly convenient to have the assistance of the aforesaid neighbours in hunting Bushmen, with whom the surrounding mountains were infested.
The occurrence of the night before his father’s death affected the character of Tyardt van der Walt permanently. For years he could never bear to be alone in the dark;—he suffered from the dread that the horrible creature he had shot would re-appear to him. This man, who did not know what fear of any material thing meant, was for long an abject slave to dread of the supernatural, and fell into a state of piteous terror if a dog howled within his hearing after dark.
It is said that his death was, after all, caused by the howling of a dog. During one of his periodical fits of nervous depression he felt unwell and, under his wife’s persuasion, went to his bed one day a few hours before the usual time. That night a dog howled on the hill across the valley; the sick man, as soon as he heard it, turned his face to the wall, saying that his summons had come. He refused to take any nourishment, and died in the course of a few days.
Strange,—that the crime of over two centuries back should have sent its baleful influence across the ocean wastes and the desert sands to drag a man who was blameless in it to his doom.
No stouter-hearted men than those of the van der Walt stock ever took their lives into their hands and faced, with unflinching eye, the dangers of the desert which they helped so mightily to reclaim. It is, however, an extraordinary fact that no member of this family in the direct line could ever hear the howling of a dog after nightfall without being reduced to abject terror.