Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion

“Oh, hang it, old chap, it was so beastly hot! If we had started before breakfast instead of at twelve, it would have been all right. But Schalkburg is such a dry hole, and you get such a thirst on!”

“I don’t. But you will get liquoring up with every man Jack who speaks to you.”

“Well, but – you can’t refuse. And then you only go in there once in a blue moon. Surely one can have a bit of a spree.”

“No, you needn’t – not that sort of spree. And you can refuse. I often do. No – no – old chap, you can’t afford to make a Hottentot of yourself, and remember, you’ve got womenkind to look after.”

“Er – I say, Colvin, you know. Don’t let go anything to them about this, will you?”

“Of course not. Don’t you know me better than that? But squarely, Frank, unless you undertake to get on another tack I’ll never go into Schalkburg with you again.”

“Anyone would think I was a regular boozer,” said Frank, sulkily.

“That’s just what I don’t want you to become. And look here, you jolly near got up the devil’s own row at Reichardt’s. Those Dutchmen will spread all over the country that we were both roaring tight. Besides, what if that row had come off – we should come home nice objects with our noses broken and our teeth kicked down our throats? For remember they were a round dozen, and we only two, and some of these very ones, I happen to know, are pretty tough customers. Here, Frank. Take the reins, so long. There are a couple of fine pauw. Think we can get any nearer?”

“No. Let go at them from the cart.”

They had just topped a light swell, and there, about two hundred and odd yards from the road, stalked the great bustards. Quickly Colvin slipped from the buggy, and keeping on its other side, rifle in hand, watched his chance. Taking a careful and steady aim, he fired. Both birds rose, and winged their flight, but, after a few yards, the hindermost half dropped, then, flopping along a little further, came heavily to the earth, where it lay with wings outspread and quite dead.

“That’s good!” observed Colvin; “I knew he’d got it, heard the bullet ‘klop’.”

They picked up the splendid bird and regained the road. But before they had gone half a mile they made out a horseman riding furiously after them as though in pursuit.

“It’s old Sarel Van der Vyver,” said Frank, looking back. “Let’s give him a gallop, eh? He looks in a devil of a rage.”

“No – no! We must smooth him down,” answered Colvin, drawing the pace in to a slow trot. Very soon their pursuer galloped up, and they made out an old Boer in a weather-beaten white chimney-pot hat, and wearing a bushy grey beard. He seemed, as Frank had said, “in a devil of a rage,” and brandished in his hand a long-barrelled Martini.

“Daag, Oom Sarel!” called out the two in the buggy.

But the old man met this amenity with a torrent of abuse. What did they mean by coming into his veldt and shooting his game without his leave, and scaring his ostriches all over the place? He did not keep game to be shot by verdomde rooineks, not he. And much more to the same effect.

Both were rather surprised. They had never been on other than the friendliest of terms with this old man, and now he was rating them as though he had never seen them before in their lives. Well, here was another very significant sign of the times. But it gave Colvin an idea.

“Take the bird, Oom Sarel,” he said, making as though he would pull it out from the back of the buggy. “I only shot it for the fun of the thing – and besides, it was possible that Andries Botma might be at Spring Holt when we got back, and a fine pauw might come in handy for the supper of the Patriot.”

The effect of the name was magical.

“Kyk! Do you know Mynheer Botma, then?” asked the old Boer, in round-eyed astonishment.

“We had a great talk together at Stephanus De la Rey’s the other night, Oom Sarel,” responded Colvin; “but come along with us, and see if he has arrived at Wenlock’s to-night.”

This invitation the old man declined, though somewhat reluctantly. “He could not leave home,” he said. “But the bird – of course they must keep it. A friend of the Patriot! Well, well, Colvin must not mind what had been said at first. He,” the speaker, “had been a little put out that day, and was growing old.” Then exchanging fills out of each other’s pouch, they literally smoked the pipe of peace together, and parted amid much cordial handshaking.

“There’s a sign of the times for you, Frank,” said Colvin as they resumed their way. “Andries Botma’s name is one to conjure with these days. But note how his influence crops up all along the line! Even old Sarel Van der Vyver was prepared to make himself disagreeable. Not a Dutchman round here will hesitate to join the Transvaal, if things go at all wrong with us.”

“I’d cut short his influence with a bullet or a rope if I were Milner,” growled Frank.

Soon, in the distance, the homestead came in sight Colvin dropped into silence, letting his thoughts wander forth to the welcome that awaited him, and the central figure of that welcome spelt May Wenlock. He was not in love with her, yet she appealed to more than one side of his nature. She was very pretty, and very companionable; and girls of whom that could be said were very few and far between in the Wildschutsberg surroundings. Several of the Boer girls were the first, but few of them had any ideas, being mostly of the fluffy-brained, giggling type. May was attractive to him, undeniably so, but if he tried to analyse it he decided that it was because they had been thrown so much together; and if he had evoked any partiality in her, he supposed it was for the same reason – there was no one else.

“Who’s that likely to be, Frank?” he said, as they drew near enough to make out a male figure on the stoep.

“Eh? Who? Where?” returned Frank, starting up, for he was drowsy. “Maagtig, it looks like Upton, the scab-inspector. Ja. It is.”

No – there was nothing lacking in the welcome that shone in May’s eyes, thought Colvin, as they exchanged a hand-pressure. And he was conscious of a very decided feeling of gratification; indeed he would not have been human were it otherwise.

“Well, Upton, what’s the news?” said Frank, as they were outspanning, and unpacking the contents of the buggy. “Is it going to be war?”

“Don’t know. Looks like it. The troops in Grahamstown and King are getting ready for all they know how. Man, but things are looking nasty. The Dutchmen up in the Rooi-Ruggensberg are as bumptious as they can be. Two of them wouldn’t let me look at their flocks at all. I shall have to summon them, I suppose.”

The duties of the speaker being to overhaul periodically the flocks of all the farmers, Dutch and British, within a large area, in search of the contagious and pestilential scab, it followed that he was in the way of gauging the state of feeling then prevalent. Personally, he was a very popular man, wherefore the fact of his having met with active opposition was the more significant as to the state of the country.

“They’re just the same here,” said Frank. “For my part, the sooner we have a war the better. I wish our farm was somewhere else, though. We are too much in among the Dutch here for things to be pleasant for the mother and May when the fun does begin.”

Now Master Frank, though carefully omitting to specify what had led up to the incident of the road wherewith this chapter opens, expatiated a great deal upon the incident itself in the course of the evening, thereby drawing from his mother much reproof, uttered, however, in a tone that was more than half an admiring one. But in that of May was no note of admiration. It was all reproving.

“You are much too quarrelsome, Frank,” she said; “I don’t see anything particularly plucky in always wanting to fight people. It’s a good thing you had someone to look after you.” And the swift glance which accompanied this should have been eminently gratifying to the “someone” who had looked after him.

“Oh, if you’re all down upon a chap, I shall scoot. I’m going round to give the horses a feed. Coming, Upton?”

“Ja,” replied that worthy; and they went out. So did Mrs Wenlock, having something or other to see to in the kitchen.

There was silence between the two thus left. Colvin, sitting back in a cane chair, was contemplating the picture before him in the most complacent state of satisfaction. How pretty the girl looked bending over the ornamental work she was engaged in, the lamplight upon her wavy golden hair, the glow of freshness and health in her cheeks, the thick lashes half veiling the velvety-blue eyes!

“Well?” she said softly, looking up. “Talk to me.”

“Haven’t got anything to say. I’m tired. I prefer to look at you instead.”

“You are a dear to say so,” she answered. “But all the same I want livening up. I am getting a dreadful fossil – we all are – stuck away here, and never seeing a soul. I believe I shall get mother to let me go away for quite a long time. I am horribly tired of it all.”

“And of me?”

“You know I am not.”

The blue eyes were very soft as they met his. A wave of feeling swept over the man. Looking at her in her winning, inviting beauty as she sat there, an overwhelming impulse came upon him to claim her – to take her for his own. Why should he not? He knew that it lay entirely with him. He made a movement to rise. In another moment she would be in his arms, and he would be pouring words of passion and tenderness into her ear. The door opened.

“Haven’t those two come in yet?” said Mrs Wenlock briskly, as she re-entered, and quietly resumed her seat, thus unconsciously affecting a momentous crisis in two lives. Was it for good or for ill? We shall see.

Note.

“Oom Paul is riding on a pig —He falls off and hurts himself,Then climbs up and rides away – ”

A nonsensical bit of popular doggerel. In Dutch it makes a jingling rhyme.

Chapter Six.

Colvin makes a Discovery

“Gert.”

“Baas?”

“Saddle up Aasvogel after breakfast. I am going over to Krantz Kop.”

Thus Colvin Kershaw to his henchman, Gert Bondelzwart. The latter was a bastard Griqua – an elderly man, of good height and powerful build. He had taken part in the Langeberg rising, but had been “slim” enough to slip away just in time, and had contrived to put a large section of country between himself and the scene of his former misdeeds. At this man Colvin’s neighbours looked askew. He had “schelm” writ large all over his yellow personality, they declared. Colvin himself thought them likely to be right; but then Gert suited him. He was a good servant, and had never given him any trouble. Moreover, he had an idea that the fellow had, for some unaccountable reason, conceived an attachment for himself. Anyway, he did not choose to part with him to please anybody.

“Did you hear what I said, Gert?”

“Ja, sir.”

“Then why the devil don’t you answer, and go and do what I tell you, instead of standing there shaking your silly head as if a bee had stung you in the ear?”

“Krantz Kop is up at the far end of the berg, sir. Boer menschen up there very kwaai.”

“Well? What’s that to you? I didn’t say I wanted an after-rider.”

“Gideon Roux very schelm Boer, sir. Strange things happen at Krantz Kop.”

“Oh, go away, Gert. Get in Aasvogel from the camp – no, he’s still in the stable. Well, give him another bundle, so long.”

“What am I to ride, sir?”

“You to ride? Confound you, I said I didn’t want an after-rider.”

“I would like to go with Baas.”

Something about the persistency of the man struck Colvin. This yellow-skinned henchman of his was a wonderful fellow, and there was precious little he didn’t know. Well, he would take him.

“You can go then, Gert. You’ll have to ride Pansy, and she’s in a camp full of kwaai birds. Cobus and the others can help get her out – but hurry up, for I don’t want to be kept waiting.”

Colvin turned into his house and sat down to his solitary breakfast, waited upon by Gert’s wife, a middle-aged well-looking woman, as neat in her attire and person as the table arrangements were scrupulously clean and well served; a very jewel of a housekeeper, he was wont to declare, for a miserable bachelor establishment in the Karroo. The house itself was of no great pretensions – being merely a type of a not very well-to-do farmer’s residence – it having just passed out of the possession of that class of Boer. But there was plenty of room in it, and it could easily be improved, if its present owner made up his mind to remain on in it. And, indeed, it was a matter not very far from foreign to the question of improving and remaining on in it that was occupying the said owner’s mind as he sat alone at breakfast that morning.

How would May Wenlock look in her bright, sweet freshness, making a second at that solitary table? Her personality seemed to be creeping more and more into his life. Why did he not ask her to share it, the more so that he had no doubt as to what the answer would be? He was not a conceited man, but he was a fairly experienced and clear-sighted one, and would have been a born fool had he failed to perceive that the girl was more than partial to him.

Propinquity – that is, opportunity – has much to answer for. They had been thrown together a great deal, for have we not said that he had spent some time with the Wenlocks while looking about for a farm of his own? Moreover, he had come there handicapped by a kind of spurious heroic glamour, in that he was supposed to have saved Frank’s life on one occasion in the Matopo Hills, what time they were hotly pressed by the Matabele, and that rash youth had chosen to hang back when he should have been retiring with the column. He had collected half a dozen volunteers and brought him out just in time. To his own mind it had been all in the day’s work, but others had seen fit to make a great deal more of it than it seemed to deserve. Of course the girl had begun by making a sort of hero of him. Again, he himself personally was the kind of man that women take to – cultured, travelled, well-bred, and full of savoir vivre. It would have been strange if, considering the life the girl led, the few men she saw, of her own nationality at least – for although several of the young Dutch men around were both well-looking and well educated, she could not take to them – she should come to think a great deal of her brother’s friend, and their only English neighbour. Hence the intimacy that had grown and ripened between them.

Now he sat there thinking everything out. How near he had been only the evening before last to asking her to share his life! A fraction of a moment more would have done it, but for the interruption – timely or otherwise. Which was it? He loved her – how indeed could he help doing so, when in addition to all her attractions she was always so sweet and lovable to him? But he was not in love with her. He had passed the age for “falling in love;” had reached that wherein men become wholesomely critical. May Wenlock as May Wenlock was one personality – and a very charming and alluring personality at that May Wenlock with a proprietary interest, and a legally signed and sealed vested right in himself, was another. He had not been slow to descry in her a very strong spice of natural temper and wilfulness; and although now her demeanour towards himself was invariably sweet and winning, would it always be so? And this was a side of the picture which did not allure.

Propinquity! He had seen repeated instances, of the results of this, had even experienced some. The girl or, woman who “could not live without you” to-day might be voting you a bore of the first water by this time next year, or even earlier. Personally he had never felt disposed to find fault with this development. It cut both ways, as often as not in point of fact, his experience told him. But on one occasion, long years ago, it had not. He had been hard hit, and the process had left a bruise, a scar, not readily obliterated. Now, however, applying the recollection of that case to this, he decided that the symptoms were wanting. He was not in love with May, much as her presence appealed to him, and yet the consciousness of what he knew his presence meant to her afforded him a gratification he would not have been human had he not experienced.

Preferentially, too, he was not inclined to embark in matrimony. He had seen too much of it – too many instances of the weary humdrum chain thus riveted, the welding together of two lives into a deteriorating round of petty frictions which it furnished. But in this instance there was a still greater and, to his mind, more fatal bar. With all the advantages, the free and easy social code, and republican waiving of social distinctions which colonial life afforded, the fact remained that the Wenlocks were some little way from being his social equals. And he was a great believer in birth and breeding. In which connection he could not but admit to himself that the mere fact of the interruption by Mrs Wenlock of their tête-à-tête the other evening had jarred less upon him than a something in her tone and speech when effecting it. More uneasily still, he was constrained to admit that he had on certain rare occasions detected manifestations of lack of breeding in May herself, such indeed as he had never traced a sign of, at any time or under any circumstances, in the De la Rey girls for instance, or in any member of that family. And yet Stephanus de la Rey was “only a Boer.”

At this juncture the sound of horse hoofs outside cut short his meditations. The morning air was fresh and keen, and Aasvogel, a tall, deep-shouldered iron-grey, having been stabled for some days, gave him plenty to take care of when first mounted. But Colvin was fond of riding, so presently, letting out the powerful animal for all he wanted over the wide Karroo plains, a sense of keen joyous exhilaration scattered all serious thought to the four winds of heaven.

Soon the plain was left behind, giving way to a steep, rugged mountain-road winding between the spurs. Higher and higher it led, overhung by craggy cliffs, resonant with the shrill scream of the dasje and the loud hoarse bark of the sentinel baboon.

“Look there, Baas,” said Gert Bondelzwart, pointing to a cleft which ran up into a krantz where the slope ended not very high overhead. “That is where Gideon Roux shot a Kafir. He is a schelm Boer is Gideon Roux.”

“Was it during the war?”

“Nee, nee, sir. The Kafir had come to take away a girl Gideon Roux had on his place. Gideon did not want her to go, but the Kafir insisted – said he had been sent by her people to fetch her. So Gideon had him tied to the waggon-wheel and thrashed him with an agter os sjambok, till he should promise not to ask for the girl any more. He would not; so Gideon left him tied up all night, promising him some more sjambok in the morning. But by then the Kafir had managed to get loose. He hadn’t much start, though, and they hunted him with dogs. He tried to hide in that hole there, but Gideon and Hermanus Delport they called to him to come out. He wouldn’t. He had climbed on a rock inside to escape the dogs and was afraid to move. So they shot him dead.”

“When was this, Gert, and what did they do with the body?”

“About three years ago, Baas, or it might have been four. Do with the body? Maagtig, sir! There are holes and pits in these mountains where you or I might conveniently disappear and never be heard of again.”

“Are you cooking up a yam, Gert, just to pass the time; for don’t you know that in this country you can’t shoot even a Kafir and stow him comfortably away without being tried for murder and hanged?”

The man shook his head, with a very humorous look upon his yellow face. It bordered almost upon amused contempt.

“It can be done, sir, and it was done. All the country knows it. Gideon Roux and Hermanus Delport only laugh. Not a man in the Wildschutsberg or the Rooi-Ruggensberg would dare accuse them, or dare come forward to give evidence. Nee, sir, not a man, white, brown, or black. There are very schelm Boers in these mountains, and whoever tried to stir up that affair his life would not be worth a tickey. They would shoot him as they did the Kafir.”

Colvin reined in his horse to the slowest of foot-paces, and stared at the cleft as though struck with an idea.

“Have you ever been into that hole, Gert?”

“Nee, sir.”

“Then how do you know there is a rock in there the Kafir could jump on to escape Gideon Roux’s dogs?”

“That is the story, Baas.”

“Well, I’m going to have a look inside there. You remain here with the horses, and if anyone passes you can say I have gone after a reebok under the krantz.”

The ascent, though steep, was not long, and soon Colvin was standing within the mouth of the hole. It was a jagged fissure – running about twenty feet into the cliff, then narrowing to a low tunnel of about ten more.

Yes, this was quite correct. There was a rock – or rather a boulder. Colvin pictured, by the light of a flaming vesta, the hunted man standing gingerly on the apex of this to avoid the excited springs and snaps of the dogs. There was no sign, however, of any human remains – but – wait. Hallo! what was this?

The tunnel, which narrowed in from the end of the fissure, was half blocked. Colvin lighted another vesta, and bent down. Through the piled-up dust he made out what looked like a square rectangular stone. Stone? No – it was wood. It was one of three long flat packing-cases, piled one on top of the other. His nerves tingled with excitement. What discovery was he on the point of making? At any rate, whatever it might be, he would make it.

Now that his vision was accustomed to the semi-gloom he had no need of artificial light. The glimmering that entered from the outer day was sufficient. He hauled out the uppermost case. But how to open it? That might be done. Fortunately, he was provided with a large pocket-knife, containing various appliances which included a strong screwdriver. What was he going to discover? Human remains? Perhaps. Why, there might be others stowed away in like manner; victims of the wild and lawless inhabitants of this remote mountain district.

Then it occurred to him that the chest was very heavy. What on earth could it contain, and, by the way, what right had he to pry into its contents? For a moment he paused. But the curiosity and excitement attending upon this discovery were too great. Possibly, even, these chests and their contents had lain there for years and years unknown to anybody – even to the owner of the wild, and stony, and scattered stock-run on which they were hidden, but remembering Gert’s story that did not seem likely. Anyway, he would share the mystery with whoever held it. That could do no harm to anybody.

The lid was strongly screwed down. A few minutes of vigorous perspiring work and it was up. Whatever the contents were, they were protected by a thick wrapper of oilskin. This he proceeded to unwind, but carefully, so as to be able to replace it readily. Then a quantity of tow, also well oiled, and then —

No human remains, no shining coins, no old and massive silver, no treasure of any kind met his eager gaze. But there, in the top of the box, lay several rifles in a row.

He took one out, carried it as near the light of day as he dared go, and examined it. The weapon was one of the newest pattern – a Mauser. The others on the top layers were all alike. Allowing for the depth of the chest, he reckoned that it must contain at least a couple of dozen rifles. Here was a discovery. What was the meaning of this secret armoury? There could be only one. For only one purpose could these weapons be stowed away thus in the caves of the rocks – for the arming of the rebel Boers when the word went forth for them to rise, and join their brethren in the Transvaal and Free State, to throw off the British yoke from the Zambesi to Cape Agulhas.

Replacing the rifle, he rapidly screwed down the case, and stowed it away in the hole whence he had taken it, carefully piling up the dust and loose earth against it and the others so as to obviate all trace of interference. Hardly had he done so than the sound of hoof-strokes and harsh voices without struck upon his ear. Peering cautiously forth, he beheld, down upon the track from which he had ascended, two armed and mounted Boers, and they were in close confabulation with Gert Bondelzwart, his retainer.