Chapter Twelve.
The Quick and the Dead.
“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Romans VII, 24.
One
Omfunda sat smoking his pipe alongside the fire he had lit close to the spring gushing out at the foot of the big cliff at the upper end of Krantz Vogel Kloof. The cliff arose sheer three hundred feet, and at each side of it the steep, broken terraces of the mountain, covered with huddled patches of immense boulders, swelled out into mighty flanks. From between the boulders gnarled and stunted trees grew, rooted in soil so deep down in the fissures that it could not be seen. Here and there dark, ragged-edged chasms yawned. These boulder-patches were bordered by fringes of scrubby forest, outside which grew coarse, matted grass.
It was a hot day in late spring, and Nomfunda felt drowsy. The bleatings of a flock of sheep came faintly to his ear. His dog lay curled up at his feet. The day was at noon. A light breeze hushed faintly through the tree-tops, soothing as the whisper of Somnus, and then died away. Nomfunda slept.
Nomfunda was the shepherd of Sarel Marais, the proprietor of the farm which took its name from the thickly-wooded kloof at the head of which he, Nomfunda, lay sleeping. Sarel Marais had over and over again warned him not to come with his sheep to this neighbourhood, for the reason that animals were so apt to get lost in the broken ground through falling into the fissures; and Sarel’s eldest son “Rooi Jan”—so called on account of his red hair—had sworn to have Nomfunda’s life if he ever again disobeyed in this respect. However, on the present occasion Nomfunda felt safe, for old Sarel was absent from home, and “Rooi Jan” had only a few hours previously departed on horseback for a farm several “hours” distant, where the girl he meant to marry in a few months’ time resided.
The foot of the cliff where the spring gushed out had a peculiar fascination for Nomfunda. It was cool on the hottest day. The water plashed from under a jutting ledge and scattered moisture over luxuriant masses of fern. The “umgwenya,” or “Kafir plum,” grew plentifully in the forest close at hand, and the holes in the porous cliff were full of bees’ nests brimming with the storage of industrious years. These bees were of the small, black, forest variety, which is celebrated as being extremely savage when interfered with; this fact, and the inaccessibility of the nests, accounted for their still being in existence. However, Nomfunda was an expert and daring honey-hunter, and was extremely pachydermatous; he hardly ever came to this spot without plundering a nest and feeding on honey to repletion.
Moreover, an antelope known as the “klipspringer” was to be found in large numbers in the neighbourhood, and Nomfunda’s dog thoroughly understood the way to circumvent this animal. Sometimes, quite on its own account, the dog would drive a buck to the point of some rock-pinnacle in the vicinity, and there hold it prisoner until Nomfunda, guided by the dog’s baying, would hurry to the spot and knock the buck over with his knob-kerrie. This dog was an utter mongrel showing traces of extremely diverse canine types. Its enemies declared they could even see a great deal of the jackal in it. The dog was, however, utterly faithful to its master, and had a wonderful knack of bailing up “klipspringers.” One peculiarity of the animal’s was that it never barked.
When Nomfunda awoke it was to find “Rooi Jan,” gun in hand, watching him. Nomfunda instinctively grasped his knob-kerrie, which lay on the ground next to him, and sprang to his feet. The dog ran behind its master and crouched, showing its teeth. “Rooi Jan” regarded Nomfunda in silence for some seconds, and Nomfunda returned his gaze. Then “Rooi Jan” spoke, using the Dutch language, which Nomfunda, who had worked among the Boers for several years, understood fairly well.