Between Sun and Sand: A Tale of an African Desert

by W. C. Scully

Soon, however, he again fell upon evil days. This time he suffered for righteousness’ sake. The Hottentots are, probably, the most untruthful race under the sun, but this Hottentot invariably made a point of telling the truth, and misfortune fell upon him in consequence. A certain Trek-Boer named Willem Bester was charged with a serious crime before the Special Magistrate for the Northern Border. Gert, unfortunately for himself, had been a witness to the act, and was, accordingly, called upon to give evidence. Instead of sensibly lying, and thus exonerating the accused, who was related to his master, poor Gert injudiciously told the truth. As a result Bester was convicted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. The consequences were disastrous to the veracious exception to the rule of his race. He was dismissed from his employment and turned adrift. He tried to obtain service everywhere, but found that he was boycotted—driven away with contumely from every Trek-Boer’s camp at which he applied.

So the three miserable beings wandered about the Desert from water-place to water-place, digging for “veld-kost”—the generic name by which the many species of edible bulbs, leaves, and tubers with which the fringe of the Desert abounds, are known. In the short and adventitious spring, when the leaves appearing through the sand indicated the proper spots to dig at, life was comparatively easy, but after the northern winds had scorched away the herbage it was only by a bitter struggle that body and soul could be kept together. Each year, when the Orange River came down in flood, the three wretched creatures would occupy a cave close to its southern bank just above the Augrabies Falls. Here, especially when the rains had been very heavy in the Orange Free State or the upper reaches of the Vaal River, they used to reap a rich harvest of garbage.

Six years of this life had passed prior to the finding of the mysterious corpse and the diamonds.

The cave was an oval chamber in the sheer granite wall in which the flank of a mighty mountain ended. The floor was of dry sand, and there was no drip from the smoke-stained roof to cause inconvenience. Here it was cool in the hottest weather, and when the cold eastern winds shrieked in arid wrath down the black gorges, the three waifs lay snug and warm. The furniture of the cave consisted of a few miserable skins, two or three earthern pots of native make, a bow and a quiverful of poisoned arrows, and a few blunted iron spikes, the latter being used in the root-digging operations. A musical instrument, which will hereafter be described, completes the inventory.

Gert was an old man. His limbs were half-crippled by rheumatism, and his sight had begun to weaken. The Hottentots are a thin-skinned race, and flogging is to them a very terrible punishment. Gert had never fully recovered from his experience of the lash. Had his physical vigour been greater he might have been able to kill game from time to time, especially when the trek-bucks crossed the Desert. As things were, his hunting never yielded him more than a few snakes and lizards and an occasional jackal. On very rare occasions he managed to get a shot at a klipspringer antelope; only, however, after lying in wait for hours at a time in a red-hot rock-cleft, on the faint chance of the bucks being startled in one of the hollows and running past him on their way to the next. But these waitings were usually unsuccessful and he could not afford to lose the time which they took up.

Gert Gemsbok reached the cave with his unsavoury burthen. This he flung down on the ground outside, for its stench would have made the air of the cave unbearable. It was bad enough to have to eat such stuff without breathing it as well. Having skinned the leg of the carcase he cut up some of the meat and put it into one of the pots. From a crevice in the wall he took out a handful of strong-smelling herbs; these he broke up and added to the stew with the object of deadening the effluvium.

After supper he related his adventure to the two women. The mother was half in her dotage, and had almost reverted to the animal in the course of the years of misery which she had lived through. The wife became wild with excitement at the idea of once more having money and being able to purchase longed-for luxuries. She tried to persuade Gert to start at once on a journey across the Desert to Kenhardt for the purpose of realising his property and obtaining coffee, sugar, and tobacco. The memory of these things, none of which had been tasted for years, continually tantalised her. Gert, however, mindful of former experiences, had no intention of placing himself within the power of the law again.

The old woman had originally come from Great Namaqualand; she belonged to the Bondleswartz Clan. She was continually urging her son to remove to the land of her birth; but this he could never be persuaded to do. He always clung to the hope of being able to remove to some civilised locality where coffee and tobacco would be obtainable.

One mitigation of all this misery existed. This Hottentot was an artist, carrying in his heart a spark of that quality which we call genius, and which might be called the flower that bears the pollen which fertilises the human mind, and without which the soul of man would not exist, nor would his understanding have sought for aught beyond the satisfaction of his material senses. Gert Gemsbok was a musician. His instrument was of a kind which is in more or less common use among the Hottentots, and which is known as a “ramkee.” The ramkee is very like a banjo rudely constructed. In the hands of a skilful player its tones may be pleasing to the ear. One peculiarity of the performance is that a great deal of the fingering—if one may use the term—is done with the chin. There are usually four strings, but some instruments contain as many as seven.

In Gert Gemsbok’s ramkee the drum was made from a cross section of an ebony log, which had been hollowed out with infinite labour until only a thin cylinder of hard, sonorous wood was left. Across this was stretched the skin of an antelope, and inside were several layers of gum—this for the sake of enriching the tone. The bridge was the breast-bone of a wild goose; the strings were made of the sinews of a number of wild animals, selected after a long series of experiments as to their respective suitability to the different parts of the gamut.