The Hottentot servants had inhabited a scherm about fifty yards to the rear of the camp. Hottentots often sit up more than half the night, chatting, laughing, and dancing. Mrs Bester, for the sake of keeping the neighbourhood quiet, had told the servants to move their scherm farther away. They had, accordingly, taken their belongings to the other side of a little knoll about two hundred yards away, on the right-hand side of the camp. Here they might hold their nocturnal jollifications to their hearts’ content without disturbing anybody or anything except the meerkats in the adjacent burrows.
A wandering stranger from Great Namaqualand had arrived during the course of the evening. This man had a ramkee upon which he performed with skill. A few months previously he had visited Namies, and had one night listened to Gert Gemsbok playing his favourite tune. Being struck with admiration of the melody, he had picked it up. He was now popularising it among the dwellers of the Desert, for he played it at every scherm he visited.
Coffee had been made of burnt rye, a sheep had died on the previous day; thus the scherm contained the materials for a feast. The company had been dancing to a series of inspiriting reels, but were now resting a space from their laborious leapings and gruntings. The stranger was playing Gert Gemsbok’s tune as an interlude to the reels. A bright fire of candle-bushes was burning. All but the ramkee player were lying down resting behind the scherm fence.
When Koos Bester stepped out of the mat-house he at once experienced a sense of relief. His head was bare and the cool breeze which wandered over the Desert refreshed his brain. The stars could, he found, pity as well as accuse; the night seemed to take compassion on his misery. He looked round to the back of the camp in the direction of where the scherm of the servants had been, and was relieved to see no light. He wanted to be free—even of the suggestion of the presence of another human being—until he had rearranged his distorted faculties. The sandy road led past the camp; he turned to the right and paced slowly along it, with bent head.
He stopped short, for a sound of horribly familiar music reached his ear; then he started and gasped, for the glow of a fire smote his eyes, coming from behind the little knoll. Being to windward of the knoll, he could not exactly distinguish what tune was being played. He knew that the instrument was a ramkee—that, in itself, was sufficiently horrible. A cold hand seemed to steal into his breast and gradually close upon his stricken heart. He stood rigidly still and tried to catch the tune exactly. He strained every nerve with this end, but the breeze freshened slightly, and only an indefinite tinkle reached him. In the midst of his reeling consciousness only one idea stood firm—he must go closer and determine who the player was and what the tune that was being played. He pressed his hands convulsively to his ears and stepped, crouching, towards the knoll.
He reached the knoll and cautiously raised his head till he was able to see over its top. The musician was sitting with his back towards the watcher, and just inside the scherm. Against the diffused glow of the embers—for the flame had died down—the outline of his head and shoulders stood clear and black. To the mind of Koos came the certain conviction that he was looking at the ghost of the man he had murdered. With a supreme effort of despairing will he tore his shielding hands away from his ears, and the unmistakable tones of the dead man’s music crashed like thunder into his brain.
Then Koos Bester’s madness returned upon him, and he fled away noiselessly across the Desert sands in the direction of the dunes.
It was long before he paused, for the fever in his brain prevented him from feeling fatigue. At length, as he was running over the roofs of a city of Desert mice, the ground gave way beneath his foot and he fell. The shock rendered him almost senseless. After a few minutes he sat up, pressed his hands to his temples, and began to grope in the haunted spaces of his darkened intellect for some clue to guide him.
He looked around. The dew-washed air of the Desert night was clear as crystal, the pulsing stars were domed over him sumptuously. He dug his hot hands into the cooling sand and lifted his faced to meet the soft, refreshing breeze.