"A Tale of an African Desert" (continued 2)

The half-breeds sent out boys mounted on ponies, sometimes for a distance of seventy or eighty miles, into the Desert. These start in two parties, each taking a different direction. After reaching ground where, from the spoor, it can be seen that ostriches abound, the two parties converge towards each other, leaving, at intervals, individuals stationary at certain points. A chain, the links of which are several miles long, is thus formed around a large space, into the centre of which all the ostriches which it contains are gradually coaxed. As soon as the cordon is complete, the birds are started at a run towards the saltpans, where the camps of the half-breeds are. As the horses of the hunters actually engaged in chasing become exhausted, their places are taken by others waiting along the wide-apart lines, between which the hapless birds are being driven. After a time the birds begin to drop, one by one. The hunters who made the running at the beginning, and who now come slowly along on the spoor of the chase, pick the carcases up, one by one. Then the feathers are carefully plucked out and tied in bundles, whilst the meat is cut from the bones and hung across the saddles of the weary horses.

Jan Roster’s buggy was of unusual make. It had a skeleton frame, and, where the well ought to have been under the seat, was fitted an ample tin case, which could be easily unshipped. The reason of this was well known to every Trek-Boer in Bushmanland. The box was the receptacle of the feathers collected as rent from the half-breeds, and, in the rare event of Jan’s meeting a policeman or the Special Magistrate upon his rounds, it could be slipped off and buried in the sand. Once he had reached home with his collections Jan felt himself quite safe. He farmed tame ostriches himself, and the possession of the feathers could always be accounted for as being the result of legitimate pluckings.

Jan’s tin box was full of feathers as he drove up to Namies, but this fact did not cause him the least embarrassment. He pulled up within a few yards of Old Schalk’s camp, and, while Piet Noona was outspanning the mules, he untied the tin box and carried it at once into the mat-house. From the way in which he did this, it could be seen that he had evidently done the same kind of thing before. He knew that he ran no risk of being betrayed—“Hawks dinna pyke out hawks’ een.”

It was Saturday afternoon when Jan arrived; he was soon sitting in the mat-house drinking coffee, munching Boer biscuit, and glancing tenderly at Susannah from time to time. Maria and Petronella sat on the big bed giggling, whispering together, and nudging one another. Mrs Hattingh, exhausted by the heat, was sitting near the door fanning her perspiring face with her cappie.

Susannah’s countenance shone with a new light which made it very good to look upon. Ever since her engagement she had become much neater and more tasteful in her dress. In this respect she had always been in strong contrast to her cousins, who, in spite of their taste for pronounced colours, were utter slatterns. To-day they were dressed out in finery of a distressing type. Maria wore a new light-pink cashmere dress, a purple-flowered cappie, and around her neck a dark-blue handkerchief. Petronella’s frock was light blue, her kerchief was scarlet, and her cappie was of the same kind as her sister’s. Both sisters wore white cotton stockings and new veldschoens—the latter just finished for the occasion by Oom Schulpad. The dresses were made of the material which had been obtained upon Mrs Hattingh’s fraudulent representations to the effect that it was required for Susannah.

There was a reason for all this splendour of attire. Maria and Petronella had just made a double conquest, and the double-conquered were immediately expected to call. These were two young men who had recently come to Namies on a courting expedition, from eastern Bushmanland. They came, saw, and succumbed, all within the space of a week. They had not yet declared themselves, but were expected to do so that afternoon. These two hunted in a couple; one never came without the other, and they did not feel the slightest embarrassment in making love ardently in each other’s immediate neighbourhood.

It was about the middle of the afternoon when the expected swains arrived. Both were tall, loose-jointed young men. They had been to the shop and there purchased suits of “reach-me-downs” of distressing texture, pattern, and cut, as well as flabby-rimmed “smasher” hats. They had rather vacant faces, with good-natured expressions. Christoffel (commonly called “Stoffel”) van Lell, Maria’s admirer, wore a tweed coat, which was much too small for him, and the sleeves of which severally revealed half a foot of red, bony wrist. His trousers were of brown corduroy of the most fragrant quality. Willem Henrico, the willing slave of Petronella’s charms, wore a suit of Bedford cord, the jacket of which was double-breasted and adorned with white delft buttons as large as cheese-plates. New veldschoens and cheap, glittering spurs adorned their extensive feet. Spurs serve as a sort of trade-flag in courting on the high plains; a young man with a new pair is known to be in search of a wife.

A walk was proposed. This Mrs Hattingh agreed to with the proviso that the road over the plains was taken and strictly adhered to, and that the couples kept close together. The young men wanted to wander among the kopjes, and the girls seemed to approve of that route. Mrs Hattingh, however, was inexorable. When she emphatically repeated her injunction about keeping close together, Maria said, deprecatingly: “Ach, Ou’ Ma,” (Ou’ Ma, grandmother) and pouted. Susannah flatly refused to go, although Jan’s request that she should do so was ostentatiously seconded by Mrs Hattingh. Jan, accordingly, decided to remain at the camp, so the other couples started by themselves.

Mrs Hattingh soon afterwards stood up and waddled to the scherm, leaving Jan and Susannah alone together. Old Schalk was sitting in his chair on the other side of the wagon, in the shade.

Jan became very nervous. After a few minutes he got up hesitatingly, and moved his chair close to the little cross-legged stool on which Susannah was sitting. He cleared his throat several times before he could force himself to speak. Susannah was pale, but quite unembarrassed. She regarded her unwelcome admirer with eyes that had a wicked snap in them, and he became demoralised under her disdain.

In vain did he speak of his house, his flocks, his horses, and the places he had seen—not to mention the important people with whom he was on terms of intimacy. None of these things moved Susannah. Her hands were closed into two shapely little fists—so tightly that there was not a vestige of blood to be seen in the knuckles. Jan ought to have noticed her hands, and taken warning accordingly, but he rushed blindly upon his fate.

“Susannah,” he said, beseechingly, “I have come a long way to see you.”

“So? Was that why you brought the tin box?”

He floundered; in spite of the practice he had had, proposing was difficult. Besides, Susannah’s last remark was not calculated to set him at his ease.

“Are you not glad to see me, Susannah?”

“Why should I be?”

“Well, I—you see—I wanted to tell you about my new house.”

“What have I to do with houses? I live in a mat-house.”

“But wouldn’t you like to live in a big house with rooms, and a stoep, and a harmonium inside, and furniture brought all the way from Clanwilliam?”

Susannah’s thoughts wandered. In a dreamy tone she replied—

“I don’t know; perhaps I might.”

Jan took this for a sign of yielding. He bent over and passed his arm around the girl’s waist.

Susannah’s dreaming was over. She sprang up and, in the act of doing so, swung round and dealt Jan a swinging blow on the ear with her small, but firm and nervous fist. Jan felt as if the thunders of the Apocalypse had discharged themselves over his left shoulder. He put his hand up to the side of his head to ascertain whether his ear was still there or had been burnt off. Susannah had hurt her hand so much that the tears started in her eyes. However, she managed to escape from the mat-house without showing her distress.

Jan, very much crestfallen and with a bad singing in the left side of his head, strolled away among the other camps. He could see, far out on the plains, the two double dots which indicated the respective pairs of lovers, and the spectacle made him sigh with envy. As the violent pain in his ear calmed down to a sensation more like that of being gently roasted, he began to make excuses for Susannah. Perhaps, he thought, he had been too precipitate. At all events he would go back to tea, Mrs Hattingh having invited him to do so.

When Jan returned at dusk he found van Lell and Henrico sitting on the big cartel bed in the mat-house—the nuptial couch of Old Schalk—with their arms around the waists of their respective charmers. On each of the four faces was an expression of fatuous bliss. The lovers took not the least notice of Old Schalk or Mrs Hattingh, or, for the matter of that, of Jan himself.

At table the lovers did not allow their affections to prevent their all making excellent suppers. The expected proposals had been duly made that afternoon. During the meal each of the affianced maidens passed little tit-bits into her lover’s mouth with her own fair fingers from time to time. These were munched with expressions of rapture by the recipients. Susannah was still indignant, and glanced at Jan from time to time in a manner that made him lose his appetite. The pain in her hand had lasted longer than that in Jan’s ear; of course she blamed him exclusively for the hurt.

After supper another walk was proposed, but this was uncompromisingly vetoed by Mrs Hattingh. Max came in later, and, as usual, sat down as far from every one as possible. Jan wondered at the black looks which the visitor got from the old couple. By and by, however, Susannah brought her little stool close to where Max was sitting, and then a glimmering of the true state of affairs came to Jan. The pain seemed to come back to his ear with renewed intensity. Ere long he found he could stand the strain no longer, so he said, “Goodnight,” and rose to depart. In response to a question from Old Schalk, he said that he would hold a religious service on the following day.

Next morning at about ten o’clock there was a considerable gathering of Boers at the Hattingh camp. Stout, frowsy “tantas” and portly “ooms” strolled up with dignity or waddled laboriously through the sand. Gaudily arrayed maidens followed with their attendant swains. A general requisition for stools and benches, had been made, and these were arranged in a semicircle in front of the wagon. The children of the congregation sat on the ground where sheepskins had been stretched at the feet of the elders. Old Schalk’s chair was placed apart, immediately below the wagon-box, in a position from which he could note the effect of the exhortations on the faces of the others. The service began with a psalm sung after the fashion followed in the Scotch kirks of a century ago—very slowly, and much through the nose. Old Schalk followed with a prayer, which might be described as so much denunciation of people in general, clothed in the phraseology of the Prophet Jeremiah, when the utterer of the Lamentations was most exercised over the sins of Israel. There was a rumour afloat to the effect that the Government was about to tax the Trek-Boers to some slight extent, in proportion to the number of stock they depastured in Bushmanland, so Old Schalk was the mouthpiece of the general indignation.

The prayer over, Jan Roster mounted the wagon-box and began his sermon. His text was a wide one—it embraced the whole of the Ten Commandments. In an unctuous and impassioned manner he fulminated against all sorts and conditions of transgressors. Some of the Commandments he slurred over—others he expounded at great length. When he reached the fourth he glanced menacingly at Max, who stood outside the circle, opposite where Susannah was sitting. The breaking of the Sabbath was, according to Jan, the root of all evil. He called upon the legislators of the land to impose the heaviest penalties for all contraventions of the Divine ordinance on the subject. He spoke in the most opprobrious terms of the Jews, who, out of the wickedness of their unregenerate hearts, desecrated this most holy day, and kept Saturday as a day of devotion in its stead. He, Jan, was a sinner, but among all the faults which his conscience laid to his charge, Sabbath-breaking was not to be found. No, he had always kept holy the Lord’s day—never travelled on it—never attended to worldly concerns between midnight on Saturday and the morning of Monday.

Just then an interruption came. Piet Noona, Jan’s driver and confidential servant, forced his way along the side of the wagon until he reached the front wheel, just over which Jan was holding forth from the wagon-box.

“Baas, Baas!” said he, in an agitated whisper. Jan glanced down with displeasure in his eye, frowned, shook his head, and proceeded to the discussion of the fifth commandment Piet, however, was not to be put off. He caught hold of the leg of Jan’s trousers between his finger and thumb, and began to tug at it.

“Baas, Baas!” said he again, in a tone almost of agony.

“Go away—wait until I have finished,” said Jan, in an irritated whisper.

“Baas, Baas!” reiterated Piet, in a whisper which could be heard by all the congregation, “die Magistrate zijn wa’ kom aan.” (“The Magistrate’s wagon is approaching.”)

Jan reeled and staggered as if he had received a blow. Then he bent down towards the agitated Piet and whispered hysterically the word “Inspan!”

Piet darted off. From the curt and summary way in which Jan dealt with the remaining Commandments one might have thought that they were of comparatively little importance. He brought the service to a close in almost indecent haste, and then dived from the wagon-box behind the canvas curtain, in front of which he had been holding forth. From there he rushed to the mat-house, whence he emerged in an incredibly short space of time, carrying the box of feathers. This he ran with to the buggy. He shoved it under the seat, and over it he draped a sheepskin kaross with ostentatious carelessness. In a few minutes the astonished congregation, which had scattered into interested groups, was scandalised at seeing Jan Roster, the strict Sabbatarian, disappear in a dusty cloud on the road which led southward through the Desert.

However, Jan had got safely away with his tin box and its incriminating contents, and there was not the slightest fear of any of the Boers giving information to the authorities on the subject.

The Spedai Magistrate’s wagon brought the Namies mail from Kenhardt. The mail consisted of three letters—two of which were for Max—and a few circular advertisements from enterprising promoters of patent medicines.

Max’s letters filled him with joy. One was from his brother Nathan, saying he had made so successful a trip—having secured a large quantity of feathers of the very best quality—that he had decided to visit Cape Town for the purpose of disposing of his spoils and buying a fresh stock of “negotie,” or trading truck. Consequently he did not intend returning for about another six weeks.

Nathan gave minute directions upon many points connected with the management of the business—more especially with reference to the giving of credit to the Boers, who, as he knew, would soon be collecting at Namies in considerable numbers. The Hattingh account was, if possible, to be closed at once; in no case was any more credit to be given in that direction. Max sighed with deep relief. After the daily dread of Nathan’s arrival which had overshadowed him for so many weary weeks, this long respite seemed like a prospective eternity.

The other letter bore a foreign post-mark. It was from a notary in Hamburg, informing him that an uncle, of whose very name he had but a faint recollection, had recently died and left him a legacy of about 150 pounds. It seemed a fortune. Why, with that sum he could open a store for himself, as large as the one he was managing on a pittance for another. What a relief it was to find himself independent of Nathan—to realise that there was now some prospect of his being able to make a home for Susannah.

Chapter Eight.

The Trek-Bokken.

The great annual “trek” of springbucks began, and Namies fell into a state of ferment. For about a week small droves of bucks had been seen passing to the westward. One morning clouds of dust were noticed arising into a windless sky about ten miles away to the south. By this it was known that the “trek” had really begun, and that the drove of game was passing unusually far to the northward. Within an hour after sunrise the Wagons were emptied of their contents, whilst every male of European descent above the age of ten was furbishing up a gun.

All sorts and conditions of firearms were to be seen, from the flint-lock of three-quarters of a century ago to the modern Martini and Express.

Breakfast over, the wagons, drawn by teams of oxen which had been standing in the yoke since early morning, moved off towards different points on the trek-line. No horses were taken; a waterless country was now to be entered, and a horse becomes useless in hot weather after a day and a half without water. On the other hand, an ox can endure thirst for a week without becoming incapable of work.

Each wagon carried a couple of small kegs of water, a pillow-case full of Boer biscuits, a small bag of ground coffee, and a kettle. The more luxuriously inclined among the hunters took with them karosses, made of the skins of fat-tailed sheep, to lie under at night. The majority, however, took nothing whatever in the way of bedding.

As the wagons cleared the circle of low kopjes it could be seen that the trek was an unusually large one. As far as the eye could range from north-east to south-west the horizon was obscured by rising clouds of dust. Here and there in the immense vista, a particularly dense cloud could be seen ascending slowly. This indicated a locality where a mob of more than average compactness was pressing westward, impelled by the strange trek instinct.

Old Schalk was a keen sportsman—as that term is understood among the Trek-Boers. In fact the “trek-bokken” were the only things he ever got very excited about. Sitting in his chair—which had been tied in the wagon—and accompanied by a youth whom he had provided with an old gun and some ammunition, and who had agreed to give up half of what he shot in payment, he was drawn towards the trek as fast as a fresh span of oxen could go with the almost empty wagon. Besides his gun Old Schalk took two large “slacht eizers,” or iron traps—cruel things with toothed iron jaws that would smash the leg of a horse.

As the wagons approached the immense drove the dust began to die down, for the tired bucks had paused for their regular rest during the heat of the day. Far away could be seen dense white masses, between which light-coloured dots were thickly sprinkled.

The springbuck is pure white on the belly and flanks, and has a mane of long, white, hair extending from the root of the tail to the shoulders. This mane is usually concealed to a great extent by the fawn-coloured ridges of hair between which it lies. It can, however, be erected at will to about five inches in height, and extended to about six inches in breadth. The sides of the animal are a light fawn colour, upon which lies a horizontal stripe of dark brown about two and a half inches in width and extending from the shoulder to the flank. The horns, shaped like the classic lyre, are about eight inches in length, and are ringed to within a couples of inches of the tip. The animal stands about two feet nine inches in height at the shoulder, and weighs about ninety pounds when fully grown.

Seen at a distance, or when the sun is shining against them, the springbucks appear to be white all over. It is in the early morning, or when running away from or in circles around a bewildered dog—deceived into the idea that it is about to succeed in catching the lissom quarry—that the springbucks are seen at their best, and in their most characteristic attitudes and movements. Then the spine becomes arched until the nose almost touches the ground, the mane of long, stiff, white hair expands laterally, whilst every fibre stands erect and apart. As the animal careers along with the appearance of a bounding disc, its feet are drawn together and it sways, like a skater, first to one side and then to the other—some times to an angle of thirty degrees from the vertical.

There is something inexpressibly sad about the fate of these hapless creatures. Beautiful as anything that breathes, destructive as locusts, they are preyed upon by man and brute in the illimitable wilderness—even as the great shoals of fish are preyed upon by their enemies in the illimitable ocean. The unbounded Desert spaces, apparently meant for their inheritance, hold for them no sanctuary; the hyaena and the jackal hang and batten on the skirts of their helpless host; the vultures wheel above its rear and tear the eyes out of the less vigorous which lag behind. Sportsman and pot-hunter, Boer, half-breed and Bushman, beast of the burrow and bird of the air, slaughter their myriads; but still the mighty mass assembles every year and surges across the Desert like a tempest in its travail of torture. Why should all this loveliness and symmetry have been created in such lavish prodigality only to be extinguished by a slow process of agony and violent death?

For if there be any design anywhere in Nature’s so-called “Plan,” the Desert was meant to be the inheritance of these animals. They were developed under its conditions, its sparse and tardy products are for them all-sufficing; they were in harmony with their ungracious environment until man came to disturb the balance. The semi-civilised human beings who are superseding the springbucks are, physically, and, pari passu mentally, deteriorating under the conditions subject to which the latter flourished.

Within a measurable time the lyre-shaped horns strewn thickly over the veld will be the sole remaining sign of a vanished race, for the springbuck will inevitably become extinct in Bushmanland, as the bison has become extinct in the North American prairies.

The “trek” is due to the instinct which impels the does to drop their young somewhere upon the eastern fringe of the Desert, which extends, north and south, for several hundred miles. This fringe is the limit of the western rains. These fall between April and September, when the Desert is at its driest, and bring out the green herbage necessary for the new-born fawns.

As the area over which the bucks range becomes more and more circumscribed, the trek, although the number of bucks is rapidly diminishing, becomes more and more destructive, owing to its greater concentration. The fawning season over, the herd melts slowly and flows gradually westward, until some night distant flashes of lightning on the cloudless horizon indicate where—perhaps hundreds of miles away—the first thunderstorm of the season is labouring down from where its bolts were forged in the far, tropical north. Next morning not a single buck will be visible—all will have vanished like ghosts, making for the distant track of the rain.

The wagons were drawn for some little distance into the course of the drove, and halted a few miles apart. Then the oxen were unyoked and driven back towards Namies.

Immediately there began a great and ruthless slaughter. Whilst trekking the bucks are very easy to shoot; in fact, if the trek be a large one there is no sport involved in killing them, for they press blindly on, only sheering off slightly to avoid an enemy. They become bewildered in strange surroundings; their only impulse is to surge forward in a flood-tide of destruction and beauty.

From right and left could be heard the dropping shots—some far away and some near—each the death-knell of one of the loveliest of created things. The Boers had crept out for some distance from the wagons, and each had taken up what he considered a favourable position. Here he cleared a circular space about ten feet in diameter by pulling the karoo-bushes, roots and all, out of the sand. The bushes were then piled around the space cleared until a low, inconspicuous fence, about nine inches in height, was formed, the root-ends of the bushes lying inwards.

Behind this fence the hunter lay prone, peering over it now and then to mark the approach of the game, which wandered aimlessly about, singly or in small groups. Whenever a buck approached to within a few yards of the scherm, the occupant, with unerring aim, would send a bullet through some vital part, and the animal would fall, its companions scattering, often only to get within range of another scherm. The karoo-bushes grow to a height of about a foot; consequently the dead bucks were usually concealed from view. If one lay unduly revealed, the hunter would creep out and strew a few bushes over it, thus hiding it effectually.

At evening the Hottentot servants drove in the oxen, inspanned them to the wagons, and drove out to the various scherms for the purpose of bringing back the game to the different camping-places. The carcases were then split down in front and laid open in the cool night air.

Old Schalk, on account of his weak legs, was conveyed by wagon right to the spot where he decided to establish his scherm; then the wagon moved back for a couple of miles and the oxen were outspanned. He laid himself down comfortably in his scherm, where he kept a Hottentot boy to attend him. Under his large body was a sheepskin kaross, for he believed in doing his shooting, like everything else, comfortably. The two terrible traps were brought into requisition. By means of the united exertions of Old Schalk and the Hottentot the springs were forced back and the frightful jaws laid open. Then the traps were carried out and carefully set, one on each side, and half buried in the loose sand. They were placed each about a hundred yards away from the scherm, and a troop of bucks would sometimes pass over one or other of the intervening spaces. Under ordinary circumstances no buck would tread upon so unusual looking an object. At a shot, however, the frightened creatures would spring into the air in different directions, and in the confusion one would perhaps alight on the engine. Then the horrible jaws would snap, and the poor animal, held by the sinews of a shattered limb, would roll over and over on the sand, bellowing in agony.

At nightfall the herd suddenly began to move on once more, in obedience to some mysteriously communicated impulse. All night long the muffled thunder of their hoofs could be heard, whilst clouds of dust hung motionless in the dew-damp air. Now and then the faint shock of a distant gun discharge could be distinguished above the sound of the trampling. In their mad career some of the larger and more consolidated troops would rush to within a few yards of a wagon before they became aware of its presence. Then the mass would open out slightly and flow onwards in a divided stream, which, however, would reunite a few yards farther on. On occasions such as this the Boers or their Hottentot servants would shoot into the dense multitude, sometimes killing or wounding three or four bucks at one shot.

Old Schalk now set a trap at each side of the wagon, and the Hottentots had to get up several times in the night to cut the throats of the captured animals and reset the engines.

Early in the morning the wagons were sent back to Namies loaded with the slaughtered game. Late in the afternoon they returned empty, to go back again on the following morning with a fresh load.

For three days and nights the trek was at its height; then no more dense troops were to be seen. For a week or more, however, plenty of profitable shooting could be had at the stragglers.

At Namies the Boer women and children were busy cutting up the carcases and converting the meat into “bultong.” From each haunch the bone was removed, whilst the meat which lay thick along the back where the ribs join the spine was cut out in long strips. All the meat was then slightly sprinkled with salt and left to lie in heaps for twenty-four hours. After this it was hung for a few days upon lines slung between the ribs of the mat-houses and the laths of the wagon-tents. Then, if the sun did not shine too fiercely, it would be hung out in the open.

After a few weeks of such treatment the “bultong” is fit for use, and if stored in a dry place may be kept for an indefinite time. This substance forms the staple animal food of the Trek-Boer for the greater part of the year.

The skins were pegged out on the ground to dry; then they were stowed away in heaps, afterwards to be “brayed” soft, sewn into mats, and bartered to the Jew hawkers.

Chapter Nine.

The Last of the “Old Woman.”

Max had no taste for slaughter. The hunter’s instinct, which makes so many otherwise humane men cruel, was not in him. He therefore felt it no privation that he was unable to leave the shop and join the hunters as he had done in previous years when the trek had taken place. On the other hand he felt with satisfaction that he could now see more of Susannah, her uncle being out of the way, and he made the most of his opportunities in this respect.

Max was rapidly developing from a boy into a man, and many of the little traits specially characteristic of modern Israel began to show themselves in him. Of Old Schalk he stood in awe; the brutal directness of the way in which the old Boer uttered all his thoughts frightened him. Mrs Hattingh, however, had ceased to impress him since the day she had obtained the dresses for her granddaughters fraudulently and on the strength of his attachment to Susannah. Max felt that he held her at a moral disadvantage, and she tacitly acquiesced in this.

Max spent every evening while Old Schalk was away at his sweetheart’s side. He told her of his legacy, and around this nucleus they began to weave plans for the future. Max had saved a little money out of the small salary which his brother allowed him. He thought seriously of leaving Nathan’s service as soon as the latter returned, and setting up on his own account as a hawker.

His first notion was to buy some stock and set up as a Trek-Boer, but Susannah put a decided veto upon this proposal. The prospect of being married to a man who spent most of his life in wandering about with a cart and four donkeys was almost equally unattractive. The latter alternative might, however, lead to something better eventually. Susannah was in no hurry; she told her lover plainly that although she was prepared to wait indefinitely for him she would not marry until he could give her a proper home.

Late one night, after Max had returned home to the shop, he heard a knock at the door. He found Gert Gemsbok standing before the threshold. The old Hottentot stepped in, and, as usual, sat down on the floor.

“Baas Max, I want to tell you a secret.”

“Yes; what is it?”

“Baas Max, when I was living down on the bank of the river I one day picked something up.”

“Yes; what was it?”

“You have been kind to me and I can trust you. Here is what I picked up.”

Gemsbok handed over to Max the smallest of the six diamonds. He had, after careful consideration, determined to trust his master so far, with the view of realising part at least of his valuables.

Max took the stone and looked carefully at it. He knew well enough that it was a rough diamond; as a child in Cape Town he had often seen illicitly obtained stones of this kind handed round among the Jews who frequented the lodging-house where he stayed for a short time upon his arrival in the colony. The gem weighed about eight carats; it was of good water and perfect shape.

“I found it,” continued Gemsbok, “hidden in a boot which came down in the flood, just above the Augrabies Falls. I know, for I have worked at the diamond fields, that I should be sent back to the tronk if that stone were found on me, so I thought you might sell it and give me half the money. If you will do this it will satisfy me.”

Max considered for a while, and then decided that this was a matter for his brother to deal with. He knew well enough that the possession of diamonds which could not be satisfactorily accounted for was a criminal offence severely punishable. The law was to Max a thing very dreadful. He had never seen its manifestations, but he had heard of Willem Bester and others who had broken the law and suffered grievously in consequence. Nathan, however, as was proved in his ostrich-feather dealings, held the law in sovereign contempt. Nathan was the man to deal with a matter such as this; Max would have none of it. In the meantime, however, he agreed to keep the stone in the small iron safe and to advance Gemsbok some coffee, sugar, and tobacco, for the delectation of himself and his “Old Woman,” as the latter always called her, upon its security.

But the “Old Woman” had no long enjoyment of the luxuries, for two days later, when Gemsbok came in from the veld with his flock, he found that she was dead. She had passed away in her sleep. Gemsbok expressed himself to Max as being glad that the poor old creature had breathed her last. She had, he said, suffered so much of late, and now she would never feel pain or privation any more. He dug a hole in a sandy gully behind one of the smaller kopjes and there the poor, unlovely corpse was laid. In spite of her physical sufferings the quaint old creature had spent a very happy time at Namies. She had enjoyed a sufficiency of fairly wholesome food, besides the occasional trifles in the way of coffee, sugar, and tobacco which Max’s bounty supplied her with. These had afforded her the keenest and, perhaps, the only enjoyment she was capable of feeling.

Gemsbok, in spite of his repeated declarations that he was glad the “Old Woman” was gone, did not appear to be happy. No matter how bright the fire of candle-bushes, the scherm was lonely at night—even an old woman so broken down by rheumatism and poverty of blood that she could not use her limbs and was hardly capable of carrying her food to her mouth, was better than no human companion at all.

Gemsbok had now no companion but his dog, which was an animal as friendless as its master. All day long alone in the veld, under the changeless Desert sky; all night long alone in the scherm, under the unregarding stars. Man is a gregarious animal, and the burthen of one’s own presence galls as only those burthens do which carry as dead weight the broken shackles of one of Nature’s disregarded laws.

Sleep was difficult to get. It had been usual for the old couple to remain awake talking half the night through. Lying awake alone proved to be a very different thing. He moved his scherm to another spot; that did not improve matters, so he moved it back again. He no longer enjoyed his coffee or tobacco. The average man almost invariably gets to love anything totally dependent on him—no matter how unlovely it may be. Some loves are not recognised in anything like their fulness until the removal of the thing loved leaves a void which can never be filled.

A Hottentot is naturally among the most sociable of beings; Gert Gemsbok was no exception to the rule of his race in this respect. He had, however, made no friends among his own race at Namies. He could not visit the scherms of the other Hottentots; all were in the service of Trek-Boers, and the boycott against him was strict. As a protest against Max’s unheard-of conduct in keeping such a man in his service, all the Boers had given strict injunctions to their servants to have nothing to do with the informer against Willem Bester. Besides, Gemsbok was; morally and intellectually, far in advance of all with whom he might, under other circumstances, have associated. Aristotle’s aphorism as to the effect of solitude upon man is very true, and Gert Gemsbok had not become a beast in his exile.

Max noticed that now the old man never lost an opportunity of being near him. In the evenings, whenever Max happened to be in the shop, Gemsbok would come in, sit on the floor, and tell of his experiences. He thus told the true story of his life in detached fragments. And what a tale it was! what a lurid record of long-drawn, strenuous suffering made bearable, at first by the memory and afterwards by the companionship of a kindred mate! One night the old man told Max that he did not expect to live long; he felt his time had nearly come and he had no wish to prolong an existence which was now more than ever a weariness.

He did not, he said, care much whether he obtained any of the proceeds of the sale of the diamond or not; he had no desire now except to get enough food for himself and an occasional bite for his dog. The “Old Woman” was gone, and the sooner he too went the better.

His music now was all in a minor key; no more reels and jigs that made one long to caper. The old, stock melody ran through all he played, making it like an endless, barbaric fugue—weird and melancholy. His nocturnal performances sometimes made the dog leap out of the scherm and howl despairingly at the stars. In accompanying Oom Schulpad his hand seemed to have lost his cunning. The old fiddler would, however, sit for long periods, astonished and uncannily fascinated by the eerie tones scattered by the saddened strings of the ramkee.

Chapter Ten.

Nathan the Tempter.

One evening just after sunset Nathan arrived, driving a team of six smart mules before a brand-new cart. He had bought the turn-out at Clanwilliam on his return journey from Cape Town. He was accompanied by Koos Bester, at whose camp he had called in passing.

Nathan had entered into a contract to supply a firm of butchers in Cape Town with slaughter oxen; Bester, who owned a lot of cattle which were running, half-wild, in Bushmanland, agreed to sell him a certain number upon terms very advantageous to the purchaser.

Nathan was as unlike Max as it is possible for one brother to be unlike another. He was a low-sized, knock-kneed man of a fair complexion which burnt to a fiery red on the least exposure. His features were of the lowest Hebrew type—his lips were full and shapeless, his nose large and prominent, his eyes small and colourless, but exceedingly bright and glittering.

Since Max had awakened from boyhood to manhood he had come to hate this brother of his, to whom money was the only god worth worshipping, and who sneered at every impulse or aspiration that did not have gain for its object.

Next morning poor Max had a bad time of it. The books were examined, and when the debit entry against the Hattinghs came to light and Max was unable to give any satisfactory explanation as to why he had disregarded his instructions in allowing this account to be increased, Nathan treated him to the grossest abuse. However, things were found to be in a satisfactory condition on the whole; in fact Nathan could find nothing but this one item to find fault with. All day long he kept recurring to this one blot upon a good record, until at length Max became extremely angry and said that if Nathan would only stop talking about it he would pay the value of the articles sold out of his own salary. At this Nathan looked at him with a searching glint in his eye, but said nothing further on the subject.

In the afternoon Nathan went for a stroll among the camps, in the course of which he learned two things, namely, Max’s relations with Susannah, and the fact that old Gert Gemsbok, the Hottentot, who had been placed under the ban for giving evidence against a Boer, was in his service. Nathan returned to the shop, filled with sardonic fury. Max at once saw that the hour he had been dreading for months had come.

“Well,” said Nathan, after he had regarded his brother for a few seconds with an evil smile, “going to get married, eh?”

“Yes—what of that?” Max felt his courage rising; he no longer dreaded the thing before him.

“You, a Jew, and the child of Jews, to talk of marrying a Christian slut who was born under a bush and reared by stinking Boers in a mat-house?”

“If I am a Jew it is more than you are; you often said that you didn’t believe in God.”

“What has God got to do with it? A Jew is a Jew, God or no God, and a Christian is of no use except to make money out of. Nice idea, a chap like you thinking of getting married. Going to reside in this fashionable suburban villa, or do you mean to build a mansion for yourself?”

“Well, I sha’n’t live here or anywhere else near you!”

Nathan blinked in astonishment; it was something quite unheard of, Max taking such a tone. The fear that inevitably strikes at the heart of the bully whenever even the weakest resists him, bridled his tongue for a minute; then he resumed—

“Well, you can take your Boer slut and breed babies under a koekerboom whenever you feel inclined, so far as I care; but if you want to stay on with me you will have to give up this rot.”

“I do not want to stay another day with you,” replied Max, in a quiet voice. “I want to have done with you as soon as I can, and then I shall not care if I never see you again.”

Nathan, for the first time in his life, began to feel a glimmering of respect for his brother. However, it would not do to let Max see that this was the case. He began to expound upon the text of his other grievance—

“That old nigger you have hired; you must clear him out at once.”

“You are master; if you want to get rid of him you had better give him notice. He is hired by the month.”

“Yes, as soon as I can get another herd I will give your old pal notice with a sjambok. I’m not going to have my trade with the Boers spoilt by keeping on a damned old nigger-informer like that.”

“I’ve got something belonging to him here,” said Max, producing the diamond. “He picked it up on the bank of the river. He wants you to sell it and give him half the price.”

Nathan took the stone and glanced at it. Then he gave a short whistle expressive of surprise and walked over to the window, in the light from which he examined the stone carefully. This done he slipped it into his trouser pocket and turned again to Max—

“No, my boy; that’s a little too thin. Stones like this are not picked up in Bushmanland. This here diamond has been stolen from Kimberley, and I mean to keep it until I can restore it to its rightful owner. See?”

Here he winked. Max looked at him with deep scorn. Nathan left the shop and walked to a short distance, whistling a lively tune. Then he stood and critically regarded the sunset, with his hands in his pockets.

Soon afterwards old Gemsbok drove up the flock of sheep to where they always lay at night, on the side of the kopje behind the shop. Nathan called to him, and he came.

“Well, you’re a nice sort of a scarecrow to come here spinning yarns about picking up diamonds in Bushmanland. I’ve a good mind to send you to the magistrate for having a stolen diamond in your possession.”

“The diamond is not a stolen one, Baas.”

“A likely story. I suppose you’ll tell me next that you’ve never been to Kimberley, eh?”

“I have been to Kimberley, Baas.”

“I thought so. Perhaps you’ll tell me next that you’ve never been in the tronk, either, eh?”

“I have been in the tronk, Baas.”

“Well, well; if that ain’t wonderful guessing I’m a Dutchman. Beg your pardon, I’m sure”—here he grinned ironically at Max, who had just come out of the shop. “Let’s try again. It might also be possible that your back has been tickled by the ‘cat,’ and that you didn’t laugh, neither?”

“My back has felt the ‘cat,’ Baas.”

“Ex-tra-ordinary! Why, I’m as good at pulling out facts as a corkscrew at opening bottles”—here he turned and winked at Max, who felt himself tingling with disgust. “Now look here, Mister Nigger-informer—who has been to the diamond fields, also in the tronk, to say nothing of other places, and whose back has been tickled by the ‘cat’ until you didn’t laugh—I’m just going to stick to this here shining gem until I find the rightful owner. Of course, if you’re not satisfied you can go and complain to the magistrate next time he comes round. See?”

“I see, Baas.”

As Gert went to his scherm Nathan turned and winked to Max again. The latter walked away with rage and shame seething in him. Nathan went into the little back room and threw himself on the bed. He lay there and chuckled over the prize he had so easily acquired. “Why,” he thought, “it must be worth at least fifty pounds.” Well, at last his luck was properly booming. First, the big haul of feathers safely disposed of; next the cattle contract and the arrangement he had made with Koos Bester, under which Koos had to do all the work and he, Nathan, had only to pocket the profits; now this diamond. He began to calculate: at this rate he would be a rich man in a few years. Then he would go away and enjoy himself, would steep himself to the lips in vice, as he had often longed with the full strength of his weasel’s soul to be able to afford to do.

A knock on the iron front of the door startled him from his dream.

“Come round here, whoever you are—especially if you have petticoats on!” he shouted.

Then the tread of a heavy man drew near, and Koos Bester entered the room.

“Well, Koos, my son, how do you feel this fine evening?”

“Fresh, thank you.”

“Well, I don’t know when I ever felt so happy. I don’t know why I should” (here he thought he had been possibly injudicious in revealing his blissful condition to Koos) “after all the money I’ve been losing lately, and after the price I’m going to pay you for these cattle; but somehow I do.”

Koos lit his pipe and smoked in silence. The Trek-Boer is seldom lively; in fact he is usually silent whenever he can possibly avoid speaking.

“Koos, have you heard that the old nigger who got Willem into that mess is here working for me, hired by my brother?”

“Ja, I heard so.”

“Of course, I will give him the sack as soon as ever I can get another boy.”

“Ja, I am glad to hear that.”

“Koos, why don’t you get him on the quiet and give him a good licking?”

“Ja, I should like to do that if you will not mind.”

“Mind! No; I’ll be only jolly glad if you will do it. But take him on the quiet, give him his dressing when there’s no one about. Whatever you do, don’t trust my brother; he makes quite a pal of him.”

“Good, I’ll make a plan. But when are we to start?”

“Let’s see—this is Tuesday; supposing we get away on Friday. Say Friday morning at daylight.”

“It’ll be no use starting so early; we cannot get to my camp, round by Puffadder, in a day. It will be time enough to start after breakfast.”

“But why do you want to go all that way round? Can’t we go through the dunes?”

“No! you won’t catch me going through the dunes this weather with mules. I have four horses that could do it; I wouldn’t take them there now for five pounds.”

“All right, Koos; we’ll go round by Puffadder and start after breakfast on Friday.”

The vast group of sand-dunes beyond which Koos Bester lived lies like a red-hot spider across the north-eastern section of the Desert, with the legs extending principally towards the south and south-west.

Rather, perhaps, is it like a menacing hand stretched forth by the giant Kalihari—that waterless waste of loose sand which extends northward indefinitely from just across the Orange River—to seize the southern extremity of the African Continent in a fiery grip. The river gorge cut the hand off at the wrist, else the eternal dribble might, in course of time, have overwhelmed all the western districts of the Cape Colony.

The dunes are, as a rule, only from ten to twenty feet in height, except in the central area where they are piled high about an abrupt, strange-looking hill which has a stratum of red stone encircling it like a belt. This hill is called “Bantom Berg,” which means “belted mountain.” The many mile-long fingers straggle over the Desert, gradually encroaching.

No one ever enters the dunes twice, except in case of the most urgent necessity. At every step the traveller sinks to below the ankles in the fine, light, scorching sand. It is sometimes practicable to cross the dune-tract in a light vehicle, if the weather happens to be cool and one’s horses are in good condition. But crossing them is, however, never safe, for there is no water to be had within their repulsive bounds. The bones of many a lost wanderer lie there, covered by the sand streaming over the flat dune-top, under the lea of which he may have crept in the vain hope of getting shelter from the flame-hot wind from the north. In such a case the body would be buried deep, beyond the reach even of the jackals, in a very short time. If ever uncovered it would be found converted into a black, shrunken mummy, for the intense dryness of the sand is such that a body buried in it never decomposes; the moisture is rapidly drained out of it until nothing is left but a parchment bag of bones.

Max gave Nathan a month’s notice of leaving next day. As, however, he had drawn his salary by the quarter, Nathan insisted on three months’ notice being given. In this Max had to acquiesce, but he did so with a very bad grace.

Up to Friday morning Koos Bester had no opportunity of carrying out his intention of giving Gert Gemsbok a thrashing on the quiet. By Thursday night he had quite given up the idea. His slow mind had gradually come to recognise that he had better leave the old Hottentot alone—this in spite of Nathan’s daily promptings on the subject. The old man looked so frail and bent. Some unrecognised remnant of chivalry in the Boer’s nature made him dimly see that for a man of his strength to attack one who would be as a child in his hands would be base and cowardly. But Willem, whom he had loved as more than a brother, had been done to death by this baboon-like creature. Then for a few minutes the face of Koos would darken with the desire for revenge. He began to long for the time of departure, so as to be away from the temptation to do the deed that he loathed and longed for the doing of at the same time.

Friday morning came, and after breakfast Nathan and Koos departed from Namies in the cart drawn by the six smart mules. The road led around the kopjes to the westward, so the cart was out of sight of the camps a few minutes after the start.

The distance to Koos Bester’s camp would take two short days to accomplish, but could not possibly be accomplished in one. The dunes were avoided on this route by passing over the point where the red-hot hand had been amputated and the stump frayed away by the winds of centuries. After travelling a mile or so they passed over some ground where a lot of shallow gullies, which carried off the occasional thunderstorm drainage from the kopjes, intersected each other. A flock of sheep could be seen grazing a few hundred yards to the right of the road, amongst the gullies. Between them and the road could be seen the figure of a man sitting on a doubled-down tussock of “twa” grass.

Koos felt the blood rise to his brain, but he averted his eyes from the figure and sucked violently at his pipe. Nathan pulled at the reins, and the mules came to a standstill. Just then the man arose from the tussock and disappeared over the edge of one of the gullies.

“Koos, my son, there’s your chance.”

“Never mind; I’ll let the old vagabond alone to-day. I haven’t got a sjambok with me, and that whip of yours wouldn’t hurt him enough. Drive on.”

“Rot! man alive; let’s have some sport. Give him a taste of those pretty little feet of yours. Go on, I’ll see fair play.”

Koos alighted from the cart and began adjusting a part of the harness which had got out of gear. Then he walked back and put his foot on the step preparatory to climbing in.

“What! ain’t you going to give it to him? Well, you most likely won’t have another chance; I’ve told Max to give him the sack as soon as ever he can get another boy, so he’ll likely be gone by the time we return.”

Koos stood with his foot resting on the step, still undecided.

“Never mind,” he said, “I’ll let him alone to-day.”

“And poor Willem, who died in the tronk all through that chap. Koos, I’m ashamed of you; be a man and give him what for.”

Koos no longer hesitated. The reference to Willem turned the scale; his good angel soared away from his side for ever. The blood arose in his veins until his face and neck became purple. He uttered a curse and walked off, at first with hesitation still apparent in his movements. He was now eager to go, but his legs seemed reluctant to carry him. To harden his purpose he began to think of Willem’s case; of how he had sworn to be revenged; of how a Boer, a man of his own blood, had been sent to herd with blacks at a convict station, and had there died miserably, all through the “thing” before him. At length his very bile seemed to stir with black rage, and he strode on with his hands and feet tingling for vengeance.

Gert Gemsbok watched over the edge of the gully the approach of Koos, and guessed the purpose of the Boer. Then he dropped back into the hollow behind him and ran down it as hard as he could in the hope of reaching some ground which he might tread on without leaving a spoor. He had caught up the little dog so that it should not betray him by following.

He might have escaped from Koos were it not that the cart stood on higher ground, and thus Nathan caught sight of his crouching form passing over an exposed spot. The Jew yelled to Koos that he was to trend to the left, and then indicated a small bush close to which he had caught sight of the fugitive. Koos, now thoroughly roused and thirsting madly for vengeance, started off at a run towards the bush Nathan had pointed out. In a few moments he nearly ran over the old Hottentot, who was hiding under an overhanging bank.

The sorry deed did not take long to accomplish. With his powerful hand Koos seized Gemsbok by the skinny arm and hurled him to the bottom of the gully. Not a word was spoken on either side. The old Hottentot was like a paper doll in the hands of the heavy, muscular Boer, and he fell with a thud upon the soft sand. Then Koos, beside himself with mad anger, leaped upon him like a tiger, stamped upon the shrunken body with his heavy feet, and kicked it until his toes, badly protected by the thin and supple-soled veldschoens, began to hurt him severely.

The pain brought Koos partly to himself. Casting one look upon the motionless, huddled body, he climbed out of the gully and began walking quickly back towards the cart. He found, however, that the great toe of his right foot caused him excruciating pain, so he could only limp slowly over the broken ground.

“Hello, Koos; did the old man show fight and knock you about? What’s up with your little hind paw? Why, you look as white as a blooming sheet.”

Koos climbed into the cart and Nathan drove on. There was something in the expression of the Boer’s face which taught the Jew that it would not be safe to take any liberties just then.

After a few minutes Nathan found that he could sustain his curiosity no longer—

“Come along, old man,” he said coaxingly; “tell us all about it.”

Koos did not reply. He was in great pain, and was wondering what the effect of the particular kick which hurt him so had been on the man whom he kicked. His toe began to press against the upper-leather, and he felt that it was dislocated.

The still, huddled figure lying in the sand at the bottom of the gully was as if photographed on the retina—it was literally so vividly before his mental vision that physical vision seemed to be suspended. And the pain in his toe! He longed to take off the veldschoen and ease the pressure, to examine the injury, regarding which he was consumed with a deadly curiosity, but he hated to attract Nathan’s attention.

He moved the foot slightly and the agony almost made him shriek aloud. A spasm of frantic terror gripped him by the heart-strings until he nearly swooned. Why, the man must be dead. He thought of his own bulk, of his strength, and of how passionately and recklessly he had leaped and stamped upon the nearly passive body. The details of what had happened had seemed lost to him for a time; in all but the merest and flimsiest general outline he had forgotten what had occurred between his gripping Gemsbok by the arm and his changing his walk into a hobble as he returned to the cart. Now, under some strange psychological sympathetic ink the smallest details appeared in pitiless distinctness, and stood out before his shuddering soul in lurid relief.

A wild rage against the man next to him, who had incited him to the deed—without whose fell, artful suggestion and encouragement his conscience would now have been clear—surged up in him. He felt, for a few minutes, as black an anger against Nathan as he had felt when he gripped the man he thought had wronged him, and dashed him down.

The day was hot and windless. He glanced up and saw the red-belted cone of Bantom Berg towering up amid the dunes. The cone was clear, and the waves of rarefied air quivered along the tops of the sand mounds like living flames, until they flashed into a lovely mirage away to the south, where the Desert line was unbroken.

He looked straight ahead and drew a deep sigh of relief, for red wisps of sand were tossing into the air, lashed by the fury of the first gusts of one of those fearful wind-storms from the north which were so common at that season. Soon the Desert would be tortured by moaning tempests, and then his footprints would be blotted out in the twinkling of an eye. A feeling of relief and subsequent elation swept through his mind. He was all right now; he had only been afraid of his spoor being found. He felt quite safe. They might, of course, suspect him; that did not matter, for Nathan, he knew, would never give information against him. Why, Nathan was almost an accomplice. The thought of his companion’s knowledge of what he had done seemed to bring vague suggestions of disquiet in its trail; nevertheless his mind was able to poise itself still for a while on the dizzy pinnacle of elation to which it had swung out of the depths, impelled by a strange momentum. The Hottentot was dead—that was certain to him now. He seemed to be able to weigh and measure the force of every individual one of the kicks he had given, and the result of this sum in mental arithmetic was—death.

Nathan stole another glance at his companion’s face and saw that it was now less terrible to look upon. His curiosity had become a positive pain. He felt he must venture to ask again for details.

“Come along, Koos,” he coaxed; “tell us all about it.”

“There’s not much to tell. I just gave him a few thumps and left him.”

“Why on earth didn’t you bring him to the top of the bank and operate there? I didn’t see any of the fun.”

Here the Jew touched his companion’s foot accidentally. Koos shrieked with anguish and uttered a horrible curse. Nathan seemed very much astonished. He riveted his gaze on the foot.

“Why, Koos, there’s blood on your veldschoen. Did you cut your foot?”

Koos could stand the pain no longer. He lifted his foot upon his left knee and began to untie the reimpje with which the veldschoen was tied. Nathan stopped the mules.

When the veldschoen was removed the great toe was found to be dislocated. It had turned from its usual direction and was pointing backward, owing to the strain on the tendon. The whole front part of the foot was turning purple.

“My eye!” said Nathan, “you must have given it to him precious hot. Why, you’ve unlatched your blooming big toe. That ain’t your blood, neither. My eye! And I didn’t see it happening. Just like my luck!”

Koos felt sick with pain. He wrapped his jacket around the injured foot and leant back. The sand-storm swept down in fury. Nathan relieved his feelings by fluent cursings. To Koos the fiery wind with its burthen of stinging sand was more grateful than the zephyrs of a springtime dawn.

“Ain’t it lucky we didn’t take the road through the dunes?” shouted Nathan during a slight comparative cessation of the wind.

Koos did not reply. He was wishing with the full strength of his tortured soul that they had taken the dune route, whatever its dangers might have been, in preference to the one which had led him to the scene of his crime.

They reached the water-place which is known by the name of “Puffadder,” and there saw the mat-houses of several Trek-Boer camps. By agreement it was stated that Koos had injured his foot by hitting it, when running, against a stone. An old woman who was skilled in herbal remedies and rough surgery made him lie down on his back upon the ground. Then she tied a thin reim around the dislocated toe and got two of her sons to haul at it. The toe slipped back into its socket, but Koos fainted from the pain. When he came to himself the evil face of Nathan was peering into his. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of that which he had now come to hate as he had never hated anything before.

“Well, old man,” said Nathan, “it strikes me you must have smashed that blooming stone you ran your foot against into splinters.”

After the mules had been watered and had taken a roll in the sand another start was made. The old woman had boiled down some dried herbs in a tin pannikin and tied rags soaked in the decoction around the injured toe. This treatment relieved the pain considerably. When they inspanned and made another start the wind had completely ceased, the sunlight had lost its sting, and the stillness of infinite peace seemed to brood like a bright-plumaged dove over the Desert. There was no sound but the faint creak-creak of the harness as the mules trotted along over the soft sand. Nathan made several attempts to elicit further particulars as to what Koos had done to the old Hottentot, but his companion remained obstinately silent, and he felt instinctively that it would not be safe for him to pursue the subject farther just then.

The sun was nearly down when they reached Koos Bester’s camp on the following day. In the interval the mind of the unhappy Boer had perpetually oscillated between two poles—that of remorse, terror, and despair on the one hand, and that of unreasoning elation on the other. But he would not speak of the thing which had happened. Sometimes he persuaded himself that the old Hottentot was surely dead; anon he reasoned that the proverbial physical toughness of the race to which the man belonged would enable him to recover. But the limp, passive, huddled form, prone on the sand at the bottom of the gully, haunted him with deadly persistence, and his detestation of the Jew who had persuaded him against his will to do the deed grew in intensity.

The collecting of the cattle, which ranged over a couple of thousand square miles of Desert, occupied several days. Nathan made himself as agreeable as possible to Mrs Bester and the children, who, however, cordially and instinctively disliked him. Koos turned upon him from time to time a slow gaze in which smouldering hatred seemed to lurk. This was especially noticeable when the Jew, as he often did, began paying Mrs Bester extravagant compliments.

Koos’ foot became much better under the treatment recommended by the old woman who had assisted him at Puffadder. She had given him a supply of her medicinal herbs, and of these infusions were made, the application of which was followed by the best results.

Koos had repeated to his wife and her father the story as to his having injured his foot by hitting it against a stone. The father-in-law caused some embarrassment by questioning him closely as to the details of the accident. The answers were not very consistently given, and when the discrepancies were commented on Koos lost his temper. Nathan was present at this scene and keenly enjoyed it.

After the cattle had been collected and the number purchased by Nathan selected and marked, the latter took his departure. In returning to Namies he followed the course he had come by. When nearly home he glanced regretfully in the direction of the broken gullies, thinking of the piece of sport he had missed, on the details of which Koos Bester had been so strangely reticent.

Next morning Koos inspanned his cart just after daybreak. He could no longer endure the suspense of waiting for information as to the result of his violence. He drove a team of rough ponies, the equals of which for endurance could hardly have been found in Bushmanland. He travelled in a light cart which had no hood. As the day seemed to promise coolness he decided to venture on taking the road through the dunes.

Chapter Eleven.

The Broken Ramkee.

About half an hour after the departure of Nathan and Koos Bester from Namies Max was surprised to see Gert Gemsbok’s dog running back from the veld with every appearance of terror. It rushed straight to the scherm, and there stood panting and with air erect along its back. Its ears were cocked and its tail tucked under, as it gazed back in the direction whence it came, sniffing the time with wide, dilated nostrils. This struck Max as extremely strange and eerie. He knew the habits of this dog; never since Gemsbok had rescued it had the animal left the side of its master.

Oom Schulpad happened to come to the shop shortly afterwards, and Max mentioned the circumstance to him. Together they walked up the side of the kopje to the scherm. The dog was so preoccupied by whatever was the cause of its agitation that it appeared unaware of their approach until they got quite close to it. Then the animal crept in under the fence of bushes and lay there whining.

“That dog has had a fright,” said Oom Schulpad. “I have sometimes seen dogs like that, and it was always after they had seen something bad happen. See, now, if something has not happened to the old Bushman.”

Max returned to the shop. After dinner, as no customers were about, he started out to search for Gert Gemsbok. He went up to the scherm and caught the dog. At first the animal snapped and snarled when he approached it. Max had, however, taken some pieces of meat with him, and these he held out in propitiation. Thus mollified, the dog allowed itself to be caught and a reim tied around its neck.

The Desert was a whirling hell of blinding and scorching sand-clouds. Max staggered on along the course which he had seen Gemsbok take that morning with his flock. The dog at first showed the most violent disinclination to follow, and had to be dragged along struggling and biting at the reim.

During a lull in the wind Max saw that the sheep were scattered about in groups far distant from each other; some were sheltering themselves among the stones on the side of the kopje and others were far out on the plain. He took his course towards the farthest group of sheep that he could distinguish. The dog now became very much excited; every now and then it would tug at the reim and try to bound forward in a certain direction. Then it would recoil in terror and endeavour to bolt back.

Max worked his way onward across the gullies in the direction indicated by the dog’s alarmed gaze. At length he reached the edge of a gully, on the opposite side of which was an overhanging bank. Huddled under this, as though to get shelter from the wind, he recognised the motionless form of Gert Gemsbok.

Lying about in the sand, and partly covered by its drift, was the ramkee, shattered into fragments. Gemsbok was lying half on his face, with his head leaning forward on his arm. Max bent over, and as soon as he ascertained that his old friend was faintly breathing, spoke his name. Gemsbok tried to lift his head, but failed in the attempt. Then Max gently passed his arm around the bruised body, and drew it back until the head rested on his shoulder.

The poor old man opened his eyes. They were dull and glazed. Then he moaned heavily and went off into a faint. Max noticed that the head was swollen on one side, and that a small trickle of blood came from the mouth. The wind had almost ceased, so Max drew Gert’s limp body tenderly down the loose sandbank and laid him on his back. After a few seconds he returned to consciousness, and the eyelids again lifted—very slowly this time.

In a broken gasp he uttered the word “Water!”

Max sprang up, meaning to run back to Namies and fetch a drink, but Gemsbok motioned to him to come close. Max bent over him again.

“Baas Max... leave... the water... it is... too late... I die for... the old sin... In my bag... sewn up... there is something... They are yours... I came honestly... by them...”

Then the head fell back, and with a low moan of pain Gert Gemsbok drew his last breath—an obscure martyr in the cause of Truth, at whose deserted shrine in the Desert he had worshipped to his own despite.

Max tried to revive him, but soon found that his attempts were useless. The dog sat on the bank at the edge of the gully, giving vent to long-drawn howls.

Max stood and looked at the body through a mist of blinding tears. Then he gathered up the fragments of the instrument which had been the only solace of the man lying dead before him through years of misery, and laid them reverently at the side of the corpse. He closed the lids of the dim and tired eyes and tied up the fallen jaw with his pocket-handkerchief. In doing this his hand came in contact with the reim by which the skin bag was slung over the dead man’s shoulder. This reminded him of the words with which Gemsbok had gasped out his life. He drew the bag softly away and began to examine its contents.

He found a pipe, a tinder box, tobacco, some dried roots, and a few strings for the ramkee in course of preparation out of sinew; nothing else. Then he discovered that the bottom of the bag had been sewn up from corner to corner, and that some hard bodies were secured under the sewn portion. He ripped open the stitches and the five diamonds rolled into his hand.

Max gazed in astonishment at the stones for a few seconds and then slipped them into his pocket. He felt dazed by all he had experienced. He sat down to collect his scattered thoughts. He looked once more upon the dead face. The diamonds were at once forgotten, and he burst into passionate sobs. The weight of all the wickedness of the world seemed to press upon him, and a sense of the futility of good darkened his soul.

He climbed out of the gully and hastened back to Namies. In a few moments all the men there were on their way to the spot where Gert Gemsbok lay as if enjoying a peace in death such as he had never known when living.

It was Old Schalk’s duty as Assistant Field Cornet to hold an inquest, and, if there were discovered the slightest sign of foul play, to send immediately a report on the subject to the magistrate.

The body was stripped, and was found to be horribly bruised and swollen. The Assistant Field Cornet at once gave it as his opinion that the deceased had come to his death through being thrown from a horse.

“It is well known,” said he, “that these Bushmen are in the habit of catching the Boers’ horses in the veld and riding their tails off.”

“But,” broke in Max, “this man never interfered with anybody’s—”

“Young man,” said Old Schalk with severity, “when you have lived as long in Bushmanland, and seen as many dead Bushmen as I have seen, you’ll perhaps be entitled to give an opinion.”

“But,” said Max excitedly, “the man told me just before he died that—”

“Young man,” interrupted Old Schalk, who had made a shrewd guess as to the perpetrator of the deed, and felt that his duty to the Trek-Boers of Bushmanland forbade him to permit indiscreet revelations, “are you the Field Cornet or am I? What does it matter what he told you—who ever knew a Bushman tell the truth? It is well known that Oom Dantje van Rooyen has a very vicious horse, which only last year threw a man to the ground and then kicked and bit him. That very horse is running in this veld at present—I saw it myself only yesterday. I am quite sure that nothing but the horse did this. The case is quite clear.”

A buzz of approval on the part of the Boers followed this verdict. Here was a dead Bushman whose body showed lesions and appearances such as might be caused by equestrian misadventure. Grazing somewhere in the neighbourhood was a horse which had been known to kick and bite a man after it had thrown him. Of course the case was perfectly clear.

Max looked around the ring of faces and saw nothing but amusement at his warmth of expression, mingled with slyness, depicted upon them. There was no pity for the sufferings which the man must have endured before he died—no horror that such a deed had been perpetrated by one with whom they were on terms of intimacy upon a sentient human being, was suggested. He felt an arm slipped within his. Looking round he saw the inscrutable visage of Oom Schulpad close beside him.

“Come, children, let us go and drink some coffee,” said Old Schalk as he led the way, assisted by a stalwart Boer, to the cart which had conveyed him from his camp to the nearest available point.

As the others followed in small groups Oom Schulpad heard one young Boer say to another—

“Got, kerel, maar Koos hat die ou’ Boschmann lekker geskop.”

(God, old fellow, but Koos kicked the old Bushman nicely.)

Oom Schulpad gave a sardonic grin which might have been expressive of anything, from rapture to nausea, and turned back to where Max was sitting fuming with indignation and grief. He laid a sympathetic hand upon the boy’s shoulder and bent his rough face, which now bore a kindly expression, over him.

“Never mind, child,” he said, “the poor old schepsel is not going to suffer any more pain. Who knows but he may be with the old woman now, and she, perhaps, may have got a new pair of legs.”

“But the man has been murdered,” replied Max hotly, “and he wants to screen the murderer—”

“Shush, shush. Young tongues gallop into dangerous places. What good can you do by making a disturbance? You won’t bring the old Bushman to life again, and it would be a bad thing for him if you could. Besides, a man must never try to set the world right all by himself.”

“But he wouldn’t hear what I had to say. I shall let the Government know what sort of a Field Cornet he is.”

“And get nothing for your pains except the hatred of every one about here. What does the Government care? It only wants not to be troubled about things. When you are as old as I am you will not be put out by anything done by people like Old Schalk.”

“I shall send a letter off at once to the magistrate and ask him to come here and see for himself.”

“No, I think you had better do nothing of the kind. If you did, the magistrate and the doctor would perhaps arrive in three weeks from now and when they came what would they be able to find out from the body? Besides, in that case it would probably turn out that some one had seen him riding Oom Dantje’s horse, or had even seen him thrown and trampled on. No, you had better do nothing at all but just bury the old Bushman. I liked him because he knew more music than I did. Come, I will help you to bury him. We’ll dig his grave next to where the old woman lies—among the kopjes. I’ll inspan my donkeys and we’ll draw him up in the cart.”

Max and Oom Schulpad wended back to Namies, and, with a couple of spades which they took out of the shop, soon dug a grave in the sluit at the back of the little kopje. It was easy ground to work, and, in spite of his deformity, Oom Schulpad was a first-rate hand at digging. In a little more than half an hour the grave was ready, and then Oom Schulpad harnessed his donkeys to the little cart and drove down to fetch the body.

Max had brought some clean, white linen from the shop, and in this they wrapped the earthly remains of Gert Gemsbok, the lonely, martyred votary at Truth’s neglected shrine. The fragments of the ramkee were reverently tied together by the old fiddler, who was honest artist enough to acknowledge a superior when he met him. He laid the shattered instrument where the stiffened hand might press upon the slackened strings until both turned to dust.

The full moon lifted her sweet face over the rim of the world, and, under the spell of her smile, the Desert took on beauty of a weird and unearthly kind. The plumy heads of the grass became pendant with dew-diamonds; every tussock was transformed into a fairy-forest lit by sparkling lamps. The ice-plants glinted so brightly that they seemed to merge together a few yards from the observer’s feet, and from there to form a shining pathway to the moon.

The strange funeral cortège wended up between the camps of Namies. Oom Schulpad walked at the side, holding the reins; Max, with bent head, followed close behind the body.

So they laid Gert Gemsbok in the sand, next to his “Old Woman” and with his broken ramkee at his side. If what some tell us about a future life be true, that ramkee will surely be recreated in the celestial equivalents of the rarest earthly instruments of music—if not something as valuable and more sonorous.

Old Schalk was sitting in the moonlight at the door of his mat-house talking to a few cronies when the funeral passed. A silence fell upon all when they saw what it was that the patient donkeys were hauling up the hill through the heavy sand. Just after the vehicle had passed out of sight around the flank of one of the kopjes Old Schalk broke the silence. He turned to one of his companions and said—“I never yet knew a man who could play the fiddle well who was not a little mad.”

“Ja,” replied the other, “I have often heard that such is the case.”

Chapter Twelve.

The Bondage of Koos Bester.

Max’s mourning for his old friend was deep and sincere. The heart of the young man, from its first awakening, recoiled from the sordidness of most of those with whom he had come in daily contact, and clave to the best within its reach—this by virtue of its natural intuitions. For a time it seemed as though a blank had been created which could never be filled. The evenings spent in the shop when Oom Schulpad and Gemsbok had contended like a couple of troubadours—the weird tales of his experiences during the six years of his banishment from the tents of men, which the old waif had related with such tragic and truthful pathos—his devotion to his miserable old wife, that decayed relic of womanhood, which was as tender as ever his love could have been for the companion of his early years—all these dwelt in the mind of Max and tinged it with what he deemed would be an abiding sadness.

On the other hand the acquisition of the five diamonds had materially improved his prospects. He hid them in a safe place and determined not to mention the fact of their existence to any one but Susannah. They were stones of very pure water, averaging about ten carats each in weight. Max knew that they must be very valuable, but he was unable to guess their worth. He made up his mind that he would have to take them to Europe and realise them there.

Even Oom Schulpad seemed to be depressed by the old Hottentot’s fate. When he now came to see Max of an evening he did not bring his violin. The two would just sit and smoke in silence, each well aware of what was filling the thoughts of the other. To Max it seemed as if the ghost of the slain man haunted the room on these occasions, asking why his only friends had not taken vengeance upon his slayer.

Oom Schulpad did not believe very much in anything outside the circle of his experiences—certainly not in ghosts. He had attained to a philosophy which might be summed up in a phrase—“Never interfere in anything that does not directly concern you.” His stock formula into which the foregoing principle had crystallised was—“No man should ever rub resin on any but his own bow.”

“But,” he continued one night after reiterating this phrase several times, “I mean to scratch Koos Bester’s nose with a certain piece of resin which I have in my pocket. He had no business to put his big hands upon any man who could make music like that, Bushman or no Bushman.”

Max pricked up his ears and looked at the old fiddler with a question in his eyes.

“I know Koos,” continued Oom Schulpad, “and if he does not bark his shins as well as his nose against the lump of resin which I will put in his path—well, I’m no fiddler and the Bushman knew no music. He said my back was like a springbuck’s when it ‘pronks,’ did he, and that my mouth was as poisonous as a sand-adder’s? Also he broke the ramkee—to say nothing of killing the old Bushman.”

“What do you intend to do to him?” queried Max.

“I’ll tell you that when he comes back, my child. It will be all right, don’t fear. You shall, perhaps, help me. I know Koos well. When he was quite a big boy he used to be afraid of being alone in the dark. I’ll make him dance a new step to the old Bushman’s music. Ja, he knew more music than I, that old Bushman.”

Three days elapsed after the tragedy before Max visited the Hattingh camp. He found Old Schalk looking extremely sulky. Max, however, had ceased to take much heed of people or their moods. He no longer dreaded Old Schalk. As in the case of Mrs Hattingh, he now felt he had him at a moral disadvantage. His recent experiences had tended to give Max considerable self-confidence.

He found Susannah alone in the mat-house, and asked her to go with him for a walk. As they passed out it seemed as though the old man sitting in the chair meant to stop them. He bent forward with an angry expression, removed the pipe from his mouth, and opened his lips as if to speak. Max, however, looked him steadily in the face, so he remembered his account at the shop—it seemed as though Nathan meant to stay away indefinitely—and Old Schalk’s sack of coffee was running very low indeed. At the same instant he thought of the inquest—the menace which he seemed to read in Max’s face might perhaps have reference to that judicial triumph. Whilst these considerations were working through his mind the lovers passed him and he made no protest. They climbed the big kopje and again sat at the foot of the large koekerboom.

Max poured out his sorrow and indignation in a flood. Susannah had been told simply that Gert Gemsbok had met his death through an accident in connection with a horse. She had seen the strange funeral and wondered thereat. Now Max’s account of the old Hottentot’s life, which she had never heard before, and of his cruel and mysterious death, moved the girl to deep sympathy.

A horrible suspicion had haunted Max from the first—he could not avoid connecting his brother with the murder, for such he was convinced had occurred. Nathan had taken his departure with Koos Bester just before the deed was done; it was inconceivable that he could be ignorant of the crime. Max believed him to be fully capable of participating in the commission of any evil.

When Susannah questioned him as to whom he suspected, Max tried hard to avoid replying. When he could no longer do this he told the girl all his thoughts and then bent his head on her knee and wept bitter tears. It was the shame of being related to a creature such as Nathan which struck him to the heart. A hatred of his surroundings, and more especially of his brother, had been born in him. He made up his mind to leave his brother’s service at once, come what might.

“Susannah, I can stay here no longer; will you come away with me?”

The girl did not reply. She sat thinking of what the consequences of such a step would be. Her utter inexperience of life was strongly qualified by natural caution, as well as by that instinct of self-preservation which clothes most women like an armour of proof.

“I feel I can stay here no longer,” he continued. “Leaving out Oom Schulpad and yourself, I hate and despise every one here. Will you come away with me?”

“I will go with you when you marry me, Max.”

“How can I marry you when you are only nineteen and your uncle will not give his consent?”

“I will wait for you. Go away, and you will find me here when you come back—if there is any water left in the well.”

“I do not want to go away without you, and I feel I cannot endure to stay. Why are you afraid to trust me?”

“I am not afraid to trust you, but—while you were talking at first I was thinking. I thought to myself that we could not get away and that there was no place for us to go to.”

“You can leave all that to me—”

“No, no, it cannot be. If you want to marry me, Max, you must make up your mind never to live in any place but Bushmanland—”

“What! live all our lives at Namies?”

“No, not at Namies. Bushmanland is large; there are many camps and many water-places in it. You know that I am only a poor Boer girl and that I could not live among those women whose pictures you showed me in the fashion books and who never speak anything but English; you would be ashamed of me and I should want to come back to live among the people I know.”

Max, after the manner of lovers, assured her that he never could, under any possible circumstances, be ashamed of her. She continued in the same strain as formerly—

“I once saw some girls who went past our camp in a wagon, when we dwelt on the other side of the Desert, far away to the eastward, and I felt like a Bushwoman beside them when I noticed their clothes and heard them talk. No, Max, I will never go to any place where you would be able to compare me with women such as those.”

Max assured her that she could easily challenge comparison with any girl in South Africa for physical advantages. Her colour heightened with pleasure at his compliments, but she was not to be moved from her resolution.

“Max, I shall never live in any place outside Bushmanland, so you had better make up your mind to that. Besides, you will have to wait for me until I am old enough to marry without my uncle’s consent. Bushmanland is long and wide, but when a girl is talked about for doing what you want me to do, the tongues of the women are heard, louder than thunder, from one side of it to the other. If I were to do this thing the people of the only land I can live in would look upon me as being no better than a Hottentot girl at the Copper Mines.”

Max felt, instinctively, that the girl was right. He made no further attempt to move her, but he reconsidered his decision about leaving Namies at once. At all events he would wait for Nathan’s return. As the lovers walked back to the camp, they said few words to each other.

Nathan returned late in the afternoon of the next day. The brothers met outside the shop. Nathan greeted Max with cheerfulness, as though he wished to ignore what had last passed between them. Max looked him straight in the eyes without acknowledging his salute.

“Hello,” said Nathan, “got the hump, eh?”

Max went into the shop; Nathan followed him after outspanning the horses. In the meantime the flock of sheep had been driven home by a strange herd. Nathan burned with curiosity to know what had transpired. He walked up to Max and addressed him again—

“Where’s your old chum? I see you’ve got a new nigger.”

Max gave him a contemptuous glance and then went on with what he had been doing, without replying to the question.

“Are you deaf?”

“I’m not deaf; neither am I blind.”

“Then why the devil don’t you answer me? Where’s the old nigger?”

“Mightn’t he be lying dead in a sluit where you and Koos Bester left him last week?”

“Look here, none of your blasted conundrums. I didn’t pull you out of a Whitechapel gutter and bring you here to get lip from you.”

Max went on with his occupation of tidying the goods upon the shelves, without making any reply. Nathan, furious, strode round the counter and gripped him by the arm. Max turned and gazed steadily into his eyes.

“You bastard Christian dog, if you don’t answer my question I’ll make pork sausages of you!”

Max seized Nathan by the throat and flung him backwards. The latter’s foot caught against the corner of a box and he fell sprawling under the counter. As he picked himself up Max strode towards him. Nathan recoiled in alarm; he had not expected such treatment from the shy, silent, diffident lad whom he had been in the habit of cuffing and cursing at whenever he felt in a bad temper and wanted to relieve his feelings.