Ernest Glanville

“ I recomember it well—the dark woods in the narrow pass rising up till they ’most shut out the sky; the red-coats down by the water; the smoke rising in tall columns from the cooking fires; the horses standing in a bunch switching the flies offen ’em; the oxen knee-deep in the water; and a silence born of the hot sun over all. It were as quiet as Sunday down in the mouth of the pass, with the sun running up and down the bayonets like fire, and no red to stain them, for there was no news of Kaffirs within a day’s march. ”

“ The village soon was left behind, and the little band went slowly over the ridge and down the long slope, into a narrow valley, and at dusk reached the broken veld that stretches up to the frowning height of Hlobane. It was very silent. The burghers smoked, but talked not; and very plain, and seeming very near, came the dismal baying of a Zulu dog from a lofty kraal on Zunguin Nek, where a fire gleamed red through the dark.
“There are men there,” said the Commandant in a guttural whisper. “We must ride hard in the morning when we return.” ”

“ The kraal Kaffir is lean, long, and tough, dignified in his movements, courteous to his friends, given over to long spells of silence broken by fits of noisy eloquence, his sullen, solemn face seldom lit up by a smile, and his black smoke-stained eyes smouldering always with an unquenchable fire, that flames out when he meets a Fingo on the highway, or when the fire-water runs through his veins at the beer-drinking. ”

“ For many a mile the banks of the river are of red soil, and as the flood eats into the banks its waters are stained a dull brick colour, which hue is imparted to the Atlantic itself for miles along the coast as the red waters pour out into the sea, bearing with them a wonderful collection of flotsam in the shape of timber, dead stock, and live reptiles. ”

“ The pure kraal Kaffir, who lounges negligently in his red blanket or squats on his loins by the fire at night, telling interminable stories about nothing in particular, has many points which mark him from the “town boy”—the spoiled child of civilisation, who treads tenderly in his hard “Blucher” boots, and covers his corduroy trousers with bright patches of other material; who has to support his weary frame against every pillar and post and corner he comes across, and who is generally shiftless, saucy, and squalid. ”

“ I jest pottered about by the house into the afternoon, looking out every now and ag’in to see if Bolo were coming back, when of a sudden I see him tearing acrost the veld. He shot by me into the house, and hang me if he didn’t bang the door in my face, and at the same time that honey-bird lighted on the roof. You never see sich a sight as that bird. He opened his mouth, spread his wings, rolled about and laughed fit to bust himself. Bymby he flew away with a final screech, and Bolo opened the door, his natrally black face being green, his lips curled back from his teeth, and his eyes rolling. ”

“ Then he stopped, smiled in a wide vacuous way, took snuff, and squatted down, while the dogs as suddenly ceased their clamour and walked sheepishly away.
“Well, you clatterin’ ole heathen,” said Abe, seating himself on the door-step, and shaving slices of tobacco against the ball of his thumb; “what mischief have you been up to?”
“Yoh,” said Bolo, resting his long arms on his knees; “I have heard tales of the black tiger and the white man’s fear. But my medicine has sent the black evil away back again to the big kloof.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ With a fierce rush, like a live crittur, the flood threw itself at the sea. We just footed it over the small waves, then we cut the top off the first roller, throwing up columns of spray high as the church steeple, and then the fight began. Behind us there was a hundred miles of flood; before us was the tide with the Atlantic at the back, and the sea after the first shock jes’ gave a sort of surly roar, and away back of the outermost breaker I seed a dark line coming along steady and unbroken. ”

“ We always did talk about snakes when other topics failed, and no one had been fishing for some time, and the big pumpkin season had passed.
“Man,” said Lanky John, the ostrich farmer, “I killed a snake, a ringhals, yesterday morning back of the kraal, and in the evening when I went by there was a live ringhals coiled round the dead one.”
“There’s a lot of love among snakes,” said Abe Pike, who had swapped a bush-buck hide for a pound of coffee and a roll of tobacco. “They don’t talk much, but they think a lot, and you can’t plumb the feelings of silent folk; they’re that deep.” ”

“ Young Piet, flushed with his act, looked for approval from his father, but the Commandant’s gaze was fixed anxiously ahead on a column of dark figures leaping like antelopes down Zunguin’s side. From the rear, too, came the loud slap of three rifles, and the angry war shout of the Hlobane warriors.
“They will head the cattle off,” said Stoffel; “and we will be caught between two fires. Let us leave the cattle and ride to the left, when they will let us go free.” ”

“ The red Kaffir is a warrior. He is also a lawyer. I am not certain whether he most prefers to settle a dispute by argument or by the kerrie, but I think his idea of greatest happiness would be a long disputation extending over a week, to be rounded off with the clashing of kerries. Some people, who have seen the wide smile on the face of a West Coast negro, accept that all-pervading grin as the main feature of the entire black race, and argue from it that all blacks are good-tempered children, prone to every impulse. That is not true of the Kaffir. ”

“ Why do they move about so?’ ‘It’s their war-dance, and he on the white horse is the chief. At his words they turn and stop, break up, and come together.’ The young chief watched like a dog straining at the leash—and, by gum, he yeard the colonel’s commands, though never a sound reached me. A smart Kaffir can smell, and see, and hear like a animile. ‘Yoh!’ he said; ‘listen to his words!’—and in his excitement he raised his head, and the half-caste he stood back and lifted his gun. ”

“ Never yeard of the soldier settlers away up by the Chumie—them as were planted there by Sir Harry Smith—of their wives and children, making merry on Christmas Day, 1850—making merry with the old custom, and the sounds of the laughing going out into the dark kloof, where the Kaffirs crouched, eyeing them as they fingered their assegais. Lor’ love you, lad: when the poor little children were running at their games, and the women were talking over their washing up, and the men at their pipes in the quiet of the afternoon, the war shout broke suddenly from the wood. ”

“ Dead! Thunderation! he was jes’ lying full-stretched for a spring from a tree branch jes’ above where I laid that pill, awaiting for me to come along. The baboon jes’ invited me to climb a tree, and looking through the leaves, I spotted that black devil, with his tail a-switching and a-jerking. I jes’ climbed down, and slipped off like a shadder, with my heart in my boots. Well, I did some thinking. You know cats is fond of certain smells, so is dogs—only dogs is not so dainty as cats. It’s jes’ the same with a tiger, and he’s got a nose for a partickler herb which he rubs his head into. ”

“ Old Abe followed my look, and then shoved himself back with his heels into a breadth of shade.
“That’s it, my lad,” he said with a queer smile, “cast your eyes round and see what can be done by one man if his heart’s in his work. Forty years agone this yer land were wilderness, and now look at it, with that there shed, them pumpkin lands, and this yer tree standin’ up like the steeple of a church as a token of honest labour.” ”

“ No, sir; give me something I can see and feel.”
“’Cording to all accounts,” said Abe, drily, “if you did feel the crittur, it would be when passing down his throat.”
“Of course you’ve seen one, Abe?” said Si Amos with a slight sneer.
“I have,” said Abe, quietly, as he reached over for the demijohn of Cango.
“Did he lift his head ten feet from the sea?” asked Long Jim.
“I see what it is,” said Abe; “you fellows been listening to my exper’ences so long that you think I’m lying; and I’m not gwine to sacrifice my self-respeck by telling you things you don’t believe. That’s so!” ”

“ Crouches by the kloof’s dark side,
Watching the settlers’ flocks afar—
Impatient waiting till the evening star
Guides him to his prey.”
Under the fierce ordeal of war the Kaffir thrived. His limbs were free and straight, his step springy, his eyes far-seeing, his nostrils could sniff the taint in the air, his deep melodious voice could boom the war-cry or the message across the wide valleys. As a man of peace he looks squalid in his broken clothes; he moves stiffly in his boots; he sings hymns in a queer, high note, with great melancholy but little meaning ”

“ 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. ”

“ Abe looked at Long Jim, who was trying to suppress a smile; then he relit the pipe he had suffered to go out.
“Reminds me,” he said, “of that there hoss Topgallant, which carried me one hundred miles twixt sun-up and sun-down.” Fixing his eyes on—the stranger, he launched into a long yarn about some impossible incident. He was not, however, up to his usual form, being suspicious of our nods and winks, and the stranger was not astonished.
“It’s a curious thing,” he said, “that people are slow to believe in things which have not come under their own observation unless they read of them in print. ”

“ Abe smiled sadly, let go his hold of the goat, pinched his ear, and then the great rout of the Poison Club began. The goat walked briskly up to the dog, reared up, brought his head down, and sent the mongrel smash under the table, where he remained whimpering; then in a brace, at a whistle from his master, the unnatural billy cleared the shed with the effectiveness of a battering ram. At the outset the strong man of the country tried to seize him by the horns, but he evaded the grasp and shot his massive enemy over a form ”

“ Who ever heard of a bull elephant rampaging round with a red diamond stuck in his forehead?”
“Humph!” grunted Abe. “If we was to believe nothin’ you never yeard on we’d be a pack o’ blamed jackasses, and no mistake. Now, I tell you that same elephant is a-tramping around now over yonder in the Addo bush, with that same red diamond a-gleamin’ in his forehead, if so be the hide ain’t growed over it.” ”

“ All this time he had been attending to the horse, rubbing its back and legs with a wisp of straw.
“Who said I had been after a cattle thief?
“What are words, sonny; words is nothing—nothing but a slower way of saying a thing you have already made plain enough by your actions. Says I, ‘Abe Pike, the young baas has lost a beast, maybe a cow and calf, and bymby he’ll be looking as black as thunder and as hungry as a mule.’”
“Uncle Abe, you know something about this robbery. It is true I have lost a cow and calf. Have you seen them?” ”

“ Abe slowly rose and felt himself. “Yes. You listen,” he said, solemnly. “The stranger’s right about them snakes—dead right.”
“It’s no time to joke,” said the stranger, looking ruefully at the bent spokes and twisted handle bar.
“You’re right there; no man would joke who’s jest escaped from death. No, sir; I tell you, jes’ as I came to this yer bend I looked out for the snake, but instead of the snake I seed—and my heart jumped into my throat at the sight—a thick rope stretched right across the road from the bank on this side to the tree on the other, raised about two feet from the level. ”

“ The sap’s running strong, and the quail are gathering thick in the young wheat. Hear to them whistling. Where’s your gun?”
“I did not come to shoot.”
“Soh! Well, you don’t look like shooting. Been eating too much green fruit?”
“I’ve passed the green fruit stage, Abe.”
“I ain’t; there’s nothing better’n a pie of green apricots with cream, and green mealies is better’n kissing. You’re not in love, are you?” ”

“ Young Piet stared at the big man, then glanced back up Zunguin’s rock-rimmed summit, and saw tiny dark figures like ants hurrying amid the huge rocks. He moistened his lips, and looked at his horse.
“Mount and ride, neef,” said Andries, softly. “Keep towards the Blood River over by Kopje Alleen. Go, little neef.”
“Ja!” growled Stoffel, who was smoking furiously; “loop, little one!”
Young Piet stared at them wildly, then he looked ahead and saw the cattle coming on in a mass, with his own red heifer leading. ”