Tales from the Veld

Chapter Fifteen

The End of the Tiger

I had been busy all day ‘branding’ the young cattle, and returning hot, dusty, and tired to the house, found Abe Pike comfortably seated in the cane chair, with the veldschoens of his outspread feet resting on the top bar of the verandah rail, and his lined face looking up at the thatched roof, whence came the loud zing of a bluebottle fly caught in the meshes of a spider web. A jar of my Transvaal tobacco was on the ground by his side, and a large jug of buttermilk near it.

“Don’t disturb yourself, Uncle!”

“I’m not agoing to. Mind how you step, else you’ll obset that buttermilk – not that it would matter much, for it ain’t been rightly made. Should ha’ been kep’ in a calabash with a drop of old milk in the bottom, to flavour it with a taste of biled leather and smoke that belongs to the proper article. But all the old arts is dying out, and insects and beasts is the only critturs that keep up the old customs. Conservatism is a law of nature – among men who have broken away from nature it’s a blind, unreasonin’ protest against change. Conservatism is the preserving wisdom of the aged, the salt of experience, and change is born of the rashness of youth. I’m a Conservative – I’m old. I should be presarved for the edification and guidance of the young. Give me the buttermilk.”

As he would not move, I tilted his chair over by kicking the legs away, and passed over his recumbent body to the bedroom. After a wash down I found him still outspread on the ground, his long legs hooked over the chair, and his head resting on his arm, while the glow of his pipe showed that he was still calmly smoking.

“What’s brought you over here, Uncle?”

“Well, I ’spect I walked. Have you ever observed, sonny, that the human body is so built that it will fit itself to any position? This is comfortable and the tobacco is fair to middlin’, fair to middlin’, with a touch of sulphur in it.”

I sat down on the stone steps to listen to the most delightful of all sounds – those made by the domestic animals and birds settling to rest; while from the deep black of the sky the stars shot out with a sudden blaze, and the cool night wind came softly whispering through the acacias.

Uncle Abe gathered himself up, and bunched upon the rail, his back bent like a sickle to keep his balance. “What’s acrost over yonder?” he said.

“My boundary ridge.”

“Your boundary ridge! An’ a euphorby tree, and a sprinkling of white thorn acacias, with the gum drops glistenin’ on the rough bark, and a few grey stones all covered with moss and a stretch of grey veld. Go ’long; there’s more than that under the curtain of the dark, for if there weren’t why would you an’ me sit here and look away off, an’ look an’ look, as ef behind the curtain was all the mysteries of the unknown world. The dark makes a wonderful difference.”

“So it does – when you’re five miles from home and hear the ‘gurr’ of a tiger.”

“Sonny, I’ve downed that black tiger.”

“You have!”

“That’s so. Ole Abe Pike has come out on top – and soon’s I skinned him I lit out to tell you the news. You see it was my wits against his. Traps was no good, so I determined to set my skin against his and trust to the ole gun. I calculated to tackle him right close up to his lair.”

“In the kloof?”

“Eweh! in the dark of the big kloof, where it’s that still you can hear the sap moving in the trees. You see that crittur was more’n ordinary cunning, and he’d seen how he was feared, so he’d settle it down to a certainty that no man would ever dare tempt death near his sleepin’ place. Therefore, though deadly risky, the best plan would be to go to that very spot. Next thing was to give him a good feed far away – and yet not too far. Ef the kill was too far he wouldn’t come back to his roost, and ef it was too near he wouldn’t eat before returning. So I built a little bush kraal near the kloof an got a brandzickt goat from Ned Amos to turn in.”

“Why not have tied the goat up in the kloof?”

“No good, sonny, with an ’xper’enced tiger. He’d a suspected a plant, ’cos his understanding ’ud tell him that goats don’t grow in kloofs. The kraal he would take as a piece of man’s foolishness. Before this I filed down a whole sixpence, and the filings I melted into a good round bullet, with some clean lead. Two charges I put in behind that bullet, and seed that the powder was well up in the nipple with the shiniest cap well pressed down. Then I killed a stink-cat – I’ll tell you why afterwards. I got the goat down to the kraal an hour before sun-down, and then I slipped into the kloof, treading like a shadder, with the bleat of the old billy buck calling loud. I pulled up, an’ waited till that ole man baboon, who had watched all proceedings, gave me the sign that the Black Sam was on the move. I felt my way on up to his lair under a shelving rock at the foot of the precipice that hems in the kloof on the top side. It was that dark I couldn’t see my hand, and I knew at once my plan would land me with a split throttle if I waited for his coming back. I was that skeered, too, with the whisperin’ in the trees, that I was just making ready to run when I see a firefly dodging around.”

“And you thought it was the tiger’s eye?”

“You wait. I seed a firefly making circles of flame against the blackness – and I cotched him gently – so’s not to spoil his lantern. I fixed him in the bark of a tree that stood near the den – and two others I fixed in line – one above, one below. The top was three feet above the ground, the middle was two and a half, and the bottom one a foot high. Next thing I threw that stink-cat in the den, and the smell of him came out thick, covering up all taint of a man. Then I settled down opposite the tree with the gun fixed on the little spark where I’d fixed the middle fly. I reckoned when the ole chap came home and smelt that cat he’d stand in disgust – and as the smell would strike him just by the tree his body would blot out the flies and give me a mark.”

“And he didn’t come back that way?”

“He did that, as it was the easiest way; but before he came the feeling grew in me that he was just behind watching me where I lay. I tell you, sonny, that long watch in the stillness of the dark, with a drop of water minute by minute falling into a little pool, and a sort of queer stirring noise among the trees, gave me the ague. But he came at last. It may have been three, or two o’clock; but without a sound he was there before me. My eyes had grown tired of watching those three dots of fire, and I’d been shutting them tight for a spell every now and again, and when I opened them the last time I saw the light was there, but altered. I looked away a second, then back, and there was three lights; but two of ’em were close together, and bigger. Jimminy! it was the ole man himself looking at me. I pulled the trigger, and the gun flew outer my hands. Then I rolled over and over, with a roaring, scuffling, and screaming in my ears as ef the gun had woke a whole crowd of devils and brought them howling outer the rocks. I rolled against a tree, and I was up it before I knew where I was, an’ all the time there was that scuffling an’ growlin’ and awful screamin’ going on down below. Bymby it got weaker and weaker, until it died off in gurglings and deep breathing, and by the grey light of the morning there was the two of ’em dead, the black tiger and the ole man baboon. The baboon had got his two long teeth in the big throat, and there he had held while the tiger with his hind claws raked the stomach clean out of him.”

“And where did your bullet strike?”

“It struck the tree, and smashed the top firefly to smithereens. The other two had dropped off.”

“Then you didn’t kill the tiger?”

“I reckon I did; at any rate, I’ve got his skin and the skull of the ole baboon. He was the biggest tiger you ever see, and old as the hills, with his teeth worn down. I’m sorry for the baboon, but I’m glad he was there.”

I have reason to believe that Uncle Abe maligned himself for the sake of the yarn. On examining the tiger’s skin subsequently, I found no traces of the baboon’s teeth, but exactly between the eyes was a bullet-hole. The old man had held his gun straight in the dark kloof.

Chapter Sixteen

Where the Quails came from

In the spring the quails come in from the west, and one September morning I went out into the standing oat-crops with two other guns, each one of us attended by a little Kaffir lad to retrieve the birds. By noon we had traversed and re-traversed in line the upper lands and low lands, bagging 98 brace, and then in the glare of the mid-day we took shelter in the shade of a yellow-wood tree. There we argued the ever-recurring theme of the coming of the quail.

In August there is not a quail to all seeming in the land, but suddenly, as the spring advances, there comes from every thicket of grass and square of growing corn on the coast the whistling call of the male bird – ‘phee – phe – yew’ calling in bird language, ‘where are you? – where are you?’ and the answering cry of the modest mate – ‘phee – phee’ – “here – here.” Whence do they come – these thousands of birds that throng along the coast? On that point regularly as September came round, as the 12-bore gun was taken down, and the cartridges filled with Number 6, we talked greatly, setting forth many theories. Silas Topper was of opinion that the quails spent their time in travelling round the continent of Africa in four huge armies, covering 500 miles from front to rear, and that while one was passing along the southern coast, the second army would be going north somewhere above the Zambesi, while the third would be traversing the shores of the Mediterranean, and the fourth skirting of Gold Coast. We all agreed that was a very good theory, and one deserving more credence than the crude, but positive, assertion of Amos Topper that the quail was originally a frog.

“It stands to reason,” Amos would say, “that a quail is developed from a frog. If ’tain’t so, what becomes of all the frogs? – tell me that. Take a caterpillar. A caterpillar comes from an egg, and a cocoon comes from a caterpillar, and a butterfly from a cocoon.”

“But a quail isn’t a butterfly.”

“Chuts! A tadpole comes from an egg, doesn’t it? Well, a frog comes from a tadpole, and a quail comes from a frog. That’s clear enough, ain’t it?”

Then, of course, the argument would start, and this particular September morning we had got well into the frog theory when old Abe Pike came along.

“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, as he sat down and selected a plump bird that Amos had carefully prepared for his own eating. He had opened it out by a cut down the breast bone, laid the broad bare back on the wood coals, and in the cup-like cavities of the breast had placed a pat of butter, with pepper and salt. The juices of the bird had gathered in these cavities, and Amos had just cut off a slice of bread to serve as a plate when old Pike forestalled him.

“That’s my bird,” said Topper, fiercely.

“Just yeard you say ’twas a frog,” grunted Abe, as he dug his knife into the earth to clean it.

“I said it was a frog, but it’s a sure enough bird now – blow you!”

“Go slow, sonny, go slow,” said Abe, between the mouthfuls. “Stick to one thing at a time. Once a frog always a frog.”

“Humph,” said Amos, as he picked out another bird from the heap. “I s’pose you never heard frogs whistling of a night?”

“Well, of course.”

“What do they whistle for, eh, if they’re not fitting themselves for the bird life – tell me that?” And Amos looked at us triumphantly.

“They whistle for the rain, you donderkop.”

“P’raps, then, you can tell us where these birds come from, as you’re so mighty clever.”

“To be sure, sonny, to be sure; they come from the clouds.”

“Oh, thunder!”

“Yes; from the clouds, or maybe higher. I s’pose you yeard of the people of Israel and how they were fed in the wilderness with manna and quail. Where d’you expect those birds came from? Frogs! No; they just dropped from the sky, and they’ve kep’ on droppin’ ever since in the spring.”

“Go along! There’s no people wandering in the wilderness in these days.”

“I seed ’em.”

“The Israelites?”

“No; the quail a-falling out the roof of the world. I’ll tell you how it came about that I diskivered this secret that’s been kep’ locked up all these hundreds of years. I’d been a-fishin’ off the great rock that stands out of the breakers over there yonder by the Kasouga, an’ the spring tide, rolling in with a great heave, made a boilin’ foam ’twixt me an’ the beach. I were fixed there for the night, sure enough; an’ I tell you what, sonny, when a man is brought face to face in the black of the night with the leaping sea, he don’t forget the time. Noise! by gum! You know what it is to be waked all of a sudden out of a sleep a full mile from the sea by the smacking crash of a great wave, and there I was in the very thick of the thunderation, with the big black breakers swishing out of the dark like a movin’ wall, and jus’ leapin’ agin the rock as though they were bent on sweeping it away. The white foam went flying above, drenching me through and through – and it grew so slippery up above on that table size top, that I was obliged to lay full stretched on my back with my heels agin a crack, and my arms outstretched – and my eyes fixed on the stars above whenever I could see them through the flying scud. Even a spring tide turns – and in the darkness before the early morning I could feel the rock under me growing firmer. I was just thinking o’ getting to the shore to dry myself in the white sand when I yeard a queer sound from the sky. There’s just one thing wanting to this yer quail.”

“What’s that?”

“Just a dash of Dop brandy.”

I passed him over the stone demijohn, and we listened to the cluck of the liquor as it poured into the tin komeky.

“Yes; out of the black of the sky there came a sort of sound that goes before a storm; and, boys, it licks me how such a shadder of a noise can come on in advance.”

“It’s the way with shadows,” said Amos, drily.

“Soh! but it’s a queer thing to hear the hum of a wind-storm before the wind comes along; jes’ ’sif th’re messages going ahead to warn critturs and trees to stand firm. Well, I squinted around, and bymby, as the light grew, far above I seed a something movin’, and the noise of its coming grew. ’Twas no bigger’n a umbrella when I fixed it; but it soon spread out, wider and wider, and what was the curiosest, it lengthened out behind like my old concertina. I tell you, I begun to get skeered, for I thought maybe ’twas one o’ them water-spouts. Then the light grew stronger and there was a twinkling from the growing column jes’ if thousands and thousands o’ poplar leaves was stirred by the wind. ‘’Tis alive,’ I said, jumping to my feet, and I scaled down that rock and scooted through the pools, and up over the sand hills to the shelter of the woods. I thought it was one o’ them here sea-serpents.”

“But it was not?”

“No sonny; it was a heaven-high column of quail. That’s what it were.”

“Falling from the moon, eh?”

“When the head of the column reached the ground, which it did, on the beach the whole length just collapsd like a falling tree, and the whole lot were just scattered along the coast in a twinkling.”

Chapter Seventeen

Abe Pike and the Ghon-ya

Old Abe had strolled over to my place to see a new Harvester tried on a good crop of wheat. In the previous reaping season I had been left suddenly in the lurch by my Kaffirs, who had silently vanished in the night for other scenes without a word of explanation, or a single regret for the loss they would put me to, and I determined to be prepared in future for such another vagary. Hence the Harvester, which reaped the corn and bound up the sheaves, aided only by one man and a boy. We were just sweeping clear the last square in the small field when Abe came up and hung himself on the fence, with his back bent like a bow, and his toes hitched under the lower wire. There, all bunched up, he eyed the machine in silence.

“Well, Uncle, what do you think of it?” I said, with some pride, as the last sheaf was tossed on one side by the human-like grippers.

He looked at me vacantly, then climbed slowly down, examined the sheaf and the tie, and then took a look all round the country.

“Things is changing,” he said.

“Yes; this is the age of progress and electricity.”

“And snorting steam engines and that there man machine – that thing without a heart, or a stomach, or eyes to see. Where’s the good?”

“It is a labour-saving machine, and enables me to produce more.”

“’Tis all vanity, an’ foolishness, an laziness – that’s what. Laziness and pride,” and the old sinner, who never did a fair day’s work in a month, wore an air of virtuous indignation as he resumed his seat on the fence.

“Things is changing – that’s so; and mankind’s on the down track. Time was when a reaper would take his sickle and harken to the rustlin’ of the yaller corn as he cut his way along, with the smell o’ the yearth in his nostrils, and the sight of all manner o’ living insects below him. And bymby he would straighten his back and look away over the land, or at the shining layers behind, and then he would stoop to it again with the thoughts busy in his mind as bees about a comb concerning the going out of the wheat in waggons an’ trains, an’ ships across the sea to the feeding of the nations. An’ look at this yer cast-iron reaper; what’s it good for but to work for a cast-iron man? That’s what’s the world’s comin’ to, with all the people cast in a mould. I’m gwine home!”

“Nonsense; come back with me and try the new lot of rolled tabak from the Transvaal.”

For all his disgust with the Harvester, Uncle Abe did not mind “riding,” to the house on the driver’s seat; neither was he cast down after supper when he sat out on the stoep. The day’s work was done for man and beast and the great quiet of the evening brooded over the place. There we sat and smoked in silence, until the glow died out of the sky, when the night creatures began to stir, sending forth inquiring notes as if to assure themselves that the time was really at hand for the starting of the wonderful orchestra of the insect band. And, as we listened, there rang out above the shrill drummings and chirpings and whistling, the weird, mournful cry of the “ghon-ya,” calling “ghon-ya!” “ghon-ya!” at regular intervals, until the melancholy of its far-reaching cry stilled the other noisy voices.

Abe stirred uneasily. “There’s the lost sperrit,” he muttered.

“Why, that’s the night locust!”

“Soh; jes’ a locust.”

“Yes, with a transparent drum in place of a body which he blows out when he wishes to make that noise, and rubs his legs upon the drum.”

“How big is this yer drum?”

“About as large as a hen’s egg.”

“So; and with such a small thunder-bag he can send out a noise that booms further than the greatest drum in the British army. Don’t tell me. That’s no insect; it’s a cry that comes from beyond.”

“Beyond where?”

“Beyond the dark. I tell you, sonny, when the ghon-ya cries he ain’t bothering himself about any glass-eyed beetle-hunter who’s just hankering to label all the critturs in this yearth; he’s not thinkin’ about you nor me, but he’s jes’ wailing in that shudderous voice to the shadders that pass by in the night; whether it’s to comfort ’em, or to put ’em on the right track, or to warn ’em of danger, I can’t say. One night I had taken the short cut past the big krantz, being late from the shop where I’d been for a tin of o’ black sugar, and thinkin’ of nothin’ at all when I yeard the ghon-ya’s cry passin’ overhead. There was nothin’ more’n ordinary solemn in the wail of it, but when I came to the thick of the wood it seemed to me there was a queer whisperin’ going on among the trees. Have you ever marked a bee against the shadder? Of course you have, and you’ll know how he moves like a drop o’ light as the sun strikes on his wings against the dark of the hill behind. Well, I happened to look back over my shoulder to the other side of the valley where ’twas as black as black, and in the glance of my eyes, with the blue and red light snapping from ’em as it does sometimes when you blink, in that very moment of turning, I seed a passing of a many shadders.”

“Tree shadows?”

“Shadders of dreams, sonny, I tell you. Jes’ in a flash I seed ’em moving up, and then all was black groups of trees; but I knowed where that whisperin’ come from. Yes, a many shadders hurryin’ on up that valley with the cry of the ‘ghon-ya’ pealin’ out ahead. Well, I got outer that valley pretty quick, and were hurryin’ by the top of the krantz overlooking the big kloof when the ‘ghon-ya’ cried jes’ ahead o’ me. A locust! Lor’, sonny, right afore me there was a something shaddery – a darker patch on the blackness, standing on the brink of the krantz overlooking the deep kloof that lay below stretching towards the sea, and the ‘ghon-ya,’ loud, long, mournful as the solitary toll of the death-bell, went out on the air, an’ I jes’ went to the ground as if the bones had all been drawed out. Looking along the top, with my eyes to the light that was in the sky over the sea, I seed them shadders from the valley file down into the kloof. A many shadders, sonny, come out of the valley – passed by that dark patch, and jes’ floated down into the kloof – whispering as they went. What sort o’ shadders they were I couldn’t tell you, my lad; but they belong, sure enough, to the other world beyond the dark. Many a time I yeard them same things in the kloof, when the dead quiet has been broken by a movement in the air, and a sort o’ creepin’ sound ’sif somethin’ were peepin’ at you from behind a tree. You’ve felt it, too, of course. The dogs they know, ’cos they’re not so cock-sure as we are about knowin’ everything jes’ bekose we can make a cast-iron reaper.”

The ghon-ya from the darkness called again, as if the sorrows of the world were in the cry.

“A locust!” cried Abe scornfully; “that’s no locust. It’s calling the sperits of the woods together, and the ghostses of animiles – that’s what; and that’s why all the other noises is hushed.”

Chapter Eighteen

Abe Pike and the Kaffir War

“Were you ever in the wars, Abe?” I asked the old chap on one of my off-days, when I had called on him to go out after rhea-buck.

“Were I ever in the wars? Did I ever grow pumpkins? There’s some fellows go through life asking questions about things that’s as plain as plain – why, blow me, I’ve known ’em ask ef ’twdn’t be a fine day when there’s bin no rain for a month and not a stir o’ wind.”

“So you have been in the wars?”

Grunt.

“I suppose,” said I, unmoved by Abe’s indignation, “you never got into a fix – always kept with the rear column?”

“What, me! Jes’ you look here,” and cocking up his chin, he showed a long scar under his beard. “Assegai!” he said.

“Must have been a close shave!”

“’Twarnt no barber held that wepin I tell you, sonny. No, sir! I jes’ seed the whites of his eyes and the gleam of his teeth, and whizz! – whough! – the assegai darted like a serpent’s tongue. He was painted red, he were!”

“Who?”

“The Kaffir, you blind eyed calabash. It was in Blaauw krantz in ’45. You don’t remember those days, ’cos you weren’t born, but Blaauw krantz were jes’ where it is now, and the red Kaffirs had suddenly got back their old idea they could drive us into the sea. Wonderful how sot they are on getting us into the salt water; and that time they was partikler keen on making us take to the sea without so much as a plank. Of course we knew there was something in the wind. When Kaffirs mean to fight they don’t fire off blank cartridges in the papers; they jes’ keep dark, uncommon dark an’ sulky, but for all that they can’t keep down the human nature that’s in ’em, and they have a way of giving you the shoulder when you order them about that means mischief. When a Kaffir clicks at you with his tongue you don’t want him to tell you in plain words that he’s quaai and would like to belt you over the head. Well, I tell you, you dursen’t order a boy to step a yard but he’d click, an’ some of the chaps with families took the hint and shifted into Grahamstown; but, lor’ bless yer, the Government didn’t take any notice. Oh no; the Government knew the Kaffirs and it knew the whites, and it believed in the Kaffirs. Look here, sonny, Government’s a ass – alus was a ass, and alus will be a ass. Alus so darned cock-sure, and so blamed ignorant that any Kaffir chief could best it every time. You know, sonny, the chief he would jes’ come along – simple an’ humble – and pitch in a yarn about how he loved the ‘great white ox,’ how he wished to herd his cattle in peace, and how thankful he’d be if the great white chief would send him a little white chief to keep the wicked white men from his kraals. All he wanted was peace – since he had listened to the words of wisdom from the Government. Then the chief would say: ‘That is my speech,’ and the Government would up and pat him on the back; an’ when the farmers said the Kaffirs meant to fight, Government would tell ’em they was a passel of fools. Oh, I tell you, Government is vain as a boy in a new weskit, an’ as easily humbugged. Well, about 1845 Government was laced up and smoothed down by the chiefs, with their tongues in their cheeks, and on a sudden the war smoke rose on the frontier.”