W. C. Scully

“ 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 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. ”

“ Hanging on the flanks of the horde might be seen the gaunt, hungry lions, seeking in vain to quench their raging thirst in the blood of their emaciated victims.
When Kanu found that Elsie had disappeared from where he had left her among the rocks and bushes at the foot of Table Mountain, he took to the veldt with the intention of getting as far from the dwellings of civilised men as possible. He knew that if he returned to Elandsfontein and told the van der Walts his remarkable story he would never be believed, and that the consequences would be distinctly unpleasant, if not fatal, to him. ”

“ The day smote them with fury. The sand became so hot that it blistered the soles of their feet through the veldschoens. The wind, heavily charged with fine, red sand, was moaning and shrieking across the waste. Their only chance lay in keeping moving, for the drifting sand would have buried the wagon, if stationary, in a few hours. But the moment came when the unhappy cattle were unable to advance with the wagon another step, so had to be outspanned.
The oxen staggered away for a few paces and sank exhausted to the ground. It was clear that without water, not one of them would ever rise again. ”

“ It was in the hunting-field that the true potency of the Bushman was shown. Inside a wicker framework covered with the skin of an ostrich, the hunter would stalk in among an unsuspecting flock of feeding birds. With slow, swaying stride,—the long neck bent down and the beak bobbing as though pecking at the green beetles on the bushes, the counterfeit presentment of a stately, full-plumaged male would edge its way in, making the characteristic by-play which the male adopts when he wants to attract the females by an affective display of his beauties. ”

“ Then Gideon saw what made the blood curdle in his veins with horror. A wagon which he knew must be that of Stephanus was approaching and behind it was being driven a mob of loose cattle and horses which he could not doubt were his own. The Hottentots raised a shout of joy; to their astonishment Gideon turned and fled back across the plains towards his wagon.
The miserable man now became insane in his terror. His only thought was to escape,—to hide from the face of the man he had so greatly wronged. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again she ascended the rugged slopes of Table Mountain, with her ears filled with the horrid shouts of the persecuting boys. The long-waited-for Kanu seemed so imminent that she bent her ear to listen for his expected step in the sound of the rocking surf. Then her terror of the baboons returned upon her like a hurricane sweeping everything away in fury; she started up with a shriek and tried to rush away.
“Oh God,—the baboons. Kanu—Kanu.”
“Hush—hush, dear,” said the soothing voice of Helena; “you are safe with us; nothing can hurt you. Feel—we are holding you safely.” ”

“ With a wild shriek he sprang from the wagon, and fled among the naked, piled-up rocks which formed the base of the hideous mountain at the foot of which his wagon stood.
Unheeding the shout of Stephanus, Gideon sped on, leaping from boulder to boulder in his mad endeavour to avoid the presence of the man against whom he had so terribly sinned. By some curious trick of thought his brother, thus unarmed, was more formidable to his maddened and guilty soul than had he come with a primed and loaded gun. A dread of some such fascination as the snake is said to exercise over his victim possessed him ”

“ However, Kanu, with his savage equivalent for the emotion of grief, was straining every nerve to get as far away from civilisation as possible, bent on hiding his suspected head in the depths of the uttermost desert.
Many were the visitors at the cottage on the mountain slope during Elsie’s illness. When the child grew better a favoured few were allowed to take a peep into the dimly-lighted room where, upon a bed as white as snow, the pallid, pathetically-beautiful image of tragic suffering lay. ”

“ They had now reached beyond the outskirts of the dwellings, and were on a pathway which meandered between patches of scrub. At an appropriate spot Jacomina darted in behind a thicket, sank with every appearance of exhaustion on to a stone, and burst into tears.
“Leave me,—leave me,”—she sobbed, as her lover, fondly solicitous, attempted to console her. “I have had a dream; I know I shall never be able to come to Cape Town again. Go away, Adrian, and find some girl who will not have to keep you waiting for years and then die without making you happy.” ”

“ Among the broken hillocks the strangers were quite at the mercy of an attacking force, no matter how small. Thus, the pygmies might have crept right up to the wagon without being noticed, and discharged their deadly shafts from within point-blank range, settling the business with one noiseless volley. But Kanu did not give the signal; he sat with his head bowed in thought, and his braves looked at him and at each other in astonishment.
Kanu reflected. He was aware of many things beyond the cognisance of his followers. ”

“ Kanu, the Bushman, was still her guide as she wandered about at will. He would have long since followed the fashion of his kind and fled back to the wilderness that gave him birth had it not been for his attachment to Elsie. One characteristic of the blind child was that she was utterly fearless. She seemed to dread nothing. One thing alone seemed to cause her any uneasiness:—the hoarse roaring of the baboons with which the black rocks that crowned the mountains on either side of the Tanqua valley abounded. ”

“ He passed a little shop, the proprietor of which,—a stout Malay, was apparently sleeping under a small awning hung over the front to protect the wares from the sun. A barrow, piled with cakes and other comestibles, stood at his side. They were queer, outlandish-looking eatables, such as Kanu had never seen before. The sight and the smell made him wolfish. He looked up and down the street; not a soul was in sight. ”

“ Aletta had always felt the greatest pity for Stephanus; knowing, as she did, the provocation he had sustained, and the rancour Gideon had shown. A sympathetic bond was thus set up between the three, and the ever-present sorrow was shorn of some of its more painful features.
Insensibly Elsie became the centre of the household. She was now twelve years of age. In spite of the fact that her intellect as well as her intuitions had developed to a strange and almost unnatural extent, her stature and features were still those of a very young child. ”

“ It was not that he dreaded the consequences of a confession to himself—his life was too full of misery for him to dread that—but rather that his somewhat waning hate of his brother had been reinforced by Marta’s words, and he could not bring himself to abate a jot of that brother’s bondage. Had it been possible to confess his sin without benefiting Stephanus by so doing, he felt that he would have told his tale to the first human creature he met, were it only a Bushman. ”

“ The thoughts of Stephanus moved upon a stage higher than Elsie’s could attain to. To Stephanus the presence of his beloved child was enough to fill his heart with joy. She seemed to be the embodiment of peace,—the dove that had come back across the troubled waters of his life. But over and above this towered high the realisation of the task laid upon him,—the lifting of his brother’s life from the slough in which it had been so long sunk. To Elsie happiness and duty were one ”

“ In another moment Marta and Elsie had followed the last of the crowd and Gideon found himself alone. Then the nobility of the mien of the man whom, innocent, he had sent forth to a doom more sorrowful than death came back to his mind with such dread distinctness that it excluded everything else. ”

“ Then Kanu turned his face to the wall of his cell and slept with inconsiderable waking intervals, throughout the rest of his period of durance.
When he was released a throb almost of joy went through the Bushman’s untutored breast. Freedom, to the wild man, is as necessary as to the sea-mew. He hurried from the gaol door and made his way up the side of the mountain to where he had left Elsie eight days before, expecting to find her lying white among the rocks, half-covered by her shining hair. ”

“ The soul of this blind child with the sweet inscrutable face, expressed itself in a passionate love for her father, and from the day upon which it came home to the strong, dour, hate-preoccupied man that this being who seemed the very incarnation of sunlight was doomed to walk in darkness all her days, he had wrapped her in a protecting love which was almost the only influence that kept him human, and which was the salvation of his better nature. ”

“ If the warning should be disregarded Gideon determined to shoot his brother dead, but he hoped not to be driven to do this. He would force Stephanus, under the muzzle of the gun, to swear to go back and trouble him no more. He would say:—“Your life is mine, here in this lawless land, to destroy by the mere slight pressure of my finger upon the trigger against which it rests.—It is mine,—forfeit because you have pursued me when I tried my best to avoid you, and driven me to bay.—I give it to you in exchange for the wrong I have done you. ”

“ At night the deep-rumbling growl of the marauding lion would be heard in the scrub below the cattle-kraal, and the trembling touch of wife and children as they clung to him, made the strong man rejoice in his strength. Every considerable mountain-cave harboured his Amalekite, the Bushman,—and him he hewed in pieces before the Lord whenever opportunity offered. ”

“ They are always glaring at me; I fear them more than his bullet.”
“Yes, Gideon, it is well that you go away for a time. I will try what I can do. He is getting to be an old man now and anger does not burn so hotly in the old as in the young. I will not speak to him now, but when he has been free for a time I will kneel to him and beg him to forgive for Marta’s sake, and Elsie’s. ”

“ Stephanus’ wagon had in the meantime arrived and was standing, outspanned, close to that of Gideon. Elsie stood near it, her face turned to the mighty thunder-chariot from which a refreshing wind, laden with the ichor of the fallen rain, stirred the richness of her hair. She turned as her quick ear caught the sound of their approaching footsteps, and it seemed to them as though the Spirit of Peace inhabited her and looked out from the unfathomable depths of her sightless eyes.
Glossary. “Alle Wereld” “Whole world”: equivalent to “Good gracious.” ”

“ Aletta had a furtive, crushed look. The long years of misery and isolation had left their mark upon her. The only thing which kept her above the level of the mere animal was the love she still bore her husband, in spite of his consistent neglect Gideon had spent the greater portion of the past four years in wandering vaguely through desert spaces, the more remote the better. In fact he only returned to the farm from time to time to refit his wagon or renew his cattle or stores. On each occasion of his departure Aletta had made up her mind that she would never see him again. ”