Chapter Fifteen.
Treats of the Zuurveld again, and one or two Surprising Incidents
Seated one evening at the door of their dug-out hut or cavern on the banks of the river, the three brothers Skyd discussed the affairs of the colony and smoked their pipes.
“Never knew such a country,” said John Skyd, “never!”
“Abominable!” observed James.
“Detestable!” remarked Robert.
“Why don’t you Skyd-addle then?” cried Frank Dobson. “If I thought it as bad as you do, I’d leave it at once. But you are unjust.”
“Unjust!” echoed John Skyd; “that were impossible. What could be worse? Here have we been for three years, digging and ploughing, raking and hoeing, carting and milking, churning and—and—and what the better are we now? Barely able to keep body and soul together, with the rust ruining our wheat, and an occasional Kafir raid depriving us of our cattle, while we live in a hole on the river’s bank like rabbits; with this disadvantage over these facetious creatures, that we have more numerous wants and fewer supplies.”
“That’s so,” said Bob; “if we could only content ourselves with a few bulbous roots and grass all would be well, but, Frank, we sometimes want a little tea and sugar; occasionally we run short of tobacco; now and then we long for literature; coffee sometimes recurs to memory; at rare intervals, especially when domestic affairs go wrong, the thought of woman, as of a long-forgotten being of angelic mould, will come over us. Ah! Frank, it is all very well for you to smile, you who have been away enjoying yourself for months past hunting elephants and other small game in the interior, but you have no notion how severely our failures are telling on our spirits. Why, Jim there tried to make a joke the other day, and it was so bad that Jack immediately went to bed with a sick-headache.”
“True,” said Jack solemnly, “quite true, and I couldn’t cure that headache for a whole day, though I took a good deal of Cape-smoke before it came on, as well as afterwards.”
“But, my dear chums,” remonstrated Dobson, “is it not—”
“Now don’t ask, ‘Is it not your own fault?’ with that wiseacre look of yours,” said John Skyd, testily tapping the bowl of his pipe on a stone preparatory to refilling it. “We are quite aware that we are not faultless; that we once or twice have planted things upside down, or a yard too deep, besides other little eccentricities of ignorance; but such errors are things of the past, and though we now drive our drills as straight as once, heigho! we ruled our account-books, things don’t and won’t improve.”
“If you had not interrupted me, Jack, you might have spared much breath and feeling. I was about to say, Is it not a fact that many of the other settlers are beginning to overcome their difficulties though you are not? True, it has now been found that the wheat crops, on which we at first expected almost entirely to depend, have for three seasons proved an entire failure, and sheep do not thrive on our sour grass pasturage, though they seem to have done admirably with the Scotch at Baviaans River; but have not many of those around us been successful in raising rye, barley, oats, and Indian corn? have they not many herds of healthy cattle? are not pumpkins and potatoes thriving pretty well, and gardens beginning to flourish? Our roasted barley makes very fair coffee, and honey is not a bad substitute for sugar.”
“You have made a successful bag this trip, I see, by your taking such a healthy view of our circumstances,” said Bob.
“Yes, I’ve done very well,” returned Dobson; “and I find the hunter’s life so congenial, and withal so profitable, that I’m really thinking of adopting it as a profession. And that brings me to the object of my visit here to-night. The fact is, my dear fellows, that men of your genius are not fit for farmers. It takes quiet-going men of sense to cultivate the soil. If you three were to live and dig to the age of Methuselah you’d never make a living out of it.”
“That’s plain speaking,” said John, with a nod, “and I agree with you entirely.”
“I mean to speak plainly,” rejoined Dobson, “and now what I propose is, that you should give it up and join me in the ivory business. It will pay, I assure you.”
Here their friend entered into a minute and elaborate account of his recent hunting expedition, and imparted to John Skyd some of his own enthusiasm, but James and Robert shook their heads. Leaving them to think over his proposal, their friend went to make a call on the Brooks of Mount Hope.
“Drat that boy! he’s escaped again, and after mischief I’ll be bound!” was the first sound that saluted him as he walked towards the house. It was Mrs Scholtz’s voice, on the other side of the hedge with which the garden was surrounded. The remark was immediately followed by a piercing shriek from the nurse, who repeated it again and again. Dobson could see her through an opening in the branches, standing helpless, with her hands clasped and eyeballs glaring. Thoroughly alarmed, he dashed towards the gate. At the same moment the voice of a child was heard:—
“Oh, look!—look ’ere, nuss, ain’t I cotched a pritty ting—such a pritty ting!”
Springing through the gate, Dobson beheld Master Junkie, staggering up the track like a drunken man, with one hand clasped tight round the throat of a snake whose body and tail were twining round the chubby arm of its captor in a vain effort at freedom, while its forked tongue darted out viciously. It was at once recognised as one of the most deadly snakes in the country.
“Ain’t it a booty?” cried Junkie, confronting Dobson, and holding up his prize like the infant Hercules, whom he very much resembled in all respects.
Dobson, seizing the child’s hand in his own left, compressed it still tighter, drew his hunting-knife, and sliced off the reptile’s head, just as Edwin Brook with his wife and daughter, attracted by the nurse’s outcry, rushed from the cottage to the rescue. Scholtz and George Dally at the same time ran out respectively from stable and kitchen.
Mrs Scholtz had gone into a hysterical fit of persistent shrieking and laughter, which she maintained until she saw that her darling was saved; then, finishing off with a prolonged wail, she fell flat on the grass in a dead faint.
Junkie at the same moment, as it were, took up the cry. To be thus robbed of his new-found pet would have tried a better temper than his. Without a moment’s hesitation he rushed at Frank Dobson and commenced violently to kick his shins, while he soundly belaboured his knees with the still wriggling tail of the poor snake.
“What a blessing!” exclaimed Mrs Brook, grasping Dobson gratefully by the hand.
“What a mercy!” murmured Gertie, catching up the infant Hercules and taking him off to the cottage.
“What a rumpus!” growled Dally, taking himself off to the kitchen.
Scholtz gave no immediate expression to his feelings, but, lifting his better half from the grass, he tucked her under one of his great arms, and, with the muttered commentary, “zhe shrieckz like von mad zow,” carried her off to his own apartment, where he deluged her with cold water and abuse till she recovered.
“Your arrival has created quite a sensation, Dobson,” said Edwin Brook, with a smile, as they walked up to the house.
“Say, rather, it was opportune,” said Mrs Brook; “but for your prompt way of using the knife our darling might have been bitten. Oh! I do dread these snakes, they go about in such a sneaking way, and are so very deadly. I often wonder that accidents are not more frequent, considering the numbers of them that are about.”
“So do I, Mrs Brook,” returned Dobson; “but I suppose it is owing to the fact that snakes are always most anxious to keep out of man’s way, and few men are as bold as your Junkie. I never heard of one being collared before, though a friend of mine whom I met on my last visit to the karroo used sometimes to catch hold of a snake by the tail, whirl it round his head, and dash its brains out against a tree.”
“You’ll stay with us to-day, Dobson!” said Brook.
Frank, involuntarily casting a glance at the pretty face of Gertie—who had by that time attained to the grace of early womanhood,—accepted the invitation, and that day at dinner entertained the family with graphic accounts of his experiences among the wild beasts of the Great Fish River jungles, and dilated on his prospects of making a fortune by trading in ivory. “If that foolish law,” he said, “had not been made by our Governor, prohibiting traffic with the Kafirs, I could get waggon-loads of elephants’ tusks from them for an old song. As it is, I must knock over the elephants for myself—at least until the laws in question are rescinded.”
“The Governor seems to have a special aptitude,” said Brook, with a clouded brow, “not only for framing foolish laws, but for abrogating good ones.”
The Governor referred to was Lord Charles Somerset, who did more to retard the progress of the new settlements on the frontiers of Kafirland than any who have succeeded him. Having complicated the relations of the colonists and Kafirs, and confused as well as disgusted, not to say astonished, the natives during his first term of office, he went to England on leave of absence, leaving Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin to act as Governor in his place.
Lord Charles seems to have been a resentful as well as an incapable man, for immediately after his return to the colony in 1821 he overturned the policy of the acting Governor, simply because he and Sir Rufane were at personal enmity. The colony at that time, and the Home Government afterwards, approved of the wise measures of the latter. He had arranged the military forces on the frontier so as to afford the new settlers the greatest possible amount of protection; the Cape corps men had been partly placed at their disposal, both to assist and defend; those who found their allotted farms too small, had them increased to the extent of the farms of their Dutch neighbours; acceptable public officers were appointed; provisions were supplied on credit, and everything, in short, had been done to cheer and encourage the settlers during the period of gloom which followed their first great calamity, the failure of the wheat-crops. All this was upset on the return of Lord Charles Somerset. With a degree of tyranny and want of judgment worthy of a mere “Jack-in-office,” he immediately removed from the magistracy of the British Settlement of Albany a favourite and able man, to make room for one of his own protégés and supporters. He withdrew troops from one of the most important frontier villages (in a strategic point of view), and stopped the formation of a road to it, thus compelling the settlers to desert it and leave their standing crops to the surprised but pleased Kafirs, who were perplexed as well as emboldened by the vacillating policy of white Governors! In addition to this he gave permission to the savage chief Macomo to occupy the land so vacated, thus paving the way for future wars. Instead of encouraging traffic with the Kafirs he rendered it illegal. He issued a proclamation forbidding all public meetings for political purposes; he thwarted the philanthropic and literary Pringle and Fairbairn in their attempts to establish a newspaper, and drove the former from the colony. But why proceed? We cite these facts merely to account for the cloud on Edwin Brook’s brow, and for the fact that at this time many of the British settlers, who would gallantly have faced the “rust” and other troubles and difficulties sent to them by Providence, could not bear the oppression which “driveth a wise man mad,” but, throwing up all their hopes and privileges as settlers, scattered themselves far and wide over the colony. This, as it happened, was much to the advantage of themselves and the old Dutch settlers with whom they mingled. Those of them who remained behind, however, continued to fight the battle against oppression and circumstances most manfully.
Long and patiently did Mrs Brook listen to her visitor and husband while they indignantly discussed these subjects.
“But why,” said she, at last giving vent to her feelings, “why does the Government at home not remove such an incapable and wicked Governor and give us a better?”
“Because, my dear,” replied Edwin, with a smile, “the incapable and wicked Governor happens to possess almost despotic power, and can gain the ear of men in high places at home, so that they are deceived by him, while all who venture to approach them, except through this Governor, are regarded with suspicion, being described as malcontents. And yet,” continued Brook, growing warm at the thought of his wrongs, “we do not complain of those at home, or of the natural disadvantages of the country to which we have been sent. We settlers are actuated by one undivided feeling of respect and gratitude to the British Government, which future reverses will never efface; but it is peculiarly hard to have been sent to this remote and inaccessible corner of the globe, and to be left to the control of one individual, who misrepresents us and debars us the right to express our collective sentiments. Why, we might as well be living under the dominion of the Turk. But a word in your ear, Frank Dobson; meetings have been held, private ones, while you were away in the bush, and our case has been properly represented at last, and a Royal Commission of Inquiry is to be sent out to put things right. So there’s hope for us yet! The clouds which have been so long lowering, are, I think, beginning to clear away.”
While the sanguine settler was thus referring to the clouds of adversity which had for more than two years hovered over the young settlement, the natural clouds were accumulating overhead in an unusually threatening manner. Long periods of drought are frequently followed in South Africa by terrible thunderstorms. One of them seemed to be brewing just then.
“I fear Hans and Considine will get wet jackets before they arrive,” said Frank Dobson, rising and going to the window.
“Hans and Considine!” exclaimed Gertie, with a flush; “are they here?”
“Ay, they came with me as far as Grahamstown on business of some sort.—By the way, what a big place that is becoming, quite a town! When we saw it first, you remember, it was a mere hamlet, the headquarters of the troops.”
“It will be a city some day,” prophesied Brook as he put on an old overcoat that had hitherto survived the ravages of time; “you see all our comrades who have discovered that farming is not their vocation are hiving off into it, and many of them, being first-rate mechanics, they have taken to their trades, while those with mercantile tendencies have opened stores. You shall see that things will shake into their proper places, and right themselves in time, and this will become a flourishing colony, for the most of us are young and full of British pluck, while the climate, despite a few trifling disadvantages, is really splendid.”
Edwin Brook spoke heartily, as he clapped his hat firmly on, preparatory to going out to make things secure against the expected storm.
At the same moment the South African storm-fiend (an unusually large though not frequently obtrusive one) laughed in a voice of thunder and nearly dashed in the windows with a tempest of wind and rain! As if his voice had called up spirits from the “vasty deep,” two horsemen suddenly appeared approaching at full speed. One of them was of unusual size.
“Here they come just in time!” exclaimed Gertie, clapping her hands in excitement.
The girl spoke and acted there. Then she blushed for the woman interfered!
Hans Marais reached the quince hedge first and sprang off his steed. Charlie Considine came second. With a wild whoop he caused his steed to leap the garden gate and dismounted at the cottage door.
Then there was a hearty welcoming and inquiring, and shaking of bands, while the travellers were congratulated on having just escaped the storm.
While this was going on at Mount Hope, the Skyds were actively engaged in gathering in their rattle and otherwise making their place secure. They had more than once been warned that their position was one of danger, but being young, athletic, and rollicking, they had not cared hitherto to remove their humble dwelling. It was time enough to do that, they said, when “lovely woman” should come on the scene and render improvement in domicile necessary. Bob Skyd had more than once attempted to induce a “lovely woman” to invade the land and enlighten the cave, but somehow without success!
“We shall have it stiff,” said John, as the three brothers approached their burrow.
“And heavy,” added Bob.
James made no remark, but opened the door. It was growing dark at the time and inside their cavern only a dim light prevailed.
“Why—what’s—hallo! I say—”
Jim leaped back with a look of alarm. The brothers gazed in and saw, in the region of their bed (which held three easily), a pair of glaring eyeballs.
The brothers, although not superstitious, were by no means free from human weakness. At the same time they were gifted with a large share of animal courage. With beating heart John struck a light, and held up a flaming brimstone match. This caused the eyes to glare with fearful intensity, and revealed a distinct pair of horns. At that moment the match went out. With anxious trepidation another light was struck, and then it was discovered that a recently purchased goat had, under a wrong impression, taken possession of the family bed.
Laughing at this, they lit a tallow candle, which was stuck into that most convenient of candlesticks—an empty bottle.
The brothers, although not proficients, were mechanical in their way. One had set up the household bed; another had constructed a table, which had broken down only six times since their arrival; and the third had contrived a sofa. This last was Jim’s work. It was a masterpiece in its way, of simplicity, and consisted of two rough planks laid on two mounds of earth, the whole being covered with a piece of chintz which fell in a curtain to the floor. This curtain, like love, covered a multitude of improprieties, in the shape of old boots, dirty linen, miscellaneous articles, and a sea-chest.
Sitting down on the sofa, John Skyd laughed long and heartily at the scene with the goat. His laugh suddenly ceased, and was replaced by an exclamation and a look of anxious surprise. “Something” had moved under the sofa! Snakes occurred to their minds at once, and the deadly character of South African snakes was well known.
“Look out, boys,” cried John, leaping on the sofa, and seizing a sword which hung on a peg just above it.—“Fetch the light.”
Bob quickly obeyed and revealed the tail of a large cobra disappearing among the improprieties. Jim ran to a rude cupboard where pistols and ammunition were kept, and began to load with small shot.
“This way I hold it closer to the wall,” said John, in an earnest voice; “I see one of his coils at the back of the sofa. Now then, steady—there!”
He made a deadly thrust as he spoke and pinned the snake to the ground, but evidently by the wrong coil, for in a moment its angry head was seen twining up towards the handle of the sword.
“Quick, Jim—the pistol!”
Jim was ready and Bob raised the curtain of the sofa, while John stood in readiness to let go the sword and bolt if the reptile should prove to be capable of reaching his hand.
“Fire, Jim, fire! look sharp!” cried John Skyd.
Jim took aim and fired. The candle was put out by the concussion.
In the dark John could risk the danger no longer. He let go the sword and sprang with a shout upon the bed. Bob and Jim made for the same place of refuge, and, tumbling over each other, broke the pint bottle and the candle. Securing a fragment of the latter they proceeded once more to strike a light, with quaking hearts, while a horrible hissing and lashing was heard under the sofa. At last light was again thrown on the scene, and when the curtain was cautiously raised the cobra was seen to be writhing in its death-agonies—riddled with shot, and still pinned with the sword.
This scene closed most appropriately with a flash of lightning and a tremendous clap of thunder,—followed, immediately, by cataracts of rain.