“Sickness—you are always talking about this sickness! Has not the sickness been here before, and is not my kraal still full? What does a woman know about things?”
“A woman knows more than you. Wait; on the day when your kraal stands empty my kraal will be full, and I will see you making clay oxen like a little boy, and playing with them. When your cattle all die you will go mad, if you don’t die with them.”
The acquisition of the new lot brought more cattle to the kraal than the enclosure could conveniently hold, so a number of the less valuable animals were weeded out and given under “ngqoma” to a man in the Xalanga district, to whom Noquala had long promised stock. This man took away five cows and five heifers to his kraal in one of the gloomy gorges of the Drakensberg.
The rinderpest came closer and closer. Its fell influence lay around the territory in which Noquala lived like a crescent, or rather like the Zulu battle-formation, which has been likened appropriately to the horns of a charging bull. But beyond a passing feeling of uneasiness when some traveller related what he had witnessed of the ravages of the pest, Noquala felt no fear. Other plagues, which had been preceded by alarming rumours, had come and gone. He, like his fellows, had suffered, although not to the same degree. He gradually made up his mind that he would, if the plague came, doubtless suffer again, but he trusted to his luck and felt sure that all would come out right in the end.
However, as the shower of rumours thickened, even Noquala began to feel uneasy. He had been told that the disease might suddenly appear, mysteriously and without apparent infection from outside. Once or twice, when individuals of his herd fell sick of minor ailments, he became distinctly alarmed. Still the rumours thickened, and his nerves began to suffer. Nevertheless he scouted every suggestion towards selling any of his cattle.
The younger children at the kraal were, as is usual with native children, in the habit of making miniature cattle out of clay. This is the sole form of plastic decorative art which the Bantu practise, with the exception of the moulding of grotesque faces on their pottery, which the Hlubis and the Basuto sometimes indulge in. The ox-moulding is of a distinctly conventional type, all the artist’s attention being concentrated upon the head, horns and neck, which are often very well executed. The legs and body are usually rough and shapeless. This form of rudimentary art has probably been acquired from the Hottentots; Hottentot children who have never been in contact with the Bantu mould images of exactly the same type, and that type does not suggest the cattle kept by the Bantu at the present day, but rather those which the now nearly extinct Hottentots once owned in great numbers.
Noquala’s mind often dwelt upon his wife’s prophecy, and whenever he noticed the clay toys he felt a twinge of guilty uneasiness. He now knew that he had been distinctly foolish in purchasing more cattle with the proceeds of the sheep. Nevertheless he still flatly refused to sell.
Darker and ever darker grew the prospect. What was it, this disease which came like a ghost from nowhere, and slew like spears in pursuit of a beaten and exhausted foe? Lung-sickness and red-water men knew. These thinned the herds out cruelly, sometimes, but a few were always spared. But this unknown scourge that swept through the land as a fire sweeps over mountain and valley in the autumn, leaving utter desolation behind it—what could it be? Surely those who work spells of evil must be at work, or else the “imishologu” (Spirits) must be wroth on account of some great and grievous sin committed by the people.
’Ndakana, the “gqira,” came into Noquala’s mind. He had shown his power over evil spirits, and had driven death, vanquished, from the mat upon which his son lay. ’Ndakana professed—an unusual circumstance—to be able to heal cattle as well as men. Noquala thought he would consult with the “gqira” next time the latter came to the kraal. Pride, and a feeling that he could not bear to confess that the oft-vaunted faith in his luck had weakened, would not allow of a message being sent.
Then it was reported that the Government had found out a cure for the disease—that by injecting some mysterious and magical medicine into the blood of beasts they were rendered proof against the pest. All the same the reports of whole herds dying out like drones before the doorway of a bees’ nest came over the Drakensberg from Basutoland. The mind of Noquala swayed hither and thither between the poles of confidence and despair.