A Vendetta of the Desert

by W. C. Scully

Kanu was not prepared to answer on these points. However, he managed to elicit some further particulars,—for instance that if he walked along the main road he would pass the Governor’s house on his right hand; that the house had big pillars of stone before it; that two soldiers with red coats and guns walked up and down in front of it night and day.

Kanu hurried away towards Rondebosch. Two things it was imperatively necessary to do,—to locate the Governor’s house, and to get something for Elsie and himself to eat. He had left Elsie a small portion of bread,—hardly enough to serve for the scantiest of breakfasts. His own hunger was horrible. In spite of the tightening of his bark belt, which now nearly cut into his skin—the Bushman tribal expedient for minimising the pangs of famine—he was in agony. He passed the fruit market and saw piles of luscious eatables that made his mouth water, and the odour of which made him almost faint with longing. All this plenty around him—whilst he and Elsie were starving. He hurried away, the wild animal in him prompting to a pounce upon the nearest table, to be followed by a bolt. He knew his legs were swift, but there were too many people about and he would be sure to be caught. Stealing, he remembered with a tingling of the shoulders, stood first in the old beggar’s category of deeds for which one might get whipped.

A thought struck him,—he would first locate the Governor’s house, then return and try, by following the course he had taken the first day, to rediscover the dwelling of the charitable woman who kept the little shop. But Rondebosch was on the other side of the mountain; would he be able to go there and back without food? Well, there was nothing else to be done. He would try it at all events.

But after he had walked a few hundred yards his hunger got the better of him and he turned back and began to search for the woman’s dwelling. He reached the hotel with the wide stoep; from there he had no difficulty in reaching the store which the waiter had pointed out to him as the Governor’s house. After this, however, he could no more unravel his way among the unfamiliar lines of exactly-similar houses, than a bird could find its way through a labyrinth of mole-burrows.

So the day drew to a close without Kanu obtaining any food. His own agony of hunger had given place, for the time being, to a sick feeling of weakness; it was Elsie’s plight that now filled his thoughts. Food he must have, so he decided to steal the first edible thing he saw and trust to his swift running for escape. The whip was only a contingency, albeit a dreadful one,—but the hunger was a horrible actuality. Kanu made for the outskirts of the city and began to prowl about seeking for food to steal.

In the valley between Table Mountain and the Lion’s Head were the dwellings of a number of coloured people of the very lowest class. Most of the dwellings were miserable huts built of sacking and other rubbish, and standing in small clearings made in the thick, primaeval scrub. In the vicinity of some of these huts fowls were pecking about Kanu skirted the inhabited part of the valley, marking, with a view to possible contingencies, the huts near which fowls appeared to be most plentiful. In a path near a hut which stood somewhat distant from any others, the matchless eye of the Bushman discerned a well-grown brood of chickens, evidently just released from parental tutelage. A swift glance showed him how he might, unobserved, get between them and the hut. After worming his way through the scrub he emerged close to the unsuspicious poultry, into the midst of which he flung his stick, quick as lightning and with practised hand. Two chickens lay struggling on the ground. The others fled homeward, with wild cacklings.

Within the space of a couple of seconds Kanu had clutched the two unhappy fowls, wrung their necks and wrapped them up in his tattered kaross. Then he sprang aside, ran for a few yards and dropped like a stone. A man and a boy came rushing up the pathway and then commenced searching the thicket in every direction. Once the man passed within a yard of the trembling Bushman, whose back began to tingle painfully. However the danger passed, so after a short time he crept along through the thicket to a safe distance, and then fled up to the mountain side to where he had left Elsie.

Bitter was the poor child’s disappointment when she heard that the Governor did not live in Cape Town after all. However, Kanu was sanguine now of being able to locate the dwelling they had so long and so painfully sought for.

Kanu soon lit a fire and cooked the chickens, which proved tender and toothsome. The Bushman ate hardly anything but the entrails. He lied freely to Elsie in regard to the manner in which he had come by the birds, and waxed nobly mendacious as to the amount of food which he pretended to have enjoyed during the day.

Next morning Elsie’s feet were still so much inflamed that she could hardly put them to the ground. Kanu gave her the rest of the meat,—which, as the chickens had been but small to begin with—came to very little. Then he bade her farewell, promising to be back as early in the afternoon as possible, and started on his way along the western flank of the mountain to Rondebosch.