Chapter Ten.Derelicts.“God help all poor souls lost in the dark.”The Heretic’s Tragedy.“There is, after all, nothing equal to philosophic cultivation of the mind for enabling one to withstand misfortune,” said the man, as he entered the room.The woman looked up at him from where she was sitting, with a start of surprise. Pain, love, pity, and yearning made worlds of her eyes.“Now take my case,” continued the man; “it is only four days since Wallie died, and it was but yesterday we laid him in his grave, and yet to-night I feel hardly any grief. Of course, the shock unmanned me at first, but now I am quite myself again. I have never been able to make you see the uses of—”The man ceased speaking and began to cough. Then he walked slowly backwards and forwards with an air of extreme preoccupation. The woman said nothing, but kept her eyes, which were now swimming in tears, fixed on him.“Really, my darling,” he continued after a pause, and in an impatient tone, “you must try and look at the thing as I do. He is dead, and we saw the lid of the coffin screwed down over his cold body, yet, wonderful to relate, he is so close to us that I can bring him back at will. I have only to close my eyes and I see him. Look here, I hold his cap just three feet from the floor, and there he stands below it, with his face under the peak, and his curls behind. Now cover your face with the cap, and draw in your breath;—so—did I not tell you?—He has only just taken it off. Now, look: can you not see him there before you? Now he is here nestling up, and just going to beg for a story. There, he has gone over to his rocking-horse. Now close your eyes and rock it; to close your eyes at the right time is the great secret.”Here the man’s voice was again interrupted by the cough. The woman stood up and laid her hand caressingly over his shoulder. Then she tried to move in front of him and look into his eyes. With an impatient gesture he shook himself free, and resumed his walking to and fro, always avoiding her eyes.“How foolish you are,” he resumed, “not to help me, not to participate in this new creation which I have discovered the secret of effecting. Look here, be reasonable, every night we will make up his bed and place his clothes ready for the morning. Then we will tie the string to your wrist so that he can pull it and waken you without disturbing me. Now just try it, and I am quite positive you will feel the string being pulled just when he wants you to kiss him at the usual time. You have always been pitching into me for reading metaphysics, but look at the difference between us now. You remember what Fichte—”Here the man’s voice was once more interrupted by the cough. He turned and leant against the wall, resting his forehead against his arm. The woman tried to make him sit down on an easy-chair, which she drew towards him, but he refused with the same impatient gesture. Soon he resumed his walking, and continued:“I am even prepared to maintain that in some respects we are better off than if he had lived. I do not imagine that either of us will last very long, and think what it would have been to leave him behind, uncared for. Then, if he had grown up, who knows what mistakes he might have made, and what he might have suffered. As it is now, he will always be the same to us. I am glad you are not crying any longer. Now I will go and carry his cot back into the bedroom. Do not come in until I have things arranged.”There was a smell of carbolic disinfectant throughout the house, for the boy had died of diphtheritic croup, after an agonising illness of five days. This smell continually suggested death to the woman; it seemed to have got into her nostrils permanently, go where she would she could not avoid it. She now stood up from where she had been sitting near the fireplace, and walked into the drawing-room, which had a south-eastern aspect. It was winter, and the night was somewhat unseasonably warm. The weather had long been dry. A bright moon was high in the heavens. The woman stood in the dark room and looked out of the window to where the bare, silvery rods of a willow swayed and undulated to the faint, intermittent breeze. Then her gaze wandered to an oak, out of the leafless boughs of which hung the ropes of the boy’s swing, oscillating gently. Every now and then she coughed, and the sound of the man’s coughing reached her at short intervals from the next room. The rising wind began to sough and moan over the house, and to call ghostly whisperings from the bare, chafing branches of the crowded oak trees. Stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon was a curved fringe of delicate snow-white cloud, suggestive of an ostrich feather in shape and texture. This came nearer every moment. It hung for a breath like a broken, opaline halo round the moon. Now it was over the house, and the moon was again clear, but low down on the southern horizon from whence it had arisen, dark clouds of gradually increasing bulk were surging up, and faint lightnings flickering.The man came from the bedroom into the passage and called to the woman, who silently joined him, and again passed her arm over his shoulder.“Come along, darling,” he said, as they went towards the bedroom; “see how I have arranged it all. What a pity we did not think of this last night!”The little cot had been moved back to its place, and in it the boy’s bed had been made, pillow, white sheet turned back, and little eider-down quilt, all complete. In the middle of the pillow was a dent, as if a head had just been lying there, and the bed-clothes were slightly tumbled. On a chair at the foot of the cot were carelessly thrown a flannel shirt, a blue-striped tunic, and a pair of blue serge knickerbockers; upon these lay loose a pair of cardinal-coloured socks, and two shoes with bright steel buckles stood close by on the floor. The woman walked up to the cot, her face was ashen. Her lips had ceased quivering, but she could not speak. Her heart stood almost still. Her mental tension was such that she almost lost consciousness. Two impressions dominated all others, the smell of the carbolic, and the swelling moan of the wind over the roof. The man went on garrulously, and in a cheerful voice:“Look here, we will hang his plaid over the side of the cot, and when we light the candle in the night to see if he is covered properly, we can justknowthat he is there, behind it. He lies so quietly that we never can hear him breathe.“Sit down now and I will read a chapter of the Bible to you. It is past our usual time.”The man stretched forth his hand and took a Bible down from a small book-shelf which hung on the wall close to the head of the bed. Then he began to speak, turning over the leaves at the same time.“Let me see, what shall we read to-night? I forgot to-day to pick one out that Wallie will not ask awkward questions about.“Ah! here is the one about King David’s child dying; you remember he lost a child, a boy too, his son and Bathsheba’s... I will read this. Come close; I believe Wallie is asleep, so I must speak low... How the wind is wailing;... but you know, wind always makes him sleep more soundly.”The woman bent forward and hid her face in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. The man began to read:“And it came to pass on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then vex himself if we tell him that the child is dead?“But when David saw that his servants whispered, David perceived that the child was dead: therefore David said unto his servants, Is the child dead? and they said, He is dead.“Then David arose from the earth and washed, and anointed himself; and changed his apparel, and came into the House of the Lord, and worshipped; then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat.“Then said his servants unto him: What thing is this that thou hast done? Thou didst fast and weep for the child while it was alive, but when the child was dead thou didst arise and eat bread.“And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live?“But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not come to me.”The wind had gradually increased in violence, and now there came a strong gust and a sudden clash of rain against the iron roof. The man ceased reading, and looked up with a light of wildness in his eyes. Then he flung down the book, started up, and ran around to the other side of the bed, where the cot was. He looked into the cot, and a long cry of agony broke from him when he saw that it was empty. He staggered and would have fallen but for the woman, who supported him for a moment, and then let him sink back on the bed. Another fit of coughing came on, after which white foam, slightly tinged with blood, appeared on his lips. The rain, with which hail was now mixed, swept down on the roof in a roaring torrent.Suddenly the man sprang up, and before the woman could restrain him, had reached the passage leading to the front door.“Come, come,” he shouted, “he is out in the cold and wet, and we are in here warm and dry. Let me go; I will take his plaid to put over him. You do not care, or you would not try to stop me. Let me go.”All this time he was struggling to escape from the woman’s clasping arms, and at length he succeeded. He rushed back into the bedroom, seized the plaid from where it hung on the cot, and again made for the door. The woman followed him with an overcoat, and caught him as he was turning the handle.“Wait one moment, Fred,” she said in a low-toned voice, which had the immediate effect of calming him, “we will go together. Come back with me until I get my cloak.”He followed her back to the bedroom, and there walked impatiently about, struggling to get into the overcoat, and coughing incessantly. She put on a waterproof ulster, and then opened a little jewel-case which stood on the dressing-table. From this she took a thick, glossy lock of dark, curly hair, which she hid in the bosom of her dress.The woman took the man’s arm, and the two walked out into the wild night. It was not dark, for the moon was nearly full, but swift on the wings of the screaming gale low, combing clouds were hurrying over the land. From these heavy showers of piercing sleet fell. Each shower only lasted for a few minutes, but the intervals between them were hardly longer. As the storm grew, the duration of the showers increased, whilst that of the intervals diminished. As yet, how ever, the moon shone out brightly after each shower.The graveyard was on the spur of a mountain which overhung the river about a mile below the village. Thither the man and the woman wended. Fortunately the wind was behind them. It was this circumstance that made their progress possible. They never could have faced the howling storm. Faster and faster they staggered onward, the woman supporting the man by means of her left arm, which she had passed around his body, and holding his left in her right hand. They both coughed dreadfully, but the paroxysms of the man were the worse.They reached the graveyard at length, and sank down exhausted on the boy’s grave. Just then, a furious shower of hail lashed out of a driving cloud, and in a few moments the whole world was white. They managed to spread the plaid over the little mound. The woman being on the windward side, held it for a while in position, and soon the hail lay thickly on it.In a short lull between two of the worst gusts the woman managed to creep around to the other side of the grave where the man was lying huddled. She passed her arm around him in the old protective manner, and laid her cold lips against his cheek, which was like frozen marble. He was only just breathing. Then the cough seized him again, and he struggled violently. The woman closed her eyes, and held him fast. He gave a great gulp, a shudder passed over his limbs, and then he lay still.The woman opened her eyes. The moon was shining brightly through a narrow rift between the storm-cloud that had just passed over and the one hurrying on its track. The dazzlingly white hail covered everything, and lay in heaps against the graveyard wall, the tree-trunks, and the tombstones. It half covered the man and the woman, and on the white heap against which his head was lying, was a dark stain.The woman closed her eyes and lay with her head against the man’s body. She soon fell asleep, and dreamt a dream. She thought she was swinging in the hammock which was slung between the verandah poles of the cottage, reading to the boy his favourite story. It was a slight and simple allegory which the man had composed for him, and was based principally upon the last chapter of Revelation, the description of the Delectable Mountains, and Augustine’s City of God. The story was written in the man’s happiest vein, and was full of the loveliest fancy-play. The best passage in it was that description of the valley through which runs the River of the Water of Life. She read as far as this, and lo! in the twinkling of an eye she was in the valley. There stood the grove of those wondrous trees which bear twelve different kinds of fruit, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the suffering nations.But she was alone in the midst of all this wonder and beauty. She wandered along in a state of disquietude, seeking something or somebody, she knew not who or what. Then she heard a halloa far away in a voice that seemed familiar, and that sent a thrill of agonising bliss through her being. Soon a well-known, pattering footstep sounded down one of the spacious avenues, and the boy rushed into her arms. After an ecstatic moment she lifted her face out of his dark curls, and saw the man hurrying towards her with shining face and outstretched arms.
“God help all poor souls lost in the dark.”The Heretic’s Tragedy.
“God help all poor souls lost in the dark.”
The Heretic’s Tragedy.
“There is, after all, nothing equal to philosophic cultivation of the mind for enabling one to withstand misfortune,” said the man, as he entered the room.
The woman looked up at him from where she was sitting, with a start of surprise. Pain, love, pity, and yearning made worlds of her eyes.
“Now take my case,” continued the man; “it is only four days since Wallie died, and it was but yesterday we laid him in his grave, and yet to-night I feel hardly any grief. Of course, the shock unmanned me at first, but now I am quite myself again. I have never been able to make you see the uses of—”
The man ceased speaking and began to cough. Then he walked slowly backwards and forwards with an air of extreme preoccupation. The woman said nothing, but kept her eyes, which were now swimming in tears, fixed on him.
“Really, my darling,” he continued after a pause, and in an impatient tone, “you must try and look at the thing as I do. He is dead, and we saw the lid of the coffin screwed down over his cold body, yet, wonderful to relate, he is so close to us that I can bring him back at will. I have only to close my eyes and I see him. Look here, I hold his cap just three feet from the floor, and there he stands below it, with his face under the peak, and his curls behind. Now cover your face with the cap, and draw in your breath;—so—did I not tell you?—He has only just taken it off. Now, look: can you not see him there before you? Now he is here nestling up, and just going to beg for a story. There, he has gone over to his rocking-horse. Now close your eyes and rock it; to close your eyes at the right time is the great secret.”
Here the man’s voice was again interrupted by the cough. The woman stood up and laid her hand caressingly over his shoulder. Then she tried to move in front of him and look into his eyes. With an impatient gesture he shook himself free, and resumed his walking to and fro, always avoiding her eyes.
“How foolish you are,” he resumed, “not to help me, not to participate in this new creation which I have discovered the secret of effecting. Look here, be reasonable, every night we will make up his bed and place his clothes ready for the morning. Then we will tie the string to your wrist so that he can pull it and waken you without disturbing me. Now just try it, and I am quite positive you will feel the string being pulled just when he wants you to kiss him at the usual time. You have always been pitching into me for reading metaphysics, but look at the difference between us now. You remember what Fichte—”
Here the man’s voice was once more interrupted by the cough. He turned and leant against the wall, resting his forehead against his arm. The woman tried to make him sit down on an easy-chair, which she drew towards him, but he refused with the same impatient gesture. Soon he resumed his walking, and continued:
“I am even prepared to maintain that in some respects we are better off than if he had lived. I do not imagine that either of us will last very long, and think what it would have been to leave him behind, uncared for. Then, if he had grown up, who knows what mistakes he might have made, and what he might have suffered. As it is now, he will always be the same to us. I am glad you are not crying any longer. Now I will go and carry his cot back into the bedroom. Do not come in until I have things arranged.”
There was a smell of carbolic disinfectant throughout the house, for the boy had died of diphtheritic croup, after an agonising illness of five days. This smell continually suggested death to the woman; it seemed to have got into her nostrils permanently, go where she would she could not avoid it. She now stood up from where she had been sitting near the fireplace, and walked into the drawing-room, which had a south-eastern aspect. It was winter, and the night was somewhat unseasonably warm. The weather had long been dry. A bright moon was high in the heavens. The woman stood in the dark room and looked out of the window to where the bare, silvery rods of a willow swayed and undulated to the faint, intermittent breeze. Then her gaze wandered to an oak, out of the leafless boughs of which hung the ropes of the boy’s swing, oscillating gently. Every now and then she coughed, and the sound of the man’s coughing reached her at short intervals from the next room. The rising wind began to sough and moan over the house, and to call ghostly whisperings from the bare, chafing branches of the crowded oak trees. Stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon was a curved fringe of delicate snow-white cloud, suggestive of an ostrich feather in shape and texture. This came nearer every moment. It hung for a breath like a broken, opaline halo round the moon. Now it was over the house, and the moon was again clear, but low down on the southern horizon from whence it had arisen, dark clouds of gradually increasing bulk were surging up, and faint lightnings flickering.
The man came from the bedroom into the passage and called to the woman, who silently joined him, and again passed her arm over his shoulder.
“Come along, darling,” he said, as they went towards the bedroom; “see how I have arranged it all. What a pity we did not think of this last night!”
The little cot had been moved back to its place, and in it the boy’s bed had been made, pillow, white sheet turned back, and little eider-down quilt, all complete. In the middle of the pillow was a dent, as if a head had just been lying there, and the bed-clothes were slightly tumbled. On a chair at the foot of the cot were carelessly thrown a flannel shirt, a blue-striped tunic, and a pair of blue serge knickerbockers; upon these lay loose a pair of cardinal-coloured socks, and two shoes with bright steel buckles stood close by on the floor. The woman walked up to the cot, her face was ashen. Her lips had ceased quivering, but she could not speak. Her heart stood almost still. Her mental tension was such that she almost lost consciousness. Two impressions dominated all others, the smell of the carbolic, and the swelling moan of the wind over the roof. The man went on garrulously, and in a cheerful voice:
“Look here, we will hang his plaid over the side of the cot, and when we light the candle in the night to see if he is covered properly, we can justknowthat he is there, behind it. He lies so quietly that we never can hear him breathe.
“Sit down now and I will read a chapter of the Bible to you. It is past our usual time.”
The man stretched forth his hand and took a Bible down from a small book-shelf which hung on the wall close to the head of the bed. Then he began to speak, turning over the leaves at the same time.
“Let me see, what shall we read to-night? I forgot to-day to pick one out that Wallie will not ask awkward questions about.
“Ah! here is the one about King David’s child dying; you remember he lost a child, a boy too, his son and Bathsheba’s... I will read this. Come close; I believe Wallie is asleep, so I must speak low... How the wind is wailing;... but you know, wind always makes him sleep more soundly.”
The woman bent forward and hid her face in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. The man began to read:
“And it came to pass on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then vex himself if we tell him that the child is dead?
“But when David saw that his servants whispered, David perceived that the child was dead: therefore David said unto his servants, Is the child dead? and they said, He is dead.
“Then David arose from the earth and washed, and anointed himself; and changed his apparel, and came into the House of the Lord, and worshipped; then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat.
“Then said his servants unto him: What thing is this that thou hast done? Thou didst fast and weep for the child while it was alive, but when the child was dead thou didst arise and eat bread.
“And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live?
“But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not come to me.”
The wind had gradually increased in violence, and now there came a strong gust and a sudden clash of rain against the iron roof. The man ceased reading, and looked up with a light of wildness in his eyes. Then he flung down the book, started up, and ran around to the other side of the bed, where the cot was. He looked into the cot, and a long cry of agony broke from him when he saw that it was empty. He staggered and would have fallen but for the woman, who supported him for a moment, and then let him sink back on the bed. Another fit of coughing came on, after which white foam, slightly tinged with blood, appeared on his lips. The rain, with which hail was now mixed, swept down on the roof in a roaring torrent.
Suddenly the man sprang up, and before the woman could restrain him, had reached the passage leading to the front door.
“Come, come,” he shouted, “he is out in the cold and wet, and we are in here warm and dry. Let me go; I will take his plaid to put over him. You do not care, or you would not try to stop me. Let me go.”
All this time he was struggling to escape from the woman’s clasping arms, and at length he succeeded. He rushed back into the bedroom, seized the plaid from where it hung on the cot, and again made for the door. The woman followed him with an overcoat, and caught him as he was turning the handle.
“Wait one moment, Fred,” she said in a low-toned voice, which had the immediate effect of calming him, “we will go together. Come back with me until I get my cloak.”
He followed her back to the bedroom, and there walked impatiently about, struggling to get into the overcoat, and coughing incessantly. She put on a waterproof ulster, and then opened a little jewel-case which stood on the dressing-table. From this she took a thick, glossy lock of dark, curly hair, which she hid in the bosom of her dress.
The woman took the man’s arm, and the two walked out into the wild night. It was not dark, for the moon was nearly full, but swift on the wings of the screaming gale low, combing clouds were hurrying over the land. From these heavy showers of piercing sleet fell. Each shower only lasted for a few minutes, but the intervals between them were hardly longer. As the storm grew, the duration of the showers increased, whilst that of the intervals diminished. As yet, how ever, the moon shone out brightly after each shower.
The graveyard was on the spur of a mountain which overhung the river about a mile below the village. Thither the man and the woman wended. Fortunately the wind was behind them. It was this circumstance that made their progress possible. They never could have faced the howling storm. Faster and faster they staggered onward, the woman supporting the man by means of her left arm, which she had passed around his body, and holding his left in her right hand. They both coughed dreadfully, but the paroxysms of the man were the worse.
They reached the graveyard at length, and sank down exhausted on the boy’s grave. Just then, a furious shower of hail lashed out of a driving cloud, and in a few moments the whole world was white. They managed to spread the plaid over the little mound. The woman being on the windward side, held it for a while in position, and soon the hail lay thickly on it.
In a short lull between two of the worst gusts the woman managed to creep around to the other side of the grave where the man was lying huddled. She passed her arm around him in the old protective manner, and laid her cold lips against his cheek, which was like frozen marble. He was only just breathing. Then the cough seized him again, and he struggled violently. The woman closed her eyes, and held him fast. He gave a great gulp, a shudder passed over his limbs, and then he lay still.
The woman opened her eyes. The moon was shining brightly through a narrow rift between the storm-cloud that had just passed over and the one hurrying on its track. The dazzlingly white hail covered everything, and lay in heaps against the graveyard wall, the tree-trunks, and the tombstones. It half covered the man and the woman, and on the white heap against which his head was lying, was a dark stain.
The woman closed her eyes and lay with her head against the man’s body. She soon fell asleep, and dreamt a dream. She thought she was swinging in the hammock which was slung between the verandah poles of the cottage, reading to the boy his favourite story. It was a slight and simple allegory which the man had composed for him, and was based principally upon the last chapter of Revelation, the description of the Delectable Mountains, and Augustine’s City of God. The story was written in the man’s happiest vein, and was full of the loveliest fancy-play. The best passage in it was that description of the valley through which runs the River of the Water of Life. She read as far as this, and lo! in the twinkling of an eye she was in the valley. There stood the grove of those wondrous trees which bear twelve different kinds of fruit, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the suffering nations.
But she was alone in the midst of all this wonder and beauty. She wandered along in a state of disquietude, seeking something or somebody, she knew not who or what. Then she heard a halloa far away in a voice that seemed familiar, and that sent a thrill of agonising bliss through her being. Soon a well-known, pattering footstep sounded down one of the spacious avenues, and the boy rushed into her arms. After an ecstatic moment she lifted her face out of his dark curls, and saw the man hurrying towards her with shining face and outstretched arms.
Chapter Eleven.The Return of Sobèdè.“There is a deal of human nature in mankind.”Josh Billings.OneSobèdè stood in the prisoners’ dock before the Circuit Court at Kokstad, between his fellow-prisoners Kwekwe and Gazile, and pleaded “Not Guilty” to the charge of having stolen four head of cattle from one Jasper Swainson, a farmer dwelling in the valley of the Indwana river, Umzimkulu district, whom he had served as a shepherd two years previously.Sobèdè belonged to the Hlangweni tribe, whilst his companions were Gaika Kafirs from near King William’s Town. But the important difference between Sobèdè and the others lay in this: that whereas they were guilty of the crime laid to their charge, he was as innocent as was his Lordship the learned judge who, clad in a gorgeous vestment of crimson silk, was trying him.Appearances were, however, strongly against Sobèdè. The evidence showed that the stolen cattle had been found by the farmers who followed on their spoor in the possession of the three prisoners, and were at the time being driven up one of the gorges of the steep Drakensberg range, in the direction of Basutoland, that great and grievous receptacle for stolen stock of all kinds. When Sobèdè told his story, namely, that he had casually joined the other two but a few minutes before he had been apprehended, having come from his kraal along one of the many footpaths leading through the same gorge, no one believed him, although the relation was perfectly true. His wife, Mampitizili, with her two-months-old baby slung on her back and hushing it as she spoke, gave evidence to the effect that her husband had left her after the sun was high on the same day for the purpose of fetching medicine from a native doctor for the week-old baby, which happened at the time to be ailing, whereas the cattle had been stolen thirty hours previously. His old, half-decrepit father, ’Mbopè, corroborated Mampitizili’s statement in a voice that rose to a quavering shout. The old man’s lips trembled, his eyes flashed for a moment through the blue film that had gradually overspread them during the past few years, and he held his shaking right hand with the two first fingers extended high over his head. He really afforded a very fine tragic spectacle, and suggested a kind of Bantu Lear in appearance and mien, but to judge by the behaviour of the jury the exhibition was rather comic than otherwise, for they put their heads together and laughed consumedly.Theyknew the dodges all these old niggers get up to, and it was quite clear that the old man had pitched it too strong for sincerity. The old man’s display evidently impressed his Lordship, but was nevertheless of no use to Sobèdè. The damning fact remained that the cattle had been stolen from a farmer in whose service he had for some time been, and when the passing flash of insight had faded from the mind of the judge, no one in court except Sobèdè’s wife and father had the slightest doubt as to Sobèdè’s guilt.The prosecuting barrister finished his address to his own entire satisfaction, and then, sitting down, leaned back in his seat and contemplated the recently-painted ceiling, conscious of having done his duty to society. Then the judge made a few remarks of an analytic nature, inclining at the same time towards the jury-box with that well-known and well-studied air of forensic friendliness which so tends to establish a good understanding between all parties concerned; except, perhaps, the prisoner at the bar. After this the nine heads of the jurymen bent towards each other in a whispered colloquy which may perhaps have lasted for thirty seconds. Then the jurymen all stood up together, and the foreman communicated their verdict as one of “guilty” against the three prisoners.Then the judge, pushing back the forensic friendliness stop, and drawing out that of judicial austerity, began to admonish the prisoners, and it could be seen that it was at Sobèdè his harangue was chiefly aimed. Although the address was well interpreted, Sobèdè could not follow the drift of it, his attention being divided between the wails of his child sounding faintly from the court-house yard where the witnesses were kept, and the little white tippets which waggled a silent accompaniment to his Lordship’s eloquence over the breast of his Lordship’s beautiful red silk robe. The baseness of ingratitude (it had transpired in the course of the evidence that Sobèdè had, in recognition of meritorious service, been sent away with four goats over and above his specified wages) was enlarged upon, and the ineradicable nature of the furtive bent in the average Bantu was treated from an ethnological point. Eventually Sobèdè found himself sentenced to three years’ imprisonment with hard labour, whilst his companions, who could not help smiling at the peculiarity of the situation, got off each with a year less.After sentence, as he was being hurried through the court-house yard to the lock-up, Sobèdè caught a glimpse of old ’Mbopè crouching with bent head in a corner, and then he passed Mampitizili. She was still hushing the baby, who as yet refused to be comforted, and as her husband passed her with the horror of the prospect of three years of unmerited, painful servitude darkening his uncivilised soul, these two exchanged such looks as are never forgotten on this side of the grave.TwoMampitizili and ’Mbopè took two days wherein to perform the return journey to Sidotè’s location, where they dwelt. Owing to his infirmities the old man walked with great difficulty, but he kept a good heart, and endeavoured his best to comfort the miserable wife of his unhappy son, reminding her from his vantage coign of old age that three years pass very quickly and do not, after all, make much of a slice out of a lifetime. This is quite true when the lifetime is regarded from near the wrong end of it, but such philosophy is unintelligible to the young. The poor woman had only been married about a year, and the baby, a boy, was not yet three months old. It had not as yet even been given a name.They reached home one cold, misty evening, and it was then that the full significance of their misfortune came home to them for the first time. The friends who had taken charge of the premises during their absence left next morning taking with them a goat, as a reward for their services, and all day long the two miserable creatures sat and hugged their misery. The hearth was cold, the milk-sacks were empty, and the strong arm and shrewd head of Sobèdè were missed at every turn.The season was early autumn, and the crops were nearly ready to reap, but during their absence the cattle, the birds, and marauding children from kraals in the next valley had so damaged them that they were now hardly worth the reaping. The calves of two of the best cows had died, and consequently milk was scarce. Everything seemed to be falling into disorganisation. A boy of about twelve years of age, a grandson of the old man, was sent to dwell at the kraal for the purpose of assisting in looking after the stock, but the loneliness weighed upon him to such an extent that he repeatedly deserted and ran home, in spite of repeated heavy beatings from his father, who had been promised a cow in payment for the boy’s services.Mampitizili struggled on bravely, and carried up basket after basket of grain from the depleted field, but when the last cob had been harvested there was hardly enough grain to last half-way through the winter, to say nothing of seed for the ensuing spring.’Mbopè had another son whose name was Manciya. Manciya’s mother had been the “great wife,” and consequently he took precedence of Sobèdè, whose mother was the wife of ’Mbopè’s “right hand.” All the rest of ’Mbopè’s children were daughters, and they had all long since been married. Sobèdè was ’Mbopè’s youngest child and his favourite.Manciya and his father did not agree, and consequently ’Mbopè had dwelt with Sobèdè since the latter had married and set up a kraal of his own on a sheltered ledge near the head of a deep valley on the eastern fringe of the Hlangweni location. Manciya had, under pretext of seniority, seized the lion’s share of the cattle. He had, it is true, a right to a great deal of it, but he took more than his share, and it was only after much trouble that he was compelled to disgorge. However, a herd of about twenty head had been rescued from his clutches and formally ceded to Sobèdè as his prospective share in his father’s estate, to be his unconditionally after ’Mbopè’s death.Manciya now and then called to see his father. His kraal, where he dwelt with his several wives, was situated about five miles away. His visits were not welcome, for the reason that he always appeared to assume that Sobèdè was guilty, and this was resented by both ’Mbopè and Mampitizili. Theft of cattle, especially if it happens to be on a large scale, is probably regarded by the native of to-day more or less as it was regarded by the moss-trooper of the Scotch Border in the sixteenth century. In Sobèdè’s case, however, his wife and his father knew him to be suffering for a sin he had not committed. The ever-present sense of injustice made them sensitive, and they felt the inconvenience of their position most keenly.Two years passed, full of misery to the widowed wife and the old man who now felt his death approaching, and keenly longed for a sight of his favourite son to carry with him into the grave. They did not even know at which of the convict stations Sobèdè was serving his time, for no word from him had ever reached them since the day of his conviction. The little boy grew strong and tall. He was now able to run about. “Kungayè” was the name given to him. This word means “It was through (or owing to) him.” This name, the significance of which will be obvious, was not given as a reproach, but so that, in after life, the son might remember and deplore his father’s unmerited sufferings, of which he had been the innocent cause.ThreeOne evening old ’Mbopè, who had the habit of pottering about digging out medicinal roots with an iron spike, returned and laid himself down on his mat after refusing to eat any supper. The season was again early autumn, and a bitterly cold wind swept down from the snow-flecked Drakensberg range. Next day he was unable to arise, and he lay moaning then and throughout the following night in a burning fever, whilst a cruel cough racked his spent frame. His talk, as he wandered in delirium, was ever of Sobèdè, and the “red chief” who had punished him undeservedly. The poor old man appeared to imagine that he was still giving evidence at the trial. In the early morning he tried to stand up, but fell back dead on his mat.Manciya came over and buried his father, and then Mampitizili, with little Kungayè, accompanied him back to his kraal. Manciya was now the head of the family, and according to native custom the interests of Sobèdè were vested in him for the time being. The cattle and goats were driven over, and the mats, calabashes, and otherlaresandpenates, with the assegais and clubs of Sobèdè, were taken to Manciya’s kraal. Mampitizili found herself disposed of as joint occupant, with Manciya’s oldest and ugliest wife, of a large hut on the left-hand side of the cattle kraal.For a time Mampitizili was left to herself, but within a few months she had come to find that all the inconvenience she had previously suffered was as nothing compared to what she now had to endure.A rumour was set afloat to the effect that Sobèdè was dead; this at first caused her much terror, but when all efforts to trace it to its source had failed, Mampitizili ceased to give it much credence; nevertheless, it left a rankling thorn of uneasiness in her mind. Soon after this she began to see far more of Manciya than she liked, and then he commenced paying her attentions that were extremely distasteful. Among the many Jewish customs followed by the Kafirs is the one prescribed in the fifth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, and Manciya, assuming the report as to Sobèdè’s death to be true, proposed to follow this custom in Mampitizili’s ease. She, it may be stated, was an extremely attractive young woman. Manciya found himself repulsed with indignation over and over again. Then he began to try the effect of harsh and even cruel treatment where soft measures had failed.The wife whose dwelling Mampitizili shared had been neglected by her husband for years, and was now savagely jealous of the attentions which he paid, in her hut and before her face, to a young, good-looking woman, and she accordingly gave full vent to her spite when she saw from Manciya’s changed demeanour that it was safe for her to do so. Soon Mampitizili’s life became one of continuous misery. It was through little Kungayè that she suffered most severely. The child was bullied or beaten every day by the other children, who were encouraged to torment him, and all attempts at defence or retaliation on the mother’s part proved to be worse than useless. The hardest drudgery fell to Mampitizili’s lot, and the worst food was her scanty portion, but all this she regarded as nothing in comparison with what she had to endure in respect of the treatment to which her child was subjected.Sometimes she would manage to steal away and carry little Kungayè over to the old kraal, there to muse miserably over the short-lived happiness that she and Sobèdè had enjoyed. The three huts were falling into decay, the corn-pits in the kraal were full of water, and the whole place was overgrown with weeds. But here she had at least peace; the leering, libidinous eye of Manciya no longer affronted her, and she was free from the constant nagging of his jealous, spiteful wives. Here, moreover, little Kungayè could play in peace with the little toy oxen she had made for him out of mud, free from the persecution of his malevolent cousins.As may have been inferred, it was Manciya who had for his own purposes set afloat the rumour as to Sobèdè’s having died at the convict station. He knew that Sobèdè’s return home might be expected in a few months, and he determined, therefore, to overcome Mampitizili’s resistance to his amatory advances with as little further delay as possible. With this end in view he again changed his tactics, and began once more to treat her with kindness. Amongst other manifestations of this may be mentioned his buying a gaudy blanket for her at a traders, and his administration of a most unmerciful thrashing to her hut-companion—to whom, very unfairly, he had failed to notify the change in his tactics, and who inopportunely was guilty before his face of a spiteful act towards the object of his desires. Mampitizili felt grateful, but kept, nevertheless, strictly on her guard.One day Manciya sent messages to the surrounding kraals inviting a number of his friends to a beer-drink. For some days previously every one had been kept busy grinding the “imitombo,” or partly-germinated millet from which the beer is made, in large earthen pots. The banquet began early in the forenoon, and by the time the sun went down many heads had been broken, and all the revellers were extremely drunk. Shortly after nightfall Manciya staggered into the hut in which Mampitizili dwelt. The other woman was crouching at the central hearth over some faintly-glowing embers, and her he struck brutally with one of the door-poles which he had stumbled over. The woman rushed with a yell out of the hut, and Manciya began to grope about in the darkness for Mampitizili.Mampitizili took in the situation at once. She was crouching against the wall at the back of the hut when Manciya entered, clasping little Kungayè close to her. Manciya passed her in his search, and she leaped to her feet and rushed out into the night with her child.The unhappy woman at length felt that her burthen was greater than she could bear;—that she must get away from Manciya’s kraal now and for ever,—even if she had to fling herself into the cold, dark, deep pool of the river just below the waterfall. But that might happen to-morrow; for to-night she would return to the old kraal, for the last time. She felt she would like to sleep once more in the hut that she and Sobèdè had occupied together. The season was late winter. She hurried on through the darkness with hot head and cold, bruised feet. The night was cloudless and still, and a heavy frost was settling down through the keen, crisp air. Soon the eastern sky began to whiten, and then the moon lit up the snowy masses of the Drakensberg rising abruptly to her left. The child shivered and clung to her mutely; he had acquired the habit of mutely enduring.At length she reached the rocky ledge upon which the three huts stood, facing down the valley. Broken and dilapidated as they were, they seemed to her like a city of refuge and peace. The largest hut was that which stood in the centre facing the entrance to the stone cattle enclosure. Mampitizili approached this hut from the back, with faltering steps, half-blinded with her tears, and shaken by sobs wrung from the depths of her despair.A portion of the wall of the hut had fallen in at one side, and, as Mampitizili passed the aperture thus formed, she uttered a cry and fell to the ground in terror, for a fire was alight in the centre of the hut, and a man with his back towards her lay next to it, half covered by a blanket.FourSobèdè, after his sentence, was drafted with other convicted prisoners to the convict station at Port Saint John’s, on the coast of Pondoland and at the mouth of the Umzimvubu river. Here, every working day, he trundled a wheel-barrow filled with gravel at the bluff that was being broken down for the purpose, and tipped it into the lagoon which, before it was thus filled up, wound sinuously through the little village. When each day’s work was done, he was marched with the other convicts to the prison, which was built of galvanised iron on the flattened top of a sand-hill overlooking the deep blue wonder of the Indian Ocean, and the lovely river-mouth with its beetling cliffs and steep forest-fringed slopes. He was well fed and comfortably housed; the work was not heavy, nor were the working hours distressingly long. The only things that troubled him much, after the first wild, desperate feeling of being trapped had passed away, were the monotony of the life, the restraint, always so specially irksome to uncivilised man, and the longing to obtain news of his wife and child, of his father and his cattle.The climate of Port Saint John’s, the gentle haze that seems to steal into the soul and allay every irritation, the health-giving breath and the commiserating murmur of the great ocean, all brought him peace. Thus the time passed more quickly and less painfully than he had expected. Moreover, he obtained the remission of six weeks for each year of his sentence, such as is allowed to all well-conducted convicts whose sentences exceed a certain limit. Of the regulation authorising this he and his family had been unaware.At length he one day found himself a free man, with a clear conscience and in perfect health. In spite of having herded with evil-doers he came out of prison a better man than he had entered it. He had endured heavy tribulation without losing hope; he had never lost hold of his past and his future; he had instinctively and insensibly acquired a healthy philosophy under the stress of his unmerited misfortune.Now he looked forward to meeting, within a few days, the wife, child, and father whom, in spite of his black skin and his uncivilised nature, he dearly loved. Conscious of his innocence and buoyant with hope, Sobèdè, as he walked down the hill from the convict station after his release, held his head erect and looked every man he met straight in the face. He was probably a better man than most of those who would have felt themselves contaminated by touching him.It is a long day’s walk from Port Saint John’s to Sidotè’s location, and the whole course lies up-hill. Sobèdè was, however, in perfect condition, and although he hurried on, walking all day long and half the night, he felt less and less fatigue the farther he went. The cold was severe in the higher altitudes, and he felt it considerably after his nearly three years spent at sea-level, but this he did not mind. His warm hearth, with Mampitizili and the child, who, he thought, must now be big and old enough to run about and talk, was waiting for him, and once there his troubles would all be forgotten.Upon taking his discharge, a few shillings wherewith to buy food on his homeward journey had been given to him by the superintendent of the convict station. Of this money he spent hardly any. Natives are extremely hospitable to strangers, and all through Pondoland and the Xesibè country Sobèdè never lacked food to eat.The last day of Sobèdè’s journey dawned at last. His course now lay along a main road running over farms occupied by Europeans, so he met with hardly any people, nor did he see a single one whom he knew. Just before sundown he came to a wagon outspanned, the owner of which had just slaughtered a goat. Thinking it probable that there would be no fresh meat at his kraal, Sobèdè invested a shilling of his maintenance-money in goat-flesh. He cut a hole in the lump of meat, stuck his stick through it, and carried it over his shoulder.Sobèdè’s kraal was situated almost on the verge of the Hlangweni location, and the footpath leading to it from the main road passed no other dwellings of men. It was sundown when he reached the point at which the footpath diverged, leading up the valley at the upper end of which the huts were built. His feet were worn and sore from the long walk, but he hurried along the steep, rugged course with firm nervous steps. It was almost dark when he began to ascend the short, steep lip of the ledge. It struck him as being strange that he had seen no signs of cattle or other animals, nor had he even heard the bark of a dog. Perhaps, he thought, those at the kraal had gone to sleep, and the dogs crept in under shelter from the cold. Of course, he was not expected for another four months, as his family knew nothing of the good-conduct remission.He reached the top of the ledge; there sure enough, he could see the outline of each hut in the shadow of the dark hill-side, beneath the faintly-gleaming western sky.—But what was the matter? Not only was there no sign of life, but he was surrounded by indications of desolation and decay. The weeds were growing thickly all around him. Sobèdè stepped forward with faltering steps and a sinking heart and made for the largest hut. He saw that the wall had partly fallen in on one side, the door had disappeared, and a gleam of stars showed through a ragged gap in the roof. Sobèdè flung himself to the ground before the threshold, and sobbed like a tired and despairing child.He lay until the keen frost chilled him to the bone. Then he arose and began to search for fuel, which he found without any difficulty. Then he drew a little of the tinder-dry grass from the roof, and by means of his flint, steel, and touchwood, soon lit a fire on the cold and barren hearth. The hut was in a fearfully dilapidated and dirty state, but with a broom extemporised out of a small bush which he plucked outside, he swept the place out. Amongst the rubbish he found several of the little clay oxen which Mampitizili had made for Kungayè, and the sight of these formed a small nucleus of hope in his mind, around which shreds of comfort began to gather. No doubt, he thought, Mampitizili and the old man had, for good and sufficient reasons, removed to Manciya’s or to some other part of the location. To-morrow he would, no doubt, find them. To-night he felt far too weary, after the shock of his disappointment, to seek them even at Manciya’s kraal. All the fatigues of the previous five days seemed to creep into his bones at once, and he felt, for the time being, completely crushed.Sobèdè cooked a portion of the goat-flesh, ate it, and then laid himself down, wrapped in his blanket, at the side of the fire. The wind had completely died away, and the frosty night seemed tense with utter silence.With the keen senses of his race Sobèdè became aware of an approaching footstep. It was not so much that he heard any sound, as that he felt a slight rhythmic tremor of the ground beneath him. The footstep drew nearer, and then the sound of sobbing could be heard. Sobèdè did not move; he was not in the slightest degree alarmed, and was far too weary and heartsore to feel interested in anything just then. Then he heard a cry and a sound as of some one falling heavily to the ground.He arose, seized a burning stick from the fire, and went outside. He saw a woman crouching to the ground, with her face hidden in her hands. Clinging to her was a little child, who gazed up at Sobèdè with wide, terror-strained eyes. Sobèdè bent down and touched the woman on the shoulder, telling her to arise and have no fear. At the sound of his voice the woman looked up quickly with a start of recognition and a cry of joy, and Sobèdè saw that her face was the face of Mampitizili. Then he flung down the spent firebrand, and clasped his wife and son in a long, silent embrace.Soon the three were sitting together in the hut, where the fire was now again blazing cheerfully;—the man and the woman with hearts too full for speech, and the child looking with wonder at the big stranger who did not treat him unkindly.Mampitizili and Kungayè were faint from hunger, so the goat-flesh was soon cut into strips, roasted upon the embers, and eaten as a sort of sacrament of reunion. Then Sobèdè fetched water in a broken earthen pot from the little streamlet that babbled down the gully at the side of the ledge, and they washed out their mouths, Kafir fashion, and drank of the icy-cold water, which seemed to taste more delicious than the best calabash-milk.It was long before they could find words to express all that made big their hearts. Sobèdè heard of the death of his father with equanimity; the natives, with true philosophy, look upon the visitation of death to the old and infirm without regret. Bit by bit—the little boy sleeping peacefully at their feet as they talked—the whole shameful story of Manciya’s conduct was told. But Sobèdè was too happy to be angry for long even under this provocation. His wife and child were safe with him, and he knew that Manciya dared not refuse to give up his cattle,—the headman and the magistrate would see to that. They decided to remain at the old kraal, and to commence repairing the huts on the following day.Of all the myriad dwellings of men upon which the snowy peaks of the Drakensberg glanced down that night in cold disdain of man and his destinies, none held such happy human hearts as did this hut without a door, with the wall falling down in ruin, and through the gaping roof of which the frost fell from a wintry sky.
“There is a deal of human nature in mankind.”Josh Billings.
“There is a deal of human nature in mankind.”
Josh Billings.
Sobèdè stood in the prisoners’ dock before the Circuit Court at Kokstad, between his fellow-prisoners Kwekwe and Gazile, and pleaded “Not Guilty” to the charge of having stolen four head of cattle from one Jasper Swainson, a farmer dwelling in the valley of the Indwana river, Umzimkulu district, whom he had served as a shepherd two years previously.
Sobèdè belonged to the Hlangweni tribe, whilst his companions were Gaika Kafirs from near King William’s Town. But the important difference between Sobèdè and the others lay in this: that whereas they were guilty of the crime laid to their charge, he was as innocent as was his Lordship the learned judge who, clad in a gorgeous vestment of crimson silk, was trying him.
Appearances were, however, strongly against Sobèdè. The evidence showed that the stolen cattle had been found by the farmers who followed on their spoor in the possession of the three prisoners, and were at the time being driven up one of the gorges of the steep Drakensberg range, in the direction of Basutoland, that great and grievous receptacle for stolen stock of all kinds. When Sobèdè told his story, namely, that he had casually joined the other two but a few minutes before he had been apprehended, having come from his kraal along one of the many footpaths leading through the same gorge, no one believed him, although the relation was perfectly true. His wife, Mampitizili, with her two-months-old baby slung on her back and hushing it as she spoke, gave evidence to the effect that her husband had left her after the sun was high on the same day for the purpose of fetching medicine from a native doctor for the week-old baby, which happened at the time to be ailing, whereas the cattle had been stolen thirty hours previously. His old, half-decrepit father, ’Mbopè, corroborated Mampitizili’s statement in a voice that rose to a quavering shout. The old man’s lips trembled, his eyes flashed for a moment through the blue film that had gradually overspread them during the past few years, and he held his shaking right hand with the two first fingers extended high over his head. He really afforded a very fine tragic spectacle, and suggested a kind of Bantu Lear in appearance and mien, but to judge by the behaviour of the jury the exhibition was rather comic than otherwise, for they put their heads together and laughed consumedly.Theyknew the dodges all these old niggers get up to, and it was quite clear that the old man had pitched it too strong for sincerity. The old man’s display evidently impressed his Lordship, but was nevertheless of no use to Sobèdè. The damning fact remained that the cattle had been stolen from a farmer in whose service he had for some time been, and when the passing flash of insight had faded from the mind of the judge, no one in court except Sobèdè’s wife and father had the slightest doubt as to Sobèdè’s guilt.
The prosecuting barrister finished his address to his own entire satisfaction, and then, sitting down, leaned back in his seat and contemplated the recently-painted ceiling, conscious of having done his duty to society. Then the judge made a few remarks of an analytic nature, inclining at the same time towards the jury-box with that well-known and well-studied air of forensic friendliness which so tends to establish a good understanding between all parties concerned; except, perhaps, the prisoner at the bar. After this the nine heads of the jurymen bent towards each other in a whispered colloquy which may perhaps have lasted for thirty seconds. Then the jurymen all stood up together, and the foreman communicated their verdict as one of “guilty” against the three prisoners.
Then the judge, pushing back the forensic friendliness stop, and drawing out that of judicial austerity, began to admonish the prisoners, and it could be seen that it was at Sobèdè his harangue was chiefly aimed. Although the address was well interpreted, Sobèdè could not follow the drift of it, his attention being divided between the wails of his child sounding faintly from the court-house yard where the witnesses were kept, and the little white tippets which waggled a silent accompaniment to his Lordship’s eloquence over the breast of his Lordship’s beautiful red silk robe. The baseness of ingratitude (it had transpired in the course of the evidence that Sobèdè had, in recognition of meritorious service, been sent away with four goats over and above his specified wages) was enlarged upon, and the ineradicable nature of the furtive bent in the average Bantu was treated from an ethnological point. Eventually Sobèdè found himself sentenced to three years’ imprisonment with hard labour, whilst his companions, who could not help smiling at the peculiarity of the situation, got off each with a year less.
After sentence, as he was being hurried through the court-house yard to the lock-up, Sobèdè caught a glimpse of old ’Mbopè crouching with bent head in a corner, and then he passed Mampitizili. She was still hushing the baby, who as yet refused to be comforted, and as her husband passed her with the horror of the prospect of three years of unmerited, painful servitude darkening his uncivilised soul, these two exchanged such looks as are never forgotten on this side of the grave.
Mampitizili and ’Mbopè took two days wherein to perform the return journey to Sidotè’s location, where they dwelt. Owing to his infirmities the old man walked with great difficulty, but he kept a good heart, and endeavoured his best to comfort the miserable wife of his unhappy son, reminding her from his vantage coign of old age that three years pass very quickly and do not, after all, make much of a slice out of a lifetime. This is quite true when the lifetime is regarded from near the wrong end of it, but such philosophy is unintelligible to the young. The poor woman had only been married about a year, and the baby, a boy, was not yet three months old. It had not as yet even been given a name.
They reached home one cold, misty evening, and it was then that the full significance of their misfortune came home to them for the first time. The friends who had taken charge of the premises during their absence left next morning taking with them a goat, as a reward for their services, and all day long the two miserable creatures sat and hugged their misery. The hearth was cold, the milk-sacks were empty, and the strong arm and shrewd head of Sobèdè were missed at every turn.
The season was early autumn, and the crops were nearly ready to reap, but during their absence the cattle, the birds, and marauding children from kraals in the next valley had so damaged them that they were now hardly worth the reaping. The calves of two of the best cows had died, and consequently milk was scarce. Everything seemed to be falling into disorganisation. A boy of about twelve years of age, a grandson of the old man, was sent to dwell at the kraal for the purpose of assisting in looking after the stock, but the loneliness weighed upon him to such an extent that he repeatedly deserted and ran home, in spite of repeated heavy beatings from his father, who had been promised a cow in payment for the boy’s services.
Mampitizili struggled on bravely, and carried up basket after basket of grain from the depleted field, but when the last cob had been harvested there was hardly enough grain to last half-way through the winter, to say nothing of seed for the ensuing spring.
’Mbopè had another son whose name was Manciya. Manciya’s mother had been the “great wife,” and consequently he took precedence of Sobèdè, whose mother was the wife of ’Mbopè’s “right hand.” All the rest of ’Mbopè’s children were daughters, and they had all long since been married. Sobèdè was ’Mbopè’s youngest child and his favourite.
Manciya and his father did not agree, and consequently ’Mbopè had dwelt with Sobèdè since the latter had married and set up a kraal of his own on a sheltered ledge near the head of a deep valley on the eastern fringe of the Hlangweni location. Manciya had, under pretext of seniority, seized the lion’s share of the cattle. He had, it is true, a right to a great deal of it, but he took more than his share, and it was only after much trouble that he was compelled to disgorge. However, a herd of about twenty head had been rescued from his clutches and formally ceded to Sobèdè as his prospective share in his father’s estate, to be his unconditionally after ’Mbopè’s death.
Manciya now and then called to see his father. His kraal, where he dwelt with his several wives, was situated about five miles away. His visits were not welcome, for the reason that he always appeared to assume that Sobèdè was guilty, and this was resented by both ’Mbopè and Mampitizili. Theft of cattle, especially if it happens to be on a large scale, is probably regarded by the native of to-day more or less as it was regarded by the moss-trooper of the Scotch Border in the sixteenth century. In Sobèdè’s case, however, his wife and his father knew him to be suffering for a sin he had not committed. The ever-present sense of injustice made them sensitive, and they felt the inconvenience of their position most keenly.
Two years passed, full of misery to the widowed wife and the old man who now felt his death approaching, and keenly longed for a sight of his favourite son to carry with him into the grave. They did not even know at which of the convict stations Sobèdè was serving his time, for no word from him had ever reached them since the day of his conviction. The little boy grew strong and tall. He was now able to run about. “Kungayè” was the name given to him. This word means “It was through (or owing to) him.” This name, the significance of which will be obvious, was not given as a reproach, but so that, in after life, the son might remember and deplore his father’s unmerited sufferings, of which he had been the innocent cause.
One evening old ’Mbopè, who had the habit of pottering about digging out medicinal roots with an iron spike, returned and laid himself down on his mat after refusing to eat any supper. The season was again early autumn, and a bitterly cold wind swept down from the snow-flecked Drakensberg range. Next day he was unable to arise, and he lay moaning then and throughout the following night in a burning fever, whilst a cruel cough racked his spent frame. His talk, as he wandered in delirium, was ever of Sobèdè, and the “red chief” who had punished him undeservedly. The poor old man appeared to imagine that he was still giving evidence at the trial. In the early morning he tried to stand up, but fell back dead on his mat.
Manciya came over and buried his father, and then Mampitizili, with little Kungayè, accompanied him back to his kraal. Manciya was now the head of the family, and according to native custom the interests of Sobèdè were vested in him for the time being. The cattle and goats were driven over, and the mats, calabashes, and otherlaresandpenates, with the assegais and clubs of Sobèdè, were taken to Manciya’s kraal. Mampitizili found herself disposed of as joint occupant, with Manciya’s oldest and ugliest wife, of a large hut on the left-hand side of the cattle kraal.
For a time Mampitizili was left to herself, but within a few months she had come to find that all the inconvenience she had previously suffered was as nothing compared to what she now had to endure.
A rumour was set afloat to the effect that Sobèdè was dead; this at first caused her much terror, but when all efforts to trace it to its source had failed, Mampitizili ceased to give it much credence; nevertheless, it left a rankling thorn of uneasiness in her mind. Soon after this she began to see far more of Manciya than she liked, and then he commenced paying her attentions that were extremely distasteful. Among the many Jewish customs followed by the Kafirs is the one prescribed in the fifth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, and Manciya, assuming the report as to Sobèdè’s death to be true, proposed to follow this custom in Mampitizili’s ease. She, it may be stated, was an extremely attractive young woman. Manciya found himself repulsed with indignation over and over again. Then he began to try the effect of harsh and even cruel treatment where soft measures had failed.
The wife whose dwelling Mampitizili shared had been neglected by her husband for years, and was now savagely jealous of the attentions which he paid, in her hut and before her face, to a young, good-looking woman, and she accordingly gave full vent to her spite when she saw from Manciya’s changed demeanour that it was safe for her to do so. Soon Mampitizili’s life became one of continuous misery. It was through little Kungayè that she suffered most severely. The child was bullied or beaten every day by the other children, who were encouraged to torment him, and all attempts at defence or retaliation on the mother’s part proved to be worse than useless. The hardest drudgery fell to Mampitizili’s lot, and the worst food was her scanty portion, but all this she regarded as nothing in comparison with what she had to endure in respect of the treatment to which her child was subjected.
Sometimes she would manage to steal away and carry little Kungayè over to the old kraal, there to muse miserably over the short-lived happiness that she and Sobèdè had enjoyed. The three huts were falling into decay, the corn-pits in the kraal were full of water, and the whole place was overgrown with weeds. But here she had at least peace; the leering, libidinous eye of Manciya no longer affronted her, and she was free from the constant nagging of his jealous, spiteful wives. Here, moreover, little Kungayè could play in peace with the little toy oxen she had made for him out of mud, free from the persecution of his malevolent cousins.
As may have been inferred, it was Manciya who had for his own purposes set afloat the rumour as to Sobèdè’s having died at the convict station. He knew that Sobèdè’s return home might be expected in a few months, and he determined, therefore, to overcome Mampitizili’s resistance to his amatory advances with as little further delay as possible. With this end in view he again changed his tactics, and began once more to treat her with kindness. Amongst other manifestations of this may be mentioned his buying a gaudy blanket for her at a traders, and his administration of a most unmerciful thrashing to her hut-companion—to whom, very unfairly, he had failed to notify the change in his tactics, and who inopportunely was guilty before his face of a spiteful act towards the object of his desires. Mampitizili felt grateful, but kept, nevertheless, strictly on her guard.
One day Manciya sent messages to the surrounding kraals inviting a number of his friends to a beer-drink. For some days previously every one had been kept busy grinding the “imitombo,” or partly-germinated millet from which the beer is made, in large earthen pots. The banquet began early in the forenoon, and by the time the sun went down many heads had been broken, and all the revellers were extremely drunk. Shortly after nightfall Manciya staggered into the hut in which Mampitizili dwelt. The other woman was crouching at the central hearth over some faintly-glowing embers, and her he struck brutally with one of the door-poles which he had stumbled over. The woman rushed with a yell out of the hut, and Manciya began to grope about in the darkness for Mampitizili.
Mampitizili took in the situation at once. She was crouching against the wall at the back of the hut when Manciya entered, clasping little Kungayè close to her. Manciya passed her in his search, and she leaped to her feet and rushed out into the night with her child.
The unhappy woman at length felt that her burthen was greater than she could bear;—that she must get away from Manciya’s kraal now and for ever,—even if she had to fling herself into the cold, dark, deep pool of the river just below the waterfall. But that might happen to-morrow; for to-night she would return to the old kraal, for the last time. She felt she would like to sleep once more in the hut that she and Sobèdè had occupied together. The season was late winter. She hurried on through the darkness with hot head and cold, bruised feet. The night was cloudless and still, and a heavy frost was settling down through the keen, crisp air. Soon the eastern sky began to whiten, and then the moon lit up the snowy masses of the Drakensberg rising abruptly to her left. The child shivered and clung to her mutely; he had acquired the habit of mutely enduring.
At length she reached the rocky ledge upon which the three huts stood, facing down the valley. Broken and dilapidated as they were, they seemed to her like a city of refuge and peace. The largest hut was that which stood in the centre facing the entrance to the stone cattle enclosure. Mampitizili approached this hut from the back, with faltering steps, half-blinded with her tears, and shaken by sobs wrung from the depths of her despair.
A portion of the wall of the hut had fallen in at one side, and, as Mampitizili passed the aperture thus formed, she uttered a cry and fell to the ground in terror, for a fire was alight in the centre of the hut, and a man with his back towards her lay next to it, half covered by a blanket.
Sobèdè, after his sentence, was drafted with other convicted prisoners to the convict station at Port Saint John’s, on the coast of Pondoland and at the mouth of the Umzimvubu river. Here, every working day, he trundled a wheel-barrow filled with gravel at the bluff that was being broken down for the purpose, and tipped it into the lagoon which, before it was thus filled up, wound sinuously through the little village. When each day’s work was done, he was marched with the other convicts to the prison, which was built of galvanised iron on the flattened top of a sand-hill overlooking the deep blue wonder of the Indian Ocean, and the lovely river-mouth with its beetling cliffs and steep forest-fringed slopes. He was well fed and comfortably housed; the work was not heavy, nor were the working hours distressingly long. The only things that troubled him much, after the first wild, desperate feeling of being trapped had passed away, were the monotony of the life, the restraint, always so specially irksome to uncivilised man, and the longing to obtain news of his wife and child, of his father and his cattle.
The climate of Port Saint John’s, the gentle haze that seems to steal into the soul and allay every irritation, the health-giving breath and the commiserating murmur of the great ocean, all brought him peace. Thus the time passed more quickly and less painfully than he had expected. Moreover, he obtained the remission of six weeks for each year of his sentence, such as is allowed to all well-conducted convicts whose sentences exceed a certain limit. Of the regulation authorising this he and his family had been unaware.
At length he one day found himself a free man, with a clear conscience and in perfect health. In spite of having herded with evil-doers he came out of prison a better man than he had entered it. He had endured heavy tribulation without losing hope; he had never lost hold of his past and his future; he had instinctively and insensibly acquired a healthy philosophy under the stress of his unmerited misfortune.
Now he looked forward to meeting, within a few days, the wife, child, and father whom, in spite of his black skin and his uncivilised nature, he dearly loved. Conscious of his innocence and buoyant with hope, Sobèdè, as he walked down the hill from the convict station after his release, held his head erect and looked every man he met straight in the face. He was probably a better man than most of those who would have felt themselves contaminated by touching him.
It is a long day’s walk from Port Saint John’s to Sidotè’s location, and the whole course lies up-hill. Sobèdè was, however, in perfect condition, and although he hurried on, walking all day long and half the night, he felt less and less fatigue the farther he went. The cold was severe in the higher altitudes, and he felt it considerably after his nearly three years spent at sea-level, but this he did not mind. His warm hearth, with Mampitizili and the child, who, he thought, must now be big and old enough to run about and talk, was waiting for him, and once there his troubles would all be forgotten.
Upon taking his discharge, a few shillings wherewith to buy food on his homeward journey had been given to him by the superintendent of the convict station. Of this money he spent hardly any. Natives are extremely hospitable to strangers, and all through Pondoland and the Xesibè country Sobèdè never lacked food to eat.
The last day of Sobèdè’s journey dawned at last. His course now lay along a main road running over farms occupied by Europeans, so he met with hardly any people, nor did he see a single one whom he knew. Just before sundown he came to a wagon outspanned, the owner of which had just slaughtered a goat. Thinking it probable that there would be no fresh meat at his kraal, Sobèdè invested a shilling of his maintenance-money in goat-flesh. He cut a hole in the lump of meat, stuck his stick through it, and carried it over his shoulder.
Sobèdè’s kraal was situated almost on the verge of the Hlangweni location, and the footpath leading to it from the main road passed no other dwellings of men. It was sundown when he reached the point at which the footpath diverged, leading up the valley at the upper end of which the huts were built. His feet were worn and sore from the long walk, but he hurried along the steep, rugged course with firm nervous steps. It was almost dark when he began to ascend the short, steep lip of the ledge. It struck him as being strange that he had seen no signs of cattle or other animals, nor had he even heard the bark of a dog. Perhaps, he thought, those at the kraal had gone to sleep, and the dogs crept in under shelter from the cold. Of course, he was not expected for another four months, as his family knew nothing of the good-conduct remission.
He reached the top of the ledge; there sure enough, he could see the outline of each hut in the shadow of the dark hill-side, beneath the faintly-gleaming western sky.—But what was the matter? Not only was there no sign of life, but he was surrounded by indications of desolation and decay. The weeds were growing thickly all around him. Sobèdè stepped forward with faltering steps and a sinking heart and made for the largest hut. He saw that the wall had partly fallen in on one side, the door had disappeared, and a gleam of stars showed through a ragged gap in the roof. Sobèdè flung himself to the ground before the threshold, and sobbed like a tired and despairing child.
He lay until the keen frost chilled him to the bone. Then he arose and began to search for fuel, which he found without any difficulty. Then he drew a little of the tinder-dry grass from the roof, and by means of his flint, steel, and touchwood, soon lit a fire on the cold and barren hearth. The hut was in a fearfully dilapidated and dirty state, but with a broom extemporised out of a small bush which he plucked outside, he swept the place out. Amongst the rubbish he found several of the little clay oxen which Mampitizili had made for Kungayè, and the sight of these formed a small nucleus of hope in his mind, around which shreds of comfort began to gather. No doubt, he thought, Mampitizili and the old man had, for good and sufficient reasons, removed to Manciya’s or to some other part of the location. To-morrow he would, no doubt, find them. To-night he felt far too weary, after the shock of his disappointment, to seek them even at Manciya’s kraal. All the fatigues of the previous five days seemed to creep into his bones at once, and he felt, for the time being, completely crushed.
Sobèdè cooked a portion of the goat-flesh, ate it, and then laid himself down, wrapped in his blanket, at the side of the fire. The wind had completely died away, and the frosty night seemed tense with utter silence.
With the keen senses of his race Sobèdè became aware of an approaching footstep. It was not so much that he heard any sound, as that he felt a slight rhythmic tremor of the ground beneath him. The footstep drew nearer, and then the sound of sobbing could be heard. Sobèdè did not move; he was not in the slightest degree alarmed, and was far too weary and heartsore to feel interested in anything just then. Then he heard a cry and a sound as of some one falling heavily to the ground.
He arose, seized a burning stick from the fire, and went outside. He saw a woman crouching to the ground, with her face hidden in her hands. Clinging to her was a little child, who gazed up at Sobèdè with wide, terror-strained eyes. Sobèdè bent down and touched the woman on the shoulder, telling her to arise and have no fear. At the sound of his voice the woman looked up quickly with a start of recognition and a cry of joy, and Sobèdè saw that her face was the face of Mampitizili. Then he flung down the spent firebrand, and clasped his wife and son in a long, silent embrace.
Soon the three were sitting together in the hut, where the fire was now again blazing cheerfully;—the man and the woman with hearts too full for speech, and the child looking with wonder at the big stranger who did not treat him unkindly.
Mampitizili and Kungayè were faint from hunger, so the goat-flesh was soon cut into strips, roasted upon the embers, and eaten as a sort of sacrament of reunion. Then Sobèdè fetched water in a broken earthen pot from the little streamlet that babbled down the gully at the side of the ledge, and they washed out their mouths, Kafir fashion, and drank of the icy-cold water, which seemed to taste more delicious than the best calabash-milk.
It was long before they could find words to express all that made big their hearts. Sobèdè heard of the death of his father with equanimity; the natives, with true philosophy, look upon the visitation of death to the old and infirm without regret. Bit by bit—the little boy sleeping peacefully at their feet as they talked—the whole shameful story of Manciya’s conduct was told. But Sobèdè was too happy to be angry for long even under this provocation. His wife and child were safe with him, and he knew that Manciya dared not refuse to give up his cattle,—the headman and the magistrate would see to that. They decided to remain at the old kraal, and to commence repairing the huts on the following day.
Of all the myriad dwellings of men upon which the snowy peaks of the Drakensberg glanced down that night in cold disdain of man and his destinies, none held such happy human hearts as did this hut without a door, with the wall falling down in ruin, and through the gaping roof of which the frost fell from a wintry sky.
Chapter Twelve.The Quick and the Dead.“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”RomansVII, 24.OneOmfunda sat smoking his pipe alongside the fire he had lit close to the spring gushing out at the foot of the big cliff at the upper end of Krantz Vogel Kloof. The cliff arose sheer three hundred feet, and at each side of it the steep, broken terraces of the mountain, covered with huddled patches of immense boulders, swelled out into mighty flanks. From between the boulders gnarled and stunted trees grew, rooted in soil so deep down in the fissures that it could not be seen. Here and there dark, ragged-edged chasms yawned. These boulder-patches were bordered by fringes of scrubby forest, outside which grew coarse, matted grass.It was a hot day in late spring, and Nomfunda felt drowsy. The bleatings of a flock of sheep came faintly to his ear. His dog lay curled up at his feet. The day was at noon. A light breeze hushed faintly through the tree-tops, soothing as the whisper of Somnus, and then died away. Nomfunda slept.Nomfunda was the shepherd of Sarel Marais, the proprietor of the farm which took its name from the thickly-wooded kloof at the head of which he, Nomfunda, lay sleeping. Sarel Marais had over and over again warned him not to come with his sheep to this neighbourhood, for the reason that animals were so apt to get lost in the broken ground through falling into the fissures; and Sarel’s eldest son “Rooi Jan”—so called on account of his red hair—had sworn to have Nomfunda’s life if he ever again disobeyed in this respect. However, on the present occasion Nomfunda felt safe, for old Sarel was absent from home, and “Rooi Jan” had only a few hours previously departed on horseback for a farm several “hours” distant, where the girl he meant to marry in a few months’ time resided.The foot of the cliff where the spring gushed out had a peculiar fascination for Nomfunda. It was cool on the hottest day. The water plashed from under a jutting ledge and scattered moisture over luxuriant masses of fern. The “umgwenya,” or “Kafir plum,” grew plentifully in the forest close at hand, and the holes in the porous cliff were full of bees’ nests brimming with the storage of industrious years. These bees were of the small, black, forest variety, which is celebrated as being extremely savage when interfered with; this fact, and the inaccessibility of the nests, accounted for their still being in existence. However, Nomfunda was an expert and daring honey-hunter, and was extremely pachydermatous; he hardly ever came to this spot without plundering a nest and feeding on honey to repletion.Moreover, an antelope known as the “klipspringer” was to be found in large numbers in the neighbourhood, and Nomfunda’s dog thoroughly understood the way to circumvent this animal. Sometimes, quite on its own account, the dog would drive a buck to the point of some rock-pinnacle in the vicinity, and there hold it prisoner until Nomfunda, guided by the dog’s baying, would hurry to the spot and knock the buck over with his knob-kerrie. This dog was an utter mongrel showing traces of extremely diverse canine types. Its enemies declared they could even see a great deal of the jackal in it. The dog was, however, utterly faithful to its master, and had a wonderful knack of bailing up “klipspringers.” One peculiarity of the animal’s was that it never barked.When Nomfunda awoke it was to find “Rooi Jan,” gun in hand, watching him. Nomfunda instinctively grasped his knob-kerrie, which lay on the ground next to him, and sprang to his feet. The dog ran behind its master and crouched, showing its teeth. “Rooi Jan” regarded Nomfunda in silence for some seconds, and Nomfunda returned his gaze. Then “Rooi Jan” spoke, using the Dutch language, which Nomfunda, who had worked among the Boers for several years, understood fairly well.“Did I not tell you never to bring the sheep up here?”“Ja, Baas.” (“Yes, Master.”)“Did I not tell you that if ever you did, I would shoot you for the d—d Kafir dog that you are?”“Ja, Baas.”“Then,” uttered “Rooi Jan,” his face distorted with fury, and his voice coming in husky gasps, as he deliberately, one after the other, drew back the hammers of his double-barrelled gun, “to-day will I do it; to-day you are dead; to-day will your black carcase lie down among the rocks with the bones of the sheep that you—”Nomfunda had all this time kept his eyes on the face of the enraged Boer, and when, blind and quivering, “Rooi Jan” lifted the gun to his shoulder, Nomfunda sprang to one side, whilst the charge of buck-shot passed so close to his head that he felt the wind of it. Then, as “Rooi Jan,” cursing his own clumsiness, was again raising the gun to his shoulder, Nomfunda lifted his knob-kerrie and flung it with all his force. The heavy knob caught “Rooi Jan” on the left temple, and he fell backwards, and lay on the ground motionless.Nomfunda had no idea that “Rooi Jan” was seriously injured. The first thing he did was to seize the gun and pitch it down the kloof into a very thick patch of fern. Then he picked up his kerrie, returned to the seat he had occupied when “Rooi Jan” arrived, and sat down to await developments. He knew he had done wrong, and was prepared, as natives generally are, to take his punishment like a man. The dog became very uneasy; it began to whine and cowered against its master, with ears cocked, tail tucked under, and hair on end all along the back.Nomfunda sat for a long time wondering why “Rooi Jan” did not move. Then he stood up and examined the injured man, who had fallen on his back across a flat stone. His head lay back and his mouth was wide open. A very small trickle of blood came from his left temple, and dabbled his hair. Nomfunda plucked a delicate frond of fern and held it in front of “Rooi Jan’s” gaping mouth and nostrils. It moved only to the trembling of the hand that held it.For a long time Nomfunda could not realise what had happened; surely, he thought, a little wound like that could not cause death. Then the shadows began to fall the other way, the brown hawks came screaming out of their nests in the cliff, and the bees came up the kloof in a steady stream. Still “Rooi Jan” lay motionless, the ghastly pallor of his face and stretched throat contrasting forcibly with the vivid red of his hair and beard. Large, blue flies buzzed round in ever-increasing numbers, and eventually a few of them settled on the nostrils and lips of the corpse. Then Nomfunda realised that his master’s son was dead and that he had killed him.The wretched man already felt the strangling rope around his neck. He was young and he loved his life. A flush of hope passed through him. No one saw the deed—he would hide the body down one of the clefts. No, that would not do; a search was sure to be made about here, and the smell would betray the hiding-place. The body must be hidden far away, high up on the mountain, in some secret place where it would never be discovered.Nomfunda was of powerful build, and “Rooi Jan” had not been a very big man. The blood had long since ceased trickling, so after carefully removing the small quantity that had stained the stones, Nomfunda lifted the corpse upon his shoulder and began ascending the steep mountain-side. His course laid for the most part through cover, but he had now and then to emerge into comparatively open spaces. Each time, before doing this, he carefully reconnoitred, but not a human being was in sight in any direction. At length he reached the bleak and broken top of the mountain, and then he made straight for a small cavern he knew of, the mouth of which was concealed by shrubs. Here he laid the body, and after carefully re-adjusting the shrubs at the entrance, he returned to his sheep by a different course. The flock was scattered along the flanks of the mountain; he at once collected it and drove it down to the kraal at the homestead, where he arrived at the usual time. Then he joined the other servants in the hut wherein they dwelt together, cooked and ate his supper and laid himself down wrapped in his blanket,—just as though nothing had happened. But he lay awake during the whole night, thinking of “Rooi Jan,” whilst the dogs howled weirdly beneath the unregarding stars.TwoThe disappearance of “Rooi Jan” caused great surprise and uneasiness. He had left the homestead early in the morning after an early breakfast, with the avowed intention of visiting the farm of Jacob Venter, which was situated about fifteen miles away, and where the girl lived to whom he was engaged to be married. He meant to return during the afternoon of the same day. It now transpired that he had not reached Venter’s farm. Each one of the servants, including Nomfunda, was closely questioned, but apparently nothing had been seen of the missing man since he disappeared riding along the road which scarped round the bluff just below the homestead, early in the morning. The spoor of his horse was traced along the road from here by an old Hottentot named Gezwint, who was celebrated as a tracker. This spoor was found to lead along the road for some distance, and then turn abruptly to the left towards the wooded kloof, at the upper end of which, four miles away, “Rooi Jan” had met his doom. It was late in the afternoon when the fact of the spoor turning out of the road was discovered, and night fell before it could be traced to any distance worth speaking of from this point.Next morning at daylight the tracking was resumed. Old Sarel Marais had been sent for, but had not yet arrived. Several of the neighbouring farmers had been sent for to come and assist in the search. The party on the spoor consisted of old Gezwint, “Rooi Jan’s” younger brothers Piet and Willem—aged, respectively, fifteen and fourteen years—six young farmers, and several native farm servants. Old Gezwint worked like a bloodhound, deciphering almost invisible signs upon the rough, stony ground, and casting back whenever at fault. On again verifying the spoor after a check, he would call out “Hier’s hij” (“Here he is”), and again run forward on the slot, followed at a respectful distance by the others, who left the real business of the tracking to his well-known skill. It was at about noon that they came upon “Rooi Jan’s” grey mare, saddled and bridled, and tied to a tree deep in the bush. From this point they followed swiftly and without a check the slot of a boot up the kloof to the spring under the cliff. Here the spoor ceased. They found the remains of a recent fire, and the tracks of naked human feet, and of a dog. Beyond this point a spoor was hardly to be hoped for because of the nature of the ground. They spent the rest of the day in searching among the rocky chasms, but when night fell they had found no further track, nor any sign of the missing man. Upon the search party reaching the homestead an hour later, it was found that the flock of sheep had not been brought back to the kraal, and that Nomfunda, the shepherd, was missing.ThreeNomfunda was herding his sheep on the open, grassy slope to the left-hand side of the kloof when the search party was at work. The day was clear and still, and he could tell the whereabouts of the trackers from the shouts which arose from time to time. As the trackers advanced towards the head of the kloof, Nomfunda drove his flock along the hill-side by a parallel course until the broken ground was almost reached. Then he darted past the flock, and taking a course still further to the right, through some scrub, he worked his round-about way to the top of the cliff overhanging the scene of the tragedy. Here he lay down just above a jutting bush, through the branches of which he could see without being seen.He saw the party emerge from the forest and disappear out of the range of his vision under the ledge where the spring gushed out. He could faintly hear the sound of voices, but without being able to distinguish the words. After a while he saw the men emerge and scatter about among the rocks, searching. He made sure they had found the gun, but had no fear just then of their being able to trace the body. It was almost dark when the party withdrew, but Nomfunda had been so absorbed in watching their operations that he had lost all recollection of his sheep. He had been in a state of complete fascination during the whole afternoon. Sometimes one or other of the searchers would take more or less the course along which the body had been carried up the mountain. When such happened, the unfortunate culprit would give himself up for lost: the cavern would inevitably be found and searched. Then the man who caused his uneasiness would proceed in another direction, and a joyous, unreasoning relief would take possession of the watcher, only to be dissipated when one of the others would accidentally take the former course.The stars came out one by one, and at length the last shred of daylight died out of the sky. Then Nomfunda sat up and considered. He had lain on the same spot and in the same position for hours and hours. He began to collect his wandering wits. He suddenly remembered his sheep. Why had he come up on the mountain at all? he asked himself in desperation. He could not now return, for it would be impossible for him to give an explanation of his absence. Why had he not returned with his flock at sundown? Fool, fool—thus to tie the rope around his own neck. No, it would never do to return. He must escape;—but where to? The alarm had been given; he was known to everybody in the neighbourhood, and all would now be on the watch after he had practically admitted his guilt by remaining away from the homestead just when he ought to have been most particular to avoid any conduct calculated to cause suspicion. No, he must remain on the mountain,—for some time at all events. He had his day’s ration with him, but it was still untouched, for all day long he had been unable to eat. He was now hungry, but he determined to keep the food for the morrow. The dog had lain quietly next to him all day; its ears were cocked, its dilated nostrils were continuously working, and the ridge of hair along the back was still erect.Next morning’s dawn found Nomfunda still lying at the edge of the cliff, and the searchers again at work among the fissures. It was, they made sure, in one or the other of these that the body of “Rooi Jan” would be found concealed. Since the disappearance of Nomfunda, everybody was certain he had murdered the “Klein Baas,” (“Little Master”), as “Rooi Jan” was called. The whole forenoon was wasted on the lower parts of the mountain. Nomfunda still lay on the top of the cliff and watched the searchers. He now suffered from a burning thirst, but until nightfall he must endure this physical, in addition to his mental misery.Early in the afternoon a shrill yell of “Hier’s hij” arose from Gezwint, the old sleuth-Hottentot. He had again found the spoor. All that could be seen was a frayed pad of lichen on a sloping stone, higher up than any of the other searchers had reached. From this stone the spoor was taken on slowly and with difficulty until sundown, by which time it had been verified to the very top of the mountain, and within about four hundred yards of where the haggard watcher lay, enduring more than the agonies of death, at his post on the edge of the cliff.But the spoor could then be traced no further, and the nature of the ground rendered it extremely unlikely that any more tracks would be found. The top of the mountain was composed of flat stones lying closely together, and bare even of lichen.At nightfall the searchers again returned to the homestead, and Nomfunda hurried down the mountain to the spring, from which he drank his fill of the pure, cold, delicious water, the dog lapping next to him. Then he again ascended the mountain, stepping carefully from stone to stone so as to avoid making a spoor. In places where the stones were not continuous he carried the dog in his arms. He knew the animal was a source of danger to him, and he thought of tying its mouth up and its legs together and cutting its throat, but he remembered that the signs of the deed would be so much more to conceal, and, moreover, he could not endure the thought of the utter loneliness which would be his lot without the dog’s companionship.At midnight Nomfunda was sitting on a stone near the very summit of the mountain. The place where the body was concealed was about half-a-mile from him. The night was cold, but he did not feel any inconvenience although clothed only in a threadbare cotton blanket. He had been for two days almost without food, and for three nights he had not slept, yet he knew neither hunger nor fatigue. Just then he felt fairly comfortable. He was quite easy in his mind about the body; it would never be found—none of the searchers would ever dream of looking in that cave—probably none of them even knew of its existence... Nomfunda sprang to his feet and gasped for breath, whilst his very heart seemed to freeze in his breast. Had he nothimselfshown this very cave to young Piet, “Rooi Jan’s” brother, one day when they together were seeking strayed horses about two years ago? Fool, and again fool! Why had he hidden the body there? Talking over the events of the day down at the homestead, young Piet had probably by this told the others about the cave. It was certain to be visited next day—probably early in the morning. What was there to be done? An unspeakable solution of the difficulty kept suggesting itself, but he drove the frightful notion from him over and over again. At length it overwhelmed him like the slime of a serpent that drenches a crushed victim about to be swallowed. He must enter the charnel cave, and remove the body to some other hiding-place. But the horror of it! There is nothing so horrifying to a native as having to handle a dead body... “Rooi Jan” had been dead nearly three days... He felt through every fibre of his tortured being that he couldnotdo this thing. But hemust. The body must not be found. Until the body were found there was only suspicion against him; not proof. Yes,itmust be done, so get it over quickly and then laugh at danger. He caught up the dog again in his arms and fled, leaping from stone to stone, towards the cave. Before he reached it he had made up his mind as to what he should do with the corpse. There was another cave in an adjoining mountain about four miles away, and in a very inaccessible place. Fool, and again fool, not to have thought of this spot in the first instance.Nomfunda readied the mouth of the cave and, throwing down the dog, burst through the bushes into the charnel-house. He tore a strip off his blanket and tied it over his mouth and nostrils. Then he caught up the body, which lay horribly limp in his arms. He seemed to be endowed with more than human strength. The frightfulthingseemed to cling to him as it lay across his shoulders, and one loosely-hanging hand patted him gruesomely on the bare flesh of his flank with rhythm corresponding to his steps. His course led over bare, flat, rocky ledges. Here and there he sat down to rest. He noticed that the dog, although it followed, did not come near him. Day was just breaking when he reached the other cave. He entered at once, and placed the body in a cleft at the further extremity, piling up stones, which he felt for in the darkness, against it. One of these slipped down, and Nomfunda thought he heard the body move. He gave a wild shriek and rushed outside. It was broad daylight. The dog heard his steps and ran forward to meet him. When it caught sight of his face the dog stopped short and stood rigid with uplifted paw, and a tingling ridge of hair erected along its back. Then it gave a terrible howl, turned, and fled. It never returned to him.All day long the wretched Nomfunda lay beneath the undermined bank of a donga. Reeds and long grass concealed his hiding-place. When night fell, he again visited the spring, drank his fill of water, and plundered a bees’ nest in the cliff, from which he had only recently removed nearly all the honey. The combs were now full of bee-bread and young bees. These were better as food for him just then than mere honey would have been. After this he re-ascended the mountain and again concealed himself in the donga, where he fell into a deep sleep. This was the first time he had slept since the death of “Rooi Jan.” He was awakened early in the forenoon of the next day by voices. The speakers stood so close that he could hear what they were saying. Their speech was to the effect that in the event of the present day’s search proving unsuccessful they would on the following day overhaul the adjacent mountain, in which it was known that several caves existed. The wretched listener nearly expired from sheer terror. When night fell he emerged from his den and hurried to the second sepulchre of “Rooi Jan.” The body must again be removed. The moon was new and sank soon after the sun. He reached the cave and grovelled upon the ground before the entrance in terror and anguish. But the awful deed had to be done. He entered; the air was horribly foetid. One by one, with dreadful groanings, he dragged away the piled-up stones, and then, trying to hold his breath, he bore the corpse out into the pure air of the spring night. Then, shutting his teeth tight, he lifted the swollen horror to his shoulders and carried it in the direction of its former resting-place. He knew of another secret spot—a deep cleft near the edge of the clift overhanging the spring. He reached this spot with his ghastly burthen just before dawn. He rolled the body into the cleft and covered it with small bushes and handfuls of grass which he pulled out. After this he concealed himself in another cleft in the vicinity.Shortly after daybreak he saw the searchers again ascending the kloof, one of them leading his dog by a rein fastened to its neck. They passed over the mountain to his left, and he did not again see them until they returned in the evening. About mid-day he saw his dog, which had evidently escaped, running as hard as ever it could down the mountain towards the homestead, with the rein trailing from its neck.Nomfunda remained three weeks upon the mountain, and nine separate times he took the body of “Rooi Jan” on his shoulders at the last hiding-place, and, limping on lacerated and bleeding feet, removed it to another. The moon grew night by night in soft splendour, and looked down upon the awful spectacle of a putrid human corpse being carried from place to place by a human being. The tempest wrapped the mountain in flame and roarings, and the rain-charged wind buffeted the quick and the dead thus linked together by a gruesome prank of Fate. The pure breath of the midnight mountain breeze hurried on to rid itself of the taint left by the gross gases of mortality which the earth should have sealed up in its transmuting alembic, and the clear mountain height, sacred to the most cleanly influences of Nature, was polluted by the ghoul-wanderings of a terrific creature bearing an unspeakable burthen, whom horror had deprived of the semblance of humanity.The sequel to this narrative may be found in the records of a certain Circuit Court and the (more or less) thirty-year-old files of some Colonial newspapers. It may therein be read how old Gezwint was perplexed by the fresh spoors which he found from time to time; these sometimes showing signs of blood. Further, how the searchers eventually determined to remain on the mountain by night, where they then scattered about in pairs; how two of the searchers, concealed one night near a certain footpath, were startled by the sound of heavy groanings, followed by the rustle of staggering footsteps and an awful stench; how they then captured Nomfunda carrying what had once been the body of “Rooi Jan” Marais. He made no resistance, and they led him away to prison. His aspect was such as to strike dread into all who beheld him.It may also be ascertained from the same sources how Nomfunda was tried for murder by a jury composed of Dutch farmers, found guilty without any recommendation to mercy, and sentenced to be hanged by the neck till he was dead; how a certain minister of the United Presbyterian Church obtained access to the condemned man, heard his story, believed it, went to the scene of the initial tragedy, and found “Rooi Jan’s” gun where it was still concealed, with one barrel empty and one yet loaded; how representations were made to the proper quarter with the effect that the death-sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. One somehow fails to see clearly either the justice or mercy of this particular commutation. Possibly Nomfunda is still serving out his sentence.
“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”RomansVII, 24.
“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”RomansVII, 24.
Omfunda sat smoking his pipe alongside the fire he had lit close to the spring gushing out at the foot of the big cliff at the upper end of Krantz Vogel Kloof. The cliff arose sheer three hundred feet, and at each side of it the steep, broken terraces of the mountain, covered with huddled patches of immense boulders, swelled out into mighty flanks. From between the boulders gnarled and stunted trees grew, rooted in soil so deep down in the fissures that it could not be seen. Here and there dark, ragged-edged chasms yawned. These boulder-patches were bordered by fringes of scrubby forest, outside which grew coarse, matted grass.
It was a hot day in late spring, and Nomfunda felt drowsy. The bleatings of a flock of sheep came faintly to his ear. His dog lay curled up at his feet. The day was at noon. A light breeze hushed faintly through the tree-tops, soothing as the whisper of Somnus, and then died away. Nomfunda slept.
Nomfunda was the shepherd of Sarel Marais, the proprietor of the farm which took its name from the thickly-wooded kloof at the head of which he, Nomfunda, lay sleeping. Sarel Marais had over and over again warned him not to come with his sheep to this neighbourhood, for the reason that animals were so apt to get lost in the broken ground through falling into the fissures; and Sarel’s eldest son “Rooi Jan”—so called on account of his red hair—had sworn to have Nomfunda’s life if he ever again disobeyed in this respect. However, on the present occasion Nomfunda felt safe, for old Sarel was absent from home, and “Rooi Jan” had only a few hours previously departed on horseback for a farm several “hours” distant, where the girl he meant to marry in a few months’ time resided.
The foot of the cliff where the spring gushed out had a peculiar fascination for Nomfunda. It was cool on the hottest day. The water plashed from under a jutting ledge and scattered moisture over luxuriant masses of fern. The “umgwenya,” or “Kafir plum,” grew plentifully in the forest close at hand, and the holes in the porous cliff were full of bees’ nests brimming with the storage of industrious years. These bees were of the small, black, forest variety, which is celebrated as being extremely savage when interfered with; this fact, and the inaccessibility of the nests, accounted for their still being in existence. However, Nomfunda was an expert and daring honey-hunter, and was extremely pachydermatous; he hardly ever came to this spot without plundering a nest and feeding on honey to repletion.
Moreover, an antelope known as the “klipspringer” was to be found in large numbers in the neighbourhood, and Nomfunda’s dog thoroughly understood the way to circumvent this animal. Sometimes, quite on its own account, the dog would drive a buck to the point of some rock-pinnacle in the vicinity, and there hold it prisoner until Nomfunda, guided by the dog’s baying, would hurry to the spot and knock the buck over with his knob-kerrie. This dog was an utter mongrel showing traces of extremely diverse canine types. Its enemies declared they could even see a great deal of the jackal in it. The dog was, however, utterly faithful to its master, and had a wonderful knack of bailing up “klipspringers.” One peculiarity of the animal’s was that it never barked.
When Nomfunda awoke it was to find “Rooi Jan,” gun in hand, watching him. Nomfunda instinctively grasped his knob-kerrie, which lay on the ground next to him, and sprang to his feet. The dog ran behind its master and crouched, showing its teeth. “Rooi Jan” regarded Nomfunda in silence for some seconds, and Nomfunda returned his gaze. Then “Rooi Jan” spoke, using the Dutch language, which Nomfunda, who had worked among the Boers for several years, understood fairly well.
“Did I not tell you never to bring the sheep up here?”
“Ja, Baas.” (“Yes, Master.”)
“Did I not tell you that if ever you did, I would shoot you for the d—d Kafir dog that you are?”
“Ja, Baas.”
“Then,” uttered “Rooi Jan,” his face distorted with fury, and his voice coming in husky gasps, as he deliberately, one after the other, drew back the hammers of his double-barrelled gun, “to-day will I do it; to-day you are dead; to-day will your black carcase lie down among the rocks with the bones of the sheep that you—”
Nomfunda had all this time kept his eyes on the face of the enraged Boer, and when, blind and quivering, “Rooi Jan” lifted the gun to his shoulder, Nomfunda sprang to one side, whilst the charge of buck-shot passed so close to his head that he felt the wind of it. Then, as “Rooi Jan,” cursing his own clumsiness, was again raising the gun to his shoulder, Nomfunda lifted his knob-kerrie and flung it with all his force. The heavy knob caught “Rooi Jan” on the left temple, and he fell backwards, and lay on the ground motionless.
Nomfunda had no idea that “Rooi Jan” was seriously injured. The first thing he did was to seize the gun and pitch it down the kloof into a very thick patch of fern. Then he picked up his kerrie, returned to the seat he had occupied when “Rooi Jan” arrived, and sat down to await developments. He knew he had done wrong, and was prepared, as natives generally are, to take his punishment like a man. The dog became very uneasy; it began to whine and cowered against its master, with ears cocked, tail tucked under, and hair on end all along the back.
Nomfunda sat for a long time wondering why “Rooi Jan” did not move. Then he stood up and examined the injured man, who had fallen on his back across a flat stone. His head lay back and his mouth was wide open. A very small trickle of blood came from his left temple, and dabbled his hair. Nomfunda plucked a delicate frond of fern and held it in front of “Rooi Jan’s” gaping mouth and nostrils. It moved only to the trembling of the hand that held it.
For a long time Nomfunda could not realise what had happened; surely, he thought, a little wound like that could not cause death. Then the shadows began to fall the other way, the brown hawks came screaming out of their nests in the cliff, and the bees came up the kloof in a steady stream. Still “Rooi Jan” lay motionless, the ghastly pallor of his face and stretched throat contrasting forcibly with the vivid red of his hair and beard. Large, blue flies buzzed round in ever-increasing numbers, and eventually a few of them settled on the nostrils and lips of the corpse. Then Nomfunda realised that his master’s son was dead and that he had killed him.
The wretched man already felt the strangling rope around his neck. He was young and he loved his life. A flush of hope passed through him. No one saw the deed—he would hide the body down one of the clefts. No, that would not do; a search was sure to be made about here, and the smell would betray the hiding-place. The body must be hidden far away, high up on the mountain, in some secret place where it would never be discovered.
Nomfunda was of powerful build, and “Rooi Jan” had not been a very big man. The blood had long since ceased trickling, so after carefully removing the small quantity that had stained the stones, Nomfunda lifted the corpse upon his shoulder and began ascending the steep mountain-side. His course laid for the most part through cover, but he had now and then to emerge into comparatively open spaces. Each time, before doing this, he carefully reconnoitred, but not a human being was in sight in any direction. At length he reached the bleak and broken top of the mountain, and then he made straight for a small cavern he knew of, the mouth of which was concealed by shrubs. Here he laid the body, and after carefully re-adjusting the shrubs at the entrance, he returned to his sheep by a different course. The flock was scattered along the flanks of the mountain; he at once collected it and drove it down to the kraal at the homestead, where he arrived at the usual time. Then he joined the other servants in the hut wherein they dwelt together, cooked and ate his supper and laid himself down wrapped in his blanket,—just as though nothing had happened. But he lay awake during the whole night, thinking of “Rooi Jan,” whilst the dogs howled weirdly beneath the unregarding stars.
The disappearance of “Rooi Jan” caused great surprise and uneasiness. He had left the homestead early in the morning after an early breakfast, with the avowed intention of visiting the farm of Jacob Venter, which was situated about fifteen miles away, and where the girl lived to whom he was engaged to be married. He meant to return during the afternoon of the same day. It now transpired that he had not reached Venter’s farm. Each one of the servants, including Nomfunda, was closely questioned, but apparently nothing had been seen of the missing man since he disappeared riding along the road which scarped round the bluff just below the homestead, early in the morning. The spoor of his horse was traced along the road from here by an old Hottentot named Gezwint, who was celebrated as a tracker. This spoor was found to lead along the road for some distance, and then turn abruptly to the left towards the wooded kloof, at the upper end of which, four miles away, “Rooi Jan” had met his doom. It was late in the afternoon when the fact of the spoor turning out of the road was discovered, and night fell before it could be traced to any distance worth speaking of from this point.
Next morning at daylight the tracking was resumed. Old Sarel Marais had been sent for, but had not yet arrived. Several of the neighbouring farmers had been sent for to come and assist in the search. The party on the spoor consisted of old Gezwint, “Rooi Jan’s” younger brothers Piet and Willem—aged, respectively, fifteen and fourteen years—six young farmers, and several native farm servants. Old Gezwint worked like a bloodhound, deciphering almost invisible signs upon the rough, stony ground, and casting back whenever at fault. On again verifying the spoor after a check, he would call out “Hier’s hij” (“Here he is”), and again run forward on the slot, followed at a respectful distance by the others, who left the real business of the tracking to his well-known skill. It was at about noon that they came upon “Rooi Jan’s” grey mare, saddled and bridled, and tied to a tree deep in the bush. From this point they followed swiftly and without a check the slot of a boot up the kloof to the spring under the cliff. Here the spoor ceased. They found the remains of a recent fire, and the tracks of naked human feet, and of a dog. Beyond this point a spoor was hardly to be hoped for because of the nature of the ground. They spent the rest of the day in searching among the rocky chasms, but when night fell they had found no further track, nor any sign of the missing man. Upon the search party reaching the homestead an hour later, it was found that the flock of sheep had not been brought back to the kraal, and that Nomfunda, the shepherd, was missing.
Nomfunda was herding his sheep on the open, grassy slope to the left-hand side of the kloof when the search party was at work. The day was clear and still, and he could tell the whereabouts of the trackers from the shouts which arose from time to time. As the trackers advanced towards the head of the kloof, Nomfunda drove his flock along the hill-side by a parallel course until the broken ground was almost reached. Then he darted past the flock, and taking a course still further to the right, through some scrub, he worked his round-about way to the top of the cliff overhanging the scene of the tragedy. Here he lay down just above a jutting bush, through the branches of which he could see without being seen.
He saw the party emerge from the forest and disappear out of the range of his vision under the ledge where the spring gushed out. He could faintly hear the sound of voices, but without being able to distinguish the words. After a while he saw the men emerge and scatter about among the rocks, searching. He made sure they had found the gun, but had no fear just then of their being able to trace the body. It was almost dark when the party withdrew, but Nomfunda had been so absorbed in watching their operations that he had lost all recollection of his sheep. He had been in a state of complete fascination during the whole afternoon. Sometimes one or other of the searchers would take more or less the course along which the body had been carried up the mountain. When such happened, the unfortunate culprit would give himself up for lost: the cavern would inevitably be found and searched. Then the man who caused his uneasiness would proceed in another direction, and a joyous, unreasoning relief would take possession of the watcher, only to be dissipated when one of the others would accidentally take the former course.
The stars came out one by one, and at length the last shred of daylight died out of the sky. Then Nomfunda sat up and considered. He had lain on the same spot and in the same position for hours and hours. He began to collect his wandering wits. He suddenly remembered his sheep. Why had he come up on the mountain at all? he asked himself in desperation. He could not now return, for it would be impossible for him to give an explanation of his absence. Why had he not returned with his flock at sundown? Fool, fool—thus to tie the rope around his own neck. No, it would never do to return. He must escape;—but where to? The alarm had been given; he was known to everybody in the neighbourhood, and all would now be on the watch after he had practically admitted his guilt by remaining away from the homestead just when he ought to have been most particular to avoid any conduct calculated to cause suspicion. No, he must remain on the mountain,—for some time at all events. He had his day’s ration with him, but it was still untouched, for all day long he had been unable to eat. He was now hungry, but he determined to keep the food for the morrow. The dog had lain quietly next to him all day; its ears were cocked, its dilated nostrils were continuously working, and the ridge of hair along the back was still erect.
Next morning’s dawn found Nomfunda still lying at the edge of the cliff, and the searchers again at work among the fissures. It was, they made sure, in one or the other of these that the body of “Rooi Jan” would be found concealed. Since the disappearance of Nomfunda, everybody was certain he had murdered the “Klein Baas,” (“Little Master”), as “Rooi Jan” was called. The whole forenoon was wasted on the lower parts of the mountain. Nomfunda still lay on the top of the cliff and watched the searchers. He now suffered from a burning thirst, but until nightfall he must endure this physical, in addition to his mental misery.
Early in the afternoon a shrill yell of “Hier’s hij” arose from Gezwint, the old sleuth-Hottentot. He had again found the spoor. All that could be seen was a frayed pad of lichen on a sloping stone, higher up than any of the other searchers had reached. From this stone the spoor was taken on slowly and with difficulty until sundown, by which time it had been verified to the very top of the mountain, and within about four hundred yards of where the haggard watcher lay, enduring more than the agonies of death, at his post on the edge of the cliff.
But the spoor could then be traced no further, and the nature of the ground rendered it extremely unlikely that any more tracks would be found. The top of the mountain was composed of flat stones lying closely together, and bare even of lichen.
At nightfall the searchers again returned to the homestead, and Nomfunda hurried down the mountain to the spring, from which he drank his fill of the pure, cold, delicious water, the dog lapping next to him. Then he again ascended the mountain, stepping carefully from stone to stone so as to avoid making a spoor. In places where the stones were not continuous he carried the dog in his arms. He knew the animal was a source of danger to him, and he thought of tying its mouth up and its legs together and cutting its throat, but he remembered that the signs of the deed would be so much more to conceal, and, moreover, he could not endure the thought of the utter loneliness which would be his lot without the dog’s companionship.
At midnight Nomfunda was sitting on a stone near the very summit of the mountain. The place where the body was concealed was about half-a-mile from him. The night was cold, but he did not feel any inconvenience although clothed only in a threadbare cotton blanket. He had been for two days almost without food, and for three nights he had not slept, yet he knew neither hunger nor fatigue. Just then he felt fairly comfortable. He was quite easy in his mind about the body; it would never be found—none of the searchers would ever dream of looking in that cave—probably none of them even knew of its existence... Nomfunda sprang to his feet and gasped for breath, whilst his very heart seemed to freeze in his breast. Had he nothimselfshown this very cave to young Piet, “Rooi Jan’s” brother, one day when they together were seeking strayed horses about two years ago? Fool, and again fool! Why had he hidden the body there? Talking over the events of the day down at the homestead, young Piet had probably by this told the others about the cave. It was certain to be visited next day—probably early in the morning. What was there to be done? An unspeakable solution of the difficulty kept suggesting itself, but he drove the frightful notion from him over and over again. At length it overwhelmed him like the slime of a serpent that drenches a crushed victim about to be swallowed. He must enter the charnel cave, and remove the body to some other hiding-place. But the horror of it! There is nothing so horrifying to a native as having to handle a dead body... “Rooi Jan” had been dead nearly three days... He felt through every fibre of his tortured being that he couldnotdo this thing. But hemust. The body must not be found. Until the body were found there was only suspicion against him; not proof. Yes,itmust be done, so get it over quickly and then laugh at danger. He caught up the dog again in his arms and fled, leaping from stone to stone, towards the cave. Before he reached it he had made up his mind as to what he should do with the corpse. There was another cave in an adjoining mountain about four miles away, and in a very inaccessible place. Fool, and again fool, not to have thought of this spot in the first instance.
Nomfunda readied the mouth of the cave and, throwing down the dog, burst through the bushes into the charnel-house. He tore a strip off his blanket and tied it over his mouth and nostrils. Then he caught up the body, which lay horribly limp in his arms. He seemed to be endowed with more than human strength. The frightfulthingseemed to cling to him as it lay across his shoulders, and one loosely-hanging hand patted him gruesomely on the bare flesh of his flank with rhythm corresponding to his steps. His course led over bare, flat, rocky ledges. Here and there he sat down to rest. He noticed that the dog, although it followed, did not come near him. Day was just breaking when he reached the other cave. He entered at once, and placed the body in a cleft at the further extremity, piling up stones, which he felt for in the darkness, against it. One of these slipped down, and Nomfunda thought he heard the body move. He gave a wild shriek and rushed outside. It was broad daylight. The dog heard his steps and ran forward to meet him. When it caught sight of his face the dog stopped short and stood rigid with uplifted paw, and a tingling ridge of hair erected along its back. Then it gave a terrible howl, turned, and fled. It never returned to him.
All day long the wretched Nomfunda lay beneath the undermined bank of a donga. Reeds and long grass concealed his hiding-place. When night fell, he again visited the spring, drank his fill of water, and plundered a bees’ nest in the cliff, from which he had only recently removed nearly all the honey. The combs were now full of bee-bread and young bees. These were better as food for him just then than mere honey would have been. After this he re-ascended the mountain and again concealed himself in the donga, where he fell into a deep sleep. This was the first time he had slept since the death of “Rooi Jan.” He was awakened early in the forenoon of the next day by voices. The speakers stood so close that he could hear what they were saying. Their speech was to the effect that in the event of the present day’s search proving unsuccessful they would on the following day overhaul the adjacent mountain, in which it was known that several caves existed. The wretched listener nearly expired from sheer terror. When night fell he emerged from his den and hurried to the second sepulchre of “Rooi Jan.” The body must again be removed. The moon was new and sank soon after the sun. He reached the cave and grovelled upon the ground before the entrance in terror and anguish. But the awful deed had to be done. He entered; the air was horribly foetid. One by one, with dreadful groanings, he dragged away the piled-up stones, and then, trying to hold his breath, he bore the corpse out into the pure air of the spring night. Then, shutting his teeth tight, he lifted the swollen horror to his shoulders and carried it in the direction of its former resting-place. He knew of another secret spot—a deep cleft near the edge of the clift overhanging the spring. He reached this spot with his ghastly burthen just before dawn. He rolled the body into the cleft and covered it with small bushes and handfuls of grass which he pulled out. After this he concealed himself in another cleft in the vicinity.
Shortly after daybreak he saw the searchers again ascending the kloof, one of them leading his dog by a rein fastened to its neck. They passed over the mountain to his left, and he did not again see them until they returned in the evening. About mid-day he saw his dog, which had evidently escaped, running as hard as ever it could down the mountain towards the homestead, with the rein trailing from its neck.
Nomfunda remained three weeks upon the mountain, and nine separate times he took the body of “Rooi Jan” on his shoulders at the last hiding-place, and, limping on lacerated and bleeding feet, removed it to another. The moon grew night by night in soft splendour, and looked down upon the awful spectacle of a putrid human corpse being carried from place to place by a human being. The tempest wrapped the mountain in flame and roarings, and the rain-charged wind buffeted the quick and the dead thus linked together by a gruesome prank of Fate. The pure breath of the midnight mountain breeze hurried on to rid itself of the taint left by the gross gases of mortality which the earth should have sealed up in its transmuting alembic, and the clear mountain height, sacred to the most cleanly influences of Nature, was polluted by the ghoul-wanderings of a terrific creature bearing an unspeakable burthen, whom horror had deprived of the semblance of humanity.
The sequel to this narrative may be found in the records of a certain Circuit Court and the (more or less) thirty-year-old files of some Colonial newspapers. It may therein be read how old Gezwint was perplexed by the fresh spoors which he found from time to time; these sometimes showing signs of blood. Further, how the searchers eventually determined to remain on the mountain by night, where they then scattered about in pairs; how two of the searchers, concealed one night near a certain footpath, were startled by the sound of heavy groanings, followed by the rustle of staggering footsteps and an awful stench; how they then captured Nomfunda carrying what had once been the body of “Rooi Jan” Marais. He made no resistance, and they led him away to prison. His aspect was such as to strike dread into all who beheld him.
It may also be ascertained from the same sources how Nomfunda was tried for murder by a jury composed of Dutch farmers, found guilty without any recommendation to mercy, and sentenced to be hanged by the neck till he was dead; how a certain minister of the United Presbyterian Church obtained access to the condemned man, heard his story, believed it, went to the scene of the initial tragedy, and found “Rooi Jan’s” gun where it was still concealed, with one barrel empty and one yet loaded; how representations were made to the proper quarter with the effect that the death-sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. One somehow fails to see clearly either the justice or mercy of this particular commutation. Possibly Nomfunda is still serving out his sentence.