Percy Fitzpatrick

“ Ansley was silent, too, feeling a little sore and disappointed at what he thought her disapproval of his friend; but in reality he was mistaken, and her sympathy was the deeper that it was not expressed. Several minutes passed thus before either stirred or spoke again. Then Miss Hardy rose and gathered her shawl about her, saying:
“Come, let us go home. I feel chilly, and oh! I cannot bear to think that a human being’s life can be so spoiled, so utterly, irretrievably ruined. It is too cruel. Indeed, it almost makes one think that this world is not the work of a God of Justice and Mercy. ”

“ The poor horses toiled on, slipping and sprawling along the greasy, smooth-worn Kaffir path, and when they rounded a little koppie that flanked Nairn’s house, and came suddenly on the well-worn track that led to the house itself—not twenty yards off—they pricked their ears, and with a low whinny of welcome and joy trotted towards the house. Geddy pocketed his pride and, bowing to circumstances that were too much for him, allowed his horse to follow the other’s lead. He did not, however, dismount as the other did, but sat in the saddle with an air of neutrality, awaiting the turn of events. ”

“ I know you! Now I know you!” Ansley looked at him steadily, and answered: “Yes, Mr Hardy, I am the man you have looked for. My name is George Ansley Norman. But just lie quiet for a few minutes, and you’ll be all right. And then we’ll get back to the house as soon as we can!”
Hardy closed his eyes and groaned aloud, but after a pause said falteringly:
“Norman—but the convict—it can’t be true! my God! it can’t be true!”
“It is true, Hardy. I am the convict, but there was no crime. Between man and man, and by the God above me, I am as innocent of it as you are.” ”

“ Within and without the one never-ending topic was diamonds; diggers backed their finds for weight or colour, shape, or number. Fortunes were held in clumsy, grog-shaken hands, and shown round as “last week’s finds;” all was clamour, festivity, and drink.
And this was Christmas Day! And the same sun that blazed down so fiercely on the drinking, and scorched the unconscious upturned faces of the drunk, shone softly on the dark hedges and snow-clad meadows of old England. It saw the fighting and drinking of a turbulent New World and the peace and quietness of a respectable Old one. ”

“ The usual lot of church-goers: men in broadcloth, women in gay colours, children neat and spotless, Prayer-book in hand—these were not the features of the day. There was no broadcloth, there were no women, there was no church—only long straggling rows of white tents, only a lot of holes of various depths and a lot of heaps of débris, only a lot of men in flannel shirts and moleskins, broad-brimmed hats and thick boots, the bronzed, bearded, hardy pioneers of the Diamond Fields. They had no church, but they could celebrate Christmas as well as those who had. ”

“ He only said, “Robbie, what haf I say? I do not understand,” and, looking white and miserable, walked quietly off to his blankets and turned in. To us it was as though a girl, a child, had been struck, and no one felt this more than Robbie himself, as soon as he saw that the insult was not intentional. The look on Soltké’s face was that of a stricken woman, a look of dull, unmerited pain. He was not cowed—just dazed and hurt, but inexpressibly hurt. You will see men blink and shuffle under that look in a woman’s face. You will see a master quail before it in a servant. ”

“ We were always tired and often hungry; but to lie there in the peace and stillness of the Bush, to look up at the stars like diamond dust against the sky, and not care a damn for anything in God’s world, why—why—I call that living! ”

“ It does not take long for daylight to glide through dusk into darkness in the bush veld in South Africa, and even these few minutes spent in conversation had seen the light begin to fade from the sky as the sun disappeared. The road was good and clear of rocks and stumps, so we hopped onto the most comfortable waggon, and talked while the oxen plodded slowly along.
We had quite a large party that trip, for, besides Gowan and myself, who owned the waggons, we had three traders from Swazie country—old friends of ours who had come down to Delagoa to buy goods. ”

“ I do believe that the fascination within the fascination is the camp-fire in veld life, with its pleasant yarn-swapping, and its long, pregnant, thoughtful silences, no less enjoyable. The least loquacious individual in the world will be tempted to unfold a tale within the circle of a camp-fire’s light. ”

“ Soltké complained excitedly, and as though he had suffered gross injustice, that no one had told him this interesting phase of life on the road; but Key snubbed him, telling him that men didn’t speak much of such matters, as it gave the impression of bragging.
Soltké, who was above all things desirous of conforming with the etiquette of the road, asked no more questions; but Key, later on in the day, affecting to relent a little, got Soltké to sit straddle-legs on the pole of one of the waggons, and there, under his directions, practise kicking crocodiles. ”

“ The man’s face, soft and gentle as a woman’s a moment before, grew hard and colourless; his mouth was set, and his eyes had a bright and wicked gleam in them.
Riding at their best over the rough ground, Ansley kept his lead easily; but Hardy drew away from the others, and they, seeing the chase tend towards the river, took a cut down to the nearest crossing, hoping to cut the pursued man off on the other bank, or take him while swimming the river, as he would have to do further down. ”

“ On the back was written, “For dear Father, from his little girl, Gracie.”
For a moment Hardy looked at it steadily, and then the hard sunburnt face softened, the mouth twitched once or twice, and two tears trickled slowly down and dropped on the card. The man’s head was lowered slowly until it rested on his arms again, and for a couple of minutes there was silence in the tent. The bitterness, the loneliness, the desolation were gone from his heart. What no reverses could bring about, and what no philosophy could resist, was done by a cheap, tawdry Christmas card sent by a child. ”

“ You who spend your lives and energies on the outside edge of civilisation paving a way for others’ feet—you are beglamoured by your ‘life of freedom, adventure, and romance,’ My dear sirs, that is a view that I cannot pretend even to understand, much less sympathise with. It may appear unnatural to you, but it is a fact, that I dislike the society of civilised men, and most of all that of the pioneers—the sappers and miners of civilisation—who think a white skin a warrant for anything. ”

“ Bankerpitt had scarcely strength to say, “Well, I’m damned!”
The party turned away, tired and hungry, and marched in silence to the clump of trees near the spruit below the house. There was no other water near, so they made camp for the night there.
It was dark. Occasionally the brighter gleams of the fire lighted up the circle of sullen faces. There was nothing to eat or drink, so they had settled down to a monotonous chorus of curses on the renegade he had turned his back on his own colour. ”

“ When occasion calls there is still no lack of brave men. Heroes spring into recognition from every grade of life, from every class of material; and while the half-dozen explosions still echoed and reverberated in the circle of the mine, there were men dashing in to the rescue at the imminent risk of their lives, heedless of the deadly fumes and of possible unexploded charges.
“The firm” lay in one heap—Cassidy on his back, Mallandane athwart him. To the only person to whom he ever spoke of the affair, Cassidy said: “He was stooping to light another fuse when I reached him. ”

“ To everyone there comes a sense of strain relieved and spirits reviving on coming through a bad river, and to the young girls, whose first experience it was, the splashing of the leaders’ feet in shallow water, and the rising up the sandy bank, brought an ecstasy of relief.
Driving up the valley of the Lampogwana, Nairn and Heron cheered them with tales of the gold-fields and of the country, and ignored the river and the coming storm ”

“ In proportion as the tented camp had grown into a great city, in proportion as the puny diggings had become a mighty mine, in like proportion had men and things altered; and even so had John Hardy thriven and prospered. One stroke of luck had placed his foot on the first rung of Fortune’s ladder, and a cool shrewd head had done the rest. Hardy the digger, in his little canvas tent, was no more, and in his place stood John Hardy, Esq, capitalist, speculator, director of companies, etc. ”

“ The evening was one of those stilly, cool summer evenings so common in South Africa, when the night seems full of still life; the moonlight, strong and clear, has nothing sombre in it, and the gentlest of cool breezes plays through the leaves, bearing along with it the commingled scents of all the blossoms. ”

“ After you have been there for a few hours, or a day or two, you begin to notice that one name is always cropping up oftener than any other; one man seems the most popular, important, and indispensable. Well, it was the same here. There was always this one name in everything—market, mines, sport, entertainment—any blessed department. You can just imagine—at least, you can’t imagine—my surprise when I found that my naked white Kaffir sailor-friend, Sebougwaan, was the man of the hour. ”

“ Then I pictured to myself Jim’s grinning face, Frenchy’s pantomime of the whole affair, Harding’s quiet smile, and the chaff and laughter of them all, and I paused. A sudden rush, a plunge and souse, and I was in. Breathless and gasping I struck out, only twenty yards across; madly I swam. The cold water made my flesh creep. On and on, faster and faster; would I never reach it? At last I touched the rocks and turned to come back. Then all their chaff recurred to me. Every stroke seemed to hiss the words at me, “Feel for his throat! Feel for his throat!” ”

“ The charm of the life is indescribable, and none who have tasted it ever weary of it, ever forget it, or cease to feel the longing to return when once they have quitted it.
It was in ’91, the year after the pioneers cut their way through the Bush, with Selous to guide them, and occupied Mashonaland. We followed their trail and lived again their anxious nights and days, when they, a small handful in a dense Bush, at the mercy of the Matabele thousands, did not know at what hour they would be pounced on and massacred. ”

“ Heron’s heart sank, for it would be a serious matter to attempt the four drifts of the Queen’s River in a heavy spider with only a pair. He looked at the overcast sky, and turned in despair to Nairn, who had remained with the ladies, and knew nothing of the injury to the horse.
“Nairn, you know the road best. Is there any place where we can stay the night? We can’t tackle the rivers. One of the leaders has cut his shoulder badly and won’t face the harness. We must put up somewhere for the night!” ”

“ When a man has spent some years of his life—the years of young manhood they generally are—in the veld, in the waggon, or tent, or Bush, it is an almost invariable rule that something which you can’t define germinates in him and never entirely dies until he does. When this thing—this instinct, feeling, craving, call it what you will—awakens, as it periodically does, it becomes a madness, and they call it trek-fever, and then, as an old friend used to say, “You must trek or burst!” There are many stories based on trek-fever, but this is not one of them ”

“ Soltké had mislaid his pipe, and, thinking he had seen Robbie take it, asked him for it back. Robbie denied all knowledge, and Soltké, deeming it but another practical joke, said, “I saw you taking it, you—” using a term which he, poor chap, had picked up without knowing the meaning, a term which among white men never passes unnoticed. Robbie’s Scotch blood was aflame, and before one of us could stir, before he himself could think of the allowances to be made, before the word was well said, a heavy right-hander across the mouth dropped Soltké back against the waggon. ”

“ The crossing was too difficult for one span of oxen, so we double-spanned, and put all hands on with whips and sjamboks along the thirty oxen, to whack and shout until we got through.
Key placed himself behind Soltké and, just when the excitement was greatest, with his long whip-stick and lash he made a loop, in which he managed to enclose Soltké’s legs. One jerk took him clean off his feet, and down-stream he went, floundering and kicking for dear life, for he believed a crocodile had him. His kicking when he was head downwards and his legs were free of the water was remarkable. ”