W. C. Scully

“ Aiäla had hitherto been loverless; now passion awoke in her torrid, Eastern nature like a summer tempest on an Indian Sea, and its waves’ resistless strength undermined what had hitherto been the impregnable rock of Brand’s insensibility. All the untaught wiles which are as instinctive to the natural woman in her youth as is preening its feathers to a bird in the spring-time, were lavished on him, and long before he even suspected it, Aiäla had filled his heart as completely as he filled hers. ”

“ Here the snowstorms of foam, fierce as fire,
⁠Shine bright 'neath the stars that they hide,
When the resonant surges retire
⁠From the rock that their rage hath defied.
Yet the heart that is weary of beating
⁠Finds here from its fever surcease,
And grief of compassion finds greeting
⁠Where the war-song of waters is peace;
Where the roar of the strife-smitten world
⁠Is drowned in the chant of the sea,
Lo! the banner of peace is unfurled,
⁠And the soul in its thraldom is free. ”

“ All day long she could think of nothing but Elsie, the silky richness of whose yellow hair seemed to adhere to her dusky fingers and to lie like chrysm upon her charitable palm.
That day the little shop and dwelling was swept and garnished as it had never been since the death of the woman’s own child. Clean sheets were placed upon the bed and a new and more wonderful patchwork quilt was unearthed from the depths of the press and spread out in all its glory. As evening drew near she cooked a dainty little supper; the child would surely return hungry after her walk. ”

“ It was broad daylight when the Balotsi drew off, and the Zulus could see their enemies massed round them in every direction, and outnumbering them excessively. Both parties paused for a time, each watching the other. The sun rose up over the mountains, the sky was clear as a dewdrop, and a bracing breeze swept down the valley, making music through the quivering reeds. Herds of eland, hartebeests, gnu, and other game, stood on the slopes afar off, and looked down on the dark masses of men standing still in grim silence after their desperate struggle.
Then Kondwana gave the order to retreat. ”

“ The last link with the world inhabited by men snapped when the hapless oxen disappeared over the rim of the desert. Like a water-logged ship in a tideless sea—like a derelict among the Sargossa weeds,—the wagon stood in the solitude and silence, with the cloudless sky above and the sun-scorched earth beneath—with the dune-fiend watching us from his lair. It was almost an insult to the landscape—this wood-and-canvas construction of man, hauled jolting and groaning across the pathless desert by tamed and tortured beasts. ”

“ The grass which had sprung up rank and luxuriant withered again, and now the farm, which was much under-stocked, lay like a clay potsherd covered with tinder.
One afternoon the sun smote the earth with more than usual fury. Away to the westward irregular fragments of thundercloud, which seemed incapable of cohering sufficiently to produce a storm, coquetted with the quivering mountain-tops. Ever and anon irregular gusts from the eastward would trail over glowing hill and gasping vale with a sound as though the tortured earth were sobbing an appeal to the skies for the withheld mercy of rain. ”

“ A land of fleckless sky, and sheer-shed beams
Of sun and stars through day's and dark’s slow hours,
A land where sand has choked once fluent streams—
Where grassless plains lie girt by granite towers
That fright the swift and heaven-nurtured teams
Of winds that bear afar the sea-gleaned showers.
The wild Atlantic, fretted by the breath
Of fiery gales o’er leagues of desert sped,
Rolls back, and wreaks in surf its thunderous wrath
On rocks that down the wan, wide shore are spread;
The waves for ever roar a song of death,
The shore they roar to is for ever dead. ”

“ Yes, the great beginning and the great end, with the devious way and the changeful weather between—the way so smooth for some and so rough for others, but with the one splendid flower blooming for all by the wayside—the triple mystery of birth and love and death—was it not all common to him and to the alien dwellers in these silent streets? Then the present terror of the pestilence made manifest in the solitude by the wails of the mourners smote him to the heart with a sense of exalted sympathy, and a deep pity for the stricken people came home to him. ”

“ When they inspanned and made another start the wind had completely ceased, the sunlight had lost its sting, and the stillness of infinite peace seemed to brood like a bright-plumaged dove over the Desert. There was no sound but the faint creak-creak of the harness as the mules trotted along over the soft sand. Nathan made several attempts to elicit further particulars as to what Koos had done to the old Hottentot, but his companion remained obstinately silent, and he felt instinctively that it would not be safe for him to pursue the subject farther just then. ”

“ The plains stretched away, to an immense distance. It was in this tract, far below the gazer on the cliff-edge, that romance dwelt in the tents of enchantment. Over it roamed the buffalo, the koodoo, and the giraffe. In the dark hour just before dawn the dew-laden boughs shrouding it trembled to the thunder-tones of the lion as he roared over his kill. Above all, its thickets of mystery had hardly been trodden by the foot of civilized man. ”

“ The Hottentot driver and leader became more and more uneasy, feeling themselves in danger of that worst of all deaths,—a long-drawn death of thirst in the desert. But Stephanus was sustained by his lofty trust, and never doubted that they would issue safely from their difficulties.
Each forenoon as the mocking mirage was painted athwart the northern sky, the clear, wide stream of the far-fountained Gariep, with its fringe of vivid green boskage, seemed as though lifted out of the depths of the awful gorge and hung across the heavens for their torment. ”

“ The cast of the desert’s message is epic rather than lyrical. The cloud-mantled mountain and the green valley,—the forest, the stream and the foaming sea teach the poet his sweeter songs. But it is the Prophet of God, the law-giver and the warrior who listen for and learn their stern messages from the tongues of the arid wilderness.
The difference between the desert and the fertile tract is that between the ascetic and the full-fed man. The desert appeals to the intellect; the verdant, rain-nurtured valley to the emotions. ”

“ Day was breaking when the fire reached long grass and brambles just beneath the summit among which the Bushmen lay concealed. Then they sprang out like monkeys from a cornfield when the dogs are let loose, and climbed to a bare mass of stone which topped the ridge. We rushed in at them through the flame, and they met us with a shower of arrows. It was a hard, bitter fight, but when the sun arose not a Bushman was left alive. The women, and even the little children, fought as bravely as the men, and bit our feet as we trod over them in the struggle thinking they were dead. ”

“ Susannah tore a piece off the curtain of her cappie and began to bind up the injury. As she did so she came so close that she leant slightly against Max. Then the opportunity triumphed over the pain—he passed his arm around her, drew her to him, and kissed her on the quivering lips.
The centipede and its sting were soon forgotten. Nature held them, embraced and embracing, for a blissful eternity; they saw the face of happiness smiling in the rosy gloom under Love’s wing. ”

“ Gweva grew up exactly like what his father had been—tall and strong, brave as a lion, and with eyes and voice that commanded the obedience of men, even against their will. When hardly more than a lad he could fling an assegai or a knobbed stick farther, and as true, as any man in the tribe. But for the madness that fell on him he would have been chief in the room of Pahlo, who was only of the right-hand house, the only son of the ‘great house,’ into which Gweva had been legally adopted, having died young, through being bitten by a snake. ”

“ Had he not seen the natives, for whose benefit his blameless and strenuous life had been ungrudgingly spent, sinking lower and lower, exchanging the virtues of barbarism for the vices of civilisation? Had he not seen the chosen lambs of his flock sink back into the savagery that surrounded them, lured by those tribal rites which bear a fundamental resemblance to the ritual of the worship of the Cyprian Venus? Had he not seen the land covered with plague-spots in the shape of canteens from which poisonous liquor was set flowing far and wide, ruining the natives, body and soul? ”

“ You sat on the ground in the crescent, and laid
⁠Your shield down flat when Dingaan spake loud—
His vitals pierced by the murderer's blade—
⁠To his warriors fierce, in dread anguish bowed.
And now to this: to cringe for a shilling,
⁠To skulk round the mission-house, hungry and lone;
To carry food to the women tilling
⁠The fields of maize! For ever have flown
The days of the spear that the rust has eaten,
⁠The days of the ploughshare suit you not;
Time hath no gift that your life can sweeten,
⁠A living death is your piteous lot. ”

“ I lifted the flower gently; its texture was thinner than the thinnest paper; beneath it was the desert sand. It had hardly any material thickness, yet infinity lay in its depths. I sought for a gazania of another species and found its petals eyed like the peacock’s tail. Yet another,—it shewed the rose-ardours of dawn contending with the purple of a sea on whose surface night still brooded. Every species had its own colour-scheme—its maze of splendour more intricate than the labyrinth of King Minos. ”

“ The roar of a killing lion and the scream of its stricken prey startled the forest creatures for miles around, but the sound of the tragedy passed over these two, unheeding. The mystery and the wonder of the desert, the lust of the spoiler, the terror and anguish of the victim—each blindly following the awful law of its being—was around them, but Love lent wings of flame that bore them to the stars, and stayed with his wonder-working hand the running of the sands of Time. ”

“ The unbounded Desert spaces, apparently meant for their inheritance, hold for them no sanctuary; the hyaena and the jackal hang and batten on the skirts of their helpless host; the vultures wheel above its rear and tear the eyes out of the less vigorous which lag behind. Sportsman and pot-hunter, Boer, half-breed and Bushman, beast of the burrow and bird of the air, slaughter their myriads; but still the mighty mass assembles every year and surges across the Desert like a tempest in its travail of torture. ”

“ Elsie does not hate you, Gideon.”
“She must, if she knows what I have done to her father. She hates me. You heard what she said about his having his reckoning. Were his anger to cool she would light it anew with those eyes of hers that glow like those of a lion in the dark. But anger such as his does not cool.”
“Gideon, you are wrong about Elsie; she loves her father, but she will not counsel him to take revenge. Oh, Gideon, we are old now, and this hatred has kept us in cold and darkness all our lives. One little, happy year; then the first quarrel,—and ever since misery and loneliness. ”

“ The executioners approached, but Kondwana drew himself up with ineffable dignity, signed to them with his hand to pause, and spake in a firm voice.
"O King, for my own death I thank you, for why should I longer live? But this man is still young, and has done no evil deed. Let him wash his spear once in the blood of your enemies, and die at the tip of your battle-horn."
Tshaka, thoroughly enraged, was a fearsome sight. Like Peter the Great, his features worked and twitched horribly. Those who beheld him thus, felt that they were before the very face of Death, embodied and visible. ”

“ Good-bye, Andries,—best of comrades. I have not told of all our adventures—of how we pursued the springbuck at full gallop across the trackless plains in your springless, home-made rattletrap, behind four wild, half-trained horses,—until we were black and blue. I have not told of how we were lured by men who desired our death to a spot sixty miles deep in the waste, and of how we had to struggle back again in the burning heat because we found the promised water to be brine, and the edges of the pools containing it thickly caked with salt. ”

“ This danger was by no means imaginary; the bones of many an adventurous Boer have been gnawed by the jackals of Bushmanland.
Gideon had, as a boy, accompanied his father upon some of the later of these expeditions. Now, when his load of unrecognised remorse hung heavily upon him, he sighed his tired soul towards the vast and vague unknown which lay, rich in the glamour of the unknown and the mysterious, beyond the frowning mountain rampart. There, he had come to think, Peace must surely have her habitation; into that solitude the ghosts of men and things could not follow. ”

“ I will never give up my friend to be choked with a rope."
"E-hea," shouted the audience.
"My Chief," said Vooda, "your words are like milk flowing from a great black cow ten days after she has calved, but there is one thing you have not seen, but which I have seen and trembled at."
"What is this thing that frightens a man who is the father of children?"
"The magic (umtagati) of U-Sessellodes, which he has taught to
Indabeni—the terrible magic wherewith he overthrew Lo Bengula and the
Matabele."
"We, also, have our magic," said Sololo, glancing at Shasha, the war-doctor. ”

“ The hoarse bark of the bush-bucks challenging each other echoed across the ravine, the jackals yelled at the stars from the grassy hill-tops, and the brown owls moaned from the tall yellow-wood trees. Every now and then unseen forest creatures would rustle through the undergrowth, or a frightened loorie flutter away, breaking its bright plumage against the branches in the darkness. In the broken fringe of cliff over the river-way a leopard made a dash at a troop of sleeping baboons which, having heard the alarm-call of the sentinel, darted away and escaped with hoarse roarings. ”

“ Who that has ever been fortunate enough to experience it can recall without a quickening pulse the mad gallop for miles across the plains after a herd of gemsbok, or the fierce rapture of meeting the noble brute at bay, and slaying the only animal of the antelope tribe that has heart enough to face a lion? ”

“ Listen to me, oh, my brothers, and not to this old man whose heart shrinks because of a sound he heard on a day before we were born. I am young, and death is more bitter to the young than to the old. My kraal is full of cattle; the dowry has been paid for my bride, yet I stand here to-day and am not afraid to die. ”

“ Bullet after bullet scarred the ground, sending up spouts of red sand—now here, now there. The herd faltered in bewilderment, whirled round in a half-circle to the left, and headed straight for the ambush.
A distant shot—another; several in rapid succession. It was the rifle of Andries speaking. It was Man taking toll of Nature, imposing his age-long tribute of blood and pain. It was Death eliminating Beauty become obsolete. It was like Autumn shedding the petals of a flower that had lived its allotted day. ”

“ A great happiness welled up in Aletta’s heart and seemed to transfigure her, body and soul. She felt that her dark hour had indeed been the prelude to a day brighter than her starved soul had known for many years. With feverish haste she completed the preparations for departure, and when the wagon rolled away up the steep kloof-track, its fresh team of sixteen drawing it with hardly an effort, she watched it until her sight grew dim with happy tears. ”

“ On every side the landscape showed gently-swelling hills of inconspicuous height, thickly dotted with groups of huts. Herds of cattle browsed contentedly on the rich grass. The gracious autumn gloaming shed a soft radiance over the settlement. It looked like a spot consecrated to civilisation and peace—an oasis in the desert of savagery. Benson drew a deep breath of satisfaction; something seemed to whisper to him that life here might include compensations other than humorous ones. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sole and only terror which Elsie had felt on her native farm,—the dread of these animals,—returned upon her with irresistible force. The Tanqua Valley was full of these monsters, whose hoarse roarings, heard from afar, haunted the dreams of her nervous childhood. In seasons of drought they would sometimes rush in among a flock of sheep and tear open the stomachs of the young lambs with their powerful paws, for the sake of the newly-drunk milk. ”

“ Often the desert dawn is followed by a faint semi-opacity; an opaline suggestion of vapourised moisture,—the diaphanous veil of evaporated dew. But on the previous night no dew had fallen. Heaven had withheld that gracious, healing touch with which it sometimes assuaged the scorch inflicted by the ruthless sun on the patient wilderness.
The plains lay hushed as though in anticipation of sinister happenings. Soon the east grew suddenly splendid; shafts of faint gold and delicate rose spread from the horizon half-way to the zenith. ”

“ Then the dawn flushed over the sea, and he realised that the dreaded day had arrived without the slightest prospect of rain. Already, in anticipation, he felt the choking strain of the thong by which his feet would be bound to his neck, preparatory to his being flung to drown in the nearest deep river-pool.
The sun, although only just risen, smote hotter than ever through the sultry drought haze undisturbed by a breath of wind. Umgwadhla could stand it no longer; he determined to fly for his life. ”

“ In the desert, the brighter the firmament at night, the more intensely darkness seems to brood over the earth,—the more insistent becomes the idea that one is surrounded by living beings, unhuman and unimaginable.
Hark! a sound of sinister import; involuntarily one sprang to grasp the rifle standing against the wagon-wheel. But an instant’s reflection brought reassurance; it was but the booming of an ostrich far out on the plains that had conjured up scenes of other days,—when questing lions prowled around camp fires, now long since quenched. ”

“ Thus, she began to fill in the obliterated pages of her mind with serene unconsciousness. She never laughed, but a strain of music, a sweet scent, or a soft touch from the hands she had learnt to love for their constant kindness would bring to her pale face the light of a rare smile, and flood it with a soft colour that was good to behold.
Thus blind Elsie, after her sore travail and disappointment, drifted, a derelict, into a harbour of safety and loving-kindness. ”

“ When the boy, returning, got within about fifty yards of the fire, his desert-tuned ear caught a sinister sound of low growling. He dropped the vessel of water and the firebrand, and rushed forward, bursting through the fringe of bushes. There, full in the firelight, crouched a great, tawny lioness, roughly pawing the cubs. In an instant his rifle was at his shoulder; the lioness sprang into the air and fell back dead, shot through the heart.
The boy and the fire were the only living things in the firelit circle. Fourie was lying, his neck terribly lacerated, in a pool of blood. ”

“ But their actions would be less opposed to Nature’s plan than mine, for it was the men who would go sombrely gay, not their woman-kind.
The tramp back to camp was long and wearisome. Could it be that I strode along the same course whereon a few short hours ago I had paced hand in hand with gentle dreams? There,—on that dusty, gasping sun-scorched flat? Could it be that the stars and the soothing dew lay beyond that expanse of flaming sky, and that the laggard night, with healing on her dusky wings, would draw them down once more? ”

“ The unbroken plain now lay before them in all its solitary horror; their only hope of relief lay a three-days agony in front. The sand,—so hot in Summer on the plains of Bushmanland that one can cook an egg in it several inches below the surface,—scorched their feet; it even caused the dogs to roll over and lie on their backs, howling from the pain they suffered.
As night fell the men closed in, bringing the scanty supply of lizards, striped-faced desert mice with long, bushy tails, roots and other desert produce which they had succeeded in capturing or unearthing. ”

“ That night they camped just below the enormous gates through which the Olifant breaks to reach the low country. The mighty, sheer, table-formed masses, arising from dense forest, bulked huge against the stars. The cataract-speech of the river filled the sounding gorge with softened thunder. To the boy it seemed as though Immensity stretched forth a finger to touch his brain and counteract the spell of sleep. He tried vainly to rest. The rich, slow, beauty-burthened hours went by. ”