A Vendetta of the Desert

by W. C. Scully

Of the two, however, the blind girl was the more alarming object than the Bushman, who made for her a most effective foil. Her face was pale with the hue born of that fatigue and starvation against which her frail body had been braced by a great resolve and a transcendent hope,—but staring through this pallor was the bitter agony of disappointment and fear. Her eyes, grown large and hollow, glowed deeply under the masses of her hair. Her face had taken on a terrible beauty that seemed to radiate calamity and despair.

Thus passed this day of tribulation, but it was late in the afternoon before the full measure of their sufferings was attained. Elsie had sunk exhausted on the pavement near an almost deserted street-corner. Suddenly a noise of shouting was heard, and within a few seconds the terrified waifs found themselves surrounded by a swarm of tormenting street boys. Elsie sprang to her feet and clasped her hands around her companion’s sinewy arm. They stood close to the wall, and the boys formed a half-circle before them. The crowd seemed ever to increase. Although molested, neither was actually hurt. Now and then some bolder urchin would jostle them and once or twice Elsie’s hair was tugged at. But it seemed as though the touch of the rich fibre had some strange effect; each one who laid hands on it drew away at once, and slunk to the outskirts of the crowd, as though ashamed.

They were rescued from this terrible predicament by three soldiers who were evidently taking a stroll. These, seeing what was going on, laid into the persecutors with their canes to such effect that the street was soon clear. Kanu spoke to his rescuers, asking the old question, but they could not understand his language, and passed on.

Kanu now tried to shape his course towards the harbour of the previous night, trying to avoid the more frequented streets. But the instinct by means of which the Bushman could find his way unerringly through the desert spaces in the deepest darkness, was useless to him here, in an unnatural environment. He had lost all perception of distance, direction and locality.

But yonder, impassive above this scene of persecution and confusion, towered the bastioned crags of the great mountain. This at least was a wild, natural object Kanu turned towards it as a drowning man turns towards an islet suddenly seen close at hand in a waste of waters, and pressed up the steepening slope. The shouts of the horrible boys became fainter and fainter as the waifs struggled up the rocky terraces. It was sundown before they reached a rugged ledge at the foot of the main precipice. Here were thick bushes and great irregular masses of rock scattered formlessly about; between them the tough mountain grass was thickly matted. Elsie sank to the ground and lay as if dead. She had got beyond tears; even the sense of pain had nearly died in her.

Fortunately, Kanu still had his wallet, and in it was the piece of bread which their kind entertainer had given them in the morning. There was a bright trickle of cool water issuing from a cleft at the foot of the cliff, and to this Kanu led the child after she had rested for a space. She had been for some time dreadfully thirsty, although hardly aware of the fact, and a drink of the cool water somewhat revived her. Then she removed her shoes and stockings, and placed her feet on a stone where the water splashed upon them. When Kanu placed a piece of bread in her hand she began mechanically to eat it.

The site was suitable as a camping-place. It was hemmed in by a loose-linked chain of great, irregular rocks, and, from the absence of paths in the neighbourhood, was evidently not often visited by human beings. Around were strewn soft cushions of moss and sheaves of waving grass swayed from high tussocks. Dead wood from the fallen branches of sugar-bushes lay about in considerable quantities. Kanu gathered a number of these together and lit a fire at the back of the largest of the rocks.

The weather was perfect. At the Cape, Spring performs her duties at the time which chronologically ought to be Winter. Thus, by the time her own proper season arrives, the flowers have already emerged to meet the mild, cloudless, steadfast sky, which, where the ground lies at any considerable elevation, scorches not by day nor chills by night. Thus, the unthinking cruelty of man was, in the case of these derelicts, in a measure compensated for by the careless kindness of the heavens.

“Kanu,—what shall we do?” asked Elsie at length, in a dejected voice.

“I do not know. It seems to be against the law down here to ask about the Governor,” replied the Bushman, reminiscent of the possibility of the whip.