From Veldt Camp Fires

by H.A. Bryden

Contents

Chapter One.
A Secret of the Orange River.

Many are the stories told at the outspan fires of the South African transport riders—some weird, some romantic, some of native wars, some of fierce encounters with the wild beasts of the land. Often have we stopped for a chat with the rugged transport riders, and some strange and interesting information is obtained in this way.

The transport rider—the carrier of Africa—with his stout waggon and span of oxen, travels, year after year, over the rough roads of Cape Colony and beyond, in all directions, and is constantly encountering all sorts and conditions of men—white, black and off-coloured; and in his wanderings, or over his evening camp fire, he picks up great store of legend and adventure from the passing hunters, explorers and traders.

One night, after a day’s journey through the bush-veldt, we lay at a farmhouse, near which was a public outspan. At this outspan two transport riders were sitting snugly over their evening meal; they seemed a couple of cheery, good fellows—one an English Afrikander, the other an Englishman, an old University man, and well-read, as we afterwards discovered—and nothing would suit them but that we should join them and take pot-luck. Attracted by their hospitable ways and the enticing smell of their game stow, for we were none of us anthobians, we sat us down and ate and drank with vigorous appetites. Their camp-pot contained the best part of a tender steinbok, and a brace or two of pheasants (francolins); and we heartily enjoyed the meal, washed down with the inevitable coffee.

Supper finished, some good old Cango (the best home-manufactured brandy of the Cape, made in the Oudtshoorn district) was produced, pipes were lighted, and then we began to “yarn.” For an hour or more we talked upon a variety of topics—old days in England, the voyage to the Cape, the Colony, its prospects and its sport.

From these, our conversation wandered up-country, and we soon found that our acquaintances were old interior traders, who in the days when ivory and feathers were more plentiful and more accessible than now, had over and over again made the journey to ’Mangwato and back. ’Mangwato, it may be explained, is the trader’s abbreviation for Bamangwato, Khama’s country, the most northerly of the Bechuana States; and of Bamangwato, Shoshong was formerly the capital and seat of trade. Then we wandered in our talk to the Kalahari, that mysterious and little known desert land, and from the Kalahari back to the Orange River again.

“’Tis strange,” said one of our number, “how little is known of the Orange River—at all events west of the falls; I don’t think I ever met a man who had been down it. One would think the colonists would know something of their northern boundary; as a matter of fact they don’t.”

“Ah! talking of the Orange River, reminds me,” said the younger of the transport riders, the ex-Oxonian, and the more loquacious of the two, “of a most extraordinary yarn I heard from a man I fell in with some years back, stranded in the ‘thirstland,’ north-west of Shoshong. Poor chap! he was in a sorry plight; he was an English gentleman, who for years had, from sheer love of sport and a wild life, been hunting big game in the interior. That season he had stayed too late on the Chobi River, near where it runs into the Zambesi, and with most of his people had got fever badly. They had had a disastrous trek out, losing most of their oxen and all their horses, and when I came across them they were stuck fast in the doorst-land (thirstland) unable to move forward or back. For two and a half days they had been without water, and from being in bad health to begin with, hadn’t half a chance; and, if I had not stumbled upon them, they must all have been dead within fifteen hours. I had luckily some water in my vatjes, and managed to pull them round, and that night, leaving their waggon in the desert in hopes of being saved subsequently, and taking as much of the ivory and valuables as we could manage and Mowbray’s (the Englishman’s) guns and ammunition, we made a good trek, and reached water on the afternoon of the next day. I never saw a man so grateful as Mowbray; I believe he would have done anything in the world for me after he had pulled round a bit. Poor chap! during the short time I knew him I found him one of the best fellows and most delightful companions I ever met. Unlike most hunters, he had read much and could talk well upon almost any subject, and his stories of life and adventure in the far interior interested and impressed me wonderfully. But the Zambesi fever had got too strong a hold upon him. I dosed him with quinine and pulled him together till we got to Shoshong, where I wanted him to rest, but he seemed restless and anxious to get out into the open veldt again, and after a few days we started away. Before we had got half-way down to Griqualand, Mowbray grew suddenly worse and died one evening in my waggon just at sunset. We buried him under a kameel doom tree, covering the grave with heavy stones, and fencing it strongly with thorns to keep away the jackals and hyenas.

“Many and many a talk I had with poor Mowbray before he died; sometimes he would brighten up wonderfully and insist on talking to me for hours, as he lay well wrapped up, in the evening, underneath my waggon sail. One evening, in particular, he had seemed so much stronger and better, and, later on, as we sat before the camp fire on the dewless ground, where I had propped him up and made him comfortable, he told me a most strange story, a story so wonderful that most people would scout and laugh at it as wildly improbable; yet, remembering well the narrator and the circumstances under which he told it to me, with the shadow of death creeping over the short remaining vista of his life, I believe most firmly his story to be true as gospel.

“Poor chap! He began in this way: ‘Felton, you have been a thundering kind friend to me, kind and tender as any woman (which, by the way, was all nonsense), and I feel I owe you more than I am ever likely to repay; yet, if you want wealth, I believe I can put it in your way. Do you know the northern bank of the Orange River, between the great falls and the sea? No! I don’t suppose you do, for very few people have ever trekked down it; still fewer have ever got down to the water from the great walls of desolate and precipitous mountain that environ its course, and, except myself and two others, neither of whom can ever reveal its whereabouts, I believe no mortal soul upon this earth has ever set eyes upon the place I am going to tell you about. Listen!

“In 1871, about the time the diamond fields were discovered, and people began to flock to Griqualand West, I was rather bitten with the mania, and for some months worked like a nigger on the fields; during that time I got to know a good deal about stones. I soon tired of the life, however, and finally sold my claim and what diamonds I had acquired, fitted up a waggon, gathered together some native servants, and trekked again for those glorious hunting grounds of the interior, glad enough to resume my old and ever-charming life. Amongst my servants was a little Bushman, Klaas by name, whom I afterwards found a perfect treasure at spooring and hunting. Like all true Bushmen, he was dauntless as a wounded lion, and determined as a rhinoceros, which is saying a good deal. I suppose Klaas had had more varied experience of South African life than any native I ever met. Originally, he had come as a child from the borders of the Orange River, where he had been taken prisoner in a Boer foray, in which nearly all his relations were shot down. He had then been ‘apprenticed’ in the family of one of his captors, where he had acquired a certain knowledge of semi-civilised life. From the Boer family of the back-country, he had subsequently drifted farther down into the colony, and thence into an elephant hunter’s retinue. He had accompanied expeditions with Griquas, Dutch and Englishmen all over the far interior. The Kalahari desert, Ovampo-land, Lake Ngami, the Mababi veldt, and the Zambesi country, were all well known to him, for in all of them he had traded, hunted and, on occasion, fought. As for the Western Orange River and its mysteries—for it is a mysterious region—he knew it, as I afterwards discovered, better than any man in the world. Well, we trekked up to Matabeleland and, after some trouble, got permission to hunt there; and a fine time we had, getting a quantity of ivory, and magnificent sport among lions, elephants, buffaloes, rhinoceros, sable and roan antelopes, koodoo, eland, Burchell’s zebras, pallah and all manner of smaller game.

“One day, Klaas, who was sometimes a bit too venturesome, got caught in the open by a black rhinoceros, a savage old bull. The old brute charged and slightly tossed him, making a nasty gash in his right thigh, but not fairly getting his horn under him, and was just turning to finish the poor little, beggar, when I luckily nicked in. I had seen the business and had had time to rush out on to the plain, and, just as Borele charged at poor Klaas to finish him off as he lay, I got up within forty yards, let drive, and, as luck would have it, dropped him with a 500 Express bullet behind the shoulder. Even then the fierce brute recovered himself and tried to charge me in turn, but he was now disabled and I soon settled his game. After that episode Klaas proved himself about the only grateful native I ever heard of, and seemed as if he couldn’t do enough for me.

“One day, after he had got over his wound, he came to me, and said, ‘Sieur! you said one day that you would like to know whether there are diamonds anywhere else than at New Rush (as Kimberley was then called). Well, sieur, I have been working at New Rush and I know what diamonds are like; and I can tell you where you can find as many of them in a week’s search as you may like to pick up. Allemaghte! Ja, it is as true, sieur, as a wilde honde on a hartebeest’s spoor.’

“‘What the devil do you mean, Klaas!’ said I, turning sharply round—for I was mending the disselboom (waggon-pole)—to see if the Bushman was joking. But on the contrary, Klaas’s little weazened monkey face wore an expression perfectly serious and apparently truthful. The statement seemed strange, for I knew the little beggar was not given to ‘blowing,’ as so many of the Kaffirs and Totties are.

“‘Ja, sieur, it is truth; if ye will so trek with me to the Groote (Orange) River, three or four days beyond the falls, I will show you a place where there are hundreds and hundreds of diamonds, big ones, too, many of them to be found lying about in the gravel. I have played with them and with other “mooi steins” too, often and often as a boy, when I used to poke about here and there, up and down the Groote River. My father and grandfather lived near the place I speak of, and I know the way to the “vallei” where these diamonds are well, though no one but myself knows of them; for I found them by a chance, and, selfish like, never told of my child’s secret. I will take you to the place if you like.’

“‘Are you really speaking truth, Klaas?’ said I severely.

“‘Ja! Ja! sieur, I am, I am,’ he earnestly and vehemently reiterated, ‘you saved my life from the “rhenoster” the other day, and I don’t forget it.’

“Again and again I questioned and cross-questioned the little Bushman, and finally convinced myself of his truth; and I had too much respect for his keen intelligence to think he was himself misled or mistaken.

“‘Well, Klaas,’ said I at last, ‘I believe you, and we’ll trek down to the Orange River and see this wonderful diamond valley of yours.’

“Shortly after this conversation we came back to Shoshong, where I sold my ivory, and then, with empty waggon and the oxen refreshed by a good rest, set our faces for the river. From Shoshong, in Bamangwato, we trekked straight away across the south-eastern corner of the Kalahari, in an oblique direction, pointing south-west; it was a frightfully waterless and tedious journey, especially after passing the Langeberg, which we kept on our left hand. Towards the end of the journey we found no water at a fountain where we had expected to obtain it, and thereby lost four out of twenty-two oxen (for I had six spare ones), and at last, after trekking over a burning and most broken country, we were beyond measure thankful to strike the river some way below the great falls. Klaas had led us to a most beautiful spot, where the terrain slopes gradually to the river (the only place for perhaps thirty or forty miles where the water, shut in by mighty mountain walls, can be approached), and where we could rest and refresh ourselves and our oxen. Here we stopped four days. It was a lovely spot; down the banks of the river, and following its course, grew charming avenues of willows, kameel dooms (acacias) and bastard ebony; two or three islands, densely clothed with bush and greenery, dotted the broad and shining bosom of the mighty stream; hippopotami wallowed quietly in the flood, and fish were plentiful. The thorny acacia was now in full bloom, and the sweet fragrance of its yellow flowers everywhere perfumed the air as one strolled by the river’s brim. Rare cranes, flamingoes, gorgeous kingfishers and many handsome geese, ducks and other water-fowl, lent life and charm to this sweet and favoured oasis.

“I had some old scraps of fishing tackle with me, and having cut myself a rod from a willow tree, I employed some of my spare time in catching fish, and had, for South Africa—which, as you know, is not a great angling country—capital sport. The fish I captured were a kind of flat-headed barbel, fellows with dark greenish-olive backs and white bellies, and I caught them with scraps of meat, bees, grasshoppers, anything I could get hold of, as fast as I could pull them out, for an hour or two at a time. Once I ran clean out of bait, and was nonplussed; however, I turned over a stone or two, killed a couple of scorpions, carefully cut off their stings, and used them as bait, and the fish came at them absolutely like tigers. I soon caught some thirty pounds weight of fish whenever I went out. The mountains rose here and there around in magnificently serrated peaks, and the whole place, whichever way you looked, was superbly beautiful. There was a fair quantity of game about; Klaas shot some klipspringer antelopes—hereabouts comparatively tame—up in the mountains, and there were koodoos, steinbok and duykers in the bushes and kopjes.

“After the parching and most harassing trek across the desert; our encampment seemed a terrestrial paradise. The guinea-fowls called constantly with pleasant metallic voices from among the trees that margined the river, and furnished capital banquets when required. Many fine francolins abounded, and at evening, Namaqua partridges came to the water to drink in literally astounding numbers. We had to form a strong fence of thorns around us, for leopards were numerous and very daring, and there were still lions about in that country. At night, as I lay in my waggon, contentedly looking into the starry blue, studded with a million points of fire, and mildly admiring the glorious effulgence of the greater constellations, I began to conjure up all sorts of dreams of the future, of which the bases and foundations were piles of diamonds, culled from Klaas’s wondrous valley.

“Having recruited from the desert journey, and all, men and beasts, being in good heart and fettle, we presently started away down the river for the valley of diamonds. I had, besides Klaas, four other men as drivers, voerlopers and after-riders, and they naturally enough were extremely curious to know what on earth the ‘Baas’ could want to trek down the Orange River for—a country where no one came, and of which no one had ever even heard. I had to tell them that I was prospecting for a copper mine, for, as you probably know, there are many places in this region where that metal occurs. After our four days’ rest by the noble river we were all greatly refreshed, and quite prepared for the severe travel that lay before us. As we were doubtful whether we should find water at the next fountain that Klaas knew of, owing to the prevalence of drought—and as it was an utter impossibility (so Klaas informed me) to get down to the river on this side for several days, owing to the steep mountain wall that everywhere encompassed it—I filled the water vatjes and every other utensil I could think of, and then, all being ready and the oxen inspanned, we moved briskly forward.

“We had now to make a détour to the right, away from the river, and for great part of a day picked our painful footsteps over a rough and semi-mountainous country. Towards evening, we emerged upon a dreary and interminable waste that lay outstretched before us, its far horizon barred in the dim distance by towering mountains, through which we should presently have to force our passage. That evening we outspanned in a howling wilderness of loose and scorching sand, upon which scarcely a bush or shrub found subsistence. After a night not too comfortable and broken by some hyenas that prowled restlessly about, we were up betimes next morning. As soon as the oxen were inspanned and ready to move forward for the mountains to which Klaas had directed our course, I rode off for a low kopje that rose from the plain away in the distance hoping to see game beyond. I was not disappointed; a small troop of hartebeest was grazing about half a mile off, and by dint of a little manoeuvring with my Hottentot after-rider, whom I despatched on a détour, I managed to cut across the herd and knocked over a fat cow at forty yards. We soon had her skinned, and taking the best of the meat, rode on for the waggon. Again we had an exhausting trek over a burning sandy plain; the heat of this day was something terrible. I have had some baddish journeys in the doorst-land on the way to the great lake, but this was, if possible, worse. Towards four o’clock the oxen were ready to sink in their yokes, their lowing was most distressing, and as the water was now nearly at an end, and we might not reach a permanent supply for another day, nothing could be done to alleviate their sufferings. At nightfall, more dead than alive, we outspanned beneath the loom of a gigantic mountain range, whose recesses we were to pierce on the following morning. Half a day beyond this barrier lay the valley of diamonds, as Klaas whispered to me after supper that night, with gleaming excited eyes; for, noticing my growing keenness, he, too, was becoming imbued with something of my expectancy.

“That night, as we lay under the mountain, was one of the most stifling I ever endured in South Africa, where, on the high table-lands of the interior, nights are usually cool and refreshing. Even the moist heat of the Zambesi valley was not more trying than this torrid, empty desert. The ovenlike heat, cast up all day from the sandy plain, seemed to be returned at night by these sun-scorched rocks with redoubled intensity. Waterless, we lay sweltering in our misery, with blackened tongues and parched and cracking lips. The oxen seemed almost like dead things. Often have I inwardly thanked Pringle, the poet, of South Africa, for his sweet and touching verse, written with the love of this strange wild land deep in him, for his striking descriptions of its beauties and its fauna. As I lay panting that night, cursing my luck and the folly that brought me thither, I lit a lantern and opened his glowing pages. What were almost the first lines to greet my gaze? These!

“A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man hath abandoned, from famine and fear,
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass nor herb nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;
And here, while the night-winds around me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb’s cave alone,
‘A still small voice’ comes through the wild
(Like a father consoling his fretful child),
Which banishes bitterness, wrath and fear,
Saying, ‘Man is distant, but God is near.’

“We hailed, the passage of the mountains next morning with something akin to delight; anything to banish the monotony of these last two days of burning toil. We were up as the morning star flashed above the earth-line. We drank the remaining water, which afforded barely half a pint each to the men, none for the oxen and horses. With difficulty the poor oxen, already, in this short space, gaunt and enfeebled from the heat and for lack of food and drink, were forced up into their yokes. Klaas, as the only one of us who knew the country, directed our movements, and with hoarse shouts, and re-echoing cracks from the mighty waggon-whip, slowly our caravan was set in motion. Our entrance to the mountains was effected through a narrow and extremely difficult poort (pass), strewn with huge boulders and overgrown with brush and underwood that often barred the way and rendered Stoppages frequent. After about a mile, the kloof into which this poort debouched suddenly narrowed and turned left-handed at right angles to our course. Accompanied by Klaas, I walked down it, and was soon convinced by the little Bushman that our passage that way was ended. As Klaas had warned me, our only way through and out of the mountains now lay in taking, with our waggons, to the steep and broken hill sides, a proceeding not only perilous, but apparently all but impossible. Yet the thing had to be done, and we at once set the spent oxen in motion and faced the ascent obliquely. After consultation with Klaas, I got out some ropes, which I had fastened to the uppermost side of the waggon, while some stout long poles, which I had had previously cut for such an emergency while outspanned at the Orange River, served to prop up our lumbering vehicle from the lower side. Slowly and wearily, and yet, withal, with a sort of dogged stubbornness, the poor oxen toiled on, half-hour after half-hour, urged by our shouts, by the cruel waggon-whip, mercilessly plied, and the terrible after-ox sjambok. Many times it seemed, as our cumbrous desert ship crashed across a boulder or down a stair-like terrace of rock, that it must inevitably topple over and roll crashing to the bottom; but our guy-ropes and the supporting poles saved us again and again.

“I had fastened one of the ropes with a stout band of leather round the chest of my hunting horse; the other two ropes were held by the strongest of my servants and myself, while two other men held the poles against the lower side of the waggon as they stood down hill below it. My old horse, guided by a Bechuana boy, as usual, proved himself as sensible as any Christian, knew exactly what he had to do, and, when we came to crucial points and the waggon shivered as it were upon empty space, he and my Kaffir and I tugged away, while the fellows below shoved with might and main. And so time after time we averted a catastrophe, so dire that I shuddered to think of it; for in some places, if the waggon had gone, the wreck must have been irreparable and the yoked oxen hurled with it in a broken and mangled heap to the bottom far below us. Well, occasionally halting for a blow, long hours of the most distressing labour I ever experienced were at last got through; we had surmounted and left behind the first huge mountain-side, had plunged into a valley, had passed obliquely over the shoulder of another great mountain, and now halted in a deep and hollow kloof lying below a singular flat-topped mountain, conical in shape, that stretched across our onward path. This mountain was flanked on either hand, as we fronted it, by yawning cliffs, and was only approachable from this one aspect. Here we outspanned for a final rest before completing our work, if to complete it were possible. Shading my eyes from the fierce sunlight, I looked upward at the long slope of mountain, broken here and there, and occasionally shaggy with bush; over all the fierce atmosphere quivered, seething and dancing in the sun-blaze. I looked again with doubt and dismay at the gasping oxen, many of them lying foundered and almost dead from thirst and fatigue, and my spirits, usually brisk and unflagging, sank below zero. Klaas had told me previously of a most wonderful pool of water that lay on the crown of a mountain where we should outspan finally before entering upon the portals of the diamond valley. Now he came to me and said, pointing upwards, ‘Sieur, de sweet water lies yonder op de berg. It is a beautiful pool, such as ye never saw the like of; if we reach it we are saved and the oxen will soon get round again; ye must get them up somehow, even without the waggon.’

“The tiny yellow blear-eyed Bushman, standing over me as I sat on a rock, pointing with his lean arm skywards, his anxious dirt-grimed face streaming with perspiration, was hardly the figure of an angel of hope; and yet at that moment he was an angel, of the earth, earthy, ’tis true, yet an angel that held before us sure hope of rescue from our valley of despair; for despair, black and grim, now lay upon the faces of my followers and in the eyes of my oxen. Remember, we had tasted no water to speak of for close on three days, and had had besides a frightfully trying trek.

“We lay panting and grilling for an hour or more, and then I told my men that water in any quantity lay at the mountain top and that we must, at all hazards, get the oxen up to it. By dint of severe thrashing with the after-ox sjambok, we at last got the oxen on to their legs—all but two, which could not be made to rise, and then, leaving the waggon, but taking three or four buckets, we moved upwards. Only a mile of ascent, or a little more, lay before us; but so feeble were the oxen that we had the greatest difficulty to drive them to the top, even without the encumbering waggon. At last we reached the krantz, and after a hundred yards’ walk upon its flat top, we came almost suddenly upon a most wonderful and, to us, most soul-thrilling sight.

“Dense bushes of acacia thorn, spekboom, euphorbia, Hottentot cherry and other shrubs grew around, here and there relieved by wide patches of open space. The oxen, getting the breeze and scenting water, suddenly began to display a most extraordinary freshness; up went their heads, their dull eyes brightened and they trotted forward to where the brush apparently grew thickest.

“For a time they found no opening, but after following the circling wall of bush, at length a broad avenue was disclosed—an avenue doubtless worn smooth by the passage of elephants, rhinoceroses and other mighty game, in past ages—and then there fell upon our sight the most refreshing prospect that man ever gazed upon. Thirty yards down the opening there lay a great pool of water, about 200 feet across at its narrowest point, and apparently of immense depth; the pool was circular, its sides were of rock and quartz, and completely inaccessible from every approach save that by which we had reached it. It was indeed completely encompassed by precipitous walls about thirty feet in height, which defied the advent of any other living thing than a lizard or a rock-rabbit. Upon these rocky walls grew lichens of various colours—blood-red, yellow and purple, imparting a most wonderful beauty to the place. The avenue to the brink of this delicious water was of smooth rock somewhat sloping, and in the rush to drink we had the greatest difficulty in preventing the half-mad oxen from plunging or being pushed in, in which case we should have had much trouble to rescue them.

“How the poor beasts drank of that cool, pellucid flood, and how we human beings drank, too! I thought we should never have finished. The oxen drank and drank till the water literally ran out of their mouths as they at last turned away. Then I cast off my clothes and plunged into the water; it was icy cold and most invigorating, and I swam and splashed to my heart’s content. After my swim and a rest I directed my men to fill the four buckets we had brought, and then, leaving the horses in charge of one of their number, we drove the cattle, loth though they were to leave the pool, back to the waggon, going very carefully so as not to spill the water.

“At length we reached the valley, only to find our two poor foundered bullocks lying nearly dead. The distant lowing of their refreshed comrades had, I think, warned them of good news, and the very smell of the water revived them, and after two buckets apiece of the cold draught had been gulped down their kiln-dried throats, they got up, shook themselves, and rejoined their fellows.

“We rested for a short time and then inspanned and started for the upland pool. The oxen, worn and enfeebled though they were, had such a heart put into them by their drink, and seemed so well to know that their watery salvation lay up there, only a short mile distant, that they one and all bent gallantly to the yokes and dragged their heavy burden to the margin of the bush-girt water. We now outspanned for the night, made strong fires, for the spoor of leopards was abundant, stewed some bustards, ate a good supper, and turned in; when I say turned in, I should be more correct in saying I turned into my waggon, while the men wrapped themselves in their blankets or karosses, lay with their toes almost into the fire and snored in the most varied and inharmonious chorus that ears ever listened to.

“I suppose we had not been asleep two hours when I was awakened by the sharp barks and yelpings of my dogs, the kicks and scrambles of the oxen, and the shouts of the men. Snatching up my rifle and rushing out, I was just in time to see a firebrand hurled at some dark object that sped between the fires.

“‘What is it, Klaas?’ I shouted.

“‘Allemaghte! it is a tiger (leopard), sieur,’ cried the Bushman, ‘and he has clawed one of the dogs.’

“True enough, on inspecting the yelping sufferer, Rooi-kat, a brindled red dog, and one of the best of my pack, I found the poor wretch at its last gasp, with its throat and neck almost torn to ribbons. Nothing could save the unfortunate animal, the blood streamed from its open throat, and, after a convulsive kick or two, it stretched itself out and lay there dead. Cursing the sneaking, cowardly leopard, I saw that the replenished fires blazed up, and again turned in.

“It must have been about two o’clock in the morning, the coldest, the most silent, and the dreariest of the dark hours—that fatal hour betwixt night and day, when many a flickering life, unloosed by death, slips from its moorings—when I was again startled from slumber by a most blood-curdling yell. Hunters, as you know, sleep light and seem instinctively to be aware of what passes around them, even although apparently wrapped in profoundest sleep. I knew in a moment that that agonised cry came from a human throat, and headlong from my kartel I dashed. God! what a din was there again from dogs, men, and oxen, and above all, those horrid human screams. I had my loaded rifle, and rushing up to a confused crowd struggling near the firelight, I saw in a moment what had happened.

“The youngest of my servants, a mere Bechuana boy, was hard and fast in the grip of an immense leopard, which was tearing with its cruel teeth at his throat, and at the same time kicking murderously with its heavily clawed hind legs at the poor fellow’s stomach and thighs. One of the men, Klaas of course, bolder than his fellows, was lunging an assegai into the brute’s ribs, seemingly without the smallest effect, others were thrashing it with firebrands, and the dogs were vainly worrying at its head and flanks. All this I saw instantaneously. Thrusting my followers aside, I ran up to the leopard, and, putting my rifle to its ear, fired. The Express bullet did its work at once; the fiercest and most tenacious of the feline race could not refuse to yield its life with its head almost blown to atoms, and loosening its murderous hold, the brute lay dead. But too late! the poor Bechuana boy lay upon the sand wounded to the death. His right shoulder and throat were terribly ripped and mangled by the fore claws and teeth of the deadly cat; but the cruellest wounds lay lower down. The hinder claws of the leopard had absolutely torn the abdomen away; it was a shocking sight. Recovery was hopeless, and indeed, although we did what we could for the poor sufferer, he only lingered an hour insensible, then died. After his death my men told me how the thing had happened. In this solitary region the leopards and other ferae, as I have often heard, never being disturbed by gunners, are extraordinarily fierce and audacious. The leopard, a male, was evidently very hungry, as its empty stomach testified, and after once tasting blood—that of the dog—it soon got over its temporary scare. The young Bechuana lay farthest from the fire, for his elders took up the warmest positions, and the leopard had crept cat-like in upon him and got him by the throat before he knew where he was. Then came the awful shrieks I had heard, and then began the tussle for life; alas! an altogether one-sided one. My men, in the scramble, and scared, too, no doubt, forgot the guns which were in the waggon, and only Klaas had thought of his assegai. So bloodthirsty was the brute, that nothing, except my rifle, could make it relax its hold, even although it was manifestly unable to get away with its victim. After these horrors sleep was banished, and as the grey light came up we prepared for day.

“The morning broke at length in ruddiest splendour, and as the terrain was slowly unfolded before my gaze, I realised the desolate magnificence of the country. Mountains, mountains, mountains of grim sublimity rolled everywhere around. Far away below, as I looked westward, a thin silvery line, only visible for a little space, told of the great river flowing to the sea, inexorably shut in by precipitous mountain walls that guaranteed for ever its awful solitude.

“Klaas stood near, and as I gazed, he whispered, for my men were not far away: ‘Sieur, yonder, straight in front of you, five miles away, lie the diamonds. If we start directly after breakfast we shall have four hours’ hard climbing and walking to reach the valley.’

“All right, Klaas,” said I, “breakfast is nearly ready and we’ll start as soon as we have fed.” A good fire was going, the pot was already steaming, the oxen had been watered, and I myself, stripping off my clothes on the brink of that delicious pool, dived deeply into its unknown depths. After a magnificent swim in the cold and bracing water I felt transformed and ready for breakfast; but although the bathe had to some extent revived my spirits, I could not forget the sad beginning of our search—the death of poor Amazi, now, poor fellow, lying buried beneath a cairn of stones just away beyond the camp.

“Well, breakfast was soon over, and then I spoke to my men. I told them that I intended to stay at this pool for a few days, and that in the meantime I was going prospecting in the mountains bordering the river. I despatched two of them to go and hunt for mountain buck in the direction we had come from, where we had noticed plenty of rhebok, duyker and klipspringer, the others were to see that the oxen fed round about the water, where pasture was good and plentiful, and generally to look after the camp. For Klaas and myself, we should be away till dusk, perhaps even all night; but we did not wish to be followed or disturbed, and unless those at the camp heard my signal of four consecutive rifle shots they were on no account to attempt to follow up our spoor. My men by this time knew me and my ways well, and I was convinced that we should not be followed by prying eyes; indeed, the lazy Africans were only too glad of an easy day in camp after their hard journey.

“Taking some biltong (dried flesh), biscuits and a bottle of water each, and each shouldering a rifle, Klaas and I started away at seven o’clock. The little beggar, who, I suppose, in his Bushman youth had wandered baboon-like all over this wild country, till he knew it by heart, showed no sign of hesitation, but walked rapidly down hill into a deep gorge at the foot, which led half a mile or so into a huge mass of mountain that formed the north wall of the Orange River. This kloof must at some time or another have served as a conduit for mighty floods of water, for its bottom was everywhere strewn with boulders of titanic size and shape, torn from the cliff walls above. It took us a long hour of the most laborious effort to surmount these impediments, and then with torn hands and aching legs we went straight up a mountain, whose roof-like sides consisted of masses of loose shale and shingle, over which we slipped and floundered slowly and with difficulty. I say we, but I am bound to admit that the Bushman made much lighter of his task than I, his ape-like form seeming indeed much more fitted for such a slippery breakneck pastime.

“At length we reached the crest, and then, after passing through a fringe of bush and scrub, we scrambled down the thither descent, a descent of no little danger. The slipping shales that gave way at every step, often threatened, indeed, to hurl us headlong to the bottom, which we should most certainly have reached mere pulpy masses of humanity. At last this stage was ended, and we found ourselves in a very valley of desolation. Now we were almost completely entombed by narrowing mountain walls, whose dark red sides frowned upon us everywhere in horrid and overpowering silence. The sun was up, and the heat, shut in as we were, overpowering. Moreover, to make things more lively, I noticed that snakes were hereabouts more than ordinarily plentiful; the bloated puff-adder, the yellow cobra, and the dangerous little night adder several times only just getting out of our path.

“The awful silence of this sepulchral place was presently, as we rested for ten minutes, broken by a posse of baboons, who, having espied us from their krantzes above, came shoggling down to see what we were.

“They were huge brutes and savage, and quah-quahed at us threateningly till Klaas sent a bullet into them, when they retreated pell-mell. We soon started again, and pressed rapidly along a narrow gorge some fifty feet wide with perfectly level precipitous walls, apparently worn smooth at their bases by the action of terrific torrents, probably an early development of the Orange River when anciently it made its way through these grim defiles. The ground we walked upon was, I noticed, composed of sand and rounded pebbles, evidently water-worn and of various kinds. Some of them were round masses of the most beautiful transparent crystal-spar, often as large as a man’s head.

“Presently the causeway narrowed still more, and then, turning a sharp corner, we suddenly came upon a pair of leopards sauntering coolly towards us. I didn’t like the look of things at all, for a leopard at the best of times is an ugly customer, even when he knows and dreads firearms, and here, probably, the animals had never even heard the report of a gun.

“The brutes showed no intention of bolting, but stood with their backs up, their tails waving ominously and their gleaming teeth bared in fierce defiance. There was nothing for it, either we or they must retreat, and having come all this frightful trek for the diamonds I felt in no mood to back down, even to Felis pardus in his very nastiest mood. Looking to our rifles, we moved very quietly forward, until within thirty-five yards of the grim cats. They were male and female, and two as magnificent specimens of their kind as sun ever shone upon. The male had now crouched flat for his charge and not an instant was to be lost; the female stood apparently irresolute. Noticing this, and not having time to speak, we both let drive at the charging male; both shots struck, but neither stopped him. The lady, hearing the report, and apparently not liking the look of affairs, incontinently fled. With a hoarse, throaty grunt the male leopard flew across the sand, coming straight at me, and then launched himself into the air. I fired too hurriedly my second barrel, and, for a wonder, clean missed, for in those days I seldom failed in stopping dangerous game; but these beggars are like lightning once they are charging. In a moment the yellow form was flying through space, straight at my head; I sprang to one side, and Klaas, firing again, sent the leopard struggling to earth, battling frantically for life, amid sand and shingle, with a broken back. Lucky was the shot, and bravely fired, or I had probably been as good as a dead man ere this. Another cartridge soon finished off the fierce brute. We noticed on inspection that one of our first two bullets had ploughed up the leopard’s nose and glanced off the forehead; the other had entered the chest and passed almost from end to end of the body, while the third had broken the spine. Klaas soon whipped the skin off the dead leopard and hid it under some stones, and we then proceeded, the whole affair having occupied but twenty minutes.

“Another mile of this canal-like kloof brought us to an opening, and here a most singular sight lay before my vision. Hitherto we had been so shut in that the sun failed to penetrate between the narrowing cliffs, except, probably, for a short while as it passed immediately above them.

“Suddenly, as the gorge widened on either hand, a blaze of sunlight glowed and glistened on the upright walls to the left hand of us. As I looked thither, one of the most marvellous sights in nature was, in an instant, laid bare; a sight that few mortals, even in aeons upon aeons of the past, have ever gazed upon in these remote and most inaccessible regions of the Orange River. The wall of mountain on our left stood up straight before the hot sunlight a dark reddish-brown mass of rock, I suppose some five hundred feet in height, and then sloped away more smoothly to its summit, which overlooked the river, as I should judge, about a mile distant. As we came out into the sunshine, Klaas, pointing to the cliff, ejaculated, in quite an excited way, ‘De paarl! de paarl! kek, sieur, kek!’ (The pearl! the pearl! look, sir, look!) Looking upwards at the pile of rock, my eye was suddenly arrested by a gleaming mass that protruded from the dead wall of mountain. Half-dazzled, I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked again. It was a most strange and beautiful thing that I beheld, a freak of nature the most curious that I had ever set eyes on. The glittering mass was a huge egg-shaped ball of quartz, of a semi-transparent, milky hue, flashing and gleaming in the radiant sunshine, with the glorious prismatic colours that flash from the unlucky opal. But yet more strange, above the ‘paarl,’ as Klaas quaintly called it, and overhanging it, was a kind of canopy of stalactite of the same brilliant opalescent colours. It was wonderful! Klaas here began to caper and dance in the most fantastic fashion, and then, suddenly ceasing, he said, ‘Now, sieur, I will soon show you the diamonds; they are there,’ pointing to a dark corner of the glen, ‘right through the rock.’

“‘What made you call that shining stone up there “de paarl”?’ said I, as I gazed in admiration at the beautiful ball of crystal.

“‘Well, sieur, I was once with a wine Boer at the Paarl, down in the Old Colony, and a man told me why they called the mountain there “De Paarl,” and he told me, too, what the pretty gems were that I saw in the young vrouw’s best ring when she wore it; and I then knew what a paarl was and that it came from a fish that grows in the sea. And I remembered then the great shining stone that I found up here, when I was a boy, on the Groote River, and I thought to myself, “Ah! Klaas, that was the finest paarl ye ever saw, that near where the pretty white stones lay.” I mean the diamonds yonder, sieur.’

“At last, then, we were within grasp of the famous stones, concerning whose reality I had even to the last had secret misgivings. It was a startling thought. Just beyond there, somewhere through the rock-walls, whose secret approach at present Klaas only knew, lay ‘Sindbad’s Valley.’ Could it be true? Could I actually be within touch of riches unspeakable; riches, in comparison with which the wealth of Croesus seemed but a beggar’s hoard?

“I sat down on a rock and lit a pipe, just to think it over and settle my rather highly-strung nerves. The Paarl, as I could now see, was an unique formation of crystal-spar, singularly rounded upon its face. It and the glorious canopy of hanging stalactite above it must have been reft bare by some mighty convulsion that had anciently torn asunder these mountains, leaving the ravine in which we stood.

“As we drank from our water-bottles and ate some of the dried flesh and biscuits we had brought with us, I noticed Klaas’s keen little eyes wandering inquiringly round the base of the precipice in our front. He seemed puzzled, and as we finished our repast and lit our pipes again, he said, ‘The hole in the rock that leads from this kloof to the diamonds should be over there,’ pointing before him. ‘But I can’t quite make out the spot, the bushes have altered and grown so since I was here as a boy, years and years ago.’

“We got up and walked straight for the point he had indicated and reached the foot of the precipice. All along here, where the sand and soil had been swept in bygone floods, or had formed from the slow disintegration of fallen rock from above, cactus, euphorbia, aloe and brush grew thickly, and in particular the curious Euphorbia Candelabrum, with its many-branching arms, stood prominent. The Bushman hunted hither and thither in the prickly jungle with the fierce rapidity of a tiger-cat after a running guinea-fowl; but, inasmuch as he was sometimes prevented from immediately approaching the rock-wall, he appeared unable to hit off the tunnel that led, as he had formerly told me, to the valley beyond. Suddenly, after he had again disappeared, he gave a low whistle, a signal to approach to which I quickly responded. Quietly pushing my way towards him, I was astonished to see within a small clearing a thick and high thorn fence, outside of which Klaas stood. Inside this circular kraal was a low round hut, formed of boughs and branches strongly and closely interlaced Klaas was standing watching intently the interior of the hut, which seemed to be barred at its tiny entrance by a pile of thorns lying close against it.

“What could it mean, this strange dwelling, inaccessible as it seemed to human life? Klaas soon found a weak spot in the kraal-fence, and, pulling down some thorns, we stepped inside and approached the hut. Here, too, Klaas pulled away the dry acacia thorns from the entrance and was at once confronted by a tiny bow and arrow and behind that by a fierce little weazened face. Instantly, my Bushman poured forth a torrent of his own language, redundant beyond expression with those extraordinary clicks of which the Bushman tongue seems mainly to consist.

“Even as he spoke, the bow and arrow were lowered, the little head appeared through the entrance, and the tiniest, quaintest, most ancient figure of a man I had ever beheld stood before us. Ancient, did I say? Ancient is hardly a meet description of his aspect. As he stood there, blinking like an owl in the fierce sunlight, his only covering a little skin kaross of the red-rhebok, fastened over his shoulders, standing not more than three feet eight or ten inches in height, he looked indeed coeval with the rocks around him. I never saw anything like it. Poor little oddity! Dim though his eyes were waxing, feeble though his shrivelled arms, dulled though his formerly acute senses, he had, with all the desperate pluck of his race, been prepared to do battle for his hearth and home.

“In his own tongue, Klaas interrogated this antediluvian Bushman, and then, suddenly, as he was answered by the word ‘Ariseep’ a light flashed across his countenance. Seizing his aged countryman by the shoulders, he turned him round and carefully examined his back. Lifting the skin kaross and rubbing away the coating of grease and dirt that covered the right shoulder, Klaas pointed to two round white scars just below the blade-bone, several inches apart; then he gave a leap into the air, seized the old fossil by the neck and shrieked into his ears the most wonderful torrent of Bushman language I have ever heard. In his turn the old man started back, scanned Klaas intently from head to foot, and in a thin pipe, jabbered at him almost as volubly.

“Finally, Klaas enlightened me as to this comical interlude. It seemed incredible; this old man, Ariseep by name, was his grandfather, whom he had not set eyes on since, long years before, the Boer commando had broken into his tribal fastness, slain his father, mother and other relatives and carried himself off captive. The old man before us had somehow escaped in the fight, had crept away, and, after years of solitary hiding in the mountains around, had finally penetrated to this grim and desolate valley, where he had subsisted on Bushman fare. Snakes, lizards, roots, gum, bulbs, fruit and an occasional snared buck or rock-rabbit; these, and a little rill of water that gushed from the mountain-side hard by, supplied him with existence. Here he had lingered for many years, alone and isolated. His only fear had been, as he grew older and feebler, the leopards infesting the neighbouring mountain. Against their attacks had he built the strong thorned fence, carefully closed at night, and the door of thorns which he wedged tightly into the entrance way.

“A strange meeting indeed it was, but after all not stranger than many things that happen in the busy world. So far as I could learn from Klaas, who himself was between forty and fifty, the ancient figure before us was laden with the burden of more than ninety years. Think of it! ninety summers of parched Bushmanland, of burning Orange River mountains; ninety seasons of hunger and thirst and dire privations; great part of the earlier period varied by raids on the flocks of the Boers and battles for existence with the wild beasts of the land!

“After nearly an hour’s incessant chatter, during which I believe Klaas had laid before his monkeylike ancestor an epitomised history of his life, he told the old man we wished to get through the mountain and that he had lost the tunnel of which he had known as a boy.

“Ariseep, who it seems, in the years he had been there, had explored every nook and cranny of the valley, knew at once what he meant, and quickly pointed out to us, not a hundred paces away, a dense and prickly mass of cactus and euphorbia bush; here, after half an hour’s hewing and slashing with our hunting knives, we managed to open a pathway, and at last a cave-like opening in the mountain, about seven feet in diameter, lay before us. Grandfather Ariseep, questioned as to the tunnel, said that, upon first discovering it, which he had done quite by accident while hunting rock-rabbits, he had once been through, years before, but, as he had found the passage long and dangerous, and the valley beyond appeared to him less interesting than his present abiding place, he had never repeated the journey. However, he gave us warning that snakes abounded and might not impossibly be encountered in the twenty minutes’ crawl, which, as Klaas had told me, it would take to get through.

“This opinion, translated by Klaas, was not of a nature to fortify me in the undertaking, yet, rather than leave the diamonds unexplored, I felt prepared to brave the terrors of this uncanny passage.

“It was now three o’clock; the sun was marching steadily across the brassy firmament on his westward trek and we had no time to lose.

“‘In you go, Klaas,’ said I, and, nothing loth, Klaas dived into the bowels of the mountain, I at his heels. For five minutes, by dint of stooping and an occasional hands-and-knees creep upon the flooring of the tunnel, sometimes on smooth sand, sometimes over protruding rock and rough gravel, we got along very comfortably. Then the roof of the dark avenue—for it was pitch dark now—suddenly lowered, and we had to crawl along, especially I, as being taller and bulkier than Klaas, like serpents, upon our bellies. It was unpleasant, deuced unpleasant, I can tell you, boxed up like this beneath the heart of the mountain. The very thought seemed to make the oppression a million times more oppressive. It seemed that the frightful pile of rock, towering far above us, was bodily descending to crush us into a horrible and hidden tomb. The thought of lying here, squeezed down till Judgment Day, was appalling; or, perhaps, more mercifully one’s bones might, ages hereafter, be discovered as these regions became settled up, in much the same state in which mummified cats are occasionally found in old chimneys and hidden closets when ancient dwellings are pulled down in England. Even Klaas, plucky Bushman though he was, didn’t seem to relish the adventure and spoke in a subdued and awe-stricken whisper. Sometimes since, as I have thought of that most gruesome passage, I have burst into a sweat nearly as profuse, though not so painful, as I endured that day. At last, after what seemed to me hours upon hours of this painful crawling and Egyptian gloom, we met a breath of fresher air; the tunnel widened and heightened, and in another five minutes we emerged into the blessed sunlight. Little Klaas looked pretty well ‘baked,’ even in his old leather ‘crackers’ and flannel shirt; as for myself, I was literally streaming, every thread on me was as wet as if I had plunged into a river. We lay panting for awhile upon the scorching rocks, and then sat up and looked about us.

“If the Paarl Kloof, as Klaas called it, from whence we had just come, had been sufficiently striking, the mighty amphitheatre in which we lay was infinitely more amazing. Imagine a vast arena, almost completely circular in shape, flat and smooth, and composed as to its flooring of intermingled sand and gravel, reddish-yellow in colour. This arena was surrounded by stupendous walls of the same ruddy brown rock we had noticed in Paarl Kloof, which here towered to a height of close on a thousand feet. An inspection of these cliffs, which sheered inwards from top to bottom, revealed the fact previously imparted to me by Klaas, that no living being could ever penetrate hither save by the tunnel passage through which we had come. The amphitheatre, which here and there bore upon its surface a thin and scattered covering of bush and undergrowth, seemed everywhere about half-a-mile across from wall to wall. In the centre of the red cliffs, blazing forth in splendour, ran a broad band of the most glorious opalescent rock-crystal, which flashed out its glorious rays of coloured light as if to meet the fiery kisses of the sun. This flaming girdle of crystal, more beautiful a thousand times than the most gorgeous opal, the sheen of a fresh-caught mackerel, or the most radiant mother-of-pearl, I can only compare in splendour to the flashing rainbows formed over the foaming falls of the Zambesi, which I have seen more than once. It ran horizontally and very evenly round at least two-thirds of the cliff-belt that encircled us. It was a wonderful and amazing spectacle, and I think quite the most singular of the many strange things (and they are not few) I have seen in the African interior.

“Well, we sat gazing at this crystal rainbow for many minutes, till I had somewhat feasted my enraptured gaze; then we got up and at once began the search for diamonds. Directly I saw the gravel, especially where it had been cleansed in the shallow spruits and dongas by the action of rain and flood, I knew at once we should find ‘stones’; it resembled almost exactly the gravel found in the Vaal River diggings, and was here and there strongly ferruginous, mingled with red sand and occasionally lime.

“I noticed quickly that agates, jaspers and chalcedony were distributed pretty thickly, and that occasionally the curious banddoom stone, so often found in the Vaal River with diamonds, and, indeed, often considered by diggers as a sure indicator of ‘stones’ was to be met with. In many places the pebbles were washed perfectly clean and lay thickly piled in hollow water-ways; here we speedily found a rich harvest of the precious gems. In a feverish search of an hour and a half, Klaas and I picked up twenty-three fine stones, ranging in size from a small pigeon’s egg to a third of the size of my little finger nail. They were all fine diamonds, some few, it is true, yellow or straw-coloured, others of purest water, as I afterwards learned, and we had no difficulty in finding them, although we wandered over not a twentieth part of the valley. I could see at once from this off-hand search that enormous wealth lay spread here upon the surface of the earth; beneath probably was contained fabulous wealth. I was puzzled at the time, and I have never had inclination or opportunity to solve the mystery since, to account for the presence of diamonds in such profusion. Whether they were swept into the valley by early floodings of the Orange River through some aperture that existed formerly, but had been closed by volcanic action, or whether, as I am inclined to think, the whole amphitheatre is a vast upheaval from subterraneous fires of a bygone period, is to this hour an unfathomed secret. I rather incline to the latter theory, and believe that, like the Kimberley ‘pipe,’ as diggers call it, the diamondiferous earth had been shot upwards funnel-wise from below, and that ages of floods and rain-washing had cleansed and left bare the gravel and stones upon the surface.

“From the search we had had, I made no doubt that a fortnight’s careful hunting in this valley would make me a millionaire, or something very like it. At length I was satisfied, and as the westering sun was fast stooping to his couch, with a light heart and elastic step I turned with Klaas to depart. The excitement of the ‘find’ had quite banished the remembrance of that awful tunnel passage so recently encountered.

“‘We’ll go back now, Klaas,’ said I, ‘sleep in your grandfather’s kraal, and get to the waggon first thing in the morning; then I shall arrange to return and camp a fortnight in Paarl Kloof, leaving the waggon at the pool. In that time we shall be able to pick up diamonds enough to enrich ourselves and all belonging to us for generations. I don’t mind then who discovers the valley; they can make another Kimberley of it if they choose, for aught I care.’

“At half-past five we again entered the tunnel. It was a nasty business when one thought of it again, but it would soon be over. As it flashed across my brain, I thought at the moment that two such journeys a day for six or seven days would be quite as much as even the greediest diamond lover could stomach. As before, Klaas went first, and for half the distance all went well. Suddenly, as we came to a sandy part of the tunnel, there was a scuffle in front, a fierce exclamation in Bushman language, and then Klaas called out in a hoarse voice, ‘Allemaghte, sieur, een slang het mij gebissen!’” (Almighty, sir, a snake has bitten me!)

“Heavens, what a situation! Cooped up in this frightful burrow, face to face with probably a deadly snake, which had already bitten my companion! Almost immediately Klaas’s voice came back to me in a hoarse guttural whisper, ‘I have him by the neck, sieur; it is a puff-adder and his teeth are sticking into my shoulder. If you will creep up and lay hold of his tail, which is your side of me, we can settle him, but I can’t get his teeth out without your help.’ As you will remember, the puff-adder’s striking fangs are very curved and are often difficult to disengage once it has made its strike. Poor Klaas! I felt certain his days must be numbered, but there was nothing for it; I must help him.

“Crawling forwards and feeling my way with fright-benumbed fingers, I touched Klaas’s leg. Then softly moving my left hand I was suddenly smitten by a horrible writhing tail. I seized it with both hands, and finally gripped the horrid reptile (which I felt to be swollen with rage, as is the brute’s habit) in an iron grasp with both hands. Then I felt, in the black darkness, Klaas take a fresh grip of the loathsome creature’s neck, and with an effort, disengage the deadly fangs from his shoulder. Immediately I felt him draw his knife, and after a struggle, sever the serpent’s head from its body. The head he pushed away to the right, as far out of our course as possible, and then I dragged the writhing body from him, and, shuddering, cast it behind me as far as possible.

“At that moment I thought that, for the first time in my life, I must have swooned. But, luckily, I bethought me of poor faithful Klaas, sore stricken, and I called to him in as cheerful a voice as I could muster, ‘Get forward, Klaas, for your life, as hard as you can, and, please God, we’ll pull you through.’

“Never had I admired the Bushman’s fierce courage more than now. Most men would have sunk upon the sand and given up life and hope. Not so this aboriginal. ‘Ja, sieur, I will loup,’ was all he said.

“Then we scrambled onward, occasionally halting as the deadly sickness overtook Klaas; but all the while I pushed him forwards and urged him with my voice. At last the light came, and as my poor Bushman grew feebler and more slow, I found room to pass him and so dragged him behind me to the opening into Paarl Kloof. Here I propped him for a moment on the sand outside, with his back to the mountain, and loudly called ‘Ariseep,’ while I got breath for a moment.

“The sun was sinking in blood-red splendour behind the mountains, and the kloof and rock-walls were literally aglow with the parting blush of day. Nature looked calm and serenely beautiful and hushed in a splendour that ill-accorded with the agitating scene there at the mouth of the tunnel. All this flashed across me as I called for the old man. I looked anxiously at Klaas and examined his wound; there were two deep punctures in the left shoulder, and from his having had to use some degree of force to drag off the reptile, the orifices were more torn than is usual in cases of snake-bite. Klaas was now breathing heavily and getting dull and stupefied I took him in my arms and carried him to Ariseep’s kraal, whence the old man was just emerging. At sight of his grandfather, Klaas rallied and rapidly told him what had happened, and the old man at once plunged into his hut for something.

“Then Klaas’s eyelids drooped and he became drowsy, almost senseless. In vain I roused him and tried to make him walk and so stay the baleful effects of the poison now running riot in his blood; he was too far gone. Ariseep now re-appeared with a small skin bag, out of which he took some dirty-looking powder. With an old knife he scored the skin and flesh around Klaas’s wound and then rubbed in the powder. I had no brandy or ammonia to administer, and therefore let the old Bushman pursue his remedy, though I felt, somehow, it would be useless. So it proved; either the antidote, with which I believe Bushmen often do effect wonderful cures, was stale and inefficacious, or the poison had obtained too strong a hold. My poor Klaas never became conscious again, though I fancied eagerly that he recognised me before he died, for his lips moved as he turned to me once. His pulse sank and sank, his face became dull and ashen, his eyelids quivered a little, his breath came hard and laboured, and at last, within an hour and a half from the time he was bitten, he lay dead.

“So perished my faithful and devoted henchman; the stoutest, truest, bravest soul that ever African sun shone upon. I cannot express to you the true and unutterable grief I felt, as, with old Ariseep, I buried poor Klaas when the moon rose that night. We placed him gently in a deep sandy spruit, and over the sand piled heavy stones to keep the vermin from him.

“Then, laying myself within Ariseep’s kraal, I waited for the slothful dawn. As it came, I rose, called Ariseep from his hut, and bade farewell to him as best I could, for we neither of us understood one another. I noticed, by-the-bye, that no sign of grief seemed to trouble the old man. Probably he was too aged, and had seen too much death to think much about the matter.

“The rest of my story is soon finished. I made my way back to camp, told my men what had happened, and indeed took some of them back with me to Klaas’s grave and made them exhume the body to satisfy themselves of the cause of death—for these men are sometimes very suspicious—then we covered him again securely against wandering beasts and birds.

“I trekked back to the Old Colony, sold off my things and came home. The diamonds I had brought away realised in England 22,000 pounds. I have never dreamt of going to the fatal valley again; nothing on earth would tempt me after that ill-starred journey, heavy with the fate of Klaas and the Bechuana boy, Amazi. As for the tunnel, I would not venture once more into its recesses for all the diamonds in Africa, even if they lay piled in heaps at the other end of it. Except old Ariseep, Klaas had no relation that I knew of, and it was useless to think of spending the diamond-money in that quarter. The old fellow had, so far as I could make him understand me, utterly refused to accompany me from the kloof, where he evidently meant to end his days; even if he had come, what could I have done for him? At his time of life, and with his peculiar habits, he could hardly have begun the world again, even if I had brought him home, bought him a country house, taken rooms in Piccadilly, dressed him in the height of fashion and launched him upon society.

“Therefore I left him as I found him. Klaas I have never ceased to mourn from that day to this. Part of the 22,000 pounds I invested for some relatives, the balance that I kept suffices, with what I already possessed, for all possible wants of my own. Then I came back to my dearly-loved South Africa for the last time, and a few weeks later made the journey to the Chobi River, from which you rescued me in the thirstland.”

Such was the story related to us by the transport rider, in a clear and singularly graphic manner, to which these pages do scant justice. Our narrator wound up by telling us that Mowbray had further imparted to him the exact locality of the diamond valley, but, he added, “I have never yet been there, nor do I think that, for the present, it is likely I shall go. Some day before I leave the Cape I may have a try and trek down the Orange River; but I don’t feel very keen about that secret passage, after poor Mowbray’s experiences.”

We had sat wrapt listeners for some hours of that soft, calm, African night. The glorious stars looked out from above us in their deep blue dome; the Southern Cross shone in serene effulgence, as if, too, its sparkling gems claimed an interest in the legend of the lost diamonds. It was now two o’clock, and the camp fire of the transport riders burned low; just one more soupje we had with our friendly entertainers, and then, with hearty expressions of thanks and good-will, rose to seek our beds. That night, before falling asleep, I pondered long upon the strange narrative we had heard. Often since have I done so. Often, too, have I thought of the lone grave of the English hunter, Mowbray, far out upon the verge of that dim and mysterious desert, the Kalahari.

Chapter Two.
The Story of a Tusk.

It was a fine spring morning in the City: even in the great dingy warehouse, where Cecil Kensley was engaged in cataloguing a vast store of ivory in preparation for the periodical sales, the sun beamed pleasantly. It lit up the dark corners of the building, and played everywhere upon hundreds of smooth, rounded elephants’ teeth, varying in colour from a rich creamy yellow to darkest brown—from the gleaming tusk, fresh chopped within the last year from the head of a young bull, to the huge, dark, discoloured, almost black-skinned tooth, that for a hundred years had lain unnoticed in some mud swamp, or for generations had decorated the grave or kraal-fence of some native chief. There they lay, those precious pillars of ivory—solid scrivelloes, Egyptian soft teeth, Ambriz hard irregulars, billiard and bagatelle scrivelloes, bangle teeth, Siam, Niger, Abyssinian, Bombay, West Coast, Cape, and all the rest of them—upon which the world sets so great a store, and for which mankind is so rapidly exterminating a species.

Those wonderful teeth, dumb memorials, so many of them, of dark tales of blood and suffering, of slave raids, plundered villages, murders, floggings, terrible journeys to the coast, unutterable scenes of horror and woe—what histories could they not unfold? But the tusks lay there, hugging their grim secrets, silent and mute enough.

Cecil Kensley, the person cataloguing these treasures of ivory in a purely matter-of-fact way, was a good-looking, fair-bearded man of thirty, partner in a wealthy firm, a bachelor, somewhat of a man of pleasure out of office hours, but in business smart, shrewd and hard-working. The cataloguing of such an accumulation of ivory as that great warehouse held was a lengthy business; and all day, until four o’clock, Kensley was engaged, with the help of the warehousemen, sorting, turning over and writing down. Before taking a short rest for luncheon, his eye fell upon one magnificent tusk—long, perfectly shaped and balanced, massive, highly polished, and, in colour, of the richest chrome yellow. It lay somewhat apart, and appeared to have no fellow; a careful inspection of the rest of the warehouse, and a single glance at that peerless tooth, showed that, even out of all that vast collection, no possible match for it could be found.

Kensley had been working all the morning at the far end of the warehouse; he now stood by the tusk which had so taken his eye.

“Hallo, Thomas!” he said, interrogating the man who stood by him, “what have you got here? What a grand tooth! Where’s the fellow to it? Is it an odd one?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the man, “it’s an odd tooth, and a rare beauty. It’s years since I saw the like of it. It’s a grand tusk, as you say: I ran the measure over it, and it went 9 feet 2 inches, and it weighs just on 170 lb. It’s as nigh perfect as can be, but there’s just one little bit of a flaw down there by the base—an old wound, or something of the kind. There’s a sight of good ivory in that tooth, and it must be as old as the hills a’most.”

Kensley had seen, in the fourteen years of his experience, thousands of fine teeth; yet, connoisseur though he was, he thought, as his eye ran lovingly over that magnificent nine feet of ivory, splendid in colour, curve and solidity, that he had never seen such another. He stooped to look at the flaw the man spoke of. Within a foot of the darker portion at the base, just beyond where the ivory had manifestly emerged from the flesh of the gum, there appeared a curious fault in the graining of the tooth, elsewhere perfect. The growth had been disturbed by some foreign substance, and the graining, instead of being as regular and even as a pattern woven by machinery, swept in irregular curves round the centre of the flaw.

Kensley rose to his feet again. “It’s not much of a fault,” he said, “and the tooth’s a real beauty. I’ve been meaning this long time past to have such a tusk at my rooms, to decorate a corner or hang upon the wall. I think I’ll take that fellow, Thomas, and pay for it; it will be a long time before I come across a better. See that it goes up to my flat to-morrow, will you, and take care how it’s carried. I don’t want it spoiled.”

“All right, sir,” replied the man, “I’ll see to it myself. I’ll give it a bit of a clean up and take it up for you to-morrow morning.”

Two evenings after this conversation, Cecil Kensley left the office and walked, as was often his custom, steadily westward. He made his way by the Embankment and Pall Mall, then up Saint James’s Street, and so to Mount Street, where his dwelling was situated. Arrived at Mount Street, he let himself into his flat. It was a pleasant set of rooms on the first floor, furnished in very excellent taste with most luxuries that the cultivated male mind can suggest. In one corner, leaning against the wall, stood the ivory tusk, which, now cleaned and polished, formed, if an unwonted, a very noble ornament to the chamber. Kensley’s eye rested on it with pleasure; he went to the corner and carefully examined his new possession. It was now six o’clock; the cold spring evening was closing in and the light fading. At eight o’clock three friends were dining with Kensley, preliminary to a night of cards. Having drunk some tea, which his man brought in for him, and lighted a cigarette, Kensley drew his comfortable armchair towards the pleasant firelight and smoked contentedly. He had been late for several nights past—he was never a very early man—and now, having cast away the end of his cigarette, he lay back in his chair and blinked drowsily at the red glow of the firelight. In ten minutes he was fast asleep and dreaming. Now, although Cecil Kensley sometimes dozed for half an hour or an hour before dinner in this way, it was seldom that he dreamed. His dreams this evening were fantastic and most strange—so strange that they are worth recording. Here is what he saw:—

In an open clearing among pleasant African hills, covered for the most part with bush and low forest, lies a collection of huts, circular and thatched, as are all native huts. Just above them, on rising ground, and surrounded by a strong stockade, stands a larger and more important dwelling, oblong in shape, its interior screened from the fierce sun by a low veranda, and thatched, as to its roof, with grass in the native fashion. It is a hot morning in the glowing tropical summer—the season of rains—vegetation and flowers are everywhere in their freshest verdure and beauty. Fleecy clouds lie at this early hour of morning upon the face of the eastern sky, and hang in a long line midway upon the sides of a high mountain some miles distant. Seated just outside the stockaded inclosure is a European, clad in the broad-brimmed hat, doublet, loose breeches, and buff riding boots of a bygone time. Somehow the face of this European, with its sallow cast, peaked beard, and fierce moustaches, is strangely familiar to the eye and brain of the dreamer, though he cannot in his sleep exactly recall how. Round about the Portuguese, for he is of that race, are half a dozen soldiers of his country, in buff coats and steel caps, bearing in their hands antique pieces—snaphaunces. Squatting in front are thirteen or fourteen naked Africans, waiting the white man’s will.

“Well,” speaks the commander, for such he is, “is the gold all here? Stand forward, Kanyata.”

A native steps out from his fellows, and hands the commander a quill of gold—gold dust and tiny nuggets—the fruit of a week’s hard toil and labour of himself and his family. Each native in turn stands forward with his precious store, and tremblingly hands it to the fierce, sour-looking white man. In his turn a young man sullenly comes out of the rank, and hands in his quill. There is a very dangerous look in the commander’s eye as he takes the quill, holds it out and surveys it. “So,” he interrogates, “that is your week’s work, Zingesi?”

The young man answers in a hopeless, yet half defiant way: “My lord, I have toiled for seven days in the river sands, and all that I have gained I bring to you. You took from me my wife; if it had been otherwise, the quill might have been full. I have no one to help me. I can do no more.”

“Thou dog!” snaps out the commander, with a look of black passion, “I told thee seven days agone that thou mightest take the wall-eyed maid to wife, to help thee. Why hast thou neglected my warning?”

“Oh! my lord,” replies the native, “I like not Mokela, the wall-eyed maid, and I will not take her to wife,”—then, passionately, “Where is my own wife? There, in thy vile hut, thou thief and robber! Do thy worst: I will find no more gold for thee.”

“Away with him!” roars the commander, now in a fury of passion, to his soldiers; “tie him up and give him two hundred lashes.”

The soldiers seize the unfortunate, take him to a tree hard by, and tie him up. But now, before a stroke is given, an old native, somewhat fantastically adorned, who has been standing among the villagers at a little distance, comes forward and salutes the officer.

“Great chief of the Bazunga (Portuguese),” he says, “spare, I pray thee, Zingesi. He is my only son, and the punishment is great. Let him work for thee for another week. Perchance he has been bewitched. I will brew him strong medicine, and he shall bring thee more gold.”

“Out with thee, Mosusa, thou evil-minded witch-doctor!” cries the commander. “’Tis too late. Thou shouldst have used thine arts with Zingesi before. Begone, or they shall serve thee as they serve Zingesi!”

With a hopeless yet terrible gesture, Mosusa quits the crowd, and retires to his hut on the village outskirts. Meanwhile, Zingesi being tied up, two Portuguese soldiers, casting off their buff coats, and tucking up their sleeves, take each in hand a cruel whip of hippopotamus hide, and begin their task. They flog by strokes of fifty; each, in presence of that grim taskmaster, laying on the blows with all his strength. With the first ten cuts the blood spouts freely from the unfortunate native, whose cries and groans might surely touch the hardest heart. But there is no mercy. Zingesi’s back at the hundredth stroke is a mass of raw and bleeding flesh; his face has assumed an ashy pallor. At a hundred and fifty his head falls over upon his shoulder, he swoons, and can feel no more. The man wielding the whip halts for an instant, looks at the commander, and says, “Shall I go on, Captain?”

“Go on, of course, and be damned to you, till he has had the full two hundred,” answers the captain venomously, as he rises from his chair and goes into his hut again.

The horrible task proceeds, and the soldiers, not daring to slacken their blows, complete the two hundred strokes. By that time Zingesi, his frame already weakened by recent fever, is beyond the reach of further ills. His body, unloosed from the tree, falls limply upon the hands of the soldiers, and is laid upon the shamed earth. Life has clean fled from that poor mangled piece of flesh and blood.

It is night. The short African twilight has vanished; the moon has not yet arisen. Far away in the depths of the forest there crouches over a fire of wood Mosusa, the old witch-doctor, father of the dead Zingesi. His face, lit up by the red flames, has lost the sullen misery of the morning. His eyes glare with the intensity of a fierce passion, the sweat drips from his brow, every muscle of his body quivers. He rises, paces slowly round the fire, keeping always within the limit of a circle which he has traced in the sand, uttering as he passes a low monotonous chant. Now and again he casts into the fire the skins of snakes and lizards, bones, the dried livers and hearts of certain animals, poisonous bulbs and herbs, and other paraphernalia of the native wizard. Anon he pauses in his chant, listens, and gazes intently into the gloom of the forest. On one side of the fire lies coiled up a huge serpent, a python, whose cold glittering eye watches intently Mosusa’s every movement. Mosusa approaches the great snake, and says, “Will he come, think you, O my friend? The forest is wide, and the great one wandered far this morning.” The serpent lifts its flat head, darts out its long forked tongue, and rubs its nose caressingly against Mosusa’s leg; then, swiftly uncoiling, it glides to the other side of the fire and lies with its head pointing to the forest. Mosusa goes and stands by its side. Presently a rumbling noise is heard; nearer and louder it comes, and then from the pall of the forest there looms within reach of the firelight a huge dark form—the form of an immense bull elephant. The great creature, bulking there dark and mysterious within the ring of firelight, bears but one tusk, long, thick and even; its head moves very slowly up and down; its outstretched trunk gently quivers as it tests every air of the night; and its small sunken eye, fixed keenly upon Mosusa, indicates expectation.

“O great one,” says Mosusa, saluting with upstretched right hand, “lord of the forest, wisest of the creatures, thou hast come at my summons. Hear me! Thou and I were born long ago upon the same night, in the same country. Long have we known one another, long have been friends—since the day when thy mother was slain by the spears of Monomotapa, and thou and I grew up together as children within the kraal of the king. But now I wax old, and near my end, while thou art in thy prime, still young and lusty, and like to live an old man’s lifetime and more. And before I leave this earth for the land of shadows one thing I have to ask of thee. Thou rememberest, long, long years ago, how I whispered to thee, when thy tusk was budding and thy captivity grew dangerous to thyself, that now was the time to seek the forest and escape. And thou wilt remember how in thy first youth, when Monomotapa, king of the tribes, had his first hunt for ivory, and slew fifty of thy kindred within the ring of fire, I warned thee the night before by the great serpent, grandfather of Tari here, and thou fleddest away and saved thyself! To-morrow, O great one, I want thine aid. The captain of the Bazunga goes forth to hunt in the forest. This day he has slain my son. To-morrow be thou within the forest, and when he comes slay me this evil man, the cruel persecutor of thy race and mine. No harm shall come to thee. So shall we be quits, and in the land of shadows I shall remember thee and joyfully await thy coming!”

The elephant moves silently a pace or two forward, just touches Mosusa delicately upon the shoulder with its trunk-tip, then turns and disappears again into the darkness.

Again the scene shifts before the mind’s eye of the dreamer; the witch-doctor and his firelight fade out, and broad daylight once more streams upon the African forest. The Portuguese captain is marching through the wilderness in search of elephants. In front of him are two trackers, who walk swiftly upon the spoor of a troop of the great tusk bearers. Not far in the rear, mingling with other hunters, is Mosusa, whose dark countenance wears this morning a very singular expression.

Presently, after passing some low hills, the white man posts himself in some thick cover in a shallow gorge commanding a broad, worn path. The bulk of the native hunters are sent far in front in a wide semicircle, to drive in elephants towards the ambush. There is a long interval, and then, crashing through the bush, appear at a slow trot the forms of five cow elephants. At the nearest of these the commander discharges his piece. The great creature, sore stricken, charges this way and that; at length, bristling with fifty spears, spouting the red blood from her trunk, and struck by other bullets from the white man’s snaphaunce, she falls heavily to earth. But while the party are gathered round the fallen beast, and the natives busy themselves in extricating their spears from the carcase, a sudden noise is heard behind. There, trumpeting hideously, comes a mighty single-tusked elephant—Mosusa’s elephant of the last night. The black men, naked and disencumbered, fly, all of them save one, far down the gorge, and scatter into the forest beyond. The white man, truth to tell, is bold and brave enough. Trusting to his heavy piece and his own pluck, he stands his ground. It is late indeed to fly, encumbered as he is with weapon and European clothing. As the grim monster charges down upon him, he steadily raises his snaphaunce and fires. But, just as he pulls trigger, Mosusa, standing behind his shoulder, jerks his right arm, the bullet flies wide of its intended mark, and strikes the elephant at the base of the great solitary tusk, just where the ivory is sheathed in the flesh. Mosusa leaps aside, there is a wild curse in Portuguese; in the same instant the savage scream of the enraged elephant thrills upon the hot morning air, the white man is flung to earth, and the great gleaming tusk drives deep through his body. Zingesi is avenged. The elephant withdraws his tusk, kneels upon the yet living man, and crushes the last remnants of humanity into a hideous, shapeless mass.

All this Mosusa has witnessed with bright eyes and the fiercest satisfaction. And now, raising his right hand, again he salutes the monstrous beast and speaks. “O thou great one, mighty chief, lord of the forest, I thank thee for what thou hast done. My time grows short: I die quickly. But thou, O my friend, live thou, live to slay the accursed white men, who pursue thy kindred and bring death and worse than death into this land of thine and mine.” As he runs on, Mosusa’s voice seems as the voice of one possessed; his eyes are fixed and open, as though gazing far into futurity. “And when thine appointed time comes,” he goes on, still addressing the mighty beast before him, “let thy tusk carry with it yet more of death and evil to the white man. There is blood now upon it: let blood be with it in its passage through the years to come, until it shall once more mingle with the earth again. And now, great one, one thing more has to be done. Let my blood mingle here with the white man’s: slay me, O my friend, and all shall be finished.”

But the elephant stands there in front of the frenzied African, its little eyes fixed upon his eyes, its body swaying ever so slightly from side to side, its trunk held out as if inquiring.

“I see what thou requirest, O great one,” cries Mosusa. “Thy blood too must flow, and at my hands!”

Suddenly he raises his spear, plunges it into the creature’s trunk, and as suddenly withdraws it. The beast screams with pain, the blood gushes forth from the spear-thrust, and in a moment, with a blow of the wounded member, the elephant has beaten the old native to the ground. In the next moment the re-infuriated beast kneels quickly upon Mosusa and crushes the life from his frame, as it had crushed the white man’s. The two bodies lie there together, misshapen, mangled, yet still warm. And now the elephant, having completed his work, turns slowly away and plunges into the jungle.

The scene had again faded from the dreamer’s eyes; yet its memory lingered clear, as Cecil Kensley awoke cold and shivering from his sleep. The fire burned low, the room was in darkness.

“Gad! what a curious dream!” he said to himself, as he rose stiffly from his lounge chair. “I never felt so cold in my life.” By the dim low firelight he made his way to a corner of the room, touched a button and switched on the electric light. The room in an instant assumed its normally bright and cheerful aspect. First putting some coals upon the fire, Kensley went to the sideboard, poured himself out a liqueur glass of brandy, and drank it down. “That’s better,” he said to himself. “I must have slept a deuce of a time. Can’t think why I got so cold.” He turned and looked at the clock. “Half-past seven, by Jove! I must dress sharp: these fellows will be here directly.”

First opening a door into an adjoining room, where he saw the dinner-table already prepared, he went to his bedroom and quickly dressed. He returned just in time to welcome his friends, who arrived almost simultaneously.

Of the three guests, two were Englishmen—average types of their race; the other a dark, good-looking foreigner, of engaging manners. Barreto, as they called him, spoke excellent English, and seemed to have a perfect knowledge of all topics—mainly pertaining to racing, matters theatrical, and cards—which came uppermost in the course of the evening. During the five minutes before dinner was announced one of the visitors caught sight of the tusk standing in the corner of the room.

“Hallo, Kensley!” he said, “what’s this? Something new, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” returned his host; “it’s a big tooth I came across in the warehouse lately. On the whole, it’s about the finest bit of ivory I ever saw; and so, as such specimens grow scarcer every year, I collared it. Makes a nice ornament, doesn’t it?”

“Magnificent!” rejoined Barreto, who had meanwhile approached, and was intently examining the tusk. “I’ve seen a good many tusks in my time, but I have never seen the fellow of this.”

“Why, where did you pick up your knowledge of ivory, Barreto?” asked Kensley. “I knew you were up to most things, but I didn’t know that you were a judge of elephants’ teeth.”

“Well, you see,” returned Barreto, “my family have had to do with Africa for between two and three hundred years. Several of them have left their bones there. I served as a lieutenant with the Portuguese troops in Mozambique when I was a youngster. After that I came home what you call invalidish—no, invalided—with fever; and, as I didn’t intend Africa to have my bones, I left the army and went into diplomacy.”

“I see!” replied Kensley. “Well, that tusk,” patting the great tooth affectionately, “must have been once something of a neighbour of yours. It came from behind Mozambique or Sofala. The elephant that carried it has, I take it, been dead many a long year. From the look of the ivory, and the way it’s been preserved, I should imagine that tooth has lain in some chief’s hut for best part of a century. Possibly it has been some cherished fetish. It could tell some tall stories, I’ll bet, if it could speak. But come along, you fellows: here’s dinner at last.”

The four men strolled into the pleasant ruby-lighted dining-room, sat themselves at the sparkling table, and for an hour devoted themselves heartily to excellent viands and wine, and to the exchange of much merry conversation.

At a quarter to ten, after some lingering over cigars and coffee, the party returned to the drawing-room, where card tables were laid. Two other men came in, and “poker” was started. The fortunes of the game waxed and waned, as they will do; but somehow, half-hour after half-hour, the luck ran dead against Barreto. It was easy to see that the Portuguese was a skilful and a smart player, yet, do what he would, bluff boldly or lie low, he steadily lost.

“Hullo, Barreto!” said one of the men to him, in a short pause for whiskies-and-soda, “what’s up with you? You couldn’t go wrong last week. To-night your luck’s dead out.”

“Yes,” replied the Portuguese, who throughout the play had retained his equanimity, and lost with a good grace, “there’s something mysterious in the air to-night. I have felt a great depression ever since I came into this room. I can’t tell you why. I felt better at dinner, but back here again I’m wrapped in a wet blanket. A change of weather coming, I suppose. A man who’s had African fever can generally foretell it.”

The play went on for another half-hour, by which time, as the clock chimed the quarter-past one, Barreto had lost between 30 and 40 pounds. Kensley’s English guests now rose to go, laughingly promising Barreto and their host, who also had lost some 20 pounds, their revenge on a future occasion. After a parting libation, the two men lighted cigar and cigarette, and left the flat, Kensley turned to Barreto. “Feel like an hour’s écarté?” he interrogated.

“By all means,” answered the Portuguese, with a pleasant smile.

Kensley brought out fresh cards, and the two sat down facing one another, the table between. It seemed at écarté that Barreto could not lose. The stakes were heavy, and Kensley’s deficit began to mount up ominously. He was a practised player, and well used to the ups and downs of card luck; yet, easy as was his manner, a looker-on might have noticed a grimmer and graver look deepening about the lines of his mouth.

Suddenly Kensley sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing, his face flushed with anger.

“You damned cheat!” he gasped, throwing down his cards. “For a long time I couldn’t believe my eyes, but there’s no other word for it—you’re a common swindler. I saw you pass that card,”—pointing to a king—“I’ve seen you doing the same thing before. Not one cent will you get out of me. Leave my rooms, and take care neither I nor my friends ever see the face of you again. If we do there’ll be trouble.”

At first, as the Englishman blurted out his indignation—which, it may be said at once, was perfectly honest and deserved—Barreto attempted, with a gesture of courteous deprecation, to offer explanations. At last he obtained speech. “You are mistaken, utterly mistaken,” he said calmly. “I think you must be mad. Anyhow I have won this money fairly, and I demand it. If you don’t pay, I shall make the fact public.”

“You damned villain!” gasped Kensley; “get out of my rooms at once, before I put you out.”

The expression upon Barreto’s face changed now instantly from a plausible calm to one of wild and deadly hate. He saw that Kensley was firm, and not to be played upon. He glanced round the room. As ill luck would have it, there hung, among other trophies upon the wall near him, an Indian knife in its sheath. In an instant Barreto grasped the handle, drew the knife flashing from its cover, and turned upon Kensley. “Now, Mr Kensley,” he said, with a very unpleasant look upon his face, “you will pay me that 55 pounds, and withdraw what you just now said, or take the alternative.”

Few Englishmen care for knife play; unlike the men of Southern Europe, they seem to have an instinctive horror of the weapon. Kensley little liked the job; the adversary before him looked very evil—far more evil than he could ever have imagined him; yet, being a man of courage and of action, he took the only course that seemed at the moment open to him. He flung himself in a flash upon Barreto, trying to seize the man’s arm before he should strike. He was not quick enough to avoid the blow; the keen knife ripped through his smooth shirt-front, and penetrated the upper part of his chest, just under the collar-bone. Kensley’s fighting blood was now up; the wound, though a nasty one, was not disabling; he grappled with Barreto, forced his right arm and dagger behind his back, and then, twining his right leg round his opponent’s, put forth all his strength and threw him, falling upon him as he did so. The room was thickly carpeted, and the fall, though a heavy one, made no great noise. The Portuguese gave a choking cry, and shuddered, as Kensley thought, very strangely. Barreto had ceased struggling from the instant he fell, and, in a strangely altered voice, gasped once in Portuguese, “I am a dead man.” Kensley cautiously released his grip; he feared treachery—some trick. But Barreto moved no more. One glance he gave as Kensley rose; his eyes rolled, then he lay quite still. A horrible fear dawned upon the Englishman. He gently lifted the man, and looked at his back. The right arm lay listless now, and had released its grip of the knife. Alas! that long knife, fashioned by some cunning artificer for wild hill men, so keen and deadly for the taking of life, had done its work. By some ghastly misfortune, it had penetrated the ribs and pierced Barreto’s heart. The man lay there, flabby and inert—as Kensley soon convinced himself, dead beyond all hope of recovery.

As Kensley rose, and with a sickening feeling at his heart surveyed the dead man’s face, something in its appearance touched a chord of memory. “Great God!” he said to himself, “is it reality, or am I still dreaming? This is the face of the Portuguese soldier I saw as I sat asleep before the fire this evening!” His eye wandered from the dead man’s face to the great yellow tusk gleaming there still and silent in the corner of the chamber. As he looked, a new light seemed to leap into his mind. Again he saw, as in a flash, before the eye of memory, those strange scenes in the African forest.

Now, whether it was coincidence, fate, black magic—call it what you will—the ivory tusk, standing there in the corner of that silent room, now a chamber of death and horror, was the tusk of the elephant seen by Kensley in his singular dream—vision it might rather be called—of that fateful evening. The name of the dead man upon the carpet there was Manoel Barreto. The name of the Portuguese captain whom Kensley had in his dream seen slain by the single-tusked elephant, more than two hundred years agone, was Manoel Barreto too. The one was a lineal descendant of the other. Zingesi’s death was again avenged. All this, however, Cecil Kensley, as he stood there, haggard and white-faced, knew not—he only surmised dimly some part of it.

The clock chimed out two in soft, resonant tones. Kensley went to the spirit-stand, poured out some brandy in a tumbler and drank it down. Then he touched the electric bell. His man came to the door, heavy-eyed and sleepy. At sight of Barreto’s body, the scattered cards upon the floor, his master’s shirt-front soaked in blood, he turned ghastly pale and opened his mouth to make exclamation.

“Thompson,” said his master, “there has been terrible work. Go into the street and fetch a policeman and a doctor.”

Pressing a handkerchief to his wound, he sank into a chair as his man went forth upon the errand.

The great tusk, the key to that grim tragedy, still gleamed there behind him, cold, inscrutable, majestic, its history of blood not yet ended.

Chapter Three.
Jan Prinsloo’s Kloof.

Far away in the gloomiest recesses of a range lying between Zwart Ruggens and the Zwartberg, Cape Colony, not far from where the mountains of that wild and secluded district give place to the eastern limits of the plateau of the Great Karroo, there lies hidden, and almost unknown, a kloof or gorge, whose dark and forbidding aspect, united to the wild and horrid legend with which it is invested, prevents any but the chance hunter or wandering traveller from ever invading its fastnesses. This kloof is about seven miles from the rough track that in these regions is dignified by the name of road; it is approached by a poort or pass through the mountains, and the way is, even for South Africa, a rough and dangerous one, although there are indications that a rude waggon-track did formerly exist there. Standing upon the steep side of this kloof are the remains of what must have once been a roomy and substantial Boer farmhouse; but the four walls are roofless, the windows and doorways naked and destitute of sashes, the euphorbia, the prickly pear, and clambering weeds grow within and without, the lizard and snake abide there, and the whole appearance of the place denotes that many years have elapsed since Prinsloo’s Kloof was tenanted by human life.

In many respects the wild kloof gives evidence that the Boer who first tarried there had an eye for good pasturage for his flocks and herds. The spekboom and many another succulent bush, dear to the goal breeder, flourish amid the broken and chaotic rocks with which the hill sides are strewn. A strong fountain of water runs with limpid current from the mountain at the back of the house; the flat tops of the hills around are clothed with long waving grasses, and the valley is, manifestly, well fitted to be the nursery of a horse-breeding establishment. A tributary of the Gamtoos River flows deeply, if fitfully, below the sheer and overhanging cliffs in a chain of pools, called zee-koe gats (sea-cow or hippopotamus deeps)—the hippopotamus, though his name lingers behind, no longer revels in the flood—and the bottom of the valley is in many parts fertile and suited for the growth of grain and fodder crops.

Broken and uncouth as are many portions of the Witteberg and Zwartberg, the neighbourhood of Prinsloo’s Kloof far surpasses them. There the volcanic action of a bygone age has perpetrated the most extraordinary freaks. The mountains are torn into shapes so wild and fantastic, that, viewed in profile against the red glow of the setting sun, all manner of weird objects may be conjured before the imagination. In some places, as the kloof runs into the heart of the hills, the cliff sides are so deep, so precipitous, and so narrow, that but little sunlight can penetrate beneath, and even on a hot day of African summer a chill strikes upon the spectator passing through.

It is not difficult to understand, from a Boer point of view, that this stern valley was a well chosen spot in which to build a farmhouse. The distance from a roadway, is, in Boer eyes, of no great account, and, as a rule, the farther from human habitation the Dutch farmer can get the better he is pleased. As for the forbidding aspect of the kloof, the stolid, unimaginative Boer would be little troubled on that score; he has no eye whatever for picturesque or scenic effect, and will plant himself as readily upon the treeless wastes of the Orange Free State, or the most stony, barren mountain-side of the Old Colony, as in the most beautiful and wooded country that South Africa can give him.

When Jan Prinsloo trekked into the kloof, towards the end of the last century, the place must have been a very paradise and nursery of game. In the river the hippopotamus played, elephants roamed through the valleys and poorts everywhere around, the zebras ran in large troops upon the mountain tops, and many of the larger game, such as koodoo, the buffalo, and the hartebeest, wandered fearlessly and free; while of the smaller game, such as rhebok, duykerbok, and klipspringer, judging from the abundance of the present day, there must have been literally multitudes. To Jan Prinsloo, then, wild and sombre as the place was, it must have appeared, as he trekked down the pass, a veritable Boer elysium. But Jan, having played his part in the world—a part more fierce and turbulent even than was usual to the marauding frontier Boers of a hundred years ago—made his exit from the scene in a manner cruel and horrible enough to match fitly with the rest of his wicked and violent existence.

Since Jan Prinsloo’s fearful ending, which will be hereafter alluded to, the kloof has borne an evil reputation. Now and again a Boer has taken the farm, tempted by its pastoral advantages and its low purchase-money, but somehow, none have ever stayed upon it for long. The last tenant, an Englishman, quitted it hastily nearly forty years ago, and ever since then the house has become year by year more sombre and more desolate, the footsteps of human beings now rarely penetrate thither, and even the very Kaffirs avoid the place.

In September of the year 1860, a young English Afrikander, Stephen Goodrick by name, who had, from the time he could handle a rifle, been engaged in the far interior in the then lucrative, if dangerous, occupation of elephant-hunting, having amassed, at the age of thirty, some four or five thousand pounds, after fourteen years of hunting and trading in Northern Bechuanaland and the Lake Ngami region, threw up the game, and trekked down to Grahamstown with his last loads of ivory. These disposed of and his affairs settled, he took unto himself for a wife, a handsome, dark-eyed girl, the daughter of Scotch parents, living near his own family in the Western Province, and then set about looking for a farm, having determined to settle down to the more peaceful pursuits of pastoral farming. After a month of riding hither and thither, inspecting farms in the districts of Swellendam, Oudtshoorn, and George, none of which pleased his fancy, he turned his attention to the Eastern Province.

Goodrick had been long and continuously away from the Cape, and in the brief intervals when he had rested from his hunting and trading expeditions he had usually stayed with his father, an old colonist, in Swellendam, a district to the south-west of the Colony. His knowledge, therefore, of the Eastern Province was necessarily somewhat restricted. Stephen, by chance, heard one day from a Boer trekking by with fruit and tobacco, that another Boer named Van der Meulen was leaving his farm near the end of Zwartberg. Losing no time, Stephen saddled up, paid temporary farewell to his wife, whom he left at his father’s house, and, traversing Lange Kloof and crossing the Kougaberg, he entered, on the afternoon of the third day, Prinsloo’s Kloof, whither he had been directed.

It was a glorious hot afternoon in early summer, the sun shone as only it can in Africa, and under its brilliant rays and with the wealth of vegetation and flower life springing up everywhere around, the kloof, savage though it appeared, put on its mellowest aspect; and as Goodrick rode up to the farmhouse and noticed the flocks and herds, all sleek and in good condition, he thought that there might be worse places in which to outspan for life than this beautiful, if solemn valley.

At the farmhouse he was welcomed by the owner. Van der Meulen, and after a stroll round the kraals and supper over a business conversation took place before the family retired to rest, which, as it seemed to the young Englishman, they did hurriedly and with some odd glances at one another. Next morning all were up early, and Goodrick rode round the farm—all good mountain pasture, embracing some 19,000 morgen (rather more than 40,000 acres) in its area. The Boer, in his uncouth, rough way, warmly praised the farm; the price he asked was extremely small, and the annual Government quit rent very trifling. Van der Meulen explained as his reason for selling the place, apparently so much below its value, that he had been offered, at an absurdly small price, a very fine farm in the Transvaal by a relation who had lately annexed the best of the land of a native chief; and, as many of his blood relations, Voertrekkers of 1836, were settled there, he wished to quit the Colony quickly and join them. Finally, Goodrick agreed to buy the farm, together with part of the stock, and, early on the following morning, left the kloof. The purchase was shortly completed at Cape Town, where the vendor and purchaser met a week afterwards, and, the Van der Meulens having trekked out with all their household goods and belongings, the Englishman and his wife prepared to enter upon their property.

Stephen Goodrick, then, with two waggons, carrying his wife, her white female servant, and a quantity of furniture and household and farming necessaries, and taking with him four Hottentots and half-a-dozen horses, trekked again through Lange Kloof, over the Kougaberg, and thence through a country partly mountain, partly karroo, until one afternoon early in October, the waggons crossed the deep and dangerous drift of the river, and went up through the poort that led into Prinsloo’s Kloof. After a most difficult and tedious piece of travelling for some seven miles—for the half-forgotten waggon-track lay up and down precipitous ascents and declivities, littered here and there with huge boulders, or hollowed out into dangerous spruits and holes—at length the stout but wearied oxen faced the last steep hill to the farmhouse, and with many a pistol crack of the great whip, many a Hottentot curse directed at Zwartland, Kleinboy, Engelschman, Akerman, and the rest, dragged their heavy burdens up to the open space that had been cleared in front of the homestead. It had been arranged that Van der Meulen’s eldest son should remain upon the farm until Goodrick and his wife had arrived, and further, that an old Hottentot, Cupido by name, who knew the farm and its ways well, and two young Kaffirs, who had lately arrived from the Transkei in search of work, should transfer their services to the new-comer.

These four being therefore ready, having already brought in and kraaled the goats for the night, they assisted the Englishman to outspan his oxen and unload the waggons. After two or three hours’ hard work, a good portion of the waggons was unloaded, and part of the furniture arranged in the house; three of the horses were placed for the night in the rough building adjoining the dwelling-house that served for a stable, while the remainder had been turned into a large stone kraal which lay on the other flank of the house. Meanwhile the white servant had prepared the supper, which partaken of, the wearied travellers retired to rest. About the middle of the night Goodrick and his wife were suddenly aroused by a great commotion in the stable; the horses were trampling, plunging and squealing as if suddenly disturbed or scared. Then there rose upon the night, as it seemed just outside the house, a wild scream, hideous in its intensity and full of horror.

Hastily thrusting on some clothes and taking a lantern, Goodrick ran round to the stable. The night, though there was no moon, was not dark, and the stars shone clear in the firmament above. Nothing was to be seen, no sound could be heard save the snorting of the horses, and the weird cry of a leopard (strangely different, as the hearer well knew, from the scream heard just previously) that sounded from the rocks a mile or so away on the right. Quickly entering the stable, Stephen was astonished to find the horses in a profuse sweat, trembling, their halters broken, their eyes startled and excited, and their whole demeanour indicating intense fear. What could be the cause? There was, apparently, no wild animal about, nothing in the stable calculated to excite alarm; the animals were old comrades, and not likely to have been fighting. Goodrick was altogether puzzled, and, leaving the stable, went to a shed in rear of the house, where the natives slept, and roused the old Hottentot. The man could give no reason for the disturbance. Wolves (hyaenas) were not likely to approach the house, and the tigers (leopards) had not been very troublesome lately, and he could think of nothing else to explain the matter. There was a scared look in the old man’s face, which Goodrick thought nothing of at the time, but which he afterwards remembered. After some little trouble, fresh halters were procured, the horses tied up and soothed, and the two again retired, Cupido being cautioned to keep his ears open against further disturbance. Nothing further occurred during the night.

Next morning, after seeing the goats unkraaled, watered and despatched to their day’s pasturage in charge of the two Kaffir herds, Goodrick asked the young Boer at breakfast if he had heard the noise among the horses, and the wild scream, and what could be the cause, and if there was any cattle-stealing about this wild neighbourhood. Young Van der Meulen’s heavy, immovable countenance changed slightly, but he replied that he could give no explanation except that perhaps a leopard might have been prowling about; they were pretty numerous in the kloof. Stephen explained that he and the Hottentots had spoored everywhere around the stable for leopards, but could find no trace.

Here the subject dropped, and Van der Meulen relapsed into silence, except when the Englishman asked him what game there was about the hills. “You will find,” he said, “plenty of small buck—klipspringers, rhebok, and duykerbok, and there are still a fair number of koodoo which, however, take some stalking. Then on the berg tops there are several troops of zebras, as well as hyaenas and leopards; but the zebras we have seldom shot, they take so much climbing after, and you know we Dutchmen prefer riding to walking. You will find also lots of springbok and steinbok and some black wildebeest (gnu) on the plains beyond the mountains. Yes, I have had many a mooi schiet op de plaats (pretty shoot on the farm).” Suddenly the young man’s heavy features changed again as he said, “Allemaghte! (Almighty) but I shall be glad to get out of this place; I hate it! I want again to get on to the Transvaal high veldt, where I trekked through two years ago, and where you can shoot as many blauuw wildebeest (brindled gnu), blessbok, quagga, springbok, and hartebeest as you want in a day’s ride. Ja! that is the land for me; these gloomy poorts and kloofs are only fit for leopards and spooks (ghosts). Then, you know, Mynheer, the Transvaal is free; we never loved your Government, which is always wanting from us this, that and the other, and I shall be glad to trek out. Up in Zoutpansberg we shall be able to hunt the kameel (giraffe), and the zwart-wit-pens (sable antelope), and elephant, as much as we like, and for our winter pasture we shall not have to pay a single rix-dollar. Ja! I have had enough of Prinsloo’s Kloof, and never wish to see it again.” This long speech delivered, the Boer relapsed into silence. There was a curious look on the young man’s face as he had spoken, which Goodrick and his wife could not quite define or understand.

An hour afterwards Van der Meulen had slung his rifle on his back, packed some biltong (sun-dried meat) in his pockets, saddled up his horse, and bidden farewell to the tenants of the kloof. The Englishman and his young wife watched his retreating form as it slowly proceeded down the valley, and presently disappeared amidst a grove of acacia trees that margined the river; then they turned to the house. “I don’t quite understand that fellow,” said Stephen, “do you, Mary? I can’t help thinking there was something behind what he said. Why were his people so eager to leave this farm? However, dearest, the farm is a good one and a cheap one; we are young and strong and ought to be as happy as any two people in the Colony.”

“Yes, Stephen,” said his wife, “I thought there was something queer in what the young man said, but it could have been only fancy. I am sure we ought to be happy and contented, and with you by my side, I shall always be so.”

In a few weeks’ time Goodrick had increased his stock of goats, and had bought a sufficient number of horses to start a stud farm upon the mountains around. Things seemed to be going well with him. The pasture was in splendid condition, the valleys and kloofs that led into the mountains literally blazed with flowers of every conceivable hue, from the great pink or crimson blossomed aloes, that gave warmth to the towering brown rocks above, to the lovely heaths, irises, and pelargoniums that clothed as with a brilliant carpet the bottom grounds. The house had been thoroughly cleansed, put into order, and the new furniture settled into it, and young Mrs Goodrick busily employed her days in household duties. Her husband had had several good days’ shooting about the hills, and had brought in two koodoos (one of the largest and most magnificent of South African antelopes), whose noble spiral horns now adorned the dining-room, besides many a head of smaller antelopes and innumerable francolins, pheasants, ducks, and other feathered game.

Yet, somehow, though things had so far gone well, the young couple were not quite comfortable. The disturbances among the horses, although not repeated for several nights, had occasionally happened; the same horrid scream had been heard, and their causes had so far completely baffled Stephen Goodrick. He had tried all sorts of plans, changed the horses, and even had them all turned loose together in the great stone kraal, but with the same results. They were found over and over again at night, mad with fear and drenched with sweat, trampling and plunging in the stable, or tearing about the inclosure.

Cupido and the Kaffirs, and his own Swellendam Hottentots, had been questioned and cross-examined, but to no purpose. Twice had Goodrick remained on the watch all night. On one occasion he believed he had seen a figure move quickly past him in the darkness, and the horses had been disturbed at the same time; but nothing further could be traced and no spoor of man or quadruped was ever discovered. The thing was a mystery. At length, one moonlight night, Goodrick ran out, hearing the now familiar noises, and, taking with him his great brindled dog, which had often hunted elephants, rhinoceros, buffalo and lion, he quickly went round to the stable.

At this moment the two Kaffir herds also came running out on hearing the noise. Just as they approached the stable together they beheld a figure pass through the open doorway, as they supposed, and swiftly glide away to the hillside. The dark figure was clad in a broad-brimmed Boer hat and quaintly cut old-fashioned dress, as Goodrick could plainly notice. Stephen shouted, and with the Kaffirs gave chase, but after a few minutes’ running the man suddenly vanished into the bushy scrub that grew on the mountain-side, and no further trace could be found, although the Kaffirs hunted everywhere around.

Meanwhile Stephen turned for his dog, surprised that the animal, usually so fierce and impetuous, had not led the chase. To his utter astonishment, “Tao” was close at his heels, his tail between his legs, his hackles up, and with every symptom of terror upon him. The thing was incomprehensible; the dog had never feared man or beast in his life before, and many a time and oft had faced, as they turned at bay, the fierce and snarling lion, the dangerous sable antelope with his scimitar-like horns, and the wounded and screaming elephant. At length, turning back, they entered the stable; to their surprise the door was locked, and on being opened the horses as usual were loose and in the last extremity of fright. Nothing more could be done that night. In the morning the Kaffirs and Hottentots searched everywhere for spoor, but could find no trace of the midnight marauder. Cupido, indeed, shook his head, rolled his bloodshot-looking eyes, and appeared to take the occurrence as a matter of course.

Three mornings afterwards the two Kaffirs came to Stephen, declared that they had seen on the previous night the same dark figure just outside their sleeping shed; that the terrible expression on the face of this apparition, which they saw distinctly in the moonlight, had made them utterly sick and terror-stricken; that the thing was a thing of witchcraft, and that nothing would induce them to stay another night on the farm.

“We like the N’kose (chief or master) well,” they said, “but we dare not stay in this country or we shall be slain by the witchcraft we see around us; why do you not get a ‘smeller out’ to cleanse this place from the evil?” The two men, who, in daylight, were, as most Kaffirs are, bold, hardy fellows, were evidently in earnest in what they said, and though Goodrick, who could ill afford to part with them at a moment’s notice, offered them increased wages, they steadfastly declined. At length finding he could not shake their resolution, he reluctantly paid them their money and let them go. Goodrick learned some months afterwards from a friend, that these men had marched straight for the boundary of the Colony, crossed the Kei, and rejoined their own tribe, the Gaikas, in Kaffraria.

Goodrick now began to think somewhat seriously of the matter, and to ask himself with inward misgivings what it all meant. Brave man though he was, like most mortals he was not quite proof against superstition, and he began to find himself half fearing that there was something not quite canny about the place. How else could he account for the locked door, the suddenly vanishing figure, the sickening yell, and the lack of footmarks? However, he kept his thoughts from his wife, and made some excuse about a quarrel with the Kaffirs as to wages, to explain their sudden departure. She, although accepting the explanation, seemed uneasy, and at last burst out, “Oh, Stephen, I think there is something wrong about this kloof—some dreadful mystery we know nothing of. Have you ever noticed that even the Kaffirs in the kraal a few miles beyond the poort never enter here? Not a soul amongst the farmers comes near us, and as for ‘Tao’ he never seems happy now and is always restless, suspicious and alarmed.”

That same night the wild, unearthly scream rose again; the same tumult was heard in the stable; Stephen rushed out, and once again, under the clear moonlight, he saw the figure passing in front of him. This time he had his rifle loaded, and after calling once, fired. Still the figure retreated; another shot was fired, but to no purpose; the figure apparently glided imperceptibly onwards, and then suddenly disappeared, as it seemed, sheer into the earth. Goodrick knew so well his powers with the rifle, with which he was famous as a deadly shot, that he could not bring himself to believe he had missed twice within fifty yards. From this incident he could form no other conclusion, and he shivered as he thought so, than that the night disturber was not of human mould.

Meanwhile the horses were becoming worn to shadows, their coats stared, they lost flesh and looked altogether miserable. Fresh horses had been brought in, but the effect was ever the same. Shortly after, two of the Swellendam Hottentots left, and the other two, with Cupido and Mrs Goodrick’s servant, alone remained. Goodrick was now in great straits; he could not immediately procure other native servants, and only managed to get through his farm work with the greatest trouble and exertion.

Things drifted on uncomfortably for another week or two, and each day as it came and went, seemed to Goodrick and his wife to increase the gloom and uncertainty of their life in the kloof. At length a climax arrived. Christmas, but a sombre one, had sped, and South African summer, with its heat, its flies, and other manifold troubles, was now at its height.

On the 15th of January, 1861, a day of intense heat was experienced. All day the landscape had sweltered under a still oppression that was almost unbearable, and the very animals about the farm seemed touched and depressed by some mysterious influence.

Towards nightfall dark clouds gathered together suddenly in dense masses; in the distance, long, rolling thunder-peals were heard approaching in strangely slow, yet none the less certain movement. Cupido, the old Hottentot, had fidgetted about the house a good deal all the evening, and finally, just before ten o’clock, he asked his master if he might for that night sleep on the floor of the kitchen, in order, as he put it, to attend more quickly to the horses if anything scared them. Goodrick noticed that the old man looked agitated, and good-naturedly said “Yes.”

Still slowly onward marched the stormy batteries of the sky, until at eleven o’clock they burst overhead with a terrific crash (preceded by such lightning as only Africa can show) that literally seemed to tear and rend each nook and corner of the gorge, reverberating with deafening repetition from every krantz and hollow and rocky inequality in the rude landscape. Rain fell in torrents for a time, then ceased. Again and again the thunder broke overhead, while the lightning played with fiery tongue upon mountain and valley, showing momentarily, with photographic clearness, every object around. Sleep on such a night was out of the question, and Goodrick and his wife sat together listening with solemn faces to the hideous tumult. At length, at about twelve o’clock, the storm for a brief space rolled away, only to return in half an hour with increased severity.

Goodrick had gone for a few moments to the back door, which faced partly towards the entrance to the kloof, and found Cupido standing there, seemingly listening intently. As the tempest approached again with renewed ferocity, some strange confused noises, shrieks and shouts as it seemed, were borne upon the strong breeze that now preceded and hurried along the thunder clouds.

“Hallo!” said Goodrick, “what the deuce is that? There surely can’t be a soul about on such a night as this?” Again a hideous scream was borne up the valley. “Good God! that’s the very yell we’ve heard so often round here at night,” repeated the Englishman. “It’s not leopard, it’s not hyaena; what on earth is it, Cupido?” The Hottentot was now trembling in every limb; his yellow, monkeylike face had turned ashy grey, and his bleared eyes seemed full of some intense terror. “Baas,” he stammered out, “it’s Jan Prinsloo’s night, and if you’re wise you’ll shut the doors fast, pull down the blinds, and not stir or look out for an hour.”

“What do you mean, man?”

“I mean that the ghosts of Jan Prinsloo, who was slain here years ago, and his murderers, are coming up the kloof.” At that moment the cries and shoutings sounded closer and closer up the valley, and it seemed as if the rattling of horses galloping along the rock-strewn path could be distinguished through the storm. Just then the other two Hottentots, who at length had also heard the din, rushed across from their shed and huddled into the kitchen. Mrs Goodrick at the same instant ran into the room. “What’s the matter, Stephen?” she cried; “I am certain there is some dreadful work going on.”

“Yes, wife, there is some devilish thing happening, and I mean to get to the bottom of it. I haven’t hunted fifteen years in the interior to be frightened by a few strange noises.” So speaking, the young farmer went to the sitting-room, took down and rapidly loaded two rifles and his revolver, and returned to the kitchen. Handing one rifle to the Hottentot, he said, “Here, Cupido, take this; I know you can shoot straight, and, if needful, you’ll have to do so. Wife, give the Totties a soupje each of brandy.”

This was quickly done; the result seemed, on the whole, satisfactory, and the Hottentots somewhat reassured. In a few more seconds the storm burst again in one appalling roar; after it could now be heard the clattering of hoofs up the hillside, mingled with shrieks and shouts. This time the tempest passed rapidly overhead, the dense black clouds rushed on, and suddenly the moon shone out with wonderful brightness.

Onward came the strange noises, sweeping past the side of the house as if up to the great stone cattle kraal, that lay sixty yards away. Then was heard the loud report of a gun. Stephen could stand it no longer. “Come on, you fellows, with me,” he exclaimed, as he ran out towards the kraal. Cupido and Mrs Goodrick, who would not be left behind, alone followed him; the white servant woman and the remaining two Hottentots stayed in the kitchen, halfddead with fright, the one on a chair, her apron clasped to her head and ears, the others huddled up in a corner. The three adventurers were not long in reaching the kraal, whence they heard proceeding the same dreadful cries and shrieks, mingled with the trampling of feet Goodrick first approached the entrance, which he found wide open. The sight that met his eyes, and those of his wife and Cupido close behind, was enough to have shaken the stoutest heart.

Under the clear illumination of the moon, which now shone forth calm and serene, the inclosure seemed as light as day. In the far corner, to the right hand, seventy paces distant, the half-dozen horses that had been turned in stood huddled with their heads together like a flock of sheep. On the opposite side from the entrance, a frightful looking group was tearing madly round. First ran a tall, stout figure, clad in the broad-brimmed hat and quaint old-fashioned leathern costume, which Goodrick in a moment recognised. In its hands it grasped a huge, long, old flint “roer,” a smooth-bore elephant gun, such as the Boers used in earlier days. The figure, as it fled, had its face half-turned to its pursuers, who consisted of six half-naked Hottentots armed with assegais and knives. As the chase, for such it was, swept round the kraal and the figures approached the entrance, every face could be plainly discerned; and this was the horrible part of it. These faces were all the faces of the dead, gaunt, ghastly, and grim, and yet possessed of such fiendish and dreadful expressions of anger, cruelty, and lust for blood, as to strike a chilling terror to the hearts of the three spectators. Brave man and ready though he was, Goodrick felt instinctively that he was in the presence of the dead, and his rifle hung listlessly in his hand.

Closer the fearful things approached the spellbound trio, till, when within thirty yards, the leading figure stumbled and fell. In an instant, with diabolical screams, the ghostly Hottentots fell upon their quarry, plying assegai and knife. Again the awful scream that the kloof knew so well rang out upon the night; then followed a torrent of Dutch oaths and imprecations; and then the dying figure, casting off for a moment its slayers, stood up and laid about it with the heavy “roer” grasped at the end of the barrel.

The three living beings who looked upon that face will never to their last days forget it. If the expression of every crime and evil passion could be depicted upon the face of the dead, they shone clear under the pale moonlight upon the face of the dying Dutchman—dying again though dead. Once again with wild yells the Hottentots closed on their victim, and once more rang the fiendish dying yell. Then, still more awful, the Hottentots, as it seemed in an instant, stripped the half-dead body, hacked off the head and limbs, and tore open the vitals, with which they bedabbled and smeared themselves as they again tore shrieking round the kraal. Flesh and blood could stand the sight no longer; Mrs Goodrick, who had clung to her husband spellbound during the scene, which had taken in its enactment but a few seconds, fainted away. Goodrick turned to take his wife in his arms with the intention of making hurriedly for the house. At that instant the horrid din ceased suddenly, and was succeeded by a deathly silence. Turning once more to the kraal gate, Goodrick at once perceived that the whole of the enactors of this awful drama had vanished. He rubbed his eyes in vain to see if they deceived him, but a nod from the half-dead Cupido convinced him that this was not so. No, there was no doubt about it, the waning moon cast her pure and silvery beams calmly and peacefully upon a silent scene. Not a trace of the bloody drama remained; not a whisper, save of the soft night breeze, told of the dreadful story.

“Baas,” whispered the Hottentot, “they’ll come no more to-night.” Quickly Goodrick raised his fainting wife and carried her into the house, where, after long and anxious tending, she was restored to consciousness. Placing her in the sitting-room upon a couch which he had himself made from the soft skins, “brayed” by the Kaffirs, of the antelopes he had shot, he at length induced her to sleep, promising not for a moment to leave her, and with his hands clasped in hers.

At length the night wore away, the sun of Africa shot his glorious rays upward from behind the rugged mountain walls of the kloof, and broad daylight again spread over the landscape. Goodrick was glad indeed to find that with the bright sunshine his wife, brave-hearted woman that she was, had shaken off much of the night’s terrors; but her nerves were much shaken. For the last time the goats were unkraaled and sent out, with the two somewhat unwilling Hottentots, to pasture. Breakfast and some strong coffee that followed this operation made things look brighter; and then, taking the couch and setting it upon the stoep (veranda), just outside the windows of their room, and placing a chair for himself, Goodrick went out to the back and called Cupido in with him to the “stoep,” where he made the little ancient yellow man squat down. “Cupido,” said he, “I am going to inspan this morning, load up one of the waggons, and send my wife and servant under your charge out of this cursed place to Hemming’s farm—the next one, twenty-five miles out on the karroo. To-morrow, with the help of some Kaffirs I shall borrow from Mr Hemming, I shall get down the horses from the mountain, load up both the waggons with the rest of the furniture and farm tackle (as soon as you return, which you will do very early), and trek out of the kloof, never again to set foot in it. But first of all, you will tell me at once, without lying, why you have never said a word to me of this horrible secret, and what it all means. Now speak and be careful.”

“Well, baas,” said Cupido, speaking in Boer Dutch, the habitual language of the Hottentots, “you have been a kind baas to me, and the jevrouw,” (nodding to his mistress) “has been good to me too; and I will tell you all I know about this story. I would have warned you long ago, but Baas Van der Meulen, when he left, made me promise, under pain of being shot, not to say anything. I believe he would have kept his word, for he often gave me the sjambok, and I dare not speak. I was born here in the kloof many years ago, many years even before slavery was abolished and the emigrant Boers trekked out into the Free State and Transvaal, and you will know that is long since.

“My father lived as a servant under that very Jan Prinsloo, whom you saw murdered last night in yonder kraal, and many a time has he told me of Prinsloo and his evil doings and his dreadful end. Well, Jan Prinsloo was a grown man years before the English came across the shining waters and took the country from the Dutch. He was one of the wild and lawless gang settled about Bruintjes Hoogte, on the other side of Sunday River, who bade defiance to all laws and Governments, and who, under Marthinus Prinsloo (a kinsman of Jan’s) and Adriaan Van Jaarsveld, got up an insurrection two years after the English came, and captured Graaff Reinet.

“General Vandeleur soon put this rising down, and Marthinus Prinsloo and Van Jaarsveld were hanged, but Jan Prinsloo, who was implicated, somehow retired early in the insurrection, and was pardoned. Some years before this, Jan was fast friends, as a younger man, with Jan Bloem, who, as you may have heard, was a noted freebooter who fled from the Colony across the Orange River, raised a marauding band of Griquas and Korannas, and plundered, murdered, and devastated amongst many of the Bechuana tribes, besides trading and shooting ivory as well. The bloody deeds of these men yet live in Bechuana story. Jan Bloem at last, however, drank from a poisoned fountain in the Bechuana country and died like a hyaena as he deserved. Then Jan Prinsloo took all his herds, waggons, ivory and flocks, came back over the Orange River, sold off the stock at Graaff Reinet, and came and settled in this kloof. He had brought with him some poor Makatese, and these people, who are in their way, as you know, great builders in stone, he made to build this house and the great stone kraal out there, where we saw him last night. He had, too, a number of Hottentots, besides Mozambique slaves, and those he ill-treated in the most dreadful manner, far worse even than any Boer was known to, and that is saying much. At last one day, not long after the Bruintjes Hoogte affair, he came home in a great passion, and found that two of the Hottentots’ wives and one child had gone off without leave to see some of their relatives, Hottentots, who were squatted some miles away.

“When these women came back in the evening, Prinsloo made their husbands tie them and the child to two trees, and then and there, after flogging them frightfully, he shot the poor creatures dead, child and all. As for the husbands, he sjambokked them nearly to death for letting their wives go, and then turned in to his ‘brandwein’ and bed. That night all his Hottentots, including seven men who had witnessed the cruel deed—God knows such deeds were common enough in those wild days—fled through the darkness out of the kloof, and never stopped till they reached the thick bush-veldt country, between Sunday River and the Great Fish River. Just at that time, other Hottentots, roused by the evil deeds of the Boers, rose in arms, and joined hands with the Kaffirs, who were then advancing from beyond the Fish River.

“Well, the Kaffirs and Hottentots, to the number of 700, for some time had all their own way, and ravaged, plundered, burned, and murdered, among the Boers and their farms, even up to Zwartberg and Lange Kloof, between here and the sea. While they were in that neighbourhood, a band of them, inspired by the seven Hottentots of Prinsloo’s Kloof, came up the Gamtoos River, in this direction, and met with Jan Prinsloo and a few other Boers, who were trekking out of the disturbed district with their waggons, and who had come to reconnoitre in a poort, fifteen miles away from here. All the Boers were surprised and slain, excepting Prinsloo; and while the Kaffirs and other Hottentots stayed to plunder the waggons, Prinsloo’s seven servants, who were all mounted on stolen horses, chased him, like ‘wilde honde’ hunting a hartebeest, for many hours; for Jan rode like a madman, and gave them the slip for three hours, while he lay hid up in a kloof, until, at last, as night came on, they pressed him into his own den here.

“It was yesterday, but years and years ago, just when the summer is hottest and the thunder comes on, and just in such a storm as last night’s, that the maddened Hottentots, thirsting for the murderer’s blood, hunted Prinsloo up through the poort. They were all light men and well mounted, and towards the end gained fast upon him, although Jan, who rode a great ‘rooi schimmel’ (red roan) horse, the best of his stud, rode as he had never ridden before. Up the kloof they clattered, the Hottentots close at his heels now; Prinsloo galloped to the great kraal there, jumped off his horse, and ran inside, like a leopard among his rocks, fastening the gate behind him, and there determined to make a last desperate stand for it.

“The Hottentots soon forced the gate and swarmed over the walls, not, however, before one was killed by Prinsloo’s great elephant ‘roer.’ Round the kraal they chased him, giving him no time to load again; at last, as you know, he fell and was slain, and the Hottentots cut off his head, and arms, and legs, and tore out his black heart, and in their mad, murderous joy and fury, smeared themselves with his blood. Then the men looted the house, set fire to what they could, and afterwards rejoined their comrades next morning. They told my father, who had known Prinsloo, the whole story when they got back. These six men were all killed in a fight soon afterwards when the insurrection was put down, and the Kaffirs and Hottentots were severely punished.

“Well, ever since that night the thing happens once a year upon the same night. Many Boers have tried to live in this place since that time, but have always left in a hurry after a few weeks’ trial. I believe one man did stay for nearly two years; but he was deaf, and knew nothing of what was going on around, until one Prinsloo’s night when he saw something that quickly made him trek I once saw the scene we witnessed last night; it was many years ago, when I was a young man in the service of a Boer, who had just come here—before then I had been with my father in the service of another Boer, forty miles away towards Sunday River. Next morning after seeing Prinsloo and his murderers, my master trekked out horror-stricken. I never thought to have seen the horrible thing again, but eight months ago, when the Van der Meulens came here, I was hard up and out of work, and though I didn’t half like coming into the kloof again, I thought, perhaps, after so many years, the ghosts might have vanished. I hadn’t been many nights here, though, before I knew too well I was mistaken. Even then I would have left, but Van der Meulen swore I should not. He and his family came here soon after Prinsloo’s night, and left before it came round again; but after the old man and his sons had twice been face to face with Jan’s spook prowling about the stable and kraals, and even looking in at the windows, they were not long before they wanted to clear out, and now you know their reason, baas.”

“Yes, Cupido, to my cost, I do,” said Goodrick, “I don’t suppose I shall ever come across that delightful family again, for it is a far cry to Zoutpansberg, in the north of the Transvaal, and a wild enough country when you get there. But tell me, why is it that this dreadful thing is always in and out of the stables and kraals frightening the horses?”

“Well, baas, I am not certain, but I believe, for my father always told me so, that Prinsloo was very fond of horseflesh, extraordinarily so for a Boer; for you know as a rule they don’t waste much time on their horses, and use them but ill. He had the finest stud in the Colony, and took great pains and trouble with it; and they say that Jan’s ghost is still just as fond as ever of his favourites, and is always in and out of the stable in consequence. Anyhow, the horses don’t care about it, as you know, they seem just as scared at him as any human being.”

Cupido, like all Hottentots, could tell a story with the dramatic force and interest peculiar to his race, and the bald translation here given renders very scant justice to the grim legend that came from his lips. After the quaint little yellow man had finished, Mrs Goodrick gave him some coffee, and immediately afterwards the party set about loading up one waggon with a part of the furniture. This done, and Mrs Goodrick and her servant safely installed, Cupido, the oxen being inspanned, took the leading riems of the two first oxen and acted as foreloper, while Goodrick sat on the box and wielded the whip.

Twelve miles away beyond the poort that opened into the kloof there was a Kaffir kraal, and having arrived there, Goodrick was able to hire a leader, and Cupido having relieved his master of the whip and received instructions to hasten to Hemming’s farm as quickly as possible with his mistress, Goodrick saddled and bridled his horse, which had been tied to the back of the waggon, and rode back to his farm. The night passed quietly away; the two remaining Hottentots begged to be allowed to sleep in the kitchen, and this favour their master not unwillingly accorded them. Next morning, at ten o’clock, Cupido, who had trekked through a good part of the night, arrived, and with him came Mr Hemming, the farmer, and four of his Kaffirs. Hearing of his neighbour’s trouble, and having seen Mrs Goodrick comfortably settled with his own wife, he had good-naturedly come to his assistance. “So Jan Prinsloo has driven you out at last,” said he, upon meeting Goodrick. “I heard from your wife last evening what you had seen the night before. I was afraid it would happen and would have warned you in time if I had known. But I never even heard that the Van der Meulens had sold the farm till they had cleared out and I met you about a month after you had been here; and as you were a determined looking Englishman, and the half-dozen people who have tried the farm in the last twenty years have been superstitious Dutch, I thought perhaps you might succeed in beating the ghost where they failed. I haven’t been in the kloof for many years, and after this experience, which bears out what my father and others who knew the story well have always told me, I shan’t be in a hurry to come in here again. It’s a strange thing, and I don’t think, somehow, the curse that seems on the place will ever disappear.”

“Nor I,” said Goodrick, “I’m not in a hurry to try it. I never believed in spooks till the night before last, for I never thought they were partial to South Africa; but after what I saw I can never again doubt upon that subject. The shock to me was terrible enough, and what my wife suffered must have been far worse.”

With the willing aid of his neighbour and his Kaffirs, as well as his own Hottentots, Goodrick got clear of the kloof that day, and, after a few days spent at Mr Hemming’s, trekked away again for Swellendam, to his father’s house. Six months later he finally settled in a fertile district not far from Swellendam, where he and his wife and family still remain. Cupido died in his service some fourteen years since. After much trouble Goodrick sold his interest in Prinsloo’s Kloof and the farm around for a sum much less even than what he gave Van der Meulen for it; it is only fair to say he warned the purchaser of the evil reputation of the place before this was done. It is a singular fact that on his way to take possession of the kloof the new purchaser fell ill and died, and the place has never since been occupied.

Although it is nearly forty years since these events took place, and Mrs Goodrick is now an old lady, with children long since grown to man and womanhood, she has never quite thrown off the terror of that awful night. Even now she will wake with a start if she hears any sudden cry in her sleep, thinking for the moment it is the death scream of Prinsloo’s Kloof. As for the haunted kloof, it lies to this day in desolation black and utter. No footfall wakes its rugged echoes; the grim baboons keep watch and ward; the carrion aasvogels wheel and circle high above its cliffs, gazing down from their aerial dominion with ever-searching eyes; the black and white ravens seek in its fastnesses for their food, looking, as they swoop hither and thither, as if still in half mourning for the deed of blood of bygone years; and the antelopes and leopards wander free and undisturbed. But no sign of human life is there, or seems ever likely to be; and if, by cruel fate, the straying traveller should haplessly outspan for his night’s repose by the haunted farmhouse on the night of the 15th of January, he will yet see enacted, so the neighbouring farmers say, the horrible drama of Jan Prinsloo’s death.

Chapter Four.
The Bushman’s Fortune.

Kwaneet, the Bushman, had lost his wife Nakeesa, and was just now a little puzzled what to do with himself. Nakeesa, poor thing, had been slain by a lion on the Tamalakan River in an attempt to rescue her man. (See “Tales of South Africa,” by the same Author.) The attempt was successful so far as Kwaneet was concerned, but Nakeesa and the babe she carried had fallen victims. Kwaneet had quickly got rid of Nakeesa’s child by her first husband, Sinikwe. It was a useless encumbrance to him, and he had sold it for a new assegai to some Batauana people near Lake Ngami.

The Masarwa was how at a loose end. The companionship of Nakeesa during their year and a half of union—married life it could scarcely be called among these nomads—had been very pleasant. Nakeesa was always industrious, and had saved him an infinity of trouble in providing water, digging up roots and ground-nuts and picking the wild fruit when game was scarce, and a score of other occupations pertaining to the Bushman’s life. Now she was gone, and he must shift for himself again, which was a nuisance. But, chiefly, his mind was just now exercised, as he squatted by himself at a small desert fountain, as to what he should do with himself in the immediate future. Suddenly an old and long-cherished plan flashed across his mind. Years before, as a young lad, his father had taken him on a long hunting expedition to a distant corner of that vast desert of the Kalahari, in which the Masarwa Bushmen make their home. He remembered the stalking of many ostriches, and the acquisition of great store of feathers; he remembered a long, long piece of thirst country through which they had toiled; and he remembered most of all coming presently to the solitary abode of a white man, planted in that distant and inaccessible spot, an abode almost unknown even to the wild Masarwa of the desert. From this white man his father had obtained for his feathers, amongst other things, a good hunting-knife—a treasured possession which he himself now carried. That white man, his waggon—there were no oxen, he remembered, nor horses—the house he had built for himself, and its fascinating contents; the strong fountain of sweet water which welled from the limestone hard by; all these things he remembered well. But most of all he recalled an air of mystery which enveloped everything. When he and his father had approached the white man’s dwelling, they had seen him, before he set eyes on them, digging in a depression of the open plain a mile from the house. Much of the grass had been removed, and piles of sand and stones were heaped here and there, and there were heaps, too, he remembered, near the house. Kwaneet’s father had, when they left that secret and unknown place, strongly impressed upon his son the absolute necessity of silence concerning the white man and his abode. The white man gave value for feathers—good value in a Bushman’s eyes—which the harsh and bullying Batauana people of Chief Moremi at Nghabe (Lake Ngami) never did. On the contrary, the Batauana robbed the poor Bushman of all his spoils of the desert whenever they got a chance, which happily was not often.

Now Kwaneet had plenty of time upon his hands and no settled plan. The mystery of the lone white man had always fascinated him. He would go now and see if he still lived. It was some winters ago, but he might still be there. So Kwaneet filled three ostrich eggs and a calabash with water, made fresh snuff against the journey, and next morning, long before the clear star of dawn had leaped above the horizon, started upon his quest. He was well equipped for a Masarwa. His giraffe hide sandals, not needed till the thorns were traversed, and his little skin cloak, neatly folded, were fastened to one end of his assegai. At the other end hung the full calabash of water. His tiny bow, quiver of reed arrows, bone-tipped and strongly poisoned, and a rude net of fibre containing three ostrich eggs of water were slung over his back. Some meat and a supply of ground-nuts, the latter skewered up in the dried crops of guinea-fowls, completed his outfit.

It was a long, long journey, but Kwaneet, travelling leisurely at the rate of twenty or thirty miles a day—he was in no violent hurry—steadily progressed. He had not been through that part of the Kalahari since, as a lad, he had accompanied his father; yet, thanks to the wonderful Bushman instinct, the way through the flat and pathless wilderness seemed as plain to him as the white man’s waggon road from Khama’s to Lake Ngami. Despite the thirst, it was not an unpleasant journey. The various acacias, hack-thorn, wait-a-bit, hook-and-stick thorn, and the common thorny acacia, with its long, smooth ivory needles, were all putting forth their round, sweet-scented blooms, some greenish, some yellow, against the coming of the rains. Leagues upon leagues of forest of spreading giraffe-acacia (mokaala) were in flower, and their big, round, plush-like pompons of rich orange-yellow blossom scented the veldt for miles with a delicious perfume. Even to the dulled senses of the Bushman these symptoms of renewed life at the end of a long drought were very pleasant. As the Masarwa plunged further and further into the heart of the wilderness, game was very plentiful. Great troops of giraffe wandered and fed among the mokaala forests; steinbuck and duiker were everywhere amid grass and bush. Upon the great grass plains, or in the more open forest glades, herds of magnificent gemsbok and of brilliant bay hartebeests grazed peacefully in an undisturbed freedom; not seldom fifty or sixty noble elands were encountered in a single troop. All these animals are almost entirely independent of water, and found here a welcome sanctuary. The country was absolutely devoid of mankind. Many years before a number of Masarwas had been massacred at a water-pit by a band of Sebituane’s Makololo, then crossing the desert. The tradition of fear had been perpetuated and the region was seldom visited by Bushmen.

One morning, after sleeping within the welcome shelter of some thick bush, Kwaneet steps forth upon a great open plain of grass. Kwaneet remembers the plain at once. Upon it his father and he had slain ostriches years before, on their way to the white man’s; and across the broad, thirty-mile flat lay a water-pit, the last before the white man’s dwelling was reached. The Bushman looks with a keen interest out upon the plain. He expects to see ostriches, and he is not disappointed. He at once begins preparation for a hunt. First he takes from his neck three curious-looking flat pieces of bone, triangular in shape, scored with a rude pattern. One of these is more pointed than the others. He pulls them from the hide strip on which they are threaded, shakes them rapidly between his two palms, and casts them upon the earth, after which he stares with intense concentration for a long half minute. These are his dice, his oracles, which disclose to him whether the hunt is to be a good or an unsuccessful one. Apparently the result of the first throw is doubtful. The Bushman picks up the dice, shakes them, and throws them again. This time the more acute-angled piece points away from the rest. The Bushman’s eyes gleam, he mutters to himself in that odd, high, complaining voice which these people have, giving a cluck or two with his tongue as he does so, and throws once more. Again the oracle is propitious. Well pleased, the Masarwa re-strings his dice, fastens them about his neck, and hastens his preparations.

He now divests himself of all his encumbrances; water vessels, food, cloak, assegai, and sandals are all left behind. Stark naked, except for the hide patch about his middle, and armed only with his bow, arrows, and knife, he sets forth. The nearest ostrich is feeding more than a mile away, and there is no covert but the long, sun-dried, yellow grass, but that is enough for the Bushman. Worming himself over the ground with the greatest caution, he crawls flat on his belly towards the bird. No serpent could traverse the grass with less disturbance. In the space of an hour and a half he has approached within a hundred yards of the tall bird. Nearer he dare not creep on this bare plain, and at more than twenty-five paces he cannot trust his light reed arrows. He lies patiently hidden in the grass, his bow and arrows ready in front of him, trusting that the ostrich may draw nearer. It is a long wait under the blazing sun, close on two hours, but his instinct serves him, and at last, as the sun shifts a little, the great ostrich feeds that way. It is a splendid male bird, jet black as to its body plumage, and adorned with magnificent white feathers upon the wings and tail. Kwaneet’s eyes glisten, but he moves not a muscle. Closer and closer the ostrich approaches. Thirty paces, twenty-five, twenty. There is a light musical twang upon the hot air, and a tiny yellowish arrow sticks well into the breast of the gigantic bird. The ostrich feels a sharp pang and turns at once. In that same instant a second arrow is lodged in its side, just under the wing feathers. Now the stricken bird raises its wings from its body and speeds forth into the plain. But Kwaneet is quite content. The poison of those two arrows will do his work effectually. He gets up, follows the ostrich, tracking it, after it has disappeared from sight, by its spoor, and in two hours the game lies there before him amid the grass, dead as a stone. The Bushman carefully skins the whole of the upper plumage of the bird, cuts off the long neck at its base, takes what meat he requires, and walks back to his camping-place. There he skins the neck of the bird, extracting the muscles and vertebra; and, leaving the head, sews up the neck again, inserting into it a long stick and some dry grass, and lays it on one side. The hunt and these preparations have consumed most of the day. Kwaneet now feeds heartily, drinks a little water, indulges himself in a pinch or two of snuff, and then, nestling in his skin cloak close to his fire, his back sheltered by a thick bush, sleeps soundly till early morning.

So soon as it is light an ostrich stalks from the Bushman’s “scherm” and moves quietly on to the plain. All its motions are as natural as possible. It holds its head erect, looking abroad for any possible danger, as these wary creatures will, puts its head down to feed at times, scratches itself, all in the most natural fashion. The ostrich is no other than Kwaneet, disguised with the greatest care and deftness in the skin of the slain bird. He manoeuvres the neck and head on the long stick inserted yesterday. All this is part of a Bushman’s education, and Kwaneet is merely profiting by desert lessons acquired from his father years before. The Bushman-ostrich moves quietly out on to the flat, and presently joins a knot of birds feeding amid the grass. His approach is so skilful that he is able, without suspicion, to lodge an arrow in the finest male bird of the troop. From this troop, moving as they move when alarmed and keeping always with them, he kills four birds during the morning, all of which he rifles of their best feathers. During three days’ hunting upon the plain Kwaneet thus kills eight fine cock ostriches, and gains a noble booty of prime feathers. These feathers having carefully fastened together, he proceeds on his journey. It takes him a long day to cross the plain. He rests at the limestone water-pit on the other side, recruits his water calabash and eggshells, and then sets himself for the wearisome two days of waterless journey to the white man’s settlement. He travels faster now, and late in the second afternoon reaches the well-remembered spot. The digging upon the grass plain seems to him as he passes it much larger than of old. Many heaps are now grass-covered and even overgrown with low bushes. But chiefly Kwaneet notices that the dry bed of an ancient stream, which ages since ran here, has been greatly excavated. The banks are piled up with soil, and the channel is much deeper than when he last saw it. Kwaneet smiles to himself and marvels at the white man’s profitless labour. The man is alive, that is certain, his spoor plainly tells that tale. In another mile, following the path worn long since, the Masarwa walks into the pleasant open glade just upon the outskirts of the camelthorn forest, where the dwelling stands. It is exactly as Kwaneet remembers it, a low cottage of wattle and daub, neatly thatched. The old waggon still stands there under the spreading acacia fifty yards to the left. It is now rotten and dilapidated, almost falling to pieces; the white ants have been busy with it. There are signs of cultivation. Away to the right, near the fountain, a patch of mealie and tobacco ground is almost ready for the rains that soon must fall.

In front of the red mud walls of the hut, now glowing warmly beneath the rays of the dying sun, sits the white man in an old waggon chair. As Kwaneet walks up, he starts, rises, and, looking hard at the Bushman, says: “Who is it?” Then, looking still harder, “Surely Dwar, the Masarwa?”

“Nay,” answers Kwaneet, “it is not Dwar, but Kwaneet, the son of Dwar. Dwar died in the drought, in the season that three lions pulled down the giraffe by the pool of Maqua.”

The white man laughs grimly. “That is the answer of a true Masarwa,” he says. “How can I tell when Dwar died? But now I remember you, Kwaneet. You were here as a lad with your father, and you are as like Dwar as one kiewitje’s egg is like another. What do you do here? The Masarwa seldom comes this way.”

“Oh, my lord,” returned Kwaneet, “I lost my wife on the Tamalakan River and I wished to wander again. I thought I would hunt this way and see if the white man still abode here. Here are feathers which he may wish to buy.”

The white man was long silent and gazed hard at Kwaneet, and as he gazed his eyes seemed to wander dreamingly into the past. Meanwhile Kwaneet, squatting there in the red sand in front of him, had time to observe him well. The white man had changed a good deal. His glance, which the Masarwa remembered as shifting and uneasy, was the same, but otherwise he was different from the strong man he had last seen. He stooped and was very thin, his face was deeply lined, the flesh followed tightly the contour of the bones. The beard and hair, which the Bushman remembered as an intense black, were now thickly streaked with white.

While the two men sit thus silent, let us look into the white man’s past—that past which at this moment he himself retraces within the mazes of his brain. James Fealton, fifteen years before, was a Namaqualand trader, who knew the interior and its natives well, and had prospered moderately. He had not a very good reputation. When diamonds were discovered and the rush took place to the Vaal River, he happened to be down-country. He joined the rush, and, chumming with an Englishman fresh from the old country, spent many months in digging. The two men lived hard, and had no luck for six months, by which time most of their capital had come to an end. Then came a big stroke of fortune. They found a huge stone of many carats, worth some thousands of pounds. Not a soul in the camp knew of the find. But one day Fealton had disappeared, his partner was found in their tent stabbed to the heart, and a hue and cry arose. The hue and cry did not last long; the camp was far too busy in those days with its own affairs to trouble greatly about bringing felons to justice. Fealton had carefully covered up his traces and the search presently died away. Fealton had, as a matter of fact, ridden off on a fleet horse by night and had secured three good days’ start. Avoiding all dwellings, he rode across the veldt, and presently reached a kraal on the north bank of the Orange River, where he had left a waggon, oxen, and some stores some six months earlier, just before he had been bitten with the diamond fever.

Within six hours of his arrival at the kraal he had inspanned his oxen and trekked away north into the heart of the Kalahari. At first he had luck; there were plenty of wild melons (tsama) about the desert, and, failing water, his oxen subsisted on these for some weeks. At Lehuditu, a Kalahari kraal, where the only native he had with him lived, he paid off the man and thence trekked on alone. But as he pressed yet north the tsama failed, and one after another the oxen fell in their yokes and died of thirst and exhaustion. It was a ghastly struggle for life. Fealton managed to reach the pleasant fountain where Kwaneet found him and there halted. He had reached a remote place, surrounded by “thirsts”—a place unknown to white men—here he would rest for a year or two. The remnant of his oxen, save two, soon after died from eating a poisonous plant—“Tulp,” as the Boers call it—and he was stranded whether he liked it or no. But the place suited him very well. He was haunted by the gnawing fear of detection. The crime itself—the foul murder of his friend—troubled him little at present in the haste and toil of flight, but the consequences of it, the terror of retribution and of justice, dwelt with him incessantly. He would stay here till things were forgotten, and then escape north far into Portuguese territory and so to Europe. Meanwhile there was plenty of game around him. He had a plentiful store of ammunition—enough for many years, with care—and was fond of sport. He would hunt ostrich feathers, and thus collect wealth to add to the value of that wonderful diamond, which he carried ever about him. And so he had built himself a hut, and made himself a home in the wilderness.

Rambling with his gun about the country near the place of his settlement, he had found one day a dry river-bed, where water had evidently run in ages past. Some of the gravel here and there, left uncovered by the light sand of the desert, struck him. He brought a spade and searched carefully, and presently from a washing picked out a small diamond. The discovery electrified him. That here in this secret place, happened upon by the merest accident in that desperate flight from the great diamond stretches of the Vaal River, he should have lit upon another field, seemed the wildest improbability of a dream. Yet so it was. He found a week or two later another stone. They were not large diamonds, but they were wonderfully pure gems, white and flawless. He now set to work with feverish energy. He would amass a huge fortune in a year or two and then get away to some civilised country and enjoy that life of luxury and indulgence for which inwardly his soul had always pined. He had a few trading tools on his waggon, among them picks and spades. These easily sufficed him. He worked steadily for three years in the dry river-bed, until the time when Kwaneet and his father had made their way to his hut. His success had not been very great, thus far the stones were scarce and far apart and not very large. Moreover, the toil of carrying the stuff to his fountain for washing purposes was great, and took up much time. But, four years after the Bushman’s visit, a turn came. Moving farther along the dry channel he had at length hit upon much richer soil. Fine diamonds of considerable size were occasionally to be found after the washings, and slowly the man’s store of gems increased. Yet, always hoping for some yet greater streak of luck, he toiled on. Now at last, in the leather bag, locked in a corner of his waggon-chest, he had a great fortune. But for the last two years his health had begun to fail. Some internal trouble sapped at his strong frame. He lost flesh and grew old and wrinkled. The fitful beating of his heart, palpitations, and even sudden pangs, alarmed him. He gave up digging, he had barely enough energy at times to shoot or snare game and keep himself in meat. He must escape from the desert, which he now loathed, and get to Europe and obtain medical advice. No doubt he could be put right again.

For months he had been casting about for some means of escape from what was now in his weakened state a prison. He doubted whether he could struggle on foot to the next water—sixty long miles of heat and thirst—and there were other long thirsts to be traversed before he could even strike a native settlement and buy a horse or oxen. And here, in the midst of his perplexities, the Bushman had turned up! Nothing could have been more fortunate, it was absolutely providential. Fealton felt that evening more cheerful than he had done for years past. His troubles would vanish now. That night he treated Kwaneet to a magnificent feed—for a Bushman—opened his last bottle of brandy—the long-treasured remnant from a case of two dozen—and, under the mellowing influence of the liquor and companionship, his spirits rose immensely. The old bright dreams, which had been fading in the last year or two, rose clear before him. He understood the Koranna dialect, which much resembles Masarwa, and he had no difficulty in conversing with the Bushman. From him he gleaned a little—a very little—of what was passing in the native states around him. Moremi reigned at Lake Ngami. Khama had succeeded Macheng and ruled the Bamangwato. Secheli still lived. The white men came oftener into the country, the game grew scarcer. He could glean little else than these bare facts from the desert man. Yet it was wonderfully pleasant to use his tongue, to break the long silence of the lonely wilderness, to exchange ideas even with a Masarwa. The two men talked for a couple of hours, then Fealton motioned Kwaneet into a corner of the hut, and himself lay down upon his rough bed.

Kwaneet curled himself up under his hartebeest skin cloak and was soon fast asleep. He woke as usual very early, but Fealton was awake before him. Peering from under his cloak, Kwaneet saw in the dim light of early morning that the white man was sitting on his bed. He had in his hands a skin bag. He opened this and poured out its contents on the couch. The Bushman could not see all, but he saw a little heap of pebbles, which the hand of the white man levelled and spread over the blanket. Several of the larger stones he picked up and examined closely and weighed in his hand. It was clear to Kwaneet from the white man’s movement that he set great store by these pebbles. The Bushman stirred. Fealton swept the stones into the skin bag again, put them into his waggon-chest, which stood close to the bed, and locked it.

That morning, after breakfast, Fealton unfolded his plans to the Masarwa. He was to go with some ostrich feathers to a trader at Lake Ngami and barter two good pack oxen on which the white man could make his escape. He could ride one and pack his belongings on the other. The Masarwa had more than once tended cattle for the Bechuanas, and understood them. Oxen would traverse the “thirst” better than horses—even if horses could be obtained, which was doubtful—and Kwaneet did not understand horses. For the Bushman’s protection in this business—lest he should be robbed or cheated of the feathers by the way—Fealton wrote a note in an assumed name and hand, authorising the cattle to be delivered in exchange for feathers. He represented himself briefly as a traveller who had broken down in the desert. He enjoined upon Kwaneet complete secrecy as to his long settlement in the Kalahari. The reward to Kwaneet for the due despatch of this piece of business was in the Bushman’s eyes a very great one. The white man promised him a breech-loading rifle and ammunition and some goats. Kwaneet had ambitions, for a Masarwa, and began to look forward to setting up as an aristocrat, such, for instance, as the Batauana or Bamangwato people, who lorded it so greatly over the poor children of the desert.

Kwaneet performed his mission secretly and well, he procured the two pack oxen, got them safely across the desert—luckily it was the beginning of the rains—and arrived one day at the white man’s hut. He approached the place with a swelling sense of satisfaction. He had accomplished a difficult mission for a desert-bred man. The white man would be vastly pleased. The reward, that magnificent Snider rifle, which always he had carried in his mind’s eye, the cartridges, the goats—all, all were soon to be his. Within fifty yards of the hut something caught the eye of the Masarwa—something that sent a thrill down his back. Here was now, since the rain had fallen, fair green grass starred with flowers. Big pink and white lilies stood in their short-lived bravery near the fountain, and amid these wild lilies lay bleached bones and pieces of torn cloth. The white man was dead, and here was the last of him. Kwaneet turned over the bones. Many of them were broken by hyenas and jackals, but there was no mistaking the fragments of clothing amid which they lay. The Bushman’s aid had come too late. Fealton’s fate had at last overtaken him. He had died suddenly of the ailment that had been so long sapping at his life, and the birds and beasts of the desert had been his undertakers.

Here at first was a bitter disappointment for Kwaneet. Presently, however, on thinking it all over, the affair looked not quite so blank for him. Here in this secret place was wealth—a good rifle, some ammunition still remaining, as he knew, the two oxen he had brought. Why should not he himself live here and enjoy this pleasant spot and these good things? So Kwaneet took possession of the hut and its contents, clothed himself in an old pair of trousers and a flannel shirt, and entered upon the life of a great man. He built a little kraal for his two oxen, and for a time was as happy as an English squire with a heavy rent roll in the good days. He tried the rifle, and after a time even overcame the alarming difficulty of letting it off. But it was a serious undertaking, and upon the whole he preferred his bow and arrows.

Presently Kwaneet, Masarwa though he was, yearned once more for companionship. He would try to get a wife again. He had found the white man’s bag of pebbles. He felt convinced somehow, from the care the man had bestowed upon them, that they were valuable. He would take these and the best of the ostrich feathers to the trader and obtain more cattle for them, and on his way thither he would pick up a wife at the water of Ghansi. This last was not a difficult task. At Ghansi he bought the girl he needed, paying for her his father’s old hunting-knife, which he had replaced by a better one found in the white man’s hut. Kwaneet’s appearance with a couple of pack oxen and a big load of feathers, and other indications of immense wealth, created some sensation among the Masarwas squatting at Ghansi. One of them in particular, Sakwan, made it his business to inquire further into the matter. He had an old grudge against Kwaneet—it had happened over a stray tusk of ivory found in the desert; it irked him yet more to see his rival thus prospering. After Kwaneet with his new wife had left Ghansi for the Lake, therefore, Sakwan followed secretly upon their spoor. Kwaneet found no difficulty in marketing his wares at the end of his journey. He interviewed the trader by night. The man was staggered at sight of the magnificent lot of ostrich feathers which Kwaneet turned out of the skin coverings that enveloped them; yet more staggered was he when the Bushman produced his bag of pebbles, and poured them upon the deal table. The trader knew diamonds in the rough perfectly well. Here, he assured himself, was the price of a king’s ransom. Where did they come from? Were there more of them? To these questions Kwaneet returned evasive answers. He knew nothing more than that he had found them in the desert. There were no more of them. What then, asked the trader, did Kwaneet want for the lot—feathers and pebbles? They were not worth much to him, but he would buy them. Kwaneet had thought all this out His fortune was worth to him, he conceived, ten head of cows, a bull, twenty goats, some Snider ammunition, a hat, a suit of trade clothes, and a shawl for his wife. He shook a little with excitement as he proposed these enormous terms. The trader laughed to himself at the Masarwa’s idea of wealth; he knew well that that wonderful bag of diamonds alone was worth some tens of thousands of pounds. And the feathers—magnificent “prime bloods,” long and snow-white, represented three or four hundred pounds at least. He haggled a little to save appearances, and finally closed the bargain.

Two days later, Kwaneet and his wife started away from a quiet cattle post belonging to the trader, which lay at some distance from the native town. It was part of the bargain that the trader should see the coast clear, so that the Bushman might get away unknown to the Batauana. This was safely accomplished. The two bush people, driving their fortune before them, plunged straightway into the desert. It was an anxious yet a delightful journey for Kwaneet. He had made his pile; henceforth he would rear flocks and herds in that dim corner of the desert and grow ever richer—as rich as a Bechuana. What Masarwa before him had ever accomplished, had ever even dreamt so much?

Thanks to the rains, which held late that season, Kwaneet got all his stock safely over the journey and reached his goal. It was a fine clear morning as they drove the cattle and goats up to the pleasant fountain, now brimming over with the rains, which Kwaneet knew so well. There stood the hut and the waggon just as he had left them. Partridge-like francolins were calling sharply near the water. Brilliant rollers and wood-peckers, and bizarre hornbills, with monstrous yellow bills, were flitting to and fro among the trees of the mokaala grove. Beautiful wild doves cooed softly from the spreading branches of the great giraffe-acacia, beneath which the old waggon stood. Bands of sand-grouse were drinking, splashing, and stooping at the water. The grass was still green; flowers still flourished; the place looked very fair. All that day Kwaneet and his young wife toiled hard, cutting thorns and making a temporary kraal for the cattle. Then they ate some food and, turning into the hut, slept.

Two hours later—before the moon rose—a dark form crept up to the doorway. The cry of a hyaena was heard. Kwaneet came forth and was met not by any prowling beast but by the sharp blade of an assegai which pierced his heart. That deadly thrust was made by Sakwan, who had shadowed for weeks past the career of his hated rival. Thus miserably ended the fortunes and hopes of Kwaneet the Bushman. Perchance if he had lived he might have founded here in this remote place, as he had sometimes in these last weeks dreamed to himself, a tribe—perhaps even a dynasty—of the desert! Why not! Lehuditu, that strange village of the central Kalahari, sprang from no greater a beginning! But all these aspirations had been ruthlessly ended by Sakwan’s spear-head. They sank there into the thirsty sand with Kwaneet’s life-blood. As for Sakwan, he took possession of the Masarwa girl, squatted at the fountain till they had killed and devoured Kwaneet’s cattle and goats, and then, with his wife, betook himself once more to the roaming life of his kind.

Kwaneet’s bones rest there amid the Kalahari grass, mingling with those of the white man, mute records of ruined hopes, the pitiful relics of the first and last Masarwa Bushman that dared to have ambition. Sometimes the jackal turns them over with his sharp snout, but they are very white and very clean now, and not even a jackal can find consolation in them. The diamonds collected so painfully by the murderer Fealton, and so lightly parted with by the simple Kwaneet, are scattered too; but at least they have built the fortunes of the white trader, who now lives in England upon their proceeds the life of a man of wealth. He can little guess, nor, I suppose, would he be greatly interested to know, the sorry ending of the desert nomad to whom he owes his luck.

Chapter Five.
The Conquest of Christina De Klerk.

The few hunters, traders, and Trek Boers who cross the dreaded Thirstland of the Northern Kalahari, and, upon their long and trying journey towards Lake Ngami, strike the Lake River (marked upon the maps Zouga or Botletli River), well know the pleasant outspan at Masinya’s Kraal. Masinya’s is a small village of Bakurutse natives, planted a mile or so from the southern bank of the Lake River. Between the kraal and the river, amid a thin grove of spreading giraffe-acacia trees, set upon a little islet of rising ground, lies the outspan where travellers bound to and from Ngami usually halt. On the right, a hundred and fifty yards from the tall, oak-like motjeerie tree, which every hunter knows, lies a deep depression, which, fed by the overflow of the Lake River, assumes the aspect of a handsome lagoon, at some seasons full and deep, at others a mere shallow vlei. Beyond the lagoon lie the hard, sun-baked alluvial flats which border the sluggish river. Upon the southern and western sides of the charming oasis of Masinya’s Kraal stretch the great open grass plains, flecked with springboks, and dotted here and there with a troop of larger game, which fifteen or twenty miles away are checked by the endless and waterless forest and bush of the Kalahari—that vast desert which, thanks to its lack of surface water, lies to this day dim, unknown, and mysterious to all races of mankind, save the wandering Bushmen and Vaalpens who inhabit it.

Upon the 28th of December, 1878, towards four o’clock in the afternoon, a great Cape waggon, conspicuous by its new white tilt and spick-and-span paint, toiled heavily across the flat towards Masinya’s Kraal. Presently, urged by the excited yells of the driver and the pistol-like cracks of his great whip, the eighteen stout oxen rose the slight sandy ascent, and a little further drew up their burden under the shade of a spreading acacia. A white woman, young, dark, and good-looking, her face shaded by a broad-brimmed straw hat, sat upon the box; and as the great waggon halted she descended with light foot to the dry, grassy soil, shook herself a little, adjusted her hat, and looked about her. The first thing her brown eyes lit upon was another waggon and encampment some hundred and fifty yards to her right.

Kate Marston was a colonial-born girl, and understood the ways and signs of the veldt well enough. Something about the look of the encampment, the old buck-sail stretched from the waggon to a couple of friendly tree stems (thus forming an apartment in itself), the travel-worn waggon, its tilt patched with raw hides, and a general air of untidiness, convinced her that it belonged to a Boer owner. The sight of a female figure sitting under the lee of the waggon in a squat chair, and her immense Dutch kapje, or sun-bonnet, at once settled that conviction.

But Kate Marston had plenty to do at present before troubling herself about a visit to her neighbour. Her husband, Fred Marston, was away in the veldt, hunting, and she wished to have her camp settled, her tent-sail fixed, some of her belongings got out of the waggon, the fires lighted, and the evening meal prepared against his return, which she expected towards sundown. In half an hour’s time, thanks to her brisk and energetic ways, things were settling themselves as she wished. The tent-sail was fastened down, the little folding camp-table—flanked by a couple of waggon chairs—in its place and covered with a clean table-cloth (even in the wilderness, Kate, with her English ways, loved to be neat), a fire of wood blazed cheerfully, the game stew was simmering in the big Kaffir pot. These things being attended to, Kate had washed her hands and face after the day of trekking, brushed her thick, dark hair; and now, in her thin light brown stuff dress, clean collar and cuffs, and broad sun-hat, looked as fresh, bright, and cheerful as if she had just issued from her bedroom in some well-found house, instead of from a mere rude travelling home in the wilderness. Kate Marston, the daughter of a well-to-do British settler in Griqualand West, had recently married, and was now, two months after her wedding, travelling in the hunting veldt with her husband—a trip she had looked forward to with the keenest anticipation for more than a year past. It was the dream of her life. Although very well-educated at the Cape, Kate, brought up on a colonial farm, loved the free, unfettered life of the veldt. She rode well, was a good shot with the fowling-piece, and, before settling down on a Transvaal farm in Marico, had persuaded her husband to take her with him on an expedition into the far interior. Rough though the journey had been through Bechuanaland, Khama’s country, and across the parched wastes of the Kalahari, Kate had loved it all. To her each day brought with it new delights—scenes and memories, of which, to the latest day of her existence, she could never be deprived. Fred Marston, her husband, a man of two-and-thirty, had done very well for years past as a trader and elephant hunter. He was about settling down for life in the Transvaal—now for a year past proclaimed a British possession; and before retiring from the wild life of the wilderness he was thus trekking with his wife, on a journey of pure pleasure and hunting, towards Lake Ngami.

A native boy had strolled across from the Boer camp, and from him Kate Marston had learned the name of the Dutch woman sitting over yonder. It was de Klerk. Her husband was an elephant hunter from the Northern Transvaal. They had a good load of ivory, gleaned during a year or two of adventure, and the wife, husband, and two children were now on their way down-country. Kate was not very sure of her reception if she went across. The Transvaal Dutch were, since the annexation of their country, not only disaffected towards the British Government, but rude and uncivil towards individual English folk. However, Kate understood the Dutch and their language exceedingly well, and her cheerful nature inclined her to be friendly. She had often before now thawed the stubborn reserve of a Boer huis-vrouw. She would go across and pay the Dutch camp a visit. A walk of less than two hundred yards, and she stood by the de Klerks’ waggon.

Now Vrouw de Klerk had heard from her native servant, sent casually across to pick up news, who and what the new arrivals were. She was not much comforted. She had hoped to see the faces of Dutch folk. Here were only English, whom she hated. However, she was not to be caught napping. She had washed her children’s faces and hands and her own, pinned a big bow of blue ribbon at her throat, and put on a clean kapje, and had even donned a nearly new black alpaca apron. She sat under the waggon sail, cutting up dried onions into a tin dish; but as Kate Marston approached she made no attempt to meet her. She was not a bad-looking woman, Christina de Klerk, as Boers—who are not noted for female beauty—go. She had plenty of light brown hair, drawn tightly back from her face and knotted under her great sun-bonnet; but the face was—as is so often the case with Afrikander Dutch women—broad, high boned, and absolutely lacking in colour; the blue eyes were somewhat pale and colourless; and although she was a young woman—little more than three-and-twenty—a dull, stolid, even hard expression was already settling itself for life upon her lineaments. Christina was a tall, big woman, but her figure was thick, heavy, and altogether devoid of grace; stiff and unyielding it was as her own nature.

Bred up in a remote back-country in Waterberg—scarcely educated at all—if reading with no great ease from the great family Bible can be called education, Christina had, like most of her fellows, a mind almost untouched by civilisation; a mind narrow, bigoted, and prejudiced to a degree almost inconceivable to denizens of modern Europe. But when all was said and done, allowances were to be made for Christina de Klerk. The grandchild of one of those Dutch families which had quitted the Cape and thrown off English rule in the Great Trek of 1836; the daughter of a frontiersman, who, after making himself a home in the wilds of the Northern Transvaal, had seen his beloved republic entered and possessed by the very British from whom he and his parents had trekked; she had from infancy been nurtured in a blind and unreasoning hatred against all English people. Just now, as Kate Marston advanced and stood before her tent, her naturally grave and impassive face had assumed a very sour and unpleasant look. Christina had surveyed with rapid sidelong glances the Englishwoman’s approach; she now took a full, steady, but by no means friendly look at her as Kate halted and spoke. In these glances and in that look she had time to observe that the Englishwoman was young, very good-looking, and—in a Boer woman’s eyes—well-dressed. All this tended little to lull her wrath. The woman, she felt, was her superior. She hated her for it. And as Kate spoke in a soft, clear English voice, with that lip speech which, to users of the rough, thick, guttural Dutch, seems mincing and super-refined, Christina detested her yet more. Her husband hated the English, her father and grandfather had hated them; now at this moment her spirit rose in a burning flame of resentment against the woman who had come to speak to her.

“Good evening, Vrouw de Klerk,” said Kate pleasantly.

“Good evening,” repeated Christina in a low, subacid voice, looking away into her bowl of sliced onions.

“We have just come up-country and I hear you are on your journey out I thought I should like just to step across and ask if there is anything we can do for you. We have plenty of stores on our waggon. You may be short of coffee, sugar, or other things? And I thought, too, perhaps, as you have been away in the veldt so long, you might like to have news from down-country.”

Christina no longer looked away, but now stared straight into the Englishwoman’s face. A faint flush had risen upon her dull cheeks; her anger, the pent-up hatred of years, was now at boiling point.

“I want to know and hear nothing,” she replied in a hard, set voice, with much energy. “The English have stolen our Transvaal country; we have nothing to say to them until we have got that country back. You took the Old Colony from us. You took Natal, which we won with our blood. Now you have taken the Transvaal. Ach! and yet you are surprised that we hate you. If I were dying I would not take one drop of cold water from an Englishwoman. We are enemies. You know it. And yet you must pursue us even here in the veldt. I want to have nothing to do with your people at all or at any time!”

Kate was a good deal staggered at this outburst, but she knew the Dutch and their uncouth ways; she knew that their bark is often far worse than their bite. In a perfectly calm tone, but with some spirit, she replied:

“Your welcome is surely a churlish one, Mevrouw de Klerk, and your accusations are very absurd. I am an Afrikander, like yourself, and I know of these things. I will grant that perhaps the Dutch in the Old Colony had some reason for their Great Trek. But that is a tale more than eighty years old, which should surely be forgotten. As for Natal, there were, as I happen to know—for my mother was a Natal colonist—English traders at Port Durban years before the Boers trekked into the country. And for the Transvaal, surely you must admit that your weakness and misgovernment was so great that the English Government had to step in to save your country and the rest of South Africa from Zulu and other native dangers.”

Vrouw de Klerk was preparing to answer vigorously. Kate Marston raised her hand. “Stop,” she said, “I won’t argue the matter further. I’ll just say Good evening and go back to my waggon. Perhaps when you come to think it over you will see that you have been rude and unreasonable to a stranger in the veldt—even an English Afrikander has feelings. If I can help you in any way, if you want anything, send over to our waggon and you can have it with pleasure. Your children there,”—looking at the two fat Dutch kinder, staring with blue eyes and moon faces at the dreadful Englishwoman—“may want something, perhaps.” So speaking, Kate turned on her heel and walked back to the camp.

Christina de Klerk sat glaring for a full minute at Kate’s back as she walked away. She was turning over in her dull, slow-moving mind some scathing retort upon her adversary’s statements. But Kate was now too far away. She rose with a snort of defiance, and, muttering angrily to herself, went off to the fire with her sliced onions. These she threw into a three-legged pot, adding to the meat already there a pinch or two of salt and pepper, and then bestirred herself towards the cookies of Boer meal baking among the embers.

Kate Marston, not a little vexed and put out at her unexpected reception, strolled back to her waggon, and then, moving fifty yards beyond, sat down with her back to a tree to enjoy the sunset and watch for the approach of her husband. She was upon the edge of the grove, and the great grass plains stretched away at her feet in illimitable monotones of green and yellow—green where the natives had fired the veldt, and the recent rain had induced fresh vegetation; yellow where belts and patches of last year’s grass, which had escaped the fire, yet remained. It was nearing sundown; the western sky was ablaze with colour; far up towards the zenith the gorgeous hues of crimson and orange faded off to amber, and yet higher the heavens were of a wondrous clear, pale sea-green. The plains were just now bathed in a rich warm glow. As Kate looked she could see droves of springbok dotted here and there, their white backs and under parts showing up curiously in the mellow light of evening. It was a wonderful hour, and amid that vast calm and the soothing glamour of the scene Kate’s ruffled feelings soon assumed their wonted peacefulness.

Her eyes, ranging over the vast expanse, presently lit upon something that arrested her attention. There were two figures far away in the sea of grass; surely one of them would be her husband? She watched, and presently made out that one of the objects was much taller than the other. What could it mean? A little while and the two figures rose clearer before her gaze. Now, at last, she understood what they meant Fred Marston had found a number of giraffe, and turned one out of the troop, and, aided by a masterly use of the wind, had succeeded in driving the tall creature in front of him right up to his own waggon. Skilled South African hunters can achieve this feat with the eland and giraffe, but the giraffe is usually far more difficult to ride into camp than the eland.

Closer came the strange group. The giraffe was tiring, and now, instead of galloping in its clumsy yet swift fashion, paced with giant, shuffling strides across the veldt, with something of the gait of a camel. A hundred yards from where Kate sat, quietly watching this singular spectacle, the great dappled giant stood. It had caught sight of the waggon and of figures moving among the trees, and would go no further. The tall quadruped, full seventeen feet in height, its rich, dark, chestnut-pied coat gleaming warmly beneath the flush of sunset, stood for a full minute absolutely motionless, as these animals will do. It looked like some strange figure of bronze, the creature of a vanished age. Thirty paces to the right Fred Marston had reined in his horse and stood expectant.

“There you are, Kate!” he shouted, cheerily, as his wife rose. “A real good giraffe cow, fat as butter, and in splendid coat. I’ve had the dickens’ own trouble with her, though. She was as obstinate as a mule.”

Kate clapped her hands together. “Oh, how wonderful!” she exclaimed. It was the first giraffe she had ever set eyes on.

The cow still stood, and Fred Marston rode nearer to his wife. He was a strong, good-looking, fair-bearded man, and, sitting there easily in his saddle, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his rifle butt resting on his right thigh, the dying light full on his sunburnt face and arms, he looked, as Kate thought, a true man of the veldt.

“How wonderful!” she repeated; “and what a height, and what a lovely colour. It seems a sin to shoot her!”

“My dear Kate,” answered her husband, “we want meat for the camp badly, and the Masarwa spoorers expect it. I can’t let her go.”

“Well,” responded Kate, “I won’t see her shot, poor thing,” and with one last look at the tall creature still standing there, an almost pathetic sight, with a half sigh she turned and went back to the waggon. As she moved, the giraffe swung round and shuffled off. But her time had come. Marston cantered a little wide and ahead of her. As she came past, his rifle went up, the report rang out, and a Martini-Henry bullet drove into the great cow’s heart. She staggered, tottered twenty paces, and then with a mighty crash fell to the earth dead.

Kate and her husband, after a cosy supper, sat long, chatting by the camp fire that evening. She told him of her reception at the Boer waggon. He related his adventures in the veldt that day. A little before ten, they turned into their waggon, in the forepart of which a comfortable kartel-bed was slung, closed the fore-clap (curtain), and their camp presently rested in a profound peace.

But at Christina de Klerk’s camp there was no peace that night. At ten o’clock her husband’s native after-rider, “September,” a Hottentot, who had before dawn on the previous morning ridden out with his master across the plains, walked up to the camp fire, leading his lame and foundered pony behind him. The man was himself far gone with fatigue. His mistress had long since retired to her waggon, but he had ill news, and he called her up. His news was this:

They had found a good troop of giraffe soon after they entered the forest; but in a long run up to the game Adriaan de Klerk had sustained a bad fall, pitching upon his head. He recovered in a couple of hours’ time, thanks to the Hottentot’s care; but after that, September said, he had behaved like a madman. The fall had turned his brain somehow. He insisted, against September’s entreaties, in pursuing the giraffes, which had now got far too great an advantage. But de Klerk said, angrily, he wanted “kameel” skins (Kameel, literally Camel, the Boer name for giraffes), he could get 2 pounds 10 shillings apiece for them in Marico, and he would ride till he came up with them. All through the hot afternoon they rode without off-saddling; the Baas had a terrible thirst, and drank up most of the water they carried. At nightfall, with jaded horses, they off-saddled in the bush and lay down to sleep. It was a bad night, said September. The Baas was very restless, and constantly moaned and talked in his sleep. Before dawn he was up again, and insisted upon going on. September begged and pleaded. He warned his master that with failing horses and no water they might easily be cast away and die of thirst. All Adriaan de Klerk could say was that he was going on till he came up with the giraffes. He told September to ride back to camp for water. The Hottentot said he would not go without his master. De Klerk was plainly beside himself. He raised his rifle and told the man if he did not turn his horse’s head and go he would shoot him. And so September had ridden home. His horse was lame and knocked up; there was not another in camp. What was he to do? If the Baas was not rescued within forty-eight hours he would die of thirst.

Christina had a stout heart, as have most of the Afrikander Dutch women-folk, but September’s story, and above all his manner, convinced her that her husband, alone, without water, his mind wandering, was in supreme danger. She rose from the kartel—like most up-country Boers she slept in her clothes—buttoned her bodice, and came to the fire. An inspection of September’s pony at once convinced her that the animal was unable to travel further. As it was, September had been compelled to walk by its side during most of that day’s journey home. It was dead lame and suffering from the effects of fatigue and two days’ thirst.

What was she to do? Christina stood there with the Hottentot by the fire-blaze, discussing every possible plan. They might carry water by the aid of natives. But that would involve waiting till the morning, and even then a journey of probably more than forty miles would have to be taken on foot. And then, as September pointed out, it was more than likely that Masinya’s people, who were not over fond of the Boers, would point-blank refuse to go. And all this time Adriaan de Klerk, his mind unhinged by his fall and set upon one impossible object, might be plunging yet further into that waterless and inhospitable wilderness. His image rose clear before her mind’s eye: the thirsting, haggard man, the sinking horse, and then the terrible end, and the vultures streaming down from the sky! She knew but too well the danger. What, oh God! what should she do? Leaving the tired Hottentot to squat over the fire, she paced frantically up and down near the waggon, turning over impossible projects in her agonised mind.

It was a glorious night. The moon, shining in unspeakable majesty, cast its silvery spell over the distant plain and upon bush and grass near at hand; its amazing light pierced the foliage of the acacias and wrought wondrous patterns beneath her feet. The clear army of the stars, the deep blue mysterious vault above, the ineffable calm of night; all these things availed nothing to the woman’s troubled soul. Her agony of mind increased. Suddenly her eyes fell upon the white waggon tilt of the Englishman’s camp. There, of course, was a way out of the difficulty. There were fresh horses, four or five of them. With these, help and water could be carried to her husband!

But then, upon the instant, her thoughts ran back to the afternoon, to her rough, unkindly reception of the Englishwoman. She knew in her inmost soul that she had not done the right thing, thus to meet a stranger in the veldt—even if that stranger were an Englishwoman. Was her trouble a judgment upon her? But here her stubborn Dutch pride came to her aid. Could she go across to that camp and ask help?

Never! Never!

The night slowly passed, and still Christina de Klerk paced up and down the grove, sometimes resting for a brief spell upon the disselboom of her waggon. In her agony of mind it seemed that the day would never dawn, the light in the east never pale the sky.

At seven o’clock next morning, as Kate Marston, fresh and beaming, was putting the finishing touches to her toilet under the waggon sail, which, flanked by canvas screens, served as her dressing-room, her husband called to her. She came forth, and there, wan and dishevelled, her eyes red with weeping, stood Christina de Klerk. She told her piteous tale. She acknowledged that she had been unpardonably rude the afternoon before. It was a judgment upon her. A judgment sent by the Heer God to humble her pride. And now would the Englishwoman and her husband forgive and help her? She could not live without her husband. She had children. They would take pity on her in her trouble. In all her life, never had Christina de Klerk known a bitterer moment, thus to humble herself before the detested English.

The tears sprang into Kate’s eyes at the poor woman’s story, her too evident distress. “Why, Me’Vrouw de Klerk,” she said cheerfully, “of course my husband will help you. Will you not, Fred? We should be a poor kind of English folk, indeed, if we could listen to a trouble like yours without doing all we could for you.”

“Wait ten minutes, Me’Vrouw de Klerk,” said Marston, taking her by the hand, “while I swallow some breakfast and get the nags saddled, and we’ll go at once with water on your husband’s spoor.” In fifteen minutes, taking a spare horse loaded up with two vatjes of water, and September, the Hottentot, on another fresh nag, to act as guide, he set forth.

“Never fear, Me’Vrouw de Klerk,” he said, cheerily, as, putting aside her heartfelt, sobbing thanks, he rode off. “We shall bring your husband back all right.”

As a matter of fact Fred Marston knew that he had a difficult and dangerous task before him, to rescue a man half out of his mind, wandering in that terrible Thirstland. He accomplished his task, but, as he had expected, with the greatest difficulty. He and September, taking up the spoor of the wanderer, had followed it hour after hour into the parched forest country. Not until half-way through the second day did they find de Klerk, lying insensible, a mile or two beyond his dead horse, himself nearing his end. Resting all that afternoon and evening, they revived the Boer with the aid of water, brandy, and a little food, and, riding all that night and part of the next day, brought Christina de Klerk her man, safe and sound, though terribly worn and jaded, into camp. All were fagged and knocked up; without water the horses could have held out but a few hours longer.

How Christina passed those miserable two days of suspense she never afterwards quite knew. But for the kindly help and sympathy of Kate Marston, she declares she never could have got through. The next day was New Year. De Klerk, after a long rest, was nearly his own man again, and nothing would content the Marstons but that all should dine together in the English camp. Sitting under the great acacia tree, where the Marstons had outspanned, they enjoyed together a right merry New Year’s dinner.

Christina de Klerk never forgot that time of trial. They trekked down to the Transvaal, and Adriaan de Klerk, it is true, rode out with his fellow-countrymen and fought in the successful Boer War of 1881. But in their estimate of the English, individually, their feelings have never wavered since that New Year’s-tide of 1879.

“There may be bad English as there are bad Dutch,” says Christina, as she sometimes tells the tale of her man’s rescue to some of her countrywomen. “And Rhodes and Chamberlain! Ach! they are too good for shooting even. But I believe most of the English folk have good hearts. For my part, so long as I live, and I hope so long as my children shall live after me, there shall be always a welcome for the English in this house. Adriaan and I owe them far too much to forget the kindness we received at their hands. Is it not so, Adriaan?”

And Adriaan, ponderously yet heartily, answers, “Yes.”

Chapter Six.
A Christmas in the Veldt.

At six o’clock upon a hot morning of African December, Lieutenant Parton, of the Bechuanaland Border Police, came out of his bedroom at the Vryburg Hotel, equipped for a long two days’ ride. He was a smart officer, and the cord uniform, big slouch hat, looped up rakishly at one side, riding boots, and spurs, became his tall figure well enough.

In itself the blazing two days’ ride and the prospect of some trouble at the end of it were hardly sufficient to warrant the air of deep thoughtfulness now gathered upon his dark and serious face; yet, as he strode across the little courtyard beneath the mean shade of the two or three straggling blue gum-trees, the grim knitting of his brows indicated that somehow he was not altogether pleased with the journey that lay before him.

But the lieutenant had some reason for his burden of care. The object of the expedition upon which he was setting forth was the arrest of some native cattle-stealers at a Bakalahari kraal, far out to the westward, in the more desert portion of British Bechuanaland. There had been a sudden call for troopers of the Bechuanaland Border Police up in the northern protectorate, and it happened that the only man Parton could take with him as orderly upon this particular morning was the very last person in the world with whom he would have chosen to spend several days—probably a week or more—in the closest intercourse. Trooper Gressex, now waiting outside in front of the hotel, was that man.

Although the one was a lieutenant close upon his captaincy, the other plain trooper in the frontier force, the two men had once been social equals at home, and, at school and elsewhere, upon terms of considerable intimacy. Gressex (formerly known as Tom Mainwaring) had migrated from London society and a career of sport and pleasure, after coming somewhat suddenly to the end of his financial tether. He had made his plunge into obscurity and had re-appeared as an unknown trooper in the Bechuanaland Border Police.

Parton had quitted service in a line regiment in India, where he saw little prospect of promotion, and had accepted a commission in the same Border Police force. The two men had first encountered one another, in their now altered circumstances, some three months back. Upon the South African frontier such striking changes of condition are being constantly met with, and are borne by the less fortunate, almost invariably, with a good-humoured, if somewhat reckless, philosophy.

In this instance Partons discovery of his old schoolfellow’s altered lot had not been altogether a welcome one; and on this particular December morning he had, as has been hinted, a special reason for desiring any other trooper as his orderly upon the expedition in front of him.

The lieutenant entered the coffee-room of the squat, corrugated-iron hotel, and ate his breakfast. In ten minutes he appeared upon the street, ready for his horse. Trooper Gressex, who was leaning against the stoep, holding his own horse and Parton’s, saluted as his officer came forth, and answered the formal “Good morning, Gressex,” with an equally formal “Good morning, sir.”

The two men mounted and rode away, no slightest sign having fallen to denote that they had ever occupied any other relations than those of officer and man.

Having ridden quietly half-a-mile out of the town, Parton lighted his pipe and set his horse into a canter. Gressex rode upon his flank, and the two steadily reeled off mile after mile of the vast sweep of grassy, undulating plains over which their route lay. Hour after hour they rode through the blazing day, off-saddling every three hours and giving their nags a brief rest according to invariable South African custom. At night, having compassed more than fifty miles, they finally halted, and prepared to camp just within the shelter of a patch of woodland, which here broke the monotony of the grass veldt. The horses, after a longish graze, were tied up to a handy bush; the two men, having eaten a supper of tinned “bully beef” and brewed a kettle of coffee, lay upon their blankets and smoked by the pleasant firelight. The few scraps of conversation which they exchanged related solely to the expedition before them, Gressex having more than once made the journey to Masura’s kraal.

Aloft the infinite calm of the far-off, dark-blue heaven, now spangled with a million stars, seemed to invite deep and peaceful sleep after a hard day’s riding. A refreshing coolness now moved upon the veldt, the tender airs whispered softly through the long grasses, a cicada droned drowsily in the thorn-bush; all nature promised rest. At nine o’clock both men, lightly wrapped in their blankets, with their feet to the fire and their heads pillowed in their saddles, were fast asleep.

At one o’clock in the still, early morning Gressex was awakened by the sound of a voice. He rose softly upon his elbow and looked about him. The stars shone more gloriously than ever, but the Southern Cross had fallen from its erect position and now lay over upon its side. The veldt was perfectly quiet, save for the plaintive wailing of a far-off jackal, which had got their wind and was crying out the news to his fellows. Even the cicada had ceased its weary drumming. As Gressex lay upon his elbow listening, he perceived that the sounds he had heard came from Parton, who was talking fitfully in his sleep. It is hard to follow a man whose tongue labours with the difficulties of a slumbering brain, and Gressex was not much interested in puzzling out the intricacies of his officer’s drowsy speech, but one word fell upon his ear which instantly fixed his attention. The word was “Ella.”

“Ella,” muttered the sleeping man, in a curiously sententious way, “I tell you I can’t do it. It’s not the least use thinking further about him. You’ll never see him again; why harp upon a broken string? Some day I hope you’ll be kind and give...”