William Charles Scully (continued 2)

Kanu’s woodcraft had stood Elsie in good stead on the journey, but it was all he could do to procure food sufficient to enable the child to bear up against the terrible hardships incidental to such an undertaking. The Heavens had been propitious, in so far that but little rain had fallen, but the cold had been severe in the rugged mountain tracts they were obliged to travel through. Water had been scarce at times and cooking had always been difficult.

For these poor wanderers had to avoid frequented ways, and, even thus, to travel only by night, Kanu knew well enough that if they were seen by any European they would be stopped and sent home. So every morning at daybreak they camped in the most suitable spot to be found in their vicinity. Here, on a bed of soft moss or grass, carefully prepared for her by the tender hands of her savage guide, Elsie would slumber through the day, while Kanu foraged for food, and, after ascending some eminence, surveyed the country with reference to the night’s course of travel.

Kanu’s adventures were sometimes alarming. Once he came face to face with a Boer who was evidently in a bad temper, for he unslung his gun and, without a word of challenge, fired. Kanu only saved himself by dropping behind a rock. Then he fled, incontinently, before his natural enemy had time to reload. More than the Boers he dreaded his own kind. The wild men had been so often treacherously deceived by tamed specimens of their own race who, after gaining their confidence, betrayed them to the Boers, that any stranger with the taint of civilisation upon him was liable to be put to death with horrible tortures.

In his own native desert Kanu would have had no difficulty in finding enough of bulbs, roots, lizards and other local products wherewith to satisfy the needs of his own appetite, but the farther south his steps trended the more unfamiliar the flora and minor fauna became. Even the little of this description of produce he found was of no use to Elsie; for her he had to steal, and it was in doing this that he ran into greatest danger.

His habitual method of plundering was to locate a flock of sheep or goats, crawl around the bases of hills and up and down gullies until he got close to it, and then hang on its skirts until an opportunity offered for seizing and stifling a lamb or a kid.

On the day before reaching the kloof where Elsie had the bitter disappointment of hearing that her father was not at Cape Town after all, but at some island beyond it, Kanu had, after waiting nearly all day for his opportunity, captured a lamb from a flock which was crossing the gully in which he lay waiting. This lamb had loitered behind with its mother,—the shepherd being, at the time, engaged in beating up stragglers in another locality. Kanu carried the prey into a deep, forest-filled hollow. Here he lit a fire of dry wood, which gave off no smoke, and roasted the toothsome carcase whole. Reserving the entrails for his own share, he stripped the roasted flesh from the bones and carried it back to Elsie, who was almost fainting with hunger.

Being now so near their goal and in a country of well-defined roads and many travellers, who did not appear to take much notice of one another, Kanu consented to make a start whilst it was yet daylight, so the strange pair emerged from their concealment and moved slowly down the rugged side of the mountain. When they reached the sandy flat at its foot they set boldly out towards the great mountain whose snowy cowl shone white as a snowdrift under the clear October sky.

They walked on until deep into the night. Elsie, buoyed up by her purpose and almost unconscious of her swollen feet, would still have pressed forward. She declared that she felt no fatigue, but Kanu insisted on her lying down and then she fell into a deep sleep which lasted until dawn.

As the light grew Kanu was astonished to find that the mountain looked nearly as far off as ever. The unfamiliar atmosphere—close to the level of the sea had deceived him. This day turned out to be the most fatiguing of all. The sun smote fiercely upon the red sand and water was scarce and brackish when obtained. However, when the sun sank they were nearly at the foot of the mountain. The soft, steady breeze brought up the thunder of the surf from the Muizenberg beach, and filled the soul of the Bushman with dismay at the unaccustomed sound. He had never been near the sea, so the thrilling diapason of the moving waters was full of terrors.

“Kanu, are you sure that this is the mountain that Cape Town is under? Tell me, what it is like.”

Elsie had dropped in the road from sheer fatigue, and Kanu had borne her to a small copse, only a few yards away.

“The side of the mountain is black with trees but its top is white with a cloud that never moves.”

“Yes,—that is the mountain,” said the child in a tone of relief; “my father told me that it always had a white cloud upon its top.”

Then her head drooped and she fell asleep.

Kanu tightened his belt and mounted guard. In the desert, among the haunts of the fiercest beasts, he would have lain down after a few simple precautions, and felt perfectly safe. Here, near the dwellings of Christians, he felt—and with reason—uneasy. There was a small quantity of meat left, and the smell of it assailed his nostrils, made keen as those of a pointer by famine. How he longed for that meat,—for only one bite. The savage in his breast seized him as it were by the throat every now and then and tried to hurl him at the morsel. But it was Elsie’s, he told himself,—all she had to sustain herself with on the morrow, when there would be still a long walk before her. At length he fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamt of sumptuous banquets for some delightful seconds.

Another tug at the belt. Well, it would soon be morning, and then this great, powerful, beneficent Governor whom Elsie knew of and talked such a lot about, would surely give them something for breakfast.

When day broke the mist had drawn away from the mountain, the huge bulk of which stood out, robed in purple and edged with the gold of the unarisen sun. Elsie slept long and deeply, and woke to a passionate flood of accusing tears when she found that the sun was already high.

As they walked along the well-beaten road they met other sojourners. The savage instinct in Kanu prompted him to hide in the bushes whenever he saw anyone approaching; but, when he found that of the many passers-by none attempted to interfere with them, he merely bent his head and hurried furtively past. No houses were yet in sight, except two square structures high up on the shoulders of the mountain. These were the watch-houses from which, in yet older times, the approach of the Indian Fleet was wont to be signalled to the Castle. The Bushman devoutly hoped that the Governor did not live in either of these, for he knew that Elsie, weak as she was, would never be able to make the ascent.

Anon they reached the shores of Table Bay, and the wide expanse of water filled the Bushman’s soul with deep awe. The scent of the sea stung the flagging blood of the spent child to new vigour; the “whish-whish” of the wavelets and the wild, strange cries of the sea-birds—perhaps they had flown across from the island where her father was waiting for her—spoke to her strained ear in tones of sweetness and mystery, which thrilled through her to the very depths of her being. Her fatigue and her lacerated feet were forgotten; she seemed to tread on air.

At length Kanu gave a sudden exclamation;—the goal of their terrible endeavours was at last in sight. There, shimmering in the soft, opaline haze, lay the lovely city, its white flat-topped houses embowered in trees, whilst the bright green slopes surrounding softened the contrast between its peaceful beauty and the mighty embodied desolation which seemed to prop the sky above it.

Elsie did not speak, but her face lit up and her eyes flashed with almost unearthly gleams. She felt that she was now at length, after all her sore travail, about to meet her father—her father who, innocent, had been torn from her and cast into prison among the vilest of men. Sweetest of all was the thought that she, in her own weak hands, was bearing to him the precious gift of freedom. In imagination she was already passing her hands over his face, as she had been wont to do when she wanted to read his mood, and smoothing out the lines of suffering. The bliss was almost painful in its intensity.

“Kanu,—Oh, Kanu—we are nearly there; are we not?”

“Yes,—but I never thought there were so many houses in the whole world. It would take half an hour on a fresh horse to get to the farthest I can see.”

“Kanu,—I suppose the Governor lives in the biggest house; don’t you think so?”

“Yes,—but there are so many big houses that I do not know where to look for the biggest.”

The Bushman had been on the point of asking more than one of the people whom they had passed, in the street to direct them to the Governor’s house, but he had invariably lost courage at the last moment. In those days there was little traffic in the Cape Town streets except in the late afternoon, when many carriages were to be seen. During the heat of the day all, gentle and simple, retired for the siesta. Thus the wanderers reached the centre of the city without attracting any attention, and without meeting anyone but a few slaves, who were out executing errands.

At length they paused before what Kanu felt sure must be the Governor’s house. It was a large building, several storeys high, and had a lofty, spacious “stoep” surrounded by heavy iron railings, which overlooked the street. The big windows were flanked by bright green shutters which had been thrown back against the wall.

A sound of music issued through the wide, open door,—interspersed, every now and then, with loud bursts of laughter. Yes,—the Governor must certainly live here; he and his friends were, doubtless, holding revel inside. A steep flight of steps led up to one end of the stoep; these Kanu mounted, leading Elsie by the hand.

The Bushman paused before the open doorway and looked in. The splendour appalled him. Rich mats of varied colour covered the floor; wonderful coloured objects hung upon the walls; a large glass case stood upon a table just before him. It was full of clear water, in which numbers of golden fishes darted to and fro,—red light flashing from their scales. Yes, this was surely the house he had been seeking.

As he paused, shrinking back against Elsie who was trying to push him forward, a door suddenly opened on the other side of the room and a man as burly as any Boer Kanu had ever seen emerged, walking unsteadily. He was dressed in blue cloth with bright buttons, and had a funny-looking glazed hat placed sideways on his head. At first he seemed to be unaware that there was anyone but himself in the room. When, however, he became conscious of the presence of Elsie and her companion he started, and paused unsteadily, hiccoughing.

“Sam,” he shouted to someone in the next room, “come and look at this.”

Sam came. He also walked unsteadily. He was nearly as big as his companion and was similarly dressed.

“Well, Sam,—what do you make of it?”

“It gets over me, Cap’n,” said Sam, after a pause of anxious scrutiny.

“Well,—I’ve been round the world and I’ve never seen hair like that—Say, my lass, where do you hail from?”

Kanu replied in Dutch, asking if the Governor lived there, and if he were at home.

“Dry up with that monkey-chatter, or I’ll wring your neck,” rasped the irate Captain. Kanu shrank back in dread, pressing Elsie behind him. The Captain lurched over to the child and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“My lass,—I’ve a little girl at Southampton who looks like you, but you can show her your heels as far as hair goes.—Why—Sam—the child’s blind.”

The Captain had sat down on a chair, drawn Elsie towards him by the shoulders, and looked into her face at close quarters. When his eyes met hers something penetrated to his perceptions through the fumes of the liquor he had drunk and told him she was blind. Sam came forward and had a look. He did not believe the child was blind, and said so. She was just a beggar, shamming. He had often seen the same kind of thing on London Bridge.

The Captain roughly, but kindly, drew the child again towards him. Elsie kept passive and silent in his hands. Perhaps this was one of the Governor’s friends,—or even the Governor himself. She read his character by his touch, and trusted him, but she had shrunk away from Sam.

“Come, my lass,—you look tired and hungry; is it some dinner you want?”

Elsie, feeling that this remark was directly addressed to her, replied in Dutch, using almost the same words as Kanu had used.

“I cannot understand this blooming lingo,” growled the Captain—“Sam,—call the waiter.”

The waiter, a black boy, who spoke both Dutch and English well, came in and interpreted. The Captain was mystified; Sam was sure that the whole thing was a “plant,” and growled an advice to the Captain to keep a careful guard upon his silver watch.

Then the landlady was called. She, good woman, was too busy to be much interested. However, the Captain sent for some food, which he gave to Elsie. She ate a little and passed the rest on to Kanu, who ate it wolfishly. The Captain sent for another plateful, which Kanu disposed of with great rapidity. The Captain—and even Sam—became interested. The Bushman was asked, through the waiter, if he could eat any more. He replied in the affirmative, so another, and after that yet another—plateful was brought. This kind of thing might have gone on indefinitely, had not a young man, who looked like a merchant’s clerk, come and taken possession of the Captain for business purposes.

As he was going away, Elsie arrested him with a cry, and when he turned for a moment she begged pathetically to be told if the house she was in was the Governor’s, and, if not, where his house was. The Captain tossed sixpence to the black waiter and told him to take the “monkey-chap,”—for thus he designated Kanu,—down the street and show him where the Governor berthed.

The waiter, fully persuaded that he had to do with two lunatics, hurried them up one street and down another at the further end of which stood a large white building.

“There,” said he to Kanu, “is where the Governor lives.”

Then he turned round and bolted.

Chapter Nine.

How They Sought the Governor and Found the Good Samaritan.

Elsie’s heart again bounded with delight as she and Kanu hurried along the street. They reached the building indicated by the black boy. It had a large doorway opening to the street on the ground floor; several wagons drawn by horses stood before it,—some full of bales and boxes,—others empty. Kanu led the way in between the scattered parcels of merchandise and paused before a stout man who was making entries in a note-book.

“Please, Mynheer, is the Governor in?” asked the trembling Bushman.

The stout man glanced carelessly and contemptuously at his interlocutor. Then, having finished his entries, he closed his pocket-book, put it hurriedly into his pocket, and strode away. Just then a truck heavily laden with sacks was trundled in at the door; Kanu quickly dragged the child aside and just saved her from being knocked down and run over. A big Malay seized Elsie roughly by the arm and dragged her into the street; then he returned, caught Kanu by the neck and flung him after her.

“Here,” he said, “take your white brat away; you all know that we don’t allow beggars here.”

The two belated wanderers drew a little to one side to avoid the traffic and stood in silent and astonished desolation. In obedience to Elsie’s prompting, Kanu accosted several of the passers with his now stereotyped enquiry about the Governor. As a rule no attention was paid to his question. One or two answered him with jibes. At length a coloured man answered him kindly, telling him that the house opposite was a store, and that the Governor did not live anywhere in the neighbourhood. He added significantly that they had better move on, or else he might get into trouble. Kanu asked what trouble would be likely to come upon them. The man replied that he might be whipped and added that his companion’s hair might be cut off. The threat of whipping filled the sensitive-skinned Bushman with terror. He seized Elsie’s hand and hurried away.

By this time the sun had gone down behind the Lion’s Head, and the streets were full of people. The dismayed pair wandered about, sick with perplexity. Poor Kanu had been utterly demoralised by the threat of the whip, and Elsie could not, for a long time, induce him to accost any of the people they met. When he did so the result was the same as previously; no one would take his enquiry seriously.

Their random steps took them to a quarter of the town where people of mixed race dwelt in low-built houses. The streets were full of bands of shouting boys, who jostled them and jeered annoyingly.

A stout coloured woman was standing at the door of a little shop, the stock-in-trade of which appeared to be composed principally of stale, unwholesome-looking fruit. Some spell of kindness in the woman’s homely face caused Kanu to pause. Then the woman addressed Elsie in Dutch, in a kind voice, and the tired child bent her head and burst into a passion of tears.

The woman drew Elsie into the shop and tried to comfort her, but it was long before the child’s pent-up woe, terror and disappointment had spent themselves. At length, when exhaustion had brought calmness, Elsie murmured that she wanted to see the Governor. The woman at once looked askance at her, suspecting that she was mad. But in a moment her look softened and her eyes became moist. Then the kind creature drew the child into a little room at the side of the shop and laid her tenderly on a bed. Elsie became calmer, so the woman drew off the tattered shoes and wept over the poor, lacerated feet. She covered the poor waif up with a soft patchwork quilt, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing her sink into a deep sleep.

The woman then went out to the shop, where Kanu was lying exhausted on the floor. She questioned him closely—and afterwards angrily, but the Bushman was proof against her cross-examination. All she could elicit from him was that they had come from a great distance and that they wanted to see the Governor about an important matter.

The woman stole back into the room on tip-toe, and gazed at the sleeping child. Made paler by sleep the face of Elsie looked like that of a corpse. Her hair lay in a glowing, tangled mass on the pillow; the gazer picked up one of the tresses and examined it with reverent wonder. Then she left the room, closed the door softly, shut up the shop and went to her kitchen for the purpose of concocting some strong broth.

It was late when Elsie woke. Her hostess was sitting at the bedside. She soothed the child, gave her a drink of warm broth and made her lie down again. Then the woman crept into the bed, and the two slumbered together until morning. Kanu had been accommodated with a sack in the kitchen and a supper of fruit which had become unsaleable stock.

At early dawn the woman arose, leaving Elsie still sleeping. She went to the kitchen and lit a large fire, over which she placed a capacious pot of water. Then she fetched a wooden tub and laid it noiselessly in the bedroom. When Elsie awoke she found a good cup of coffee and a biscuit ready for her. These she consumed with a good appetite.

It was in preparing her for the bath that the woman found out that the child was blind. Then her pity overcame her so that she sobbed aloud. She had lost her own only child, a girl of about Elsie’s age, a few years previously. After Elsie had bathed, the woman went to a cupboard and fetched out what was her greatest treasure,—the clothes of her dead child, which she had folded carefully away interspersed with aromatic herbs to keep out the moth. With the best of the garments she clothed her little guest. Then, after dressing the lacerated feet, she wrapped them in clean strips of linen, and put shoes and stockings which would have been much too large under other circumstances, upon them. This done, she combed out the child’s hair, marvelling audibly at its length and richness.

Elsie could no longer resist the importunities of her kind friend, so she told her story,—how her dearly-loved father was in prison, suffering for a crime he had never committed; how she and Kanu were the only ones who could establish his innocence; how they had run away and wandered thither over mountain and desert plain for the purpose of seeing the great English Governor and obtaining justice.

The woman did not know what to make of it. The places named were strange to her; the whole thing seemed uncanny. The extraordinary tale of the shooting, the child’s blindness,—her wonderful tresses,—the savage, wild-animal look of her diminutive protector,—his language—an outlandish click-mingled corruption of an already corrupt patois—it was quite beyond the good soul’s imaginative range, so she gave up the problem with a sigh and redoubled her tenderness to Elsie.

After breakfast Elsie and Kanu again wandered forth on their pathetic quest. The woman tried her very best to induce Elsie to remain, and let Kanu endeavour to locate the Governor’s dwelling as a preliminary measure. She herself could give no information on the subject, nor could any of the neighbours of whom she enquired. She made Elsie promise to return if her search proved unsuccessful.

This woman was a lonely soul, with nothing to love, and Elsie had made a way straight to her heart. She exultingly made up her mind to adopt the child, knowing that the latter, even if she succeeded in finding the Governor’s house, would never be let in by the attendants. Therefore she made sure that her guests would return in the evening. All day long she could think of nothing but Elsie, the silky richness of whose yellow hair seemed to adhere to her dusky fingers and to lie like chrysm upon her charitable palm.

That day the little shop and dwelling was swept and garnished as it had never been since the death of the woman’s own child. Clean sheets were placed upon the bed and a new and more wonderful patchwork quilt was unearthed from the depths of the press and spread out in all its glory. As evening drew near she cooked a dainty little supper; the child would surely return hungry after her walk.

The hour at which the visitors had arrived on the previous day drew on. Supper was ready,—done to a turn,—and the woman stood before her doorway, anxiously scanning the street, up and down. The neighbourhood had grown loud with the strident tones of squalid children, rushing about in bands at uncouth games as was their wont. The darkness came but there was no sign of the missing guests.

The night drew on and the noises died down in the streets, until almost utter silence reigned. When midnight struck in the spire of the distant church, the disappointed woman sadly closed the door. She sat in the shop for a while longer, her ear alert for the footstep her heart yearned for. Then she put out the light and went weeping to bed, leaving the untasted supper on the table.

Chapter Ten.

The Sorrows of Kanu.

The two waifs resumed their search for the Governor’s dwelling with feelings very different from those which had inspired them at the beginning. Throughout the long, blistering morning they wandered about the streets, timidly accosting any occasional passer-by whose appearance suggested possibilities of kindness, but no one would take their enquiries seriously. Some sent them purposely wrong, as one has seen unfeeling persons send an ignorant native round a village on April Fool’s Day, carrying a paper with the legend: “Send the Fool on.” Most of the people they spoke to smiled and passed on; more than once Kanu had to spring to one side to avoid a blow. He, poor savage, had a continual dread of the whip hanging over his shuddering shoulders, whilst cold and deepening despair lay like lead upon his blind companion’s breast.

And, truly, the appearance of the two was sufficiently bizarre and startling. Kanu, clad in a few tattered skins,—gaunt with famine, his body and limbs scarred by brambles and his quaking soul glaring out through his eyes,—his questions clothed in badly-broken Dutch and his whole manner that of a wild beast at bay,—why, such a being had never been seen in the city of Cape Town before.

Of the two, however, the blind girl was the more alarming object than the Bushman, who made for her a most effective foil. Her face was pale with the hue born of that fatigue and starvation against which her frail body had been braced by a great resolve and a transcendent hope,—but staring through this pallor was the bitter agony of disappointment and fear. Her eyes, grown large and hollow, glowed deeply under the masses of her hair. Her face had taken on a terrible beauty that seemed to radiate calamity and despair.

Thus passed this day of tribulation, but it was late in the afternoon before the full measure of their sufferings was attained. Elsie had sunk exhausted on the pavement near an almost deserted street-corner. Suddenly a noise of shouting was heard, and within a few seconds the terrified waifs found themselves surrounded by a swarm of tormenting street boys. Elsie sprang to her feet and clasped her hands around her companion’s sinewy arm. They stood close to the wall, and the boys formed a half-circle before them. The crowd seemed ever to increase. Although molested, neither was actually hurt. Now and then some bolder urchin would jostle them and once or twice Elsie’s hair was tugged at. But it seemed as though the touch of the rich fibre had some strange effect; each one who laid hands on it drew away at once, and slunk to the outskirts of the crowd, as though ashamed.

They were rescued from this terrible predicament by three soldiers who were evidently taking a stroll. These, seeing what was going on, laid into the persecutors with their canes to such effect that the street was soon clear. Kanu spoke to his rescuers, asking the old question, but they could not understand his language, and passed on.

Kanu now tried to shape his course towards the harbour of the previous night, trying to avoid the more frequented streets. But the instinct by means of which the Bushman could find his way unerringly through the desert spaces in the deepest darkness, was useless to him here, in an unnatural environment. He had lost all perception of distance, direction and locality.

But yonder, impassive above this scene of persecution and confusion, towered the bastioned crags of the great mountain. This at least was a wild, natural object Kanu turned towards it as a drowning man turns towards an islet suddenly seen close at hand in a waste of waters, and pressed up the steepening slope. The shouts of the horrible boys became fainter and fainter as the waifs struggled up the rocky terraces. It was sundown before they reached a rugged ledge at the foot of the main precipice. Here were thick bushes and great irregular masses of rock scattered formlessly about; between them the tough mountain grass was thickly matted. Elsie sank to the ground and lay as if dead. She had got beyond tears; even the sense of pain had nearly died in her.

Fortunately, Kanu still had his wallet, and in it was the piece of bread which their kind entertainer had given them in the morning. There was a bright trickle of cool water issuing from a cleft at the foot of the cliff, and to this Kanu led the child after she had rested for a space. She had been for some time dreadfully thirsty, although hardly aware of the fact, and a drink of the cool water somewhat revived her. Then she removed her shoes and stockings, and placed her feet on a stone where the water splashed upon them. When Kanu placed a piece of bread in her hand she began mechanically to eat it.

The site was suitable as a camping-place. It was hemmed in by a loose-linked chain of great, irregular rocks, and, from the absence of paths in the neighbourhood, was evidently not often visited by human beings. Around were strewn soft cushions of moss and sheaves of waving grass swayed from high tussocks. Dead wood from the fallen branches of sugar-bushes lay about in considerable quantities. Kanu gathered a number of these together and lit a fire at the back of the largest of the rocks.

The weather was perfect. At the Cape, Spring performs her duties at the time which chronologically ought to be Winter. Thus, by the time her own proper season arrives, the flowers have already emerged to meet the mild, cloudless, steadfast sky, which, where the ground lies at any considerable elevation, scorches not by day nor chills by night. Thus, the unthinking cruelty of man was, in the case of these derelicts, in a measure compensated for by the careless kindness of the heavens.

“Kanu,—what shall we do?” asked Elsie at length, in a dejected voice.

“I do not know. It seems to be against the law down here to ask about the Governor,” replied the Bushman, reminiscent of the possibility of the whip.

“Kanu,—have you seen the island where the prison is?”

“Yes,—it is far away across the water. If the water were land it would take half a day to walk to it.”

After some further discussion it was finally agreed that next day Kanu was to leave Elsie on the mountain and continue his search for the Governor’s residence alone. So at break of day the Bushman stole down the mountain side and continued his quest. At length he met one who vouchsafed a reply to his question. This was a blind Hottentot beggar whom he met being led by a little child to the street-corner where he was wont to ply his trade.

“The Governor,” replied the beggar, with an air of superiority, “lives at Rondebosch, which is at the other side of the mountain, at this time of the year. I know this, because my niece, who is a washerwoman and washes for his coachman, told me so.”

“Is it against the law to ask where the Governor lives?”

“No,—why should it be against the law?”

“Then one cannot be whipped for asking?”

“Whipped? no; what an idea. But there are many things a Hottentot can get whipped for, all the same.”

“What kind of things?” asked Kanu, starting.

“Oh, plenty; stealing, for instance, or getting drunk, or being found in a garden at night. But who are you and where do you come from?”

Kanu was not prepared to answer on these points. However, he managed to elicit some further particulars,—for instance that if he walked along the main road he would pass the Governor’s house on his right hand; that the house had big pillars of stone before it; that two soldiers with red coats and guns walked up and down in front of it night and day.

Kanu hurried away towards Rondebosch. Two things it was imperatively necessary to do,—to locate the Governor’s house, and to get something for Elsie and himself to eat. He had left Elsie a small portion of bread,—hardly enough to serve for the scantiest of breakfasts. His own hunger was horrible. In spite of the tightening of his bark belt, which now nearly cut into his skin—the Bushman tribal expedient for minimising the pangs of famine—he was in agony. He passed the fruit market and saw piles of luscious eatables that made his mouth water, and the odour of which made him almost faint with longing. All this plenty around him—whilst he and Elsie were starving. He hurried away, the wild animal in him prompting to a pounce upon the nearest table, to be followed by a bolt. He knew his legs were swift, but there were too many people about and he would be sure to be caught. Stealing, he remembered with a tingling of the shoulders, stood first in the old beggar’s category of deeds for which one might get whipped.

A thought struck him,—he would first locate the Governor’s house, then return and try, by following the course he had taken the first day, to rediscover the dwelling of the charitable woman who kept the little shop. But Rondebosch was on the other side of the mountain; would he be able to go there and back without food? Well, there was nothing else to be done. He would try it at all events.

But after he had walked a few hundred yards his hunger got the better of him and he turned back and began to search for the woman’s dwelling. He reached the hotel with the wide stoep; from there he had no difficulty in reaching the store which the waiter had pointed out to him as the Governor’s house. After this, however, he could no more unravel his way among the unfamiliar lines of exactly-similar houses, than a bird could find its way through a labyrinth of mole-burrows.

So the day drew to a close without Kanu obtaining any food. His own agony of hunger had given place, for the time being, to a sick feeling of weakness; it was Elsie’s plight that now filled his thoughts. Food he must have, so he decided to steal the first edible thing he saw and trust to his swift running for escape. The whip was only a contingency, albeit a dreadful one,—but the hunger was a horrible actuality. Kanu made for the outskirts of the city and began to prowl about seeking for food to steal.

In the valley between Table Mountain and the Lion’s Head were the dwellings of a number of coloured people of the very lowest class. Most of the dwellings were miserable huts built of sacking and other rubbish, and standing in small clearings made in the thick, primaeval scrub. In the vicinity of some of these huts fowls were pecking about Kanu skirted the inhabited part of the valley, marking, with a view to possible contingencies, the huts near which fowls appeared to be most plentiful. In a path near a hut which stood somewhat distant from any others, the matchless eye of the Bushman discerned a well-grown brood of chickens, evidently just released from parental tutelage. A swift glance showed him how he might, unobserved, get between them and the hut. After worming his way through the scrub he emerged close to the unsuspicious poultry, into the midst of which he flung his stick, quick as lightning and with practised hand. Two chickens lay struggling on the ground. The others fled homeward, with wild cacklings.

Within the space of a couple of seconds Kanu had clutched the two unhappy fowls, wrung their necks and wrapped them up in his tattered kaross. Then he sprang aside, ran for a few yards and dropped like a stone. A man and a boy came rushing up the pathway and then commenced searching the thicket in every direction. Once the man passed within a yard of the trembling Bushman, whose back began to tingle painfully. However the danger passed, so after a short time he crept along through the thicket to a safe distance, and then fled up to the mountain side to where he had left Elsie.

Bitter was the poor child’s disappointment when she heard that the Governor did not live in Cape Town after all. However, Kanu was sanguine now of being able to locate the dwelling they had so long and so painfully sought for.

Kanu soon lit a fire and cooked the chickens, which proved tender and toothsome. The Bushman ate hardly anything but the entrails. He lied freely to Elsie in regard to the manner in which he had come by the birds, and waxed nobly mendacious as to the amount of food which he pretended to have enjoyed during the day.

Next morning Elsie’s feet were still so much inflamed that she could hardly put them to the ground. Kanu gave her the rest of the meat,—which, as the chickens had been but small to begin with—came to very little. Then he bade her farewell, promising to be back as early in the afternoon as possible, and started on his way along the western flank of the mountain to Rondebosch.

He crossed the high neck which connects the eminence known as “the Devil’s Peak” with Table Mountain. This name used then to cause great scandal to the Dutch colonists,—the term being an unconscious perversion by the English of the original name of “Duiven’s,” or “Dove’s” Peak. Then he descended the almost perpendicular gorge to the thickets behind Groot Schuur, and soon found himself in the straggling village of Rondebosch.

It did not take him long to find the big house with the tall stone shafts before it, as described by the old beggar. His eye caught a glint of scarlet through the trees,—yes, there were the two soldiers walking up and down, armed with guns from the muzzles of which long bright knives projected.

However, it was best to make sure, so he took up a position fronting the house, but on the opposite side of the road. He saw people going in and coming out, some in scarlet and some in wonderfully shiny black clothes. Several people passed by, but they all looked too important for him to accost. At length a miserable-looking coloured woman hobbled by and he plucked up courage to address her:

“What are those two men walking up and down for?”

“Who are you that you don’t know soldiers when you see them?”

“Are these soldiers;—and what are they doing here?”

“Taking care of the Governor, of course. That is his house.”

At last. Well, he had found what he wanted, and there was nothing to do now but to tell Elsie, and bring her out here as soon as her feet were better.

But now that the excitement of the quest which had sustained him hitherto was over, a sudden agony of hunger gripped his vitals like a vice, and he felt that he must presently eat or die. Elsie, too! He had only left her a bite of cold chicken. He would go and seek for more prey. The whip was clean forgotten. Hunger—supremely agonising hunger—held him by the throat. He would go and seek for more fowls. There must be other places on the outskirts of the city where they were obtainable. So Kanu started swiftly back along the main road to Cape Town, with all his faculties concentrated upon fowls and the stealing thereof.

It was early afternoon when he reached the outskirts of the city. The sun shone oppressively; there was hardly a soul to be seen.

He passed a little shop, the proprietor of which,—a stout Malay, was apparently sleeping under a small awning hung over the front to protect the wares from the sun. A barrow, piled with cakes and other comestibles, stood at his side. They were queer, outlandish-looking eatables, such as Kanu had never seen before. The sight and the smell made him wolfish. He looked up and down the street; not a soul was in sight. He tightened his left arm against his side and let a fold of the ragged kaross hang over it like a bag. Then he shuffled his feet on the ground to test the slumber of the Malay, who gave no sign of observance. Then he clutched as many of the cakes as his hands would hold, placed them in his improvised bag, and hurried away on tip-toe. Just afterwards a strong grasp compressed his neck and he was borne to the ground. When he managed to turn his head he saw the enraged countenance of the Malay glaring down upon him.

Kanu stood in the dock, looking like the terrified wild animal that he was, and pleaded “guilty” to stealing the cakes. He had spent the night in a foetid cell with a number of other delinquents who had been scummed off the streets. The case attracted no particular attention, being one of a class very common in, it may be supposed, every city.

The prisoner took some pains to explain to the bench how hungry—how very hungry he had been, and how he had found it impossible to pass by the food after he had seen and smelt it.

The magistrate asked Kanu where he had come from and what he was doing in. Cape Town. The reply came in the form of a long, rambling statement which caused the minor officials to titter audibly, and the obvious untruthfulness of which caused His Worship, to frown with judicial severity. He had, come—the Bushman said—from a great distance, but from what exact locality he begged to be excused from saying. His business in Cape Town was “a big thing”; no less than an interview with the Governor. If Mynheer would only let him go to seek a companion who was waiting for him, and who must, by this time, be very hungry indeed;—and would let him have a piece of bread—just one little piece of bread no bigger than his hand, he would promise to return at once.—And if Mynheer would let him and his companion be taken before the Governor, Mynheer would soon see that the story he told was true.

Then he went on to say that he knew that he had done wrong in stealing the cakes, and consequently he deserved punishment, but Mynheer must please remember how hungry he had been, and how hungry his companion had been, and not give him the whip. He had heard that “brown people” were whipped in Cape Town if they stole, which was quite right if they stole when they were not hungry. He had never stolen before; he had only stolen this time because he could get nothing to eat, and had been unable to find the Governor. Only two things he begged of Mynheer: to let him go to his companion with a little piece of bread;—she had had nothing to eat since yesterday morning, and must be very hungry now, and frightened, for she had been alone all night. The other favour was that Mynheer might spare him the whip.

By this time everyone in court,—except His Worship, who had no sense of humour,—was almost convulsed with merriment at the quaint and guileful fictions of the Bushman. Where, wondered carelessly some of the more thoughtful, had this “onbeschafte” savage learnt to practise such artful hocus pocus. It was, they thought, an interesting object lesson, as proving the essential and hopelessly-mendacious depravity of the Bushman race.

His Worship was “down on” vagrancy in all its forms. Probably, being responsible for the good order of the city, he had to be. His official harangue in passing sentence was not long, nor,—with the exception of the last paragraph,—interesting, even to Kanu. This last paragraph struck into the brain of the Bushman with a smart like that produced by one of the poisoned arrows of his own race, for it sentenced him to receive that whipping the dread of which had persistently haunted his waking and sleeping dreams. In addition he was to be imprisoned for a week—the greater portion of which had to be spent upon spare diet. After this he had to leave the precincts of the city within twenty-four hours, on pain of a further application of the lash.

Kanu, the Bushman thief, received his stripes dumbly, as a wild animal should; but the bitter physical agony which he underwent when the cruel lash cut through the skin of his emaciated body expressed itself in writhings and contortions which, the prison warders said (and they spoke from an extended experience), were funnier than any they had ever seen before. The spare diet he did not so much mind, being well accustomed to that sort of thing.

After the shock of his punishment, which had dulled every other feeling for the time, had somewhat passed away, Kanu realised that by this time Elsie must surely be dead, and he fell, accordingly, into bitter, if savage, tribulation. But soon he found himself thinking, in quite a civilised way, that it was better, after all, that the blind child should be free from her sufferings. Then Kanu turned his face to the wall of his cell and slept with inconsiderable waking intervals, throughout the rest of his period of durance.

When he was released a throb almost of joy went through the Bushman’s untutored breast. Freedom, to the wild man, is as necessary as to the sea-mew. He hurried from the gaol door and made his way up the side of the mountain to where he had left Elsie eight days before, expecting to find her lying white among the rocks, half-covered by her shining hair.

Bushmen, everyone says, have no hearts,—yet a spasm contracted the throat of this Bushman as he neared the spot where he had left the blind girl, which, in the case of a civilised man, would have been attributed to an agony of grief.

But no trace of Elsie could he see. His keen, microscopic eye searched the ground for a sign, but none was visible. The north-east wind had blown; the swift springing of vegetation had affected Nature’s obliterative work—wiping away the faint traces of the tragedy from this small theatre as completely as Time, with the assistance of lichens, grass and a few others of Nature’s busy legion, will finally obliterate man with all his works and pomps.

No sign.—Stay,—there, floating on the slow, sweet stream of sun-buoyant air, quivered a yellow thread,—bright as materialised sunlight. It hung from the bough of a shrub upon which bright, sweet-scented buds were struggling through between cruel-looking, black thorns, and miraculously getting the best of the struggle. Kanu carefully disentangled the precious filament, rolled it up into a minute coil and put it into a little bag containing several namelessly-unpleasant charms, which hung by a strand of twisted sinew from his neck.

Swiftly the Bushman examined every nook and cranny in the vicinity, but no other trace of the blind girl he had served so faithfully and unselfishly could be found. Then his eyes began to swim with what in the case of a European would certainly have been called tears, and his throat tightened once more with the same sensation he had a few minutes previously experienced.

Far away to the northward the great blue peaks of the Drakenstein glowed and pulsed in the sunshine, while their hollows were dyed a more wonderful purple than Tynan artificer ever took from the depths of the Mediterranean. Beyond this range, albeit on the other side of an almost interminable series of other ranges, seemingly as impassable, lay the desert; and towards this Kanu the Bushman sighed his savage soul.

One more look round—lest, haply he might have left some sign unread or some nook unsearched;—one more recurrence of the unaccountable (for a Bushman) sensation in his throat, and Kanu set his face to the North, and went forth for ever from the shadow of the dwelling-places of civilised men.

Chapter Eleven.

Elsie and the Satyrs.

The long day drew to a close but Elsie, with the sweet steadfastness of a nature that had hardly ever known what it was to repine, did not feel impatient. She knew that it would be impossible for her to go to Rondebosch until the following day, so she was content to sit in the mild sunlight, bathing her feet in the cool stream.

The portion of cold chicken that remained she had divided into two, one of which she ate for breakfast. When she knew from the coolness of the air that the sun had gone down, she ate the remainder. When night came she wondered why Kanu had not arrived, and the wild thought that he might by some wonderful chance have seen the Governor and then gone straight off to procure her father’s release lifted her heart for one moment’s wild delight. But she soon saw the impossibility of her imaginings, and her joy fell, broken-winged, to earth. However, her spirits soon regained the former mean. Fear she felt not; the only thing that had caused her terror was the mob of boys in the street of the city, but here, where Kanu had placed her, she felt quite safe. To those who are blind from birth darkness harbours no more terror than day.

Although the lovely scene which lay around her was cut off from her cognisance by the failure of her principal channel of sense, her remaining faculties had been so sharpened by the striving of the imprisoned individuality to apprehend its environment, that she might almost be said to have developed a special sense which those possessing sight have no idea of. To Elsie the evening was full of beauty and for one short hour she was soothed in the lap of Peace.

The faint, far-off murmur of the city stole up and seemed to cluster like a lot of echo-swallows against the sheer rock-wall that soared into its snow-white fleece of cloud above her head. To her fine-strung ear they made music. She wondered in what direction her father’s prison lay. Perhaps he had breathed the very air which now, full of the scents and ichor of the sea, gently stirred her locks.

The dew-fall made everything damp; it was cold and she longed for a fire. Why was Kanu so long in coming back?—Her mind searched in vain for an explanation. Could it be possible, after all, that he had seen the Governor and then gone with the soldier and the great key to effect her father’s release? Even now he might be hurrying up the rugged path, under the faithful Bushman’s guidance, to greet the beloved child who had dared, suffered and accomplished so much for his sake. No, she reflected with a sigh, that was hardly to be hoped. The Governor would, doubtless, want to see and talk to herself before taking any steps. Kanu was, after all, only a Bushman, and, although she knew how brave and honest and true he was, and how superior to his race, it was not to be expected that the Governor would recognise his good qualities at the very outset of their acquaintance.

But where was Kanu? It was most extraordinary that he should have left her so long as this, all alone. Surely he could not have forgotten that she had no food and no means of lighting a fire.

It was now, she knew, very late, for the noises had died down and the city lay as silent as the grave. She knew also that Kanu was not anywhere near. Last evening her supersensitive ear had been able to detect his approaching footsteps long, long before he arrived. She was now very hungry indeed and the penetrating dew had chilled her to the bone. But she was accustomed to exposure and she did not suffer in this respect as another might have done. She was crouched under the lee of a rock. Drawing her knees up for the sake of warmth she shook her tresses out over her like a tent, and soon fell asleep.

She awoke suddenly and started up with a wild cry, her every nerve tingling with horror. From the krantz-ledges above her head were issuing strident shrieks and hoarse roarings. In an instant she recognised the sounds:—they came from a troop of large, fierce, dog-faced baboons which had taken up their quarters on the face of the cliff.

The baboons were having one of those noisy scuffles which, several times in the course of a night, invariably disturb an encampment of these animals. Down the face of the cliff came bounding good-sized pebbles and even small rocks, dislodged by the struggling simians. These thudded into the grass or crashed into the bushes close beside her. Seizing the short staff which she always carried, the terror-smitten child felt her course away from the vicinity of the cliff and began descending the mountain with stumbling steps.

The sole and only terror which Elsie had felt on her native farm,—the dread of these animals,—returned upon her with irresistible force. The Tanqua Valley was full of these monsters, whose hoarse roarings, heard from afar, haunted the dreams of her nervous childhood. In seasons of drought they would sometimes rush in among a flock of sheep and tear open the stomachs of the young lambs with their powerful paws, for the sake of the newly-drunk milk. To Elsie and her kind the baboon took the place of the dragon, the giant, and the gnome, around which cluster the terrors of northern childhood.

Bruised, bleeding, and palpitating with horror, the poor little blind child stumbled on down the rough, brambly mountain side until she lost her footing and fell heavily over a ledge. Then she swooned from the combined mental and physical shock, and for a time lay still in merciful unconsciousness. When she revived she could not at first realise what had occurred; then the horror came back upon her like a flood, and she once more arose and staggered forward, groping before her with her stick.

Then came another dreadful thought:—Kanu would not now know where to find her when he returned. What was she to do? She had dreaded the boys in the cruel, perplexing city—yet she felt that she could now fly to them for protection—if she only knew the way. And Kanu might—the thought brought a momentary gleam of cheerfulness—possibly track her course down the mountain side, but—if she once reached the streets he would never be able to trace her. No,—she had better remain somewhere on the mountain.—But the baboons—thus the poor, over-laden little brain reeled along the mazes of a labyrinth of frightful alternatives.

Now her alert senses told her that the day was breaking and the sweet influences of the dawn brought a momentary relief from the worst of her imaginary terrors. She thanked God with happy tears for the returning of the blessed day. But almost immediately afterwards the ripple of relief was swamped by a returning tide of dismay.

Even at this late day the baboons of Table Mountain sometimes assume a very threatening attitude to persons rambling alone in the more unfrequented spots, but in the early days of the Cape settlement these great simians were far more daring. It was no uncommon thing for them to raid the vineyards and gardens on the outskirts of the city in the early morning,—and this is what they were preparing to do on the occasion of Elsie’s great travail. At the first streak of light they began to descend from the krantzes and spread in skirmishing order over the slopes beneath. The centre of the scattered column headed direct for the spot where Elsie lay cowering, and it was the guttural bark by which the animal that discovered her announced the presence of a human being to the others, that gave her such a redoubled shock of dread.

She tried to move, but her strength failed her; so she crept under a bush and lay there, crouched and quaking. On right and left she could hear the harsh signals of the sentinels, from flank to flank of the long-extended troop. Far and near she could hear the stones being rolled over as the baboons searched for scorpions and other vermin.

She heard a rustling close to her, and then a guttural grunt of mingled curiosity and surprise. The horrors of the situation struck her rigid, and she ceased, for a few seconds, to breathe. The baboon was now close to her, wondering no doubt, as to who and what she was. Then, with a movement which combined the elements of a slap and a scratch, the creature drove its hairy paw into her face.

With a long, shrill shriek Elsie sprang to her feet and fled down the steep slope. A thorny shrub caught and held her dress fast. She thought that one of the monsters had overtaken and captured her, and she fell to the ground and lay huddled in a swoon that was very nigh to death.

The fruit-orchard at the back of the du Plessis’ dwelling had on several occasions suffered severely from the depredations of the baboons. Thus, whenever these brutes were heard roaring and coughing on the mountain side—which usually happened in the very early morning, it was customary for all the male members of the household to turn out in a body, to repel the attack.

On this occasion the slaves, armed with whatever weapons could be hurriedly laid hands on, and headed by the old white-headed gardener, who carried a blunderbuss of ancient make, rushed out to protect the fruit Mr du Plessis and his two daughters joined in the sortie a few minutes afterwards. The girls enjoyed this sort of thing very much, and the cry of “baviaan” would turn them out of bed earlier, and more quickly, than anything else. The sensation of “creeps,” which any enterprise involving a small tincture of imaginary danger brings, is dear to the youthful female breast.

On the present occasion the enemy made even less show of resistance than usual. Driven back in disorder, they retreated to the mountain krantzes which were inaccessible to all but themselves, hoarsely defiant and threatening what they would do next time.

The morning was delightful as only an early morning can be when listless Spring coquettes with impatient Summer under a cloudless, calm, and southern sky; so Mr du Plessis and his daughters decided to spend some of the time which must elapse before breakfast would be ready in strolling over the flower-strewn mountain slope. The lovely bay lay like a white-fringed purple robe cast down to earth from the couch of some regal goddess; in the deep, deep hollows of the Drakenstein the shattered remnants of the host of conquered night were cowering; overhead the scarred crags of Table Mountain lent, by force of contrast, a splendid foil to the softness of the rest of the landscape.

They had left the footpath and were wandering among the dew-bejewelled bushes. Suddenly, with one accord they all stood still; before them lay what appeared to be the dead body of a young girl, fallen upon its face.

Mr du Plessis stepped forward and bent over the pallid form. He ascertained that it still contained life, and he signed to the two girls to approach.

They turned the unconscious frame over upon its back and placed the slack limbs in an easy position. The face was untouched, but the poor hands had been sorely torn by thorns. The lips were almost bloodless and the whole form as cold as the earth it lay on. The hair, sadly tangled, glowed in the sunshine like live gold.

“The blind girl we saw with the Bushman,” said Helena, in an awed whisper.

“Yes,” said Mr du Plessis,—“there has been some foul play here. You girls rub her body as hard as you can and loosen her dress at the throat; I will run and send Ranzo and one of the boys with a basket-chair.”

It was not long before the chair arrived, carried by two strong slaves. Elsie was tenderly lifted from the cold earth and carried down to the cottage, where she was soon laid upon a soft, warm bed. Her damp clothes were removed and warm wraps substituted. The doctor had been sent for at once, but in the meantime Mrs du Plessis poured a hot cordial down her throat. This soon caused a glow of warmth to spread over the almost pulseless body.

Soon the doctor arrived and ordered that the patient should be laid in a warm bath. This caused her to revive considerably. When her eyes opened it seemed as if they were filled with the pain of the whole world. After swallowing a little nourishment she fell into a swoon-like sleep, which lasted all day and into the middle of the night.

When Elsie awoke it was to delirium of the most painful kind. Ever and anon she would shriek with terror and try to spring from the bed. This lasted for several days, until the doctor feared brain-fever. However, she once more fell asleep, and lay for days like a faintly-breathing statue. She was wakened now and then and given nourishment, which she mechanically swallowed,—immediately afterwards sank back to deepest sleep.

The strange story of the finding of the blind girl with the wonderful hair had in the meantime spread abroad, and the circumstance aroused general interest. Many now recalled having seen the strange pair wandering up and down the streets upon their hopeless quest, and regretted, too late, that they had not rendered assistance. Public feeling,—that mad perverter of probabilities,—was very much aroused against Kanu, and had that unhappy Bushman been caught it would have gone hard with him. However, Kanu, with his savage equivalent for the emotion of grief, was straining every nerve to get as far away from civilisation as possible, bent on hiding his suspected head in the depths of the uttermost desert.

Many were the visitors at the cottage on the mountain slope during Elsie’s illness. When the child grew better a favoured few were allowed to take a peep into the dimly-lighted room where, upon a bed as white as snow, the pallid, pathetically-beautiful image of tragic suffering lay. The wonderful hair had been carefully combed; it flowed like a golden cataract over the headrail of the bedstead. When the light of a candle shone upon it through the gloom of the darkened room the beholders marvelled at a depth and richness of colour such as they had never before thought possible.

Up from the vaults of blank unconsciousness floated the mind of the blind girl until she became cognisant of her immediate surroundings; but the past remained to her an utter blank. Bit by bit she recovered the faculty of speech. It would be more correct to say that she re-acquired it, for she picked up words from those around her almost as an infant does—only more rapidly and intelligently. Her sweet, equable disposition had not altered. Thus, she began to fill in the obliterated pages of her mind with serene unconsciousness. She never laughed, but a strain of music, a sweet scent, or a soft touch from the hands she had learnt to love for their constant kindness would bring to her pale face the light of a rare smile, and flood it with a soft colour that was good to behold.

Thus blind Elsie, after her sore travail and disappointment, drifted, a derelict, into a harbour of safety and loving-kindness.

Chapter Twelve.

Elsie’s Awakening.

Four years had come and gone; four times had the winter rains from the hidden Antarctic floated up to the storm-smitten shores of that continent over which the wings of Ancient Mystery still brood, and made sweet the ways of Spring.

The cottage still stood on the slope of Table Mountain but it was no longer alone; other dwellers of the city had selected sites and built near it. Moreover, it could not so readily be seen from a distance as formerly, for the reason that the bowering trees had enviously stretched forth their boughs around it.

Mr and Mrs du Plessis had been tenderly dealt with by Time; being young in heart they still knew youth, and the lady’s French vivacity remained unimpaired. Gertrude and Helena had grown into young women comely to see, and the path leading to their dwelling was often trodden by the feet of the young men of the city and the officers of the garrison. The suit of a young minister of the Dutch Reformed Church had found favour with Gertrude. He had graduated in Leyden in a distinguished manner three years previously. Mr Brand and Gertrude were engaged and meant to be married in the early part of the ensuing year.

The greatest change was, however, to be seen in Elsie. She was about seventeen years of age and as beautiful as a lily. Tall and slight, her sweet face marble-pale, her deep eyes fringed with long, brown lashes and her wonderful hair full of amber hues mingled with the golden tints of dawn, the blind girl who dwelt in darkness was the sunshine of the household.

Although her mind was still a blank so far as events that had occurred previous to her waking in the home of her protector were concerned, her intellect otherwise was quite unimpaired. Her memory had regained its old strength, and once more she became remarkable for never forgetting anything she experienced. She was quite without fear except of the baboons, the barking of which upon the mountain side always made her tremble. It was this circumstance which led the old doctor who attended the household to express his belief that she would one day recover her memory. She was called Agatha by the du Plessis after numerous attempts to elicit her name had failed.

The Reverend Philip Brand, Gertrude’s fiancé, was an earnest and a muscular Christian. He was a man who held quite original views upon most questions; one peculiarity of his being that he rather preferred the society of the very bad to that of the correspondingly good. The visitation of the unfortunates condemned to serve in chains at the quarries on Robben Island was a self-imposed branch of his duties which he took the greatest interest in.

“I have recently come in contact,” he said one day to Gertrude, “with a very remarkable man. He is a convict at Robben Island,—a man named van der Walt. He tried to murder his brother, and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in consequence.”

“Yes;—and why does he specially interest you?”

“Well,—’tis a very curious thing;—you know that I am apt to take a liking to reprobates; this man’s influence upon me is, however, very strange. Whenever I have been talking to him I come away with the impression that there is some mistake,—that he is God’s minister and I am the criminal.”

“I wish I could meet him.”

“I wish you could. I can hardly describe him.—The man is as humble as Christ himself, and is always, without the least sign of cringing, grateful for the least attention. He does not talk religion at all; in fact he tries rather to avoid the subject, but he continually endeavours to enlist my help towards getting favours granted for the other prisoners. He has never, so far as I can make out, asked for anything for himself.”

“Do you know the particulars of his crime? his story ought to be interesting.”

“I only know a few of the bare facts. It appears that he and his brother—they lived far up country, near the Roggeveld—had been quarrelling for years. One day they met in the veld, and this one shot the other with his own gun,—tried to murder him, in fact Murder or no murder, something always seems to say to me when we meet: ‘That man is a better Christian than you.’”

“Has he been long in prison?”

“About eight years. They tell me that he has never been known during all that time to disobey an order or to grumble at anything. His wife died five years ago, and just afterwards his little daughter, whom he loved better than anyone else, disappeared. They say his health afterwards broke down completely for a time, and his hair and beard turned from jet black to pure white within a few months.”

“Poor old man,—why don’t they let him out if he has suffered so much and has become so good?”

“They are talking of asking the Governor to commute the last year of his sentence. I shall do my best to have the idea carried out, but I had better not move in the matter openly, because all say I am already too much on the side of the convicts, and I am no longer listened to when I intercede for them.”

Summer had not yet come, but its approach was making itself felt from afar. The du Plessis’ were spending the day on the western side of the peninsula, where the South Atlantic tides, steel-grey and cold, sweep past the black, broken rocks. To landward the bastioned turrets known as the “Twelve Apostles” soared into a blue sky; from seaward the rollers were thundering up, in front of a steady north-west breeze.

Elsie had been placed in a comfortable situation such as she loved—safe above the reach of the moving waters, but where faint fragrant whiffs of spray might now and then reach her, and where the generous sunshine prevented her from feeling chilled. She loved sometimes to be left alone thus, so the others wandered away. Soon she fell into a deep sleep.

When the strollers returned they were alarmed at the change which had taken place in the blind girl. She was sitting straight up; her face was drawn, her lips were parted; she breathed with quick, husky gasps and her eyes blazed. The two girls ran up and put their arms around her; then she shrieked loudly, and became almost convulsed. But she soon became calmer under their soothing words and touch.

“Kanu,—are you here?” she uttered.

“We are here,” replied Helena, gently—“Gertrude and I. What is the matter.—What frightened you?”

“Oh,—how long have I been sleeping.—Where is Kanu? Where am I?”

They noticed that she spoke in quite a different tone to her usual one, and in an uncouth idiom they had never heard from her before.

“Hush, dear,” said Helena, soothingly. She guessed what had happened. The doctor had told her that an awakening of the girl’s dormant memory might happen at any time.—“Hush,—do not trouble to think just now. You will remember it all by and by.”

Helena drew the blind, frightened face down upon her generous breast, whilst Gertrude softly stroked the rigid hand which had seized one of hers with such a convulsive grasp as caused her acute pain. The blind girl’s brain was reeling perilously near to madness. Like a flood came the memory of her journey and its purpose—of the misery of disappointment, and the terror of the baboons. Her mind began anew at the flight from Elandsfontein, and retraced every painful step of the journey which came to such a tragic close in the inhospitable streets of the city. The whole pageant went through her consciousness in a whirling phantasmagoria.

When she reached that stage of her adventures wherein she left the dwelling of the kind old coloured woman, she instinctively passed her hand over her knees to feel if she still wore the dress which had been lent her then. Again she ascended the rugged slopes of Table Mountain, with her ears filled with the horrid shouts of the persecuting boys. The long-waited-for Kanu seemed so imminent that she bent her ear to listen for his expected step in the sound of the rocking surf. Then her terror of the baboons returned upon her like a hurricane sweeping everything away in fury; she started up with a shriek and tried to rush away.

“Oh God,—the baboons. Kanu—Kanu.”

“Hush—hush, dear,” said the soothing voice of Helena; “you are safe with us; nothing can hurt you. Feel—we are holding you safely.”

The sudden rupture of the cells in the blind girl’s brain, within which the terrors of that dire morning of four years back were pent, was like the breaking of the Seventh Seal. The shock almost unseated her reason. However, she gradually came to realise that she was with friends, whose tender touch brought comfort and a sense of safety. For the moment the last four years of her life were as effectually blotted out as though they had never been. Then, as a tortured sea gradually glasses over when the storm-cloud has passed on, although it yet heaves with silent unrest, her mind began to calm down and the recollection of more recent events to dawn upon the verge of her consciousness.

“But where is Kanu? Why did he not come back to me?”

“Was Kanu the Bushman who led you about?” asked Helena, gently.

“Kanu left me on the mountain and went to find out where the Governor lived.—My father—How long ago is it—Where have I been?”

“What is your father’s name and where does he live?” asked Gertrude.

“My father is in prison, but he is innocent, and only Kanu and I know the truth. We came to tell the Governor, so that he might let my father out.”

“Come, Agatha,—let us go back to mother and tell her.”

“My name is not Agatha,—my name is Elsie,—Elsie van der Walt.”

The two girls looked at each other in surprise, recalling the name of the prisoner in whom Mr Brand was so much interested, and of whom he had spoken several times. After gently assisting Elsie to arise they led her to where the other members of the party were waiting. Helena then drew her mother and Mr Brand aside and told them of what had occurred.

“Find out her father’s Christian name,” said the latter; “if it is Stephanus you may safely tell her that she will be taken to him to-morrow. I will get permission to-night and arrange to have a boat ready in the morning.”

“Elsie,” said Helena, passing her arm over the bewildered girl’s shoulder, “is your father’s name Stephanus van der Walt?”

“Yes—yes,—that is his name. Is he still in prison?”

“He is still in prison, but he is well. You will be taken to him to-morrow.”

The light of a great happiness seemed to radiate from Elsie’s face. At last—at last—The compensation for the long travail was about to be hers. And he—the innocent and long-suffering, would be freed from his bonds.

The eventful day was drawing to a close, so preparations for the return homeward were at once made. Mr Brand started on foot for Cape Town, by a short cut. He meant to call upon the magistrate at once and obtain a written permission to visit Robben Island and see the prisoner on the following day.

As the party drove homeward Elsie was wrapped in a trance of utter happiness. The lovely day had ripened into a sunset-flower of gorgeous and surpassing richness, and, as the pony drew the little carriage up the hill-side to the peaceful home among the trees, its rarest light seemed to be intensified in and reflected from the radiant face of the blind girl.

Elsie spoke no more that night, and the others made no attempt to disturb her blissful silence. In the middle of the night Mrs du Plessis arose, lit a candle and stepped softly to the room where the blind girl slept alone. She was dreaming, and her lips were parted in a smile. Her long, brown lashes lay darkly fringed upon her cheeks, her face and throat had lost their marble pallor and were faintly tinged with the most delicate rose. Adown her sides and completely concealing her arms flowed the double cataract of her peerless hair. Across her bosom and concealing her clasped hands, the streams coalesced into a golden billow which, as it heaved to her breath showed full of changing lights.

The kind woman gazed, spell-bound, until happy tears came and blurred her vision. Then, with thanks to the Power which had sent this angel to her household upon her lips, she noiselessly withdrew.

Chapter Thirteen.

Father and Daughter.

Stephanus Van Der Walt had entered the door of his prison with the firm conviction that his God—the just and mighty God of the Psalms that he knew so well—had laid this burthen upon him for his great transgressions. In the light of his changed heart all the provocation which Gideon had given him seemed to melt away like snowflakes in the sunshine, whilst his own contributions to the long-drawn-out quarrel waxed larger and blacker the more he looked at them.

The exaltation of spirit which buoyed him up when he received his sentence had never flagged. He gloried in his sufferings. His only prayer was that God might not visit his crimes upon his innocent children,—that Elsie, his little blind child, might have the shield of divine protection extended over her helplessness—that Marta, the wife whom he had neglected, and Sara, his elder daughter who stood on the threshold of womanhood, might find the wind of adversity tempered to their need.

When he heard of Marta’s death he bent his head anew in bitter self-reproach. He felt he had left the weak woman whom he had vowed to cherish alone and unprotected,—disgraced and sorrowful. Up till now he had been happy—happier than he had felt for years, for his heart was no longer the home of torturing hate. He felt that this later misfortune was sent to chasten him,—a thing which his imprisonment had failed to do. He took his wife’s death as a sign of the wrath of the Almighty, and he winced at the soreness of the stroke.

But when, a year later, the loss of his little blind daughter became known to Stephanus, his bones seemed to turn to water and light died out of his life. It was the uncertainty of her fate which made the blow so terrible. Month by month would he write letters asking for news and suggesting places to be searched. Had her body only been found it would have brought some consolation. But no—God’s wrath was still sore against him. It was his perfect trust in God’s justice that saved him from despair. He had no hope that Elsie was alive; God, he firmly believed, had taken her to himself, and had left her fate uncertain so as to punish her father, who was the greatest of sinners.

His health nearly broke down under the strain. However, his sublime faith triumphed in time—he bent his back to the sore stroke and the soreness grew less.

Stephanus was employed with the ordinary convict gang in the stone-quarries upon Robben Island. For the first few years he had worked in chains. Afterwards his good conduct had attracted so much remark that he was freed from his fetters and allowed several privileges which, however, he always tried to pass on to his fellow-convicts.

Whenever any of the others fell sick, it was Stephanus who would tirelessly nurse them, night and day. He had even offered on one occasion to receive corporal punishment to which another prisoner had been sentenced, but this, of course, the authorities would not allow.

Since his prostration consequent upon the news of Elsie’s disappearance Stephanus had not been asked to do any labour in the quarries. Moreover, he had not been forced to cut his hair or beard of late years. These were snow-white and of considerable length, and, combined with his upright figure, strongly marked features, and keen but kindly eyes, gave him that appearance we are accustomed to associate with the Hebrew prophets filled with the fire of inspiration.

An early breakfast was hardly over at the du Plessis’ home next morning, before Mr Brand appeared, armed with permission for himself and Elsie to visit the convict van der Walt. They drove down to the wharf, where they found a boat awaiting them. The day was clear and bracing and the stout boat flew before the south-east wind across the heaving welter of Table Bay.

Although Elsie had never been on the sea before, she felt neither alarm nor inconvenience. In the course of a couple of hours the keel grated on the shingle and the passengers were carried ashore through the surf.

Her impatience had given place to a feeling of calm, and she paced up the pathway to the prison without the least appearance of agitation. Leaving her in charge of the wife of one of the officials, Mr Brand went to prepare Stephanus for the great surprise.

Elsie’s beauty became almost unearthly when she was led up the stone steps, at the other side of which she knew her father was waiting to receive her. She entered a flagged passage and then was led to a doorway on the right. The door opened, and she stepped into the room where her father was waiting. He, with a wild look of astonishment and almost incredulity, clasped her in his arms. The door was gently closed, leaving the two alone together.

Some time elapsed before any words were spoken. Stephanus drew Elsie upon his knee and she passed her white hands over his worn face in the old enquiring way. The wrinkled lines that had been ploughed deep by sorrow were traced by her fingers, one by one. Then she clasped her arms around his neck and laid her face against his.

Stephanus could hardly bring himself to believe, at first, that this beautiful and daintily dressed young woman was the roughly-clad and unkempt little girl he had parted from so long ago. The rest of mind and body she had enjoyed,—the calm and wholesome life she had led during the past few years had blotted out the traces of the hardships she had undergone, and had fostered her physical development. The serenity of her spirit had stamped itself upon her beautiful face and she had imbibed the refinement of her surroundings as though to the manner born.

When, at length, her speech came, and her father learnt, bit by bit, all she had endured for his sake, his tears fell fast. But for her the bitterness of the past only enhanced the happiness of the present. Even when he laid a charge upon her, which almost seemed to take away the true value of all she had suffered for his sake, she did not attempt to repine.

“God laid this punishment upon me,” said Stephanus, “and it is His will that I should bear it to the end.”

“But when I tell them what I heard they will surely set you free.”

“My child,—God does not smite without knowing where and how the stripes will fall.”

“But you did not mean to shoot Uncle Gideon, and he knew it when he spoke at your trial.”

“My child,—you have been brave for my sake, and we will soon be happy together once more. I lay this charge upon you:—that you go back to the farm,—to your uncle’s house, and wait for me there. Moreover, that you say not a word to anyone of what you know. If God wants this revealed He will reveal it in His own way.”

Elsie no longer questioned her father’s decision. It was agreed between them that as soon as arrangements could be made she was to return to Elandsfontein, and there await her father’s release.

Elsie and Mr Brand slept at the house of the Superintendent of the Convict Station that night, and returned to the mainland next morning.

There was grief and dismay in the du Plessis’ household when it became known that Elsie was about to take her departure. It was as though a child of their own were leaving. They tried every persuasive argument to detain her, but all were of no avail. It was pointed out that if she remained in Cape Town she would be near her father and could return with him after his release. But his will to her was law, and her determination was not to be shaken.

A letter was written to Gideon apprising him of the fact that his niece had been found, and another to Uncle Diederick, asking him to come and fetch Elsie with his tent-wagon and a team of Stephanus’ oxen. In due course a reply was received, to the effect that Gideon was absent on a hunting trip, and that Uncle Diederick would start for Cape Town in the course of a few days, accompanied by Elsie’s cousin Adrian.

Elsie had begged that enquiry should be made as to whether Kanu had returned to the farm, but nothing had been seen or heard of him there. This was, of course, a very fortunate circumstance for the Bushman. Had he ever been found and recognised, it is to be feared that a short shrift and a round bullet would have been his portion.

Chapter Fourteen.

Adrian and Jacomina.

Aletta, who had mentally and physically become grey like her surroundings, like a tree growing in a damp and dark corner which has long since given up the attempt to shine and burgeon like its fellows that rejoice in the sunlight—received the news of Elsie’s having been found with but a faint shock of surprise and satisfaction. Her perceptions had become dulled by the woe-laden years. Sara had, some two years previously, married a young farmer from an adjoining district.

Uncle Diederick was glad of the opportunity of visiting Cape Town; he had heard of some wonderful new discoveries in the drug line, and he wanted to advance professionally with the times. His farming on joint behalf of himself and Stephanus had prospered. He felt that when his (at present) sleeping partner should be released, he, Uncle Diederick, would be able to build himself another “hartebeeste house” of ample proportions and sumptuous style, and devote his energies exclusively to the exercise of that healing art which his whole soul loved.

Adrian had—being of a careful and frugal nature—begun acquiring stock when still very young. This had increased considerably, owing to a long series of excellent seasons and the exercise of careful management. Thus, he had recently found himself quite rich enough to start farming on his own account. When, however, he mooted this contingency with his father, Gideon at once offered him a full partnership in the farm as a going concern, leaving him the unrestricted management and only stipulating for the supply of teams of oxen and relays of horses for use on the hunting trips upon which he now spent by far the greater proportion of his time. Adrian at once closed with the offer.

Whilst Uncle Diederick was making preparations for his trip the thought struck Adrian that the present might prove a good opportunity for him to visit that city which he had never yet seen. He felt that not alone could he make the journey pay its expenses, but that a handsome profit might be won by taking down a load of produce and bringing back another of supplies. So he overhauled his wagon, packed it with ostrich feathers and hides and then sent over to tell Uncle Diederick of his intention.

Uncle Diederick had arranged to start on the third day following. Adrian’s notification came in the form of a message sent through a Hottentot who was directed to enquire as to the hour of Uncle Diederick’s intended departure, so that the wagon might arrive at the spot where the two roads from the respective homesteads met, at the same time. Up to this it had been understood that Jacomina was to remain behind and attend to any patients who might turn up.

“Pa,” said that artless damsel, at supper, “it will be very lonely here while you are away.”

A quizzical expression crinkled over the withered-apple-like visage of Uncle Diederick. Otherwise he impassively went on with his meal.

“Yes,—and I have never seen Cape Town. Besides Elsie will be very lonely on the road if there is not another girl to talk to and look after her.”

After she had obtained her father’s consent Jacomina began at once making preparations for her trip. Her best frock was taken from the box and thoroughly overhauled, her smartest cappie and her newest veldschoens were laid ready for the morrow. A brooch of old workmanship and some other trinkets which had drifted into Uncle Diederick’s coffers in the course of trade, and thence been annexed by his daughter as part of her share in the profits, were examined and judiciously selected from.

Next day Adrian was astonished, elated and embarrassed to find Jacomina, resplendent in what passed, locally, for finery, sitting throned upon Uncle Diederick’s wagon box when the wagons met at the appointed spot.

As a matter of fact Adrian’s shyness had grown with his passion until each had reached a pitch of tragic intensity. He had often ridden over to Uncle Diederick’s homestead with full and valiant intentions of declaring his love, but invariably his courage had failed at the last moment Jacomina had been at her wits’ end to bring him to the point of proposing which, she knew perfectly well, he was longing to do. She had tried various ways and means, but all had failed. When she became cold he sank into gloomy despondency and moped away by himself. If she grew tender he seemed to dissolve in nervousness and grew as shy as a young girl. Once, she tried flirtation with another, for the purpose of arousing jealousy, but the effect was alarming. Adrian went without food or sleep for several days and rode about the country like one demented.

The obvious way to arrange matters would have been to get Uncle Diederick to intervene. This, however, in spite of many direct hints from Jacomina he had declined to undertake.

In the days we tell of no marriage could be solemnised in the Cape Colony unless the parties had previously appeared before the matrimonial court in Cape Town. It is an historical although almost incredible fact that in the early days of the present century couples wishing to marry had to come to the metropolis for the purpose from the most distant parts of the Colony.

Now, in the tender but astute soul of Jacomina a bright and happy thought had been born. Like the birth of Athene was the issue of this fully equipped resolve that stood before Jacomina in sudden and dazzling completeness. Adrian was to accompany her and her father to Cape Town,—she would induce him to propose on the way down and then there would be no difficulty in leading him up to the marrying point. He was of full age; she was accompanied by her father. There was no reason why the wedding should not take place at once, and thus save them all the necessity for another trip.

Adrian’s shyness did not diminish during the journey. At each outspan Jacomina exercised all her faculties to shine as a cook. He shewed by his appetite that he deeply appreciated the results, but he got no farther than this. With her own deft hands would Jacomina mix Adrian’s well-known quantity of milk and sugar with his coffee, and then pass him the cup which he would receive so tremblingly that the contents were in danger.

The skin bag of rusks made so crisp and light that they would melt instantaneously and deliciously in coffee or milk—the jar of pickled “sassatyes,”—hanks of “bultong” and other delicacies would be produced from the wagon-chest at each outspan and, if Adrian’s passion might be gauged by his appetite, he was, indeed, deeply enamoured.

But Jacomina was at her wits’ end,—her lover would not declare himself, do what she might. One day, however, some difficulty arose with the gear of Adrian’s wagon, so that off Uncle Diederick started alone, its owner’s intention being to wait for his travelling companion at the next outspan place, where water and pasturage were known to be good. Uncle Diederick, as was his wont, fell asleep shortly after a start had been made. Jacomina sat at the opening of the vehicle behind, gazing back along the road in the direction of where she had left her lover.

It was a drowsy day; a faint haze brooded over the land; not a breath stirred the air, faint with the scent of the yellow acacia blooms. The road was deep with heavy sand, through which the oxen slowly and noiselessly ploughed.

A small, bush—brimming kloof was crossed. Through it sped a small stream, plashing over a rocky bar into a pool around which nodded a sleepy forest of ferns. Jacomina put her head out of the back of the tent. Then she sprang from the back of the wagon and went to examine the grot. She found a flat ledge, out of range of the spray, which made a most convenient seat, so she sate herself down and contemplated the scene.

Jacomina liked the scenery so much that she determined to stay for a few minutes, and then follow the retreating wagon. Anon she thought she would wait a little longer and get Adrian to give her a seat as he came past. The Hottentot driver had seen her dismount, so her father would know that she had not fallen off and got hurt, at all events.

She sat among the ferns for a good half-hour before she heard the shouts of the driver urging on the labouring team. Then the wagon laboured through the kloof, and Jacomina peered through the ferns as it passed her.

Adrian was walking behind the wagon, with long, slow strides and bent head. Jacomina was just about to arise and call out to him when he lifted his face at the sound of the plashing water, hesitated for a few seconds, and then stepped towards the grot.

Jacomina knew, instinctively, that the hour she had long hoped for had come; that her lover was at length to be caught in the toils which she had, half-unwittingly, set for his diffident feet,—and the knowledge filled her with a feeling of bashfulness to which she had hitherto been a stranger. Thus, when Adrian walked heavily through the fern and almost touched her dress before he perceived her, she felt covered with confusion.