A Vendetta of the Desert

by W. C. Scully

Day broke, and when the party halted a little shade was obtained by stretching skins over sticks stuck into the ground. Then a fire was soon kindled and the food obtained on the previous day cooked and eaten. Another sparing ration of water was issued and, in spite of its scarcity, and of the fact that every drop was as it were their life-blood, a small libation was poured out on the sand to propitiate the spirits of the sky who so greedily drank up moisture from the thirsty earth.

It was late in the afternoon of the third day when they reached the spot where the water-filled eggshells lay buried. Some of the women and children had been left half a day’s march behind, where they had dropped from thirst and exhaustion. Fortunately the cache was found to be intact. During the night a supply of water was sent back to those left behind, and early in the forenoon of next day the whole party was once more together. Their only loss was that of their best dog; the animal went mad while they were digging for the water, and rushed away to meet its death alone among the dunes.

They rested all that day as well as the next night, and it was on the following day that Kanu made the great discovery which more than ever convinced his followers of their leader’s supernatural powers. Before dawn Kanu left the encampment on a solitary hunting expedition. Skirting the edge of the dune-tract he went on and on, wondering sorely at the absence of game of every description. Then he noticed a number of tracks of jackals, all converging towards one point. Following one of these he was led to a narrow opening in a low, overhanging ledge of rock. Entering the opening and groping about, he found himself in a small, oblong cave. His heart beat fast, for he distinctly smelt water. Feeling along the walls of the cavern he came to an inner opening, of size just sufficient to admit the body of a man. This proved to be the mouth of a passage which dipped inward at a steep angle. Kanu held his bow by one end and tried to find the bottom of the shaft, but unsuccessfully. Then he carefully let himself down, feet first. Soon he found himself standing,—or rather half-reclining,—with his feet in icy cold water, but the passage was so narrow that he could not stoop sufficiently to reach the water even with his hands.

With some difficulty he managed to extricate himself, and then he turned and let himself down head first, having previously placed his bow across the opening and fastened a thong to it, so as to enable him to work his way back again. He drank his fill of water more delicious than anything he had tasted for years past and then hastened back to where he had left his companions.

Great were the rejoicings over what to all appearances was a permanent spring, the water of which was absolutely perfect in quality. The little community at once decided to make the cave their head quarters. Food was plentiful and easy to obtain. On account of the general drought no water was to be found anywhere else in the neighbourhood; consequently, numbers of jackals visited the spot every night. Of these, the flesh of which is looked upon by the Bushman as being a special delicacy, as many as were required for consumption were slain. Later, when the rains came, the herds of game returned; moreover, the vicinity proved to be rich in “veldkost,” which is the name by which the edible bulbs and tubers with which the desert sometimes abounds, are known by.

The years went by and these Bushmen, isolated as they were from the rest of mankind, led a life of absolutely ideal happiness from their own point of view. They had no want ungratified; to them the desert and what it contained were all-sufficing. There were no other human creatures anywhere near them, so they had nothing to fear.

It is a mistake to suppose that the life of the Bushmen was solely that of animals. Besides painting, they possessed the art of mimicry to a high degree and were, moreover, excellent actors. Their plays were hunting scenes, the characters being the different animals they were accustomed to hunt. The cries, movements and peculiarities of such were imitated as accurately as was possible by human beings, and a curious tincture of humour,—humour of a kind almost unintelligible to the civilised mind, was imported into the personifications. For instance: the shifts and stratagems by means of which a trio of ostriches will endeavour to lead an enemy away from their nest,—the simulated alarm of the birds when the enemy takes a wrong direction and the comparative absence of any sign of uneasiness if he takes the right one, were hit off to the life and accentuated with an amount of drollery one might think the subject incapable of sustaining.

The favourite episode for dramatic representation was the robbing of the lion of his prey. The lion’s favourite time for killing is just before daybreak. After he has killed he loves to drain, at his ease, every drop of blood from the carcase of his quarry. The act of killing by the king-killer of the wilderness is a noisy affair and, if it happened within a radius of several miles, and the wind were not unfavourable, the sound was almost sure to reach the keen ears of the pygmies. Then all would turn out, each being armed with a firebrand and carrying a bundle of dry, inflammable grass and twigs.

Approaching the spot where the kill had taken place, from different directions, the Bushmen would begin to shout and jeer at the lion and call him by all sorts of ridiculous and insulting terms. If he attempted to attack, some of the inflammable stuff would at once be ignited, and the lion, no matter how enraged, would always turn tail and retreat from the blaze. All this time the circle would be gradually closing in, leaving a gap through which the baffled and furious animal could beat a retreat, snarling and showing his teeth.

In the Bushman’s moonlit theatre this scene would be acted with astonishing skill and realism. In regions where the clans were thickly distributed, a good actor of the lion’s part in this popular play would be as sure of a welcome as if he were a great painter, and thus could pick and choose his society among the different communities.