Chapter Sixteen.
The Sunless Kloof.
Meanwhile, guided by Doda, Lee, or, as we may now call him, Lyle, threaded his way through some of those innumerable defiles which, cleaving the great mountains of the Amakosa country in twain, afford covert for many a marauding party with its cattle; and, having passed the Zonga River, the two wanderers sat down to rest in a “murky glen,” impervious to the sun.
At the time when the people at Umlala’s Kraal were intent on torturing the unhappy Amayeka, Lyle and Doda were quietly preparing to refresh themselves with such provision as they had brought with them, and both were not a little startled at hearing the branches in the jungle giving way before some footsteps. There was a crash close to them; two horns emerged from the speck boom, or elephant bush, the head of a huge ox became visible, the body followed, and then two dusky figures. These were our old friend Zoonah and a thieving comrade. The animal had been abstracted from a kloof, where a herd of stolen cattle had been concealed, and the worthy pair had sought this solitary spot with intent to slaughter the beast, and keep holiday as long as it lasted.
The apparition of a white man, seated beside Doda, elicited from them the usual exclamation of “Ma-wo!” but the party very soon understood each other, and the three Kafirs having reimed the poor creature, they proceeded to destroy it after their own fashion, which I should be sorry to describe. Suffice it to say, that the wretched animal, being secured beyond all power of resistance, was deprived of its tongue by the most cruel process, and its skin subjected to the assegai ere it was fairly dead.
Of late years the Kafirs have abandoned this shocking mode of slaughter; but some of them, when beyond the influence of the white man, or of their less, savage chiefs, will occasionally adhere to the old custom.
Lyle gave up all idea of proceeding on his journey that day; he knew his friends too well to suppose they would separate with such a feast before them. It is just to him to say that he turned with horror and disgust from the quivering body of the poor ox, and would have ended its agony by shooting it, had it been prudent to use firearms.
The three Kafirs—Doda, Zoonah, and Lulu—applied themselves to the plentiful meal before them with a gusto indescribable, and then lay down to sleep. Lyle would have travelled on alone, but this was impracticable, as the only paths that could be safely traversed were new to him; so he was fain to stretch himself on the grass, and reconsider his plans, which could not be matured till he came face to face with his desperate colleagues, the disaffected Boers. Zoonah was to be questioned as to what he knew of colonial matters, for Doda informed Lyle that he was a well-known spy; but greediness and sloth are the principal characteristics of the Kafir, and till these inclinations were satisfied, nothing could be elicited. Lyle knew that; so, giving way to weariness himself, he, too, fell asleep.
But for this, the noise of the explosion at Umlala’s Kraal might have reached them.
They slept on through the hour of noon, till the sun, reaching its meridian, pierced even the dense jungle with a ray or two of light, and Lyle rose, and would have rejoiced much in a cool bath, had there been a stream near; but the torrent that in the rainy season roared and tumbled over the rocks in the middle of the kloof was almost dry; he could only lave his face and hands in the pools, but even this was refreshing.
The three Kafirs were talking together as he ascended the bank, and Doda related to him the tradition of the Sunless Kloof.
It was here that the first white man had been seen by the Amakosas. “He came,” said Doda, “from there,” pointing westward. “The tribes whom this wild rider—for he was on horseback—passed on the way were too much terrified to stop him—the covering on his head was supposed to be part of it, but when he lifted it, it caused still greater surprise. He was seen to get off his horse at one time, and the people followed the spoor. They had never seen shoes then; and the print of his feet, so different to our own, made them believe he was not formed like ourselves. He carried in his hand a long hollow weapon, from which there came forth fire, smoke, and thunder; and the horse, being an animal never before seen by Kafirs, caused deeper dread. The natives shunned him as a being not of earth. Some killed cattle on his approach, and placed it in his way as a peace-offering, and, in return, he would leave beads and tobacco beside it. Some honoured him as a wizard; from him the ‘Wizard’s Glen’ takes its name, for his footprints were discovered there one day. He had nearly reached the sea, when Narini’s people, believing him to be some unnatural animal, determined to kill him, and, watching him from the rocks, hunted him down, and assegaied him. Since then, men have said that he was one of a tribe of white people, who had been sent by their chief to the country beyond Shiloh: almost all were murdered. Some found their way back by the Winterberg, but this one must have intended, to seek the Zooluh country, where it was known that a race with white skins, but hair dark as the crow’s wing, exchanged beads for slaves.” (The Portuguese settled on the south-east coast.)
Doda ceased to speak, and Zoonah and Lulu commenced singing a wild air, the first words of which were intended to imitate the clatter of a horse’s hoof.
“Ite cata, cata mawooka,
Na injormane.”
“Clatter clatter, he is going;
He goes with a horse, he goes with speed.”
Over and over again they repeated this inharmonious, monotonous “Ite cata, cata mawooka,” and then drew the embers of the fire together, and prepared to set to work anew upon some fresh steaks of meat.
So, sleeping, and eating, and talking alternately, these savages passed the day in the Sunless Kloof. Lyle was content to wait till nightfall ere he advanced, and as he was able to understand much of the language of these children of the wilderness, he listened not without interest to a conversation between Doda and Lulu, the latter never having been located, like Doda and Zoonah, among the missionaries. He had lately, however, paid, a visit to one of the larger frontier towns, where he had heard an account of a criminal’s execution; he had not seen it himself, and therefore was sceptical.
“I do not doubt,” said Doda, “for I have been told by the teacher that the English always kill a murderer.” (The literal translation is, “one murders another.”)
“And I,” remarked Zoonah, “have conversed with people who have described the manner in which they kill them by hanging them with string by the neck on poles.”
Lulu, after thinking for some minutes, observed, “The English must have more people than they can manage?”
“Why do you say so?” asked Doda, who, being the elder, took the lead in the conversation.
“Because I see no end to be answered in killing him; it is surely sufficient that the one already dead should die. Killing his murderer will not raise him to life again, neither will it benefit his family: besides, it is depriving the chief of one man more.”
Zoonah interposed, “The English say that the murderer must be made to feel what the dead man felt—that was, to die.”
“But what help,” asked Lulu, who, though the least educated, was the shrewdest of the three in argument,—“what help is that to the living? Why do they not eat him up (a Kafir phrase for ruining any one by confiscation of his property), and let him live?”
Zoonah spoke, in a low, deep voice, “Where is the dead?”
“No more!” replied Doda; “he has ceased to be.”
“Then,” asked Lulu, “how will he know his murderer has been killed or eaten up?—he is not there to see him.”
“What need,” asked Zoonah, “for him to know he is no more?”
“It would compensate his heart for the loss of his body,” replied Lulu.
“But,” said Doda, “we have nothing more to do with his heart—his body is gone—he is no longer a man.”
There was a long pause.
Doda was the first to break silence. “When,” said he, “I inquire of my own heart, one view of the case makes me on the side of the English lawgivers. We know the two principals in a murder are the murderer and the murdered. The last has left this world, so we cannot call for his evidence. The murderer denies all about it. The English say, God made man; to destroy what God made is ukwapula umsíla, to break His representative. It is clearly a case beyond the jurisdiction of man. It can only be understood and disposed of by the maker of the dead thing; and on these grounds it seems reasonable that the murderer should be sent the same path that he caused the other to go, in order that they may meet and he judged before God.”
“I see what you say,” answered Lulu, after due deliberation; “it is too strong for me. Do the English do this from such views? They can talk: they do talk—but one cannot always believe them. His argument is good. My heart is satisfied; I have heard. My heart is satisfied with your words. Nevertheless, I do not comprehend—”
And Lulu withdrew to ponder in silence on this argument.
After this, Lyle bid Doda question Zoonah on all that he had seen in his late perambulations “to and fro” upon the earth.
Zoonah complied partially, but omitted the episode of his being discovered by May, and outwitted also by the bushman.
He described the two sportsmen, and the cavalcade with which they were attended; and added, that they had retraced their steps, and had joined the bivouac at Annerley, which was known by all the Kafir scouts to be the rendezvous for the women and children of the district farmers. The scouts, of course, were in constant communication with some of the Annerley herdsmen, who, as was shown in the last chapter, were spies, ready to desert at the right moment. One of these had, some weeks previously to the open demonstrations of enmity in the frontier districts, on overhearing Mr Daveney announce to a farmer that England was sending troops, quitted the settlement, travelled 160 miles without sleep, and, after delivering his message, dropped dead at the feet of his chief. All Kafirland now was ripe for war, the tribes were gathering in the hill, and the watch-fires beginning to smoke.
Zoonah, in his turn, put manifold queries to Doda. The former said his path was uncertain; his “feet were towards Umlala’s Kraal, but his face turned away sometimes.” He asked, also, about Amani’s proceedings. Amani was his bitter foe. Lulu was bound for the settlements in the Annerley district, to look for plunder. Was Amayeka at Umlala’s Kraal? He must get cattle to offer Doda, for his daughter. He thought he should go with Lulu; he must come to Doda with full hands, to ask for Amayeka. How many bullocks would Doda want for her—the girl with the shining hair?
And then there was the usual subtle bartering argument between the two Kafirs.
Meanwhile, a thought had struck Lyle. Taking one of Zoonah’s assegais from the bundle, he scratched with his clasp-knife his name and a certain date on the blade of the weapon. Zoonah, who could elicit no decided answers from Doda, leaned over the convict’s shoulder.
He had seen books; indeed, as a boy, in a former war, he had, with others, cut them up as wadding for muskets, but could not read. Nevertheless, he knew that letters were, as he called them, “silent words.”
Lulu came too, and sat down beside Lyle—“Was he bewitching Zoonah’s assegai?”
Zoonah grasped the weapon, and would have drawn it away.
Lyle explained to him, in a mingled jargon, that the words were mystical, but not intended to injure him. “Take it,” he said, “to Daveney’s Great Place, Annerley. Be like the asphogels. Watch them, but let them not see you till the time comes to cast the weapon before them. You know that Daveney is your enemy. Doda knows that I am the friend of the Amakosas. I have brought you guns and powder. I have made a path between you and the Dutch. The Dutch hate the English more than you do now. There are people in my country, beyond the great waters, who know that the English colonists are great liars. Can the white chiefs sent hither ever carry their threats as far they declare they will? No. You know that when they have laid schemes to drive you from your lands, a word comes to them across the foaming vley, and they are forced to eat their own words.—Your chiefs have many to speak for them in my country. I have been one of your mouths there. I was here long ago, when the son of Umlala’s great wife was no taller than that mimosa: when I went back to my land, I spoke in council. I said you were under the feet of the English here; that you were not permitted to sit still in green places in your own territory; that you only wanted grazing-ground and patches of land to grow corn in; but that instead of rewarding you for refusing to help the Boers against the English, we have suffered your cattle and your land to be taken from you. You see, too, that the Boers are angry. They have cause. You and they were as two gnoos fighting for plunder. One gnoo comes first, and possesses himself of the prey; another follows, and would seize it. Up stalks the lion, he parts the combatants, seizes the plunder, and takes it to himself. What should the gnoos do? They should unite, go to war with the lion, take the plunder from him and share it. The land is large enough for all; but when you would have justice, the lion puts his paw beyond his own boundary, shakes his mane, his eyeballs burn and roll like flames, he roars, and the very trees of the forest tremble at the sound. Up, then, Amakosas, and at this roaring, ravaging lion. Quarrel not among yourselves; the musket and the flint, and the powder and the bullet, are all good when used together; apart, what are they?
“Drive these greedy white men to the sea. The Boers are already treking towards those great solitudes where the sun rises; divide this glorious country among you, and make a place along the shore for white men to come and traffic, bringing you beads, and blankets, and knives, and brandy, and all those good things which white men love best, but which they tell you, when they preach, that God has no delight in, and forbids.”
Lyle went on much further in this strain, standing up, and declaiming in a strange dialect with increasing spirit. The these Kafirs seated themselves at his feet, and listened attentively to his specious reasoning. He informed them that he was going among the Boers: that they too would make a stand for their rights; that there were more men like himself in the land intent on seeing justice done to all; and that if the Kafirs were overcame by numbers in the forthcoming onset, they had but to fall back to the sources of the white Kei, and mingle their war-cry with the thunder of the Storm mountains. There the Boers would answer them, and, ere long, the Zooluhs would echo it back, and bring their hosts to join them in the onslaught. The Zooluhs and the Amatembus, the Amapondas and the Amakosas, should be brothers; they came from the same father originally, they were brandies of the same tree. The Zooluhs were worthy to be the brothers of the Amakosas, for they were brave. What a day it would be for Kafirland when they should chant the same war-song, when, the Fingoes should be their dogs again. The Fingoes, who, like the Zooluhs and Amakosas, had once been a great nation, but who had lost their name, had no longer a place to sit, and were fain to do the white man’s bidding now, and work! Lyle laughed scornfully, and there was a low chuckle among the three Kafirs.
He pursued the theme skilfully, and if he did not persuade the three men to believe him implicitly, he succeeded in stirring up their hearts to join hopefully in the coming strife. In proof of his allegations against his countrymen, he reminded them of what a Kafir chief, who had visited England, had told them—how he had been brought before a council (the Committee of the House of Commons), and questioned, and how even women had stood up and pleaded that their land should be restored.
They were fully aware, too, of the difficulties which many a “cruel white Governor” had met with in trying to oppress those whom he was sent to protect—how strong had been the words of those who spoke in their favour. They, the Kafirs, had heard of and seen English papers. They could not read them, but they knew that, like the Kafir watch-fires, they were silent messengers. They had heard the teachers read from books. Who asked the teachers to come? What good did they do? They drew the people away from their chiefs: they would break up chieftainship in Kafirland.
The shades of evening were beginning to gather over the glen, and the sky above was like a spangled banner of deep blue. Lyle was determined to proceed that evening, and brought his speech to a close by bidding Zoonah take the mystic assegai to Annerley, and having, when opportunity offered, cast it where it could not fail to be observed, warned him to note carefully, by means of household spies, the effect that would be produced on the whole family at the sight of the inscription on the blade. Lyle had already been in communication with Brennard regarding the present position and circumstances of the Daveney family, and Zoonah’s information, gathered from various sources, confirmed him in the idea that the two young officers, now domesticated at Annerley, were, whether in earnest or not, on most agreeable terms with the whole family, especially with the younger ladies.
He knew every inch of ground about that settlement,—he could realise the whole scene;—he learned that the place had been made very defensible, and that a block-house was in progress. It was clear that the magistrate intended to hold out vigorously against all attacks; but there was much cattle, said Zoonah, most of which had been seized on commandoes, and the chiefs were outrageous at being deprived of their property, for Zoonah did not call it plunder.
Lyle knew his ground in thus sowing the seed of evil in a small way. A white man standing up, and venturing opinions among a tribe of Kafirs, would meet with argument from some, contradiction from others dissent from most, distrust from all; but these three men would soon be on different routes. Two were accredited scouts in Kafirland; wherever they went they were asked, “What news?” then they sat down, and “talked;” thus what he had said would spread gradually, but surely, and doubtless gain in importance.
He had already become popular at Umlala’s Kraal; the trade in muskets, gunpowder, tobacco, and Cape brandy had been brisker under his guidance than it had ever been. He was an athletic man, a rider, a swimmer, a perfect marksman, and had once beat a Kafir in hurling the assegai.
He was wont to respond cheerfully to the cry of “Baseila;” would join in the games even of the boy warriors—this was the very class to conciliate; and with his fearless air, his reckless laugh, and withal a certain deferential manner to the chief, Lyle had contrived, to make himself much at home with the tribe: while poor Gray was looked upon with some distrust and much contempt; his step was slow, his whole air cast down and melancholy, and the women and the youths, had some suspicion of his passion for Amayeka; but Lyle was his friend, outwardly, that was clear; and as the whole population must suffer by quarrelling with the traders, Gray’s presence was endured. The children liked him, for however abstracted or dejected he might be, he had always a smile for them, and the mothers thanked him for this. The Kafir women love their children as long as the latter are helpless, but cast them aside when, they become adults, and able to live by their own exertions.
Lyle’s authoritative manner had due weight with the three Kafirs; the ox was divided into portions, and each man took a goodly piece with him. Lyle and Doda started ere the Southern Cross began to bend and tell the midnight hour had passed. Zoonah and Lulu bent their course westward, and idling as they went, resting here and talking there, lurking about the settlements, and helping the Kafir women whom they met in their commissariat arrangements for the ensuing periods of strife; they separated in the Buffalo Mountains, Lulu to join the warriors in the Amatolas, Zoonah to keep watch in the Devil’s Kloof.
You have seen the result of Lyle’s plan. The herdsmen at Annerley, who fled into the wilderness at the sound of the war-cry, caught sight of Zoonah at sunrise next morning, when he was skimming along a distant ridge, and recognising him, by the feather at his ankle, to be a special messenger, waved their karosses. He waited for them; they had not deserted empty-handed. Two fine heifers were driven before them, and dropping into a neighbouring kloof on the shady side of a mountain, they all met together to hold a parley, and fare sumptuously on one of the slaughtered animals.
The detention in the “Sunless Kloof” was so far fortunate, that it prevented Lyle and Doda from encountering the young Dutch burghers bearing off. Amayeka, and, by a strange coincidence, Gray, in his uncertain route, passed during the day within two miles of them; his course, however, lay more to the westward, for he no longer cared to conceal himself: but, as his ill-luck would have it, he was overtaken by his fellow-convict two days after, on the northern bank of the Kabousie River.
Weak from hunger, he had been obliged to keep to the more fruitful spots, and had subsisted on roots, Kei apples, and a little Kafir corn, gathered from deserted gardens. Utterly disheartened, he again yielded passively to his fate, and told the tale of the events which had driven him forth as a wanderer again.
After this, the three pushed forward night after night, and in the course of a few days, the heavy clouds that had veiled the horizon cleared off, and they found themselves within a few hours’ journey of the Stormberg Mountains.
Gray’s narration of the events which had been the cause of his leaving Umlala’s Kraal did not particularly move Lyle or Doda; if the latter had any suspicion of the deserter’s regard for his daughter, he did not betray it. Until a Kafir is excited by incidents passing before him, he never displays any decided emotion; hating Amani, he was more inclined to be enraged with him for his condemnation of Amayeka, than anxious for his daughter’s fate. In the hands of white men, he felt certain enough of her safety to take the matter coolly, suggesting that he was now among the Boers in the Stormberg; and, under this impression, he tramped steadily on, staff in hand, and, with a loose assegai, ready to bring down any game that might cross the path.
Lyle, on learning the destruction of the ammunition, congratulated himself on having settled all monetary transactions ere he started. The articles of barter exchanged by the Kafirs for the gunpowder were all well on their way to the Witches’ Krantz, and the only point now on which he was ill at ease, was Gray’s faint-heartedness, as he termed it.
“What would you do?” said Lyle, as, side by side, the two Englishmen followed Doda through the tangled pathways intersecting the small plains, covered with fine pasturage, and watered by numerous streams proceeding from the Stormberg,—“what would you do? declare yourself a runaway convict, a deserter from the Royal Artillery? My good fellow, you are the man the Boers want—they have got guns, as you know, but few to handle them—you will meet some old comrades, though, I have no doubt, up in those hills.”
Then Gray spoke the first resolute words he had uttered for a long time.
“If,” said he, “you think I will work a gun against my own countrymen, you are mistaken. You may call me fool, coward, if you will—I may be branded, shot as a deserter but I will not die a traitor!”
Lyle gave a long, low, contemptuous whistle, and then burst into a laugh. “What do you call a traitor?” he asked: “to my mind, he is a man who enlists in a good cause, and then, without rhyme or reason, or for some vicious purpose, turns against it. Why, they condemned me to transportation as a traitor, because I took the side of justice and the oppressed. It is more manly to fight for the weak than for the strong. Talk of might against right in this country—I should like to know who are the rightful owners of it—why, those little nations, the bushmen. As for justice, she may well be painted blind, for the strongest arm turns for scale, and she can’t see to help herself. It is the same everywhere. We left the Government in England riding rough-shod over the poor starving devils, and when the worms began to turn, the law, as they call it, crushed them with its iron heel. The lion of England is a mighty fine fellow to boast of, but wherever he stalks, he leaves the traces of his bloody paws. They are beginning to find this out at home. Home!—it is no home to us.” Gray heaved a deep sigh. “They are getting sick of being taxed for those hired assassins, the soldiers. I was one of those to show the people what they were taxed for—to pay men for shooting them like dogs, if they complained of wrong. I did not conceal from them that I had been a soldier myself and I pointed out the slavery of such a condition. I was licenced to talk of what I had been. I might have been pulled up and shown up, for I had got into a few scrapes from want of money; but this would have dragged forward some respectable names, so justice was deaf, as well as blind, on this question, and Jasper Lee was only talked of as a Chartist leader. The real traitors to the cause were those who sat safely at their desks in dusty offices, and made promises which gained them popularity at the time, but which they never intended to perform. One wrote, ‘If Jasper Lee leaves the B— D— dock in a felon’s van, it shall be over a hurdle of Chartists’ bodies.’ Another, that if I ‘did not walk a free man from my gaol—free by the verdict of a British jury—thousands of armed citizens were ready to fling back the defiance I should hurl from the felon’s dock.’ One party ‘resolved,’ that the vessel carrying off Jasper Lee, as a convict, should have to cleave its way through an ocean of Chartist blood,—‘and,’ shouted another from a platform at a hill-side meeting in one of the manufacturing districts, ‘so long as I live, the manacle will not be forged that will encircle the heel, or the scissors that will cut a hair from the head of Jasper Lee, the felon.’
“I did not take all the epistles I received for gospel, but I did reckon on a rescue. The miserable mob, however, terrified at the sight of the soldiers, quailed before an unloaded gun; but at last they began to show fight with brickbats. There was barely time to read the Riot Act—ha, ha! how the old mayor’s hand trembled that held it, when a charge of cavalry came down the street and drove the poor devils right and left. We were the victims of treachery. Some of our pretended friends had been bribed, turned informers, and went over to the enemy. These were the traitors and deserters; they have pocketed the price of blood, and are at work again, no doubt, like spiders in their dark, gloomy offices, making false promises, deluding the people into the assemblies they convoke, only to bring the troops upon them, and then reap their reward for betraying their victims.”
In this strain Lyle proceeded; Gray paid but little heed to his sophistry—his mind was intent on casting aside the thraldom under which he writhed; but fate seemed against him.
And Amayeka, what was to become of her? Lyle next pointed out the advantages of the prospect before them. It was by no means certain, he said, that the Boers must necessarily fight against the English government; it was well-known that Vander Roey had gone to the Commander-in-Chief to hold a conference; it was not improbable that terms would be made, and that a territory would be given to the Dutch settlers, where they might exercise their own laws.
“Here,” said Lyle, “we may find a place of rest, for, unless something is to be gained by it, I am not inclined for war for fighting’s sake.”
This was, as the reader may divine, untrue; but he adapted his expressed opinions to the tone of Gray’s mind at the moment.
“So, for the present, my lad, make your mind easy; you cannot get away from this if you would, and you would not if you could, for your dusky lady-love is, without doubt, yonder in the hills, and no bad refuge neither. By Jove, this is a fine country—ha! Doda told me it was a noble pasture-land for horses, and see, the mountain-sides are dotted with them; and here is a troop of jolly young Boers. Now remember, once for all, my lad,” continued Lyle, clutching Gray suddenly by the arm—“let me tell you to put a good face on the matter. As to getting these people just now to listen to your history, and give you a guide or an escort to take you back—you young fool!—to fight against them, it is of no use. All your reasoning would be as useless as whistling jigs to milestones—all your wrath like the grimaces, and the sputtering, and the swearing of the bushmen at a storm of thunder and lightning. So now say ‘good morrow’ to these young fellows with the best face you can.”
A party of youths rode up as Lyle spoke; the latter informed them, in tolerable Dutch, that he was the trader whom Brennard had located at Umlala’s Kraal, and, as he had no intention of at once avowing himself willing to be enrolled as a rebel, he affected to have started from the Kraal with mere prospects of traffic. He then related what had occurred since his departure, and Gray listened with a beating heart to the reply made to Lyle on his inquiring whether a Kafir girl had been brought to the mountains by the young men of the foraging party.
“Yes; but they had earned her over the hills to the Boers’ large encampment, where she would be taken care of by some of the women.”
With this information Gray and Doda were obliged to be content. The young Dutchmen informed Lyle that the ammunition was on the south-western side of the mountains, where it was carefully stored in some of the bushmen’s caves, long abandoned by their first tenants, until Vander Roey sent intelligence of the result of his conference with the Commander-in-Chief, Vander Roey’s wife was in charge of it, and, under her directions, instalments of gunpowder were daily forwarded on pack-oxen and horses, the passes of the mountains being impracticable for wagons.
The young Boers having turned their horses’ heads in the direction of the mountains, the convicts and Doda accompanied them to the temporary bivouac, where Vander Roey’s wife held sway in the absence of her husband. The three were left among the scattered tents and wagon-tilts of the few families congregated together in the sequestered spot, while the riders hastened to Mrs Vander Roey to inform her of the new arrivals in the camp. Lyle and Gray were soon summoned by the lady, who advanced to the door of the cave to receive them, and ask their business.
She was a woman apparently five or six and twenty years of age, though probably she was much less. She was not what might be termed a true specimen of the Boeress in Southern Africa, but was, in colonial parlance, an Africander, of French extraction, her father belonging to the race who established themselves at the Cape after the revocation of the edict of Nantes; and her mother, although the wife of a Boer, had a alight touch of dark blood in her veins. To these circumstances, which, in the eyes of the community to which she belonged, were objectionable, she owed her raven hair, drawn back from the temples, and bound round her head in classic fashion. The forehead was low, but well formed; the eyes long, dark, and fringed with black lashes, that softened their fiery expression; the nose aquiline, with the delicate nostril indicative of Indian blood; the mouth scarlet-lipped, and radiant with pearly teeth; her figure, above the middle height, and gracefully, if not perfectly, shaped, was set off by the dress, which, albeit coarse and rough, was picturesque; a petticoat of bright-coloured voerchitz, a bodice of the same material, but of different pattern, over which was thrown a rich silk handkerchief of orange hue—a gift from Cape Town; loose sleeves, reaching a little below the elbow of a beautiful arm; cotton stockings, passing fine, and veldt scoons, of better make than was common among her people, fitted to a tolerable foot and slender ankle. Such was the attire of Mrs, or, as she chose to call herself, Madame Vander Roey; and, as she came forward, the rays of the setting sun illuminated her figure, and set off the manifold hues of her costume in a very striking manner. Even the attention of the listless deserter was arrested by the vision of this showy dame, who, with a pistol in her belt, her arms folded across the orange handkerchief her head thrown back, and her flashing eyes bent eagerly on Lyle, awaited their approach in front of her rude but picturesque domicile. She opened the conversation by the direct inquiry addressed to Lyle in Dutch, of “Where do you come from, and what is your business?”
Lyle replied, with equal decision of tone,
“I am the trader from Umlala’s Kraal; I have been, in communication with Vander Roey for more than six weeks.”
“Vander Roey has been absent nearly a month, but I did not wish Umlala’s people to know this; the scouts were told he was ill, and have received the ammunition; some of it I have stored, some has been sent over the mountains. Are you here only as traders, and who is this boy?”
She scanned the dejected-looking Gray with something like glances of contempt.
“Doda, good morrow; you are to be trusted, because you would gain nothing by betraying us. Go, you will find meat cooking at those fires in the hollow. Who, I say, is this boy?”
“A deserter from the service of my king,” answered Gray, “and a miserable creature.”
Lyle would have spoken; Madame Vander Roey forestalled him, by asking in English, “And what is your business here? Do you come as friend or enemy?”
“As neither,” replied Gray; “but I am a most unfortunate young man.”
“Neither friend nor enemy!” said Madame Vander Roey, elevating her dark-pencilled eyebrows; “then why come you here at all?”
Lyle, seeing that Gray had resolved on making a true statement of past occurrences, suddenly exclaimed, “At least accept me as your friend; I am one of those who have been banished by my country for taking part with the ill-used, the poor, and the weak—in a word, we are convicts, who escaped lately from the wreck of the Trafalgar, and from the moment that I set foot on shore, I resolved to seek Vander Roey, whose fame has spread to England—aye, and to the land of his forefathers, to Holland; but of this we can speak hereafter. We have been travelling for some days on foot, are weary and hungry, and long for the rest and refreshment which we believe you will give us. This lad will come to his senses by-and-by; if he does not,” added the elder convict, with a bitter laugh—one of those laughs which Eleanor could not distinguish between jest and earnest—“we most teach him the use of his wits.”
Gray knew it was vain to remonstrate with his evil genius. Madame Vander Roey invited both the travellers into her retreat, and Gray passively followed Lyle and the lady into the bushmen’s cave, her present dwelling-place.
Chapter Seventeen.
The Patriarch.
It was, like most of these retreats, a deep recess in the rocks. The walls were ornamented with grotesque drawings, poorly executed in coloured clay, of men and animals, the figures of the former more resembling apes than men. The ground—for flooring there was none, save a carpet woven by Nature’s tasteful hand—was partially covered with mats and skins, and the furniture consisted of a rickety camp-table and two or three broken stools. A long roer and a pair of large pistols were slung against the scarp of rock at the back of the recess, and the place was faintly illuminated by a primitive kind of lamp—a calabash filled with sheep-tail oil—from the centre of which rose a rush wick. The coolness of this retreat,—for the sun’s rays never penetrated therein,—was delicious, after passing so many days in the open air during the hottest period of the South African summer.
The lamp only emitted sufficient light to make darkness visible to the travellers’ unaccustomed eyes. On their entrance, they heard voices, and Lyle stumbling over some object on the ground, there rose up Madame Vander Roey’s attendant pages, Lynx and Frolic, two small bushboy imps; they uttered a little screech at sight of the new-comers, and were tumbling out of the cave, when their mistress called them back and issued some orders, desiring them to send Hans, the Hottentot. She then lit another lamp, and thereupon they discerned another object in the corner of the recess.
This was the aged father of Madame Vander Roey, a venerable Boer, with snowy hair and a long silvery beard. His seat was an old arm-chair, which his daughter had rendered more comfortable and sightly by throwing over it a kaross made of the silver jackal’s akin. His dress was of the usual coarse duffle, a good deal worn, and a crutch beside him indicated infirmity of body. His mind appeared less enervated than his limbs, and he bowed with an air of great courtesy to the new-comers, evincing no surprise at the appearance of strangers.
He shook his head mournfully, and inquired of his daughter if they were English; she replied in the affirmative, and added that they were friends.
His first thought was hospitable; he reminded her that they must need refreshment; he next begged them to be seated, and inquired whence they came.
Madame Vander Roey said that this question must be deferred for a while, and left the dwelling to see that food was provided for the evening meal.
The old Boer, Du Plessis, began to talk in soliloquising fashion as soon as he was left with Lyle and Gray; the latter reclining listlessly against the painted rock, the former with his full grey eye fixed intently on Du Plessis.
“Has my daughter’s husband returned?” asked the patriarch; but, instead of waiting for an answer, he went back to memories seventy years old, when he was a youth and his father a landowner in the lower districts of the Cape. He repeated the usual tale of complaint. “They robbed us,” said he, speaking of the kafirs. “We offered our humble petitions to the great men at Cape Town, and asked for help; but, while we waited, leaning upon promises—broken reeds!—our enemies swept away our possessions, stole or mutilated our cattle and sheep, and left us poor. Then we learned with great sorrow that some of our fellow-burghers were against us, and time was lost in disproving this, and our enemies laughed at us; therefore we sent messengers to their honours in Cape Town, and said, ‘As we possess little, we pray you let us go and live in peace upon the Sneeuwberg, where, if you will permit us to remain, we will pay you rent; there is quiet there and much game; indeed, we need a supply of food, for many of us now have not a hundred sheep and five cattle. Let us go then with our small flocks and our wives and our little ones.’ So then we waited, and could get no certain answer, and our great men advised us to go, and we went sorrowfully, and sent again messengers to implore forgiveness of their honours if we had done amiss in trekking, and prayed the Lord would bestow His grace upon them, that they might select a fitting person to arrange all disputes between neighbours.
“We fared ill with the bushmen: if we went out to kill sea-cows, these robbers would follow us, or plunder our homes in our absence, or shoot at us with their poisoned arrows. So we grew more and more impoverished, and a generation passed away while we were waiting for help; and so, not being able to hold out against the robbers, we abandoned our places again.”
Here Madame Vander Roey returned to make such preparations as the times permitted for setting the supper-table in array; her father went wandering on.
“Next,” said he, “they took away our slaves. We had been told by good teachers that slavery was bad, that we had no right to traffic in human flesh; but we could not understand anything at first except that we were left without servants, and with pieces of paper in our hands, which we were told were money-bills, but that we must go to Cape Town to get them cashed, and so we did; but we had many hundreds of miles to go. Some trekked away with their slaves altogether, but my father inclined to the Government, and accepted what they called compensation, and I went with him to Cape Town, and we were glad to sell our bills for what we could get from the merchants, and when we came back we found our farms uncultivated, our cattle gone, and our wives and children very miserable; so, you see, my white brothers, we have come step by step further and further and further, and I am heart-sore, and would fain listen to the word that my son Vander Roey shall bring; for I had rather die in peace with all men and with my face turned to the west, than with anger in my heart.”
Hans brought in, on some sticks, some slices of broiled gnoo, and there was a rusty tin dish, filled with rice and carbonatje; the savoury steam was grateful to the senses of even the melancholy Gray, and some coarse but sweet bread and a calabash of Cape brandy being added to the refection, the adventurers did full justice to their hostess’s hospitable display.
The bald rocks of Asphogels’ Kop, a peak distinguished from the other heights of the Stormberg by this name, were shining like snow in the rays of the newly-risen silver moon, when Lynx and Frolic put their impish faces into the cave, and announced that Vander Roey and his escort were in sight of the Donder Berg, for a fire was blazing on the hill.
The old Boer crossed his hands on his breast, closed his eyes, and his lips moved, as Gray supposed, in prayer. The deserter sat down beside the aged Du Plessis; Madame Vander Roey, accompanied by Lyle, left the cave. On emerging from it, into the clear moonlit air, the latter saw that the whole bivouac was astir; there were some forty men and eight or nine women, several children, and a motley assembly of Hottentots, half-castes, and bushmen. These gathered together in a group near Madame Vander Roey, and the beads of approaching men and horses soon appeared above the long waving grass of the little plain, on which the encampment was spread in somewhat disorderly fashion.
The equestrian party came up leisurely, after the manner of those who bring no cheerful or decided tidings. The atmosphere was clear and light as that of day.
Madame Vander Roey said, in a low voice, to Lyle, “There is no good news!”
And so it proved. Vander Roey had not even bees admitted to an interview with Sir John Manvers; indeed, there was little time for treating with any one; for, as we have shown, the brand and the spear were abroad, and the colonists were looking with anxious eyes for the “sea-wagons from across the broad waters,” and their freights of “red men.”
The captain of the bivouac, Lodewyk, a boater, with a race almost covered with hair, arms bared to the elbow, but garnished, Kafir fashion, with bangles of brass, and a ring of ivory, a large straw hat on his head, and equipped with leather trowsers, girded with a belt containing immense pistols, and carrying besides an elephant gun, stepped forwards as Vander Roey swung himself from his jaded horse, and said, in a loud, distinct voice, in the Dutch language,
“Vander Roey, is it peace or war with our white brothers?”
“War,” replied the Boer leader, abruptly, and strode on without greeting his wife, who followed him to the cave.
“War!” shouted Lodewyk—“War!” echoed Lyle; and Lodewyk, recognising the trader, whom he had had dealings with of late, turned to Lyle, and offered his hand.
Lyle grasped it.
“Let us smoke a pipe of tobacco together,” said Lodewyk, and the two men strolled off towards the habitation of the latter; it was a domicile, half hut, half tent, formed of withered boughs and skins, and screened from the east by a scarp of rock, on which many a grotesque and unnatural-looking creature was depicted in yellow ochre and different-coloured chalks.
Circumstances conspired to induce Lyle to develop his plans and purposes sooner than he had first intended; there was something in the bearing of Lodewyk that chimed in with his own feverish desire to be up and doing; and, on the other hand, Lodewyk had been attracted by the hearty, dare-devil style in which the Englishman had flung up his hat, in the moonlight, and shouted “War! war! to the knife!”
They talked fair into the night, as they reclined on a bank facing the habitation of the Vander Roeys. Gray had joined them, and lay fast asleep, his head pillowed by a stone.
The people in the bivouac, through which the cry of “War!” had rung till the voices that uttered it were hoarse, were all busied in preparing for the march at early day across the mountains, the chief having resolved to move to the plains, where the majority of the Boers and their families were awaiting his decision to trek or return.
The women were as busy as the men, collecting the few draught-oxen they possessed, and yoking them to the wagons with their own hands, that there might be no delay; and stalking in silence from group to group, and wagon to wagon, but chiefly intent on superintending the packing of all the gunpowder that remained, on the backs of the beasts of burden, might be seen Vander Roey, with his broad-flapped hat and dark ostrich plume, towering in height above his fellows, and issuing his orders, in a tone of lofty command.
Within the cave, Madame Vander Roey was making preparations for the journey, her father watching her movements with a sad, bewildered dr.
“Peace or war!” muttered the old man. “How many years have I been wandering without rest for the sole of my foot, without a roof to shelter these grey hairs? My son Vander Roey, let it be peace till I die. Whither would you take me? The mountains will sunder me from my dead—my buried wife—my three brave sons, all lying in one grave, killed within a month. I can see from these plains the blue peaks of the hills beneath which they lie. Let me, too, rest here, within sight of those blue hills!
“There has been strife too long, always strife. Let there be peace till I die!—peace! peace!”
And so the old man muttered on, his daughter proceeding with her preparations, and now and then remonstrating with him kindly, and begging him to rest as long as he could on the couch she had spread for him, and so arranged that it could be lifted like a litter. In this, with a light wagon-tilt, the aged patriarch was to be borne over the mountains on the morrow.
Ere the night had passed, three men rode into the camp; these were Brennard and two young Boers of Vander Roey’s party. The former had resolved to join the rebels, and due greetings passed between him and Lyle. Poor Gray, shuddered at the web gathering round him, but there was no escape. He was resolved, however, to keep to the one resolution he had formed during his miserable sojourn among strangers—he would not fight against his sovereign’s troops, come what might.
He could recollect many a loyal saying of his father’s; as a child, he had been taught to “fear God and honour the King.” In spite of the sway his passions had obtained over him, he remembered the lesson; and now, in spite of difficulties and danger, he determined to keep his fealty to his liege. Alas! many a soldier who forgets God abides by his allegiance to man!
Brennard confirmed all that Lyle had been striving to impress on Lodewyk. He swore that Holland had protested against the conduct of the English Government towards the unfortunate white Africans; that help would be sent to Natal, near which the Boers might establish a government of their own, backed by the mother-country; that France was favourably disposed towards the descendants of her sons. They might hear through the papers that France was perfectly peaceful; but it was not so—the people of France would dance over a mine till it sprung and destroyed them—they were deaf to all warnings; the rising Powers had already begun to think of the colonial possessions of England, and their unsatisfactory state. As for the colony, now was the time to make ready for war. The troops, although they fended the Kafirs would be easily beaten, would be thoroughly harassed—“used up”—before reinforcements could arrive. Every one knew that Sir John Manvers, the present commander of the forces, was an irresolute, sullen, haughty man, anxious for the arrival of the new Governor, who was reported to be Sir Adrian Fairfax. Every one knew, too, what Sir Adrian was; he had said that he compassionated the Boers, but was bound to carry out the orders of Government, and must shoot them as rebels if they attempted to show fight. What had they—these poor, unhappy white Africans—gained by passive endurance of ill? In England, men were already standing up for a fresh Charter on their own ground—but what did the Boers want? Only space to feed their cattle, permission to exercise their own laws, without interfering with the English—and this was not to be granted. Would they submit like dogs? At any rate, was it not worth while to try for freedom?
Vander Roey followed up this tirade by informing those who had not accompanied him to the British settlements, that he had been turned from Sir John Manvers’s door like a dog. “He sent me word,” said he, “that he had not time to listen to me. His messenger was a youth with careless mien. I opened my lips to speak, but he heeded me not. I could hear voices, and see lights through the doorways, and the young man passed away, leaving me to be shown out of the house by a servant. I walked by the front of the mansion; the man who ‘had not time to see me’ was receiving guests in a large lighted room. The windows were open, and I stood in the garden, grinding my teeth with rage. I strode out of the light into the darkness; my horse stood patiently at the great gates of that fine house. He hung his head; he was worn with hard riding—he had a sorry look—the sentry, standing under the lamp, was laughing at his miserable plight. I mounted him, dashed through the town, and never drew rein till I reached a river, the waters whereof bubbled and foamed, and I was forced to stop to give the good beast rest. We lay down side by side to sleep, and when I awoke, poor ‘Starry Night’ was dead!
“I had to carry my saddle many a mile before I came up with my people; they asked me few questions, but saw that hope was lost—so now for war.”
“War! war!”—it was not shouted now, but passed from lip to lip, as the chief occupants of the bivouac continued their preparations for the early journey. Only the children and a few of the elder people were asleep in the open ground, for the tents and other wretched contrivances for covering were struck, and all the poor property of these unhappy wanderers packed for the march.
“War! war!” was the dogged watchword of sullen men without. Du Plessis sat up on his couch of skins. “Peace! peace! let there be peace!” he murmured. His daughter laid him gently down on his rude pillow, a saddle, and, before taking an hour’s rest herself, stepped out beyond the cave to see how the people sped in loading, under Vander Roey’s superintendence, the patient beasts of burden.
Lo! a brilliant lunar rainbow spanned, with its broad, illuminated arch, the little plain over which the houseless people were scattered. “See,” said Madame Vander Roey to her husband,—“see the sign of peace God sends us. Ah! I begin to feel myself but a woman; must you lift your hand against our white brethren?”
“We are aliens,” replied Vander Roey, sullenly. “We have no white brethren but those who will echo our cry of war.”
Madame Vander Roey re-entered the cavern, and, casting herself on a pile of dried leaves, was soon asleep.
Oh! the contrast of that shining arch, which God had set in the heavens, and the restless, feverish scene below; horses neighing, bad men swearing, children wakening from their uneasy asleep, and screaming in vague terror, women foremost in urging men to up-saddle and trek. Lodewyk, Brennard, and Lyle, strong in nerve and limb, forswore sleep till they should pass the mountain ridge which shut out the western plains from their sight. Gray lay betwixt sleeping and waking, and as he watched the hues of the rainbow blend one within the other till they faded into mist and veiled the beauty of the moon, an old fancy revived within him—a child’s fancy—“that the rainbow takes its shape and hues from the gathered tears of Heaven,” and is set in the clouds by angel heralds, as a token between God and man of a covenant of peace.
The clouds which, like sheeted ghosts, hung about the sides of the Stormberg mountains, melted into drizzling showers, and met the party commanded by Vander Roey, in its journey up the steep and stony pathways.
First rode Vander Roey, his flapped hat and sweeping feather drawn down to his eyebrows. A little apart from him, watching his leader’s countenance with keen and anxious glance, strode the wild hunter on foot, staff in hand, a handkerchief bound round his head, and this surmounted by a coarse, weather-beaten straw hat. Close behind were Brennard, Lyle, and Lodewyk. The former was a sworn ally of Vander Roey—he, too, had been a deserter. Lyle, introduced as his friend, had found a ready welcome, but as yet had had no opportunity of close discussion with Vander Roey; and poor Gray was mounted on a somewhat tired steed; but this signified little, as the acclivity was impracticable for a hurried journey; and, besides this, the feeble and infirm of the party could only proceed at a certain pace. Very few wagons accompanied the procession, and these halted often, that the smoking oxen might take fresh breath for the desperate task before them. Now a wagon was lifted almost edgeways on a huge block of stone, now it came down with a crash that threatened dislocation to every joint of the creaking mass; sometimes the poor animals, in utter despair at the sight of the almost perpendicular track, dashed at it at headlong speed, halted suddenly, and were almost dragged back by the weight of the huge vehicle in the rear; or, if they did succeed in gaining a ridge, overlooking a hollow in the mountain-side, would plunge recklessly on, and come down en masse, jumbled together in a confused heap.
But, apparently absorbed in thought, sullen, angry, smarting under a keen sense of wrong and disappointment, the leader expressed no impatience at the delays occasioned by the feebleness or incapacity of the most useless followers of the cavalcade. He made no reply when told that a halt must be called, for the sake of some sickly family, wasted with fever, from lying long in the open bivouac, or some patriarch of the tribe, head of three or four generations, who could not walk, was not strong enough to sit his horse, or whose rheumatic limbs needed a respite from the jolting of the wagon. Moodily silent, he sat upon his powerful horse, which he had kept fresh for the work before him, and apart from his fellow-men, save that Lodewyk and Brennard occasionally conferred with him. At last Lyle made his way slightly in advance, and, turning his horse’s head to the westward, surveyed the panorama lying before him. They were on a ridge of table-rock near the summit of the lowest mountain, over which their path lay, and here it was intended they should outspan for an hour or two, and make a meal of some of the poor sheep, which with great difficulty had been driven up the steep by the bushboys, Lynx and Frolic.
Lyle’s powerful frame, bronzed but handsome face, the very air with which he carried his rifle, his attitude on horseback,—in fact, his whole bearing, as he smiled cordially on Vander Roey, attracted the latter at once to his colleague. The two riders brought their horses together, neck and neck, and watched the party winding up the steep.
In rear of all was old Du Plessis on a litter. The mists had cleared away, the rays of the sun illuminated the hills above them with a glory, the clouds were tinged with flame. Nature breathed gently on the rocky soil, and as the aged Boer sat up in his primitive palanquin, the tilt partially drawn back, the balmy breeze lifted his white hair, and seemed to refresh him. His daughter rode close by, reining in, with no small skill, a horse of the same shape and power as her husband’s, but with some attempt at smartness about his harness; the saddle was a man’s, but she had learned to ride in the civilised districts, and with the left stirrup shortened, and the right one brought over to the near side, she contrived to sit with comfort and considerable grace; but the head-gear was unsightly,—a gingham bonnet, shaped like a wagon-tilt, almost concealed her face, yet from the depths of this miniature tunnel flashed out the dark and brilliant eyes; but when these turned upon her father, their radiance softened to a tender light.
As Vander Roey and Lyle sat conversing in short pithy sentences on the subject of oppression, the former believing Lyle’s indignation to be as patriotic and disinterested as his own, the latter somewhat discomposed at finding Vander Roey as shrewd, resolute, and intelligent as himself, and withal comparatively honest of purpose, though blind in judgment, they both watched the last division, consisting of the chief Boer’s wife, the litter, its bearers, and some of the younger people of the clan.
All at once, Madame Vander Roey dropped her reins, clasped her hands, sprung from her horse, and cast herself on her knees beside the couch of her father, then looking upward, beckoned her husband to her; her bonnet railing off, disclosed an anguished countenance. Vander Roey dismounted, and leading his horse, descended the few hundred yards, that lay between him and his wife. Lyle followed, and the little crowd, halting on the hill-side, looked down upon the litter and the attendant group.
Du Plessis had raised himself with a strength unusual to him; an unnatural light filled his eyes; his voice, though not loud, was firm and clear. The air was so still, that the gentle breeze wafted his words to those above. Those who could, drew as near as they could do with due respect to his immediate relatives.
“My children,” said the old man, “draw near. Let me bless you before I die. I thank my God that he gives me light at the last. I shall die within sight of those dark purple hills, whose feet are washed by those pleasant streams beside which I dwelt through many a long, long year. There my forefathers came, pitched their tents, and tarried for four generations. There they sowed, there they reaped, there they were despoiled, but abided patiently for help that never came. My children, I would fain have you still wait for help; the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; God will take his own time to make the crooked pathways straight, and the rough places plain; think well before you lift your hand against your white brethren.”
Old memories seemed to flit in shadows before the eye of the dying “white African settler;” it looked into the past. A sudden flush crimsoned the ashy cheek, and the eyes shone with tears.
Folding his trembling and withered hands together, he gave himself up to thoughts of bygone days; the cheek paled again, but the tears of weakness rolled slowly down, and bedewed the old rough jacket. He was back again at the foot of those hills, purpling in the glory of the morning sun, but green and fresh in his memory even now. He mentioned father, mother, brothers, sisters, wife, all gone; all lying beneath the sod near a ruined chapel. Of all his people, his daughter was the last one; his sons’ bones had bleached unburied in the waste.
Sometimes swiftly, sometimes slowly, he spoke of the days when the white men of Africa were all united: “But now,” said he, “our white brethren—where are they? Some tell us they are sorry. We were friends once. We ate bread together, we smoked our pipes together at sunset. We had no thought of strife—strife—strife. Peace, peace”—the wings of the angel of death swooped down, and overshadowed his recollection. A gleam of light irradiated his face for a few minutes, he raised himself higher on his couch, the wind parted the snowy hair on his majestic brow, his gaze was fixed westward, his arms were stretched towards the mountain ridges of his first home, his daughter clasped his hands in hers, he bowed his white head upon her breast, she uttered a loud cry, Vander Roey stooped to support the patriarch, but he was dead to human sympathy. The sable wings of Azrael had overshadowed him, and his soul passed away, while his outward vision was fixed longingly and lovingly upon those mountain ridges which he was never more to tread in youth or age, in sorrow or in joy.
They buried him decently upon the lone hill-side.
Few of the married families were without their Bibles; and he, who stood next in age to Du Plessis, said a prayer over the open grave. While they were occupied in closing it with safe blocks of stone, a mother gathered a little flock around her, and read them a chapter suited to the occasion. Madame Vander Roey sat beside her, weeping bitterly; the men stood apart in groups. Some had been impressed with the old man’s last words, “Peace, peace.”
But as in all disorganised communities the strong and evil spirit of man’s nature prevails over the good, there were not wanting women, as well as men, to step forward and urge even the incident of old Du Plessis’ death as an incentive to carry out the purpose of wrath and of revenge. He, the aged, the virtuous, the banished patriarch!—who had driven him into the wilderness to die, but his white brother, another Cain? Were they to submit to the will of these jealous, bad white brethren, who permitted the savage Kafir the exercise of his diabolical laws, his heathen rites, and denied the poor Dutch colonist the use of his own moral laws? Who had first robbed them of their slaves, and then pretended to make them compensation for depriving them of what was theirs by purchase? Had not Du Plessis himself urged the obligation of making a sacrifice, because it was disgraceful to white men to trade in human flesh? What reward had he gained? His cattle had been swept away, his sons shot down by the Kafirs, his home devastated; he had met with no pity or redress, and he had died sorrow-stricken amid the mountains of the storm.
And to add to these grievances, men had belied them, and were still belying them, in England. The traders, now with them, had brought them the evil sayings of wicked or ignorant Englishmen, who proclaimed to the world that the Boer was cruel and rapacious, never satisfied with the land he had pillaged from the Hottentots, but committing unequalled cruelties against them, entering their countries with commandoes, despoiling them of their cattle, devastating their villages; but men were among them now who knew how false these allegations were; that the commandoes, wherein many a life was lost, were undertaken to recover their own goods stolen from them by the thieving Hottentots, the bushmen, and Kafirs, who had no villages, except hamlets of huts built by the hands of women, their beasts of burden; a noble race were these to be indulged and pitied by enlightened men of the greatest nation in the world...
“Peace. Yes, they would have peace; but the waters of many a river must be turned into blood first ere this would be. On, on! to the land of promise, the land flowing with milk and honey, where they should have their own rules, and the judge and the criminal speak one language face to face!”
So spoke Lodewyk, the hunter, standing between, and at all times appealing by gesture to Brennard and Lyle. Alas! the sentiments he uttered had been strengthened by the agency of these two desperate men.
Gray sat moodily apart from all, resigned doggedly to the fate that awaited him, but resolute in his intent to die, rather than fight against “his own.”
Day was dying in glory on the hills Du Plessis loved, ere all the rites of sepulture were concluded, and as the moon came up calm, serene, and radiant, the sky cloudless, the elements at peace, the band of pilgrims halted on the mountain ridge, and, turning their faces towards the homes of their forefathers, sang their beautiful paraphrase of the 137th Psalm, “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept;” and as the last low notes floated dirge-like over the patriarch’s new-made grave, they descended the eastward side of the mountains, and held their silent course during the night, halting at daylight, when many an eager, carious gaze was turned to scenes hitherto unexplored by these wanderers. As the mists lifted, a strong gleam of sunlight shot down upon a spot in the centre of a wide-spreading, treeless plain. Some men of the party advanced and fired a volley from their roers. A thick wreath of smoke intercepted the glory of the sun’s rays, and the signal was responded to. As the eye became accustomed to the glare, a large bivouac, dotted with tents, wagons, oxen, sheep, horses, and men, became distinctly visible. Soon a little body of horsemen were seen skimming the plains, and ere long the salute of their uplifted hats was answered by a similar movement on the part of Vander Roey’s determined band.