A Vendetta of the Desert

by W. C. Scully

Chapter Eighteen.

How Kanu Prospered.

Kanu arose from his hard couch on the floor of the cavern wherein he dwelt with his followers and clambered to the top of the rocky ridge which capped the krantz at the foot of which the cavern was situated. It was hunger and thirst which drove him forth thus restlessly under the midnight stars. Every night for more than a month he had sat for hours at this spot. Rain had not fallen for nearly two years and the little brackish fountain in the kloof below, on which these Bushmen were solely dependent for water to keep body and soul together, had shrunk and shrunk until it was reduced to a mere trickle. As the fountain shrank it became more and more brackish; so much so that after his long day of unsuccessful hunting Kanu had been unable to quench his thirst at it.

When he reached the top of the ridge the Bushman instinctively turned his gaze to the north-east. The sky was absolutely cloudless and the stars were shining and throbbing as they only shine and throb over the desert. He sat long motionless and was about to return, sick at soul, to the cave, when he caught his breath short, and his heart gave a great throb, for a faint flash lit up the horizon for a instant. Another flash, brighter than the first, soon followed. Kanu clambered swiftly down the steep hill-side, wakened the other cave-dwellers and informed them of what he had seen. In a few seconds the cave was the scene of bustling activity, preparatory to an immediate migration.

These distant flashes of lightning had for the little clan—or rather family of Bushmen, an all-important significance, for they meant that in some distant region beyond the north-eastern horizon a thunderstorm was raging and thus the long drought had broken on the vast plains sloping northward to the mighty, mysterious Gariep.

The cave was situated in a spur of that rugged range of iron-black hills known as the Kamiesbergen, and which were now, after the long-protracted drought, covered with blackened stumps marking the spots where, after rain, the graceful sheaves of the “twa” grass grow. The Bushmen knew there was no chance of rain falling where they were, for their moisture came in the winter season in the form of wet mists from the sea. These never passed the limit of the hills. On the other hand, the only rains which visited the plains were those which swept down with the thunderstorms from the torrid north, when the great clouds advanced with roarings as though to smite the hills asunder but, within the compass of a vulture’s swoop, would be stopped as though by a wall of invisible adamant and sent reeling to the eastward.

It was now midsummer and the Bushmen well knew that they would never be able to survive in their present situation until midwinter, before which season no rain from the southward was to be expected. For some time they had realised that their only chance of escaping a death of terrible suffering lay in cutting the track of the first thunder shower which would, as they were well aware, be the track of the others soon following. Should they succeed in doing this they would revel in a belt of desert turned as though by magic into a smiling garden, full of game, and with many a rock-bottomed, sand-filled depression in which good water could be easily reached by burrowing.

Already the herds of famished game would be on the move, apprised by the lightning-sign of the falling of that rain which was to be their salvation:—springbucks,—flitting like ghosts under the late-risen moon; gemsbucks,—sore-footed from digging out with their hoofs the large tap-roots from which they get that supply of moisture that serves them in lieu of water to drink; hartebeests lumbering along with swift, ungainly stride, and other desert denizens in bewildering variety. Hanging on the flanks of the horde might be seen the gaunt, hungry lions, seeking in vain to quench their raging thirst in the blood of their emaciated victims.

When Kanu found that Elsie had disappeared from where he had left her among the rocks and bushes at the foot of Table Mountain, he took to the veldt with the intention of getting as far from the dwellings of civilised men as possible. He knew that if he returned to Elandsfontein and told the van der Walts his remarkable story he would never be believed, and that the consequences would be distinctly unpleasant, if not fatal, to him. So he exercised the utmost wariness, taking great precautions against the possibility of being observed by day when seeking food. It will, of course, be understood that he travelled only by night. Being a Bushman of intelligence Kanu reflected upon many things in the course of his exciting and wearisome journey. In his untutored ignorance he classified the Caucasian race arbitrarily into two categories,—the good and the bad. Elsie comprised within her own person the one category; all other Europeans fell into the other.

Cautiously feeling his way northward, Kanu made a wide détour to avoid passing anywhere near the Tanqua Valley, and then wandered vaguely on in the hope of falling in with some of his own race. This hope was realised one morning in a somewhat startling manner. Following some tracks which he had discovered leading up the stony side of a very steep mountain, he suddenly found himself confronted by a number of pygmies such as himself; each, however, with a drawn bow and an arrow which Kanu knew was most certainly poisoned, trained upon him at point-blank range.