Lodges in the Wilderness

by W. C. Scully

Before waking me, Hendrick had brewed the coffee, so after hurriedly emptying a pannikin and adding a few rusks to the contents of my haversack, I seized a rifle and made a start. My course lay due south, my objective being the vicinity in which the troops of ostriches had been visible on the previous morning. It had been arranged that Hendrick was to start an hour later and make a wide détour to the right, for the purpose of stampeding any birds he could manage to get to the westward of. It was trusted that such birds might run towards the spot where I intended to lie concealed.

The sky was clear as a crystal lens, for the copious dew had caught all dust particles which were left suspended in the atmosphere after yesterday’s outburst, and carried them back to earth. The waning moon had just arisen; fantastic shadows were cast by every shrub and tussock. The air was cool—almost cold; not a breath stirred. Every few yards I stumbled over irregular heaps of soft sand, varying in height, in size and in contour. These were fragments of the ravaged locks of Typhon—locks torn out in his fury of yesterday and flung far and wide over the desert.

How still it was; how void my environment of the details of ordinary experience. It was like a ramble through dreamland. The whirring wheels of Time seemed to have become dislocated; each as it were turning reversed on its axis—no two moving at the same speed. It seemed as though the mill of which sequence is a product had fallen out of gear, for yesterday joined hands with a day of twenty years old, while the intervening myriads of days flew forth into the void like chaff from a winnower.

Space seemed to have taken on additional dimensions,—the impossible to have become actual without an effort. Faces glimmered up through the mists that hung over the dimming pathway of the past—through the steam of long-shed tears—through the ghastly coffin-lid and the horrible six feet of clay. They smiled for an instant, and vanished. Winds that had slept for years arose laden with the laughter from lips whose warm red faded with dawns long overblown. Surely I must have strayed into some pallid Hades such as the ancients fabled of,—some zone where shadows only were real and real things appeared as shadows.

Mechanically I strode on, avoiding without conscious volition the shrubs and tussocks. As the moon ascended the shadows shortened and became less grotesque. Fancied resemblances to and suggestions of things outside my own experience, but of which my mind had formed concepts that had become familiar, switched thought on to other tracks; the pendulum swung from the subjective to the objective. Imagination built up the tiny, lithe, agile forms of that race we exterminated and whose barren territory we annexed, but neither occupied nor made use of. I could almost hear the sandalled, pattering feet of the aboriginal dwellers of these plains,—those kings of the waste whose sceptre was the poisoned dart. The Bushmen were in many respects a wonderful people. They obeyed no chief; they had no political organisation whatsoever; each family governed itself independently. Yet they had their fixed customs,—their general traditional code of proprieties. They had knowledge of the properties of plants which no others possessed; they had a highly-developed dramatic art. As limners they excelled, and a keen sense of humour is evinced in many of their paintings. Not alone was this sense of humour keen, but it must have been very much akin to our own.

How many hot human hearts have searched for a clue to the nature of that Power which energises as much through evil as through good,—which could foster the development of a numerous people under painful and inexorable laws until it harmonised with its rigorous environment,—that could implant in its units the capacity for love, heroism and faithfulness—and then ordain or sanction its obliteration,—an obliteration so absolute that, with the exception of one aged and senile pair, and a few delineations on sheltered rocks, of animals that shared its doom, this people has not left a trace behind. Literally, not a trace; hardly so much evidence that it ever existed as afforded in the case of an extinct sub-species of diatoms, the imprint of whose forms may be found on the fractured face of a chalk-cliff.

Musing thus, I suddenly became aware that day was at hand, for the pallid moonlight grew paler and the thrill of approaching dawn pulsated through the firmament. If all my trouble were not to be thrown away, I should at once select a spot suitable for my ambush. But first I had to look out for a certain shallow-rooted shrub of globular form which grew in patches here and there throughout the desert. A few such shrubs had to be pulled out of the ground and piled in the form of a low, circular fence enclosing a space about six feet in diameter. This is the “scherm” or screen so often used by those who hunt in the desert. Within it the hunter lies prone, fully concealed from any approaching quarry.

I was in luck, for I had reached an almost imperceptible rise; a long oval, the highest part of which was not more than thirty inches above the general level of the plain. But those inches were of incalculable value for my purpose, for they extended by miles the scope of my vision in every direction and, should game have been afoot, enabled me to prepare for the one and only shot. A single shot each day is the utmost that the hunter on foot in the desert ever expects.

In the vicinity of the rise shrubs were fairly plentiful, so I plucked out a sufficient number of suitable size and drew them carefully to the spot I had selected for my lair. This was just to westward of an unusually high shrub, a “taaibosch” which, after the sun should have arisen, would afford temporary shade for my head. But day came on apace; no time was to be lost.

Within a few minutes my scherm was complete, and I extended prone within it. After consideration I ventured to light my pipe. There was no wind; even had there been the ostrich has no sense of smell,—and on that day I was not looking for buck. Even had an oryx approached and sniffed at me, I would have let him go scathless. An ostrich, and a super-excellent one at that, was what I wanted. No breeding bird with plumes discoloured through contact with the sand, but a young, lusty, unmarried male with peerless adornment of foam-white plumes,—the crowning result of a long period of selection,—developed by unrestricted Nature for the all-wise end of making him comely in the eyes of the female of his species.