Far away in the gloomiest recesses of a range lying between Zwart Ruggens and the Zwartberg, Cape Colony, not far from where the mountains of that wild and secluded district give place to the eastern limits of the plateau of the Great Karroo, there lies hidden, and almost unknown, a kloof or gorge, whose dark and forbidding aspect, united to the wild and horrid legend with which it is invested, prevents any but the chance hunter or wandering traveller from ever invading its fastnesses. This kloof is about seven miles from the rough track that in these regions is dignified by the name of road; it is approached by a poort or pass through the mountains, and the way is, even for South Africa, a rough and dangerous one, although there are indications that a rude waggon-track did formerly exist there. Standing upon the steep side of this kloof are the remains of what must have once been a roomy and substantial Boer farmhouse; but the four walls are roofless, the windows and doorways naked and destitute of sashes, the euphorbia, the prickly pear, and clambering weeds grow within and without, the lizard and snake abide there, and the whole appearance of the place denotes that many years have elapsed since Prinsloo’s Kloof was tenanted by human life.

In many respects the wild kloof gives evidence that the Boer who first tarried there had an eye for good pasturage for his flocks and herds. The spekboom and many another succulent bush, dear to the goal breeder, flourish amid the broken and chaotic rocks with which the hill sides are strewn. A strong fountain of water runs with limpid current from the mountain at the back of the house; the flat tops of the hills around are clothed with long waving grasses, and the valley is, manifestly, well fitted to be the nursery of a horse-breeding establishment. A tributary of the Gamtoos River flows deeply, if fitfully, below the sheer and overhanging cliffs in a chain of pools, called zee-koe gats (sea-cow or hippopotamus deeps)—the hippopotamus, though his name lingers behind, no longer revels in the flood—and the bottom of the valley is in many parts fertile and suited for the growth of grain and fodder crops.

Broken and uncouth as are many portions of the Witteberg and Zwartberg, the neighbourhood of Prinsloo’s Kloof far surpasses them. There the volcanic action of a bygone age has perpetrated the most extraordinary freaks. The mountains are torn into shapes so wild and fantastic, that, viewed in profile against the red glow of the setting sun, all manner of weird objects may be conjured before the imagination. In some places, as the kloof runs into the heart of the hills, the cliff sides are so deep, so precipitous, and so narrow, that but little sunlight can penetrate beneath, and even on a hot day of African summer a chill strikes upon the spectator passing through.

It is not difficult to understand, from a Boer point of view, that this stern valley was a well chosen spot in which to build a farmhouse. The distance from a roadway, is, in Boer eyes, of no great account, and, as a rule, the farther from human habitation the Dutch farmer can get the better he is pleased. As for the forbidding aspect of the kloof, the stolid, unimaginative Boer would be little troubled on that score; he has no eye whatever for picturesque or scenic effect, and will plant himself as readily upon the treeless wastes of the Orange Free State, or the most stony, barren mountain-side of the Old Colony, as in the most beautiful and wooded country that South Africa can give him.

When Jan Prinsloo trekked into the kloof, towards the end of the last century, the place must have been a very paradise and nursery of game. In the river the hippopotamus played, elephants roamed through the valleys and poorts everywhere around, the zebras ran in large troops upon the mountain tops, and many of the larger game, such as koodoo, the buffalo, and the hartebeest, wandered fearlessly and free; while of the smaller game, such as rhebok, duykerbok, and klipspringer, judging from the abundance of the present day, there must have been literally multitudes. To Jan Prinsloo, then, wild and sombre as the place was, it must have appeared, as he trekked down the pass, a veritable Boer elysium. But Jan, having played his part in the world—a part more fierce and turbulent even than was usual to the marauding frontier Boers of a hundred years ago—made his exit from the scene in a manner cruel and horrible enough to match fitly with the rest of his wicked and violent existence.

Since Jan Prinsloo’s fearful ending, which will be hereafter alluded to, the kloof has borne an evil reputation. Now and again a Boer has taken the farm, tempted by its pastoral advantages and its low purchase-money, but somehow, none have ever stayed upon it for long. The last tenant, an Englishman, quitted it hastily nearly forty years ago, and ever since then the house has become year by year more sombre and more desolate, the footsteps of human beings now rarely penetrate thither, and even the very Kaffirs avoid the place.

In September of the year 1860, a young English Afrikander, Stephen Goodrick by name, who had, from the time he could handle a rifle, been engaged in the far interior in the then lucrative, if dangerous, occupation of elephant-hunting, having amassed, at the age of thirty, some four or five thousand pounds, after fourteen years of hunting and trading in Northern Bechuanaland and the Lake Ngami region, threw up the game, and trekked down to Grahamstown with his last loads of ivory. These disposed of and his affairs settled, he took unto himself for a wife, a handsome, dark-eyed girl, the daughter of Scotch parents, living near his own family in the Western Province, and then set about looking for a farm, having determined to settle down to the more peaceful pursuits of pastoral farming. After a month of riding hither and thither, inspecting farms in the districts of Swellendam, Oudtshoorn, and George, none of which pleased his fancy, he turned his attention to the Eastern Province.

Goodrick had been long and continuously away from the Cape, and in the brief intervals when he had rested from his hunting and trading expeditions he had usually stayed with his father, an old colonist, in Swellendam, a district to the south-west of the Colony. His knowledge, therefore, of the Eastern Province was necessarily somewhat restricted. Stephen, by chance, heard one day from a Boer trekking by with fruit and tobacco, that another Boer named Van der Meulen was leaving his farm near the end of Zwartberg. Losing no time, Stephen saddled up, paid temporary farewell to his wife, whom he left at his father’s house, and, traversing Lange Kloof and crossing the Kougaberg, he entered, on the afternoon of the third day, Prinsloo’s Kloof, whither he had been directed.

It was a glorious hot afternoon in early summer, the sun shone as only it can in Africa, and under its brilliant rays and with the wealth of vegetation and flower life springing up everywhere around, the kloof, savage though it appeared, put on its mellowest aspect; and as Goodrick rode up to the farmhouse and noticed the flocks and herds, all sleek and in good condition, he thought that there might be worse places in which to outspan for life than this beautiful, if solemn valley.

At the farmhouse he was welcomed by the owner. Van der Meulen, and after a stroll round the kraals and supper over a business conversation took place before the family retired to rest, which, as it seemed to the young Englishman, they did hurriedly and with some odd glances at one another. Next morning all were up early, and Goodrick rode round the farm—all good mountain pasture, embracing some 19,000 morgen (rather more than 40,000 acres) in its area. The Boer, in his uncouth, rough way, warmly praised the farm; the price he asked was extremely small, and the annual Government quit rent very trifling. Van der Meulen explained as his reason for selling the place, apparently so much below its value, that he had been offered, at an absurdly small price, a very fine farm in the Transvaal by a relation who had lately annexed the best of the land of a native chief; and, as many of his blood relations, Voertrekkers of 1836, were settled there, he wished to quit the Colony quickly and join them. Finally, Goodrick agreed to buy the farm, together with part of the stock, and, early on the following morning, left the kloof. The purchase was shortly completed at Cape Town, where the vendor and purchaser met a week afterwards, and, the Van der Meulens having trekked out with all their household goods and belongings, the Englishman and his wife prepared to enter upon their property.

Stephen Goodrick, then, with two waggons, carrying his wife, her white female servant, and a quantity of furniture and household and farming necessaries, and taking with him four Hottentots and half-a-dozen horses, trekked again through Lange Kloof, over the Kougaberg, and thence through a country partly mountain, partly karroo, until one afternoon early in October, the waggons crossed the deep and dangerous drift of the river, and went up through the poort that led into Prinsloo’s Kloof. After a most difficult and tedious piece of travelling for some seven miles—for the half-forgotten waggon-track lay up and down precipitous ascents and declivities, littered here and there with huge boulders, or hollowed out into dangerous spruits and holes—at length the stout but wearied oxen faced the last steep hill to the farmhouse, and with many a pistol crack of the great whip, many a Hottentot curse directed at Zwartland, Kleinboy, Engelschman, Akerman, and the rest, dragged their heavy burdens up to the open space that had been cleared in front of the homestead. It had been arranged that Van der Meulen’s eldest son should remain upon the farm until Goodrick and his wife had arrived, and further, that an old Hottentot, Cupido by name, who knew the farm and its ways well, and two young Kaffirs, who had lately arrived from the Transkei in search of work, should transfer their services to the new-comer.

These four being therefore ready, having already brought in and kraaled the goats for the night, they assisted the Englishman to outspan his oxen and unload the waggons. After two or three hours’ hard work, a good portion of the waggons was unloaded, and part of the furniture arranged in the house; three of the horses were placed for the night in the rough building adjoining the dwelling-house that served for a stable, while the remainder had been turned into a large stone kraal which lay on the other flank of the house. Meanwhile the white servant had prepared the supper, which partaken of, the wearied travellers retired to rest. About the middle of the night Goodrick and his wife were suddenly aroused by a great commotion in the stable; the horses were trampling, plunging and squealing as if suddenly disturbed or scared. Then there rose upon the night, as it seemed just outside the house, a wild scream, hideous in its intensity and full of horror.

Hastily thrusting on some clothes and taking a lantern, Goodrick ran round to the stable. The night, though there was no moon, was not dark, and the stars shone clear in the firmament above. Nothing was to be seen, no sound could be heard save the snorting of the horses, and the weird cry of a leopard (strangely different, as the hearer well knew, from the scream heard just previously) that sounded from the rocks a mile or so away on the right. Quickly entering the stable, Stephen was astonished to find the horses in a profuse sweat, trembling, their halters broken, their eyes startled and excited, and their whole demeanour indicating intense fear. What could be the cause? There was, apparently, no wild animal about, nothing in the stable calculated to excite alarm; the animals were old comrades, and not likely to have been fighting. Goodrick was altogether puzzled, and, leaving the stable, went to a shed in rear of the house, where the natives slept, and roused the old Hottentot. The man could give no reason for the disturbance. Wolves (hyaenas) were not likely to approach the house, and the tigers (leopards) had not been very troublesome lately, and he could think of nothing else to explain the matter. There was a scared look in the old man’s face, which Goodrick thought nothing of at the time, but which he afterwards remembered. After some little trouble, fresh halters were procured, the horses tied up and soothed, and the two again retired, Cupido being cautioned to keep his ears open against further disturbance. Nothing further occurred during the night.

Next morning, after seeing the goats unkraaled, watered and despatched to their day’s pasturage in charge of the two Kaffir herds, Goodrick asked the young Boer at breakfast if he had heard the noise among the horses, and the wild scream, and what could be the cause, and if there was any cattle-stealing about this wild neighbourhood. Young Van der Meulen’s heavy, immovable countenance changed slightly, but he replied that he could give no explanation except that perhaps a leopard might have been prowling about; they were pretty numerous in the kloof. Stephen explained that he and the Hottentots had spoored everywhere around the stable for leopards, but could find no trace.

Here the subject dropped, and Van der Meulen relapsed into silence, except when the Englishman asked him what game there was about the hills. “You will find,” he said, “plenty of small buck—klipspringers, rhebok, and duykerbok, and there are still a fair number of koodoo which, however, take some stalking. Then on the berg tops there are several troops of zebras, as well as hyaenas and leopards; but the zebras we have seldom shot, they take so much climbing after, and you know we Dutchmen prefer riding to walking. You will find also lots of springbok and steinbok and some black wildebeest (gnu) on the plains beyond the mountains. Yes, I have had many a mooi schiet op de plaats (pretty shoot on the farm).” Suddenly the young man’s heavy features changed again as he said, “Allemaghte! (Almighty) but I shall be glad to get out of this place; I hate it! I want again to get on to the Transvaal high veldt, where I trekked through two years ago, and where you can shoot as many blauuw wildebeest (brindled gnu), blessbok, quagga, springbok, and hartebeest as you want in a day’s ride. Ja! that is the land for me; these gloomy poorts and kloofs are only fit for leopards and spooks (ghosts). Then, you know, Mynheer, the Transvaal is free; we never loved your Government, which is always wanting from us this, that and the other, and I shall be glad to trek out. Up in Zoutpansberg we shall be able to hunt the kameel (giraffe), and the zwart-wit-pens (sable antelope), and elephant, as much as we like, and for our winter pasture we shall not have to pay a single rix-dollar. Ja! I have had enough of Prinsloo’s Kloof, and never wish to see it again.” This long speech delivered, the Boer relapsed into silence. There was a curious look on the young man’s face as he had spoken, which Goodrick and his wife could not quite define or understand.

An hour afterwards Van der Meulen had slung his rifle on his back, packed some biltong (sun-dried meat) in his pockets, saddled up his horse, and bidden farewell to the tenants of the kloof. The Englishman and his young wife watched his retreating form as it slowly proceeded down the valley, and presently disappeared amidst a grove of acacia trees that margined the river; then they turned to the house. “I don’t quite understand that fellow,” said Stephen, “do you, Mary? I can’t help thinking there was something behind what he said. Why were his people so eager to leave this farm? However, dearest, the farm is a good one and a cheap one; we are young and strong and ought to be as happy as any two people in the Colony.”

“Yes, Stephen,” said his wife, “I thought there was something queer in what the young man said, but it could have been only fancy. I am sure we ought to be happy and contented, and with you by my side, I shall always be so.”

In a few weeks’ time Goodrick had increased his stock of goats, and had bought a sufficient number of horses to start a stud farm upon the mountains around. Things seemed to be going well with him. The pasture was in splendid condition, the valleys and kloofs that led into the mountains literally blazed with flowers of every conceivable hue, from the great pink or crimson blossomed aloes, that gave warmth to the towering brown rocks above, to the lovely heaths, irises, and pelargoniums that clothed as with a brilliant carpet the bottom grounds. The house had been thoroughly cleansed, put into order, and the new furniture settled into it, and young Mrs Goodrick busily employed her days in household duties. Her husband had had several good days’ shooting about the hills, and had brought in two koodoos (one of the largest and most magnificent of South African antelopes), whose noble spiral horns now adorned the dining-room, besides many a head of smaller antelopes and innumerable francolins, pheasants, ducks, and other feathered game.

Yet, somehow, though things had so far gone well, the young couple were not quite comfortable. The disturbances among the horses, although not repeated for several nights, had occasionally happened; the same horrid scream had been heard, and their causes had so far completely baffled Stephen Goodrick. He had tried all sorts of plans, changed the horses, and even had them all turned loose together in the great stone kraal, but with the same results. They were found over and over again at night, mad with fear and drenched with sweat, trampling and plunging in the stable, or tearing about the inclosure.

Cupido and the Kaffirs, and his own Swellendam Hottentots, had been questioned and cross-examined, but to no purpose. Twice had Goodrick remained on the watch all night. On one occasion he believed he had seen a figure move quickly past him in the darkness, and the horses had been disturbed at the same time; but nothing further could be traced and no spoor of man or quadruped was ever discovered. The thing was a mystery. At length, one moonlight night, Goodrick ran out, hearing the now familiar noises, and, taking with him his great brindled dog, which had often hunted elephants, rhinoceros, buffalo and lion, he quickly went round to the stable.

At this moment the two Kaffir herds also came running out on hearing the noise. Just as they approached the stable together they beheld a figure pass through the open doorway, as they supposed, and swiftly glide away to the hillside. The dark figure was clad in a broad-brimmed Boer hat and quaintly cut old-fashioned dress, as Goodrick could plainly notice. Stephen shouted, and with the Kaffirs gave chase, but after a few minutes’ running the man suddenly vanished into the bushy scrub that grew on the mountain-side, and no further trace could be found, although the Kaffirs hunted everywhere around.

Meanwhile Stephen turned for his dog, surprised that the animal, usually so fierce and impetuous, had not led the chase. To his utter astonishment, “Tao” was close at his heels, his tail between his legs, his hackles up, and with every symptom of terror upon him. The thing was incomprehensible; the dog had never feared man or beast in his life before, and many a time and oft had faced, as they turned at bay, the fierce and snarling lion, the dangerous sable antelope with his scimitar-like horns, and the wounded and screaming elephant. At length, turning back, they entered the stable; to their surprise the door was locked, and on being opened the horses as usual were loose and in the last extremity of fright. Nothing more could be done that night. In the morning the Kaffirs and Hottentots searched everywhere for spoor, but could find no trace of the midnight marauder. Cupido, indeed, shook his head, rolled his bloodshot-looking eyes, and appeared to take the occurrence as a matter of course.

Three mornings afterwards the two Kaffirs came to Stephen, declared that they had seen on the previous night the same dark figure just outside their sleeping shed; that the terrible expression on the face of this apparition, which they saw distinctly in the moonlight, had made them utterly sick and terror-stricken; that the thing was a thing of witchcraft, and that nothing would induce them to stay another night on the farm.

“We like the N’kose (chief or master) well,” they said, “but we dare not stay in this country or we shall be slain by the witchcraft we see around us; why do you not get a ‘smeller out’ to cleanse this place from the evil?” The two men, who, in daylight, were, as most Kaffirs are, bold, hardy fellows, were evidently in earnest in what they said, and though Goodrick, who could ill afford to part with them at a moment’s notice, offered them increased wages, they steadfastly declined. At length finding he could not shake their resolution, he reluctantly paid them their money and let them go. Goodrick learned some months afterwards from a friend, that these men had marched straight for the boundary of the Colony, crossed the Kei, and rejoined their own tribe, the Gaikas, in Kaffraria.

Goodrick now began to think somewhat seriously of the matter, and to ask himself with inward misgivings what it all meant. Brave man though he was, like most mortals he was not quite proof against superstition, and he began to find himself half fearing that there was something not quite canny about the place. How else could he account for the locked door, the suddenly vanishing figure, the sickening yell, and the lack of footmarks? However, he kept his thoughts from his wife, and made some excuse about a quarrel with the Kaffirs as to wages, to explain their sudden departure. She, although accepting the explanation, seemed uneasy, and at last burst out, “Oh, Stephen, I think there is something wrong about this kloof—some dreadful mystery we know nothing of. Have you ever noticed that even the Kaffirs in the kraal a few miles beyond the poort never enter here? Not a soul amongst the farmers comes near us, and as for ‘Tao’ he never seems happy now and is always restless, suspicious and alarmed.”

That same night the wild, unearthly scream rose again; the same tumult was heard in the stable; Stephen rushed out, and once again, under the clear moonlight, he saw the figure passing in front of him. This time he had his rifle loaded, and after calling once, fired. Still the figure retreated; another shot was fired, but to no purpose; the figure apparently glided imperceptibly onwards, and then suddenly disappeared, as it seemed, sheer into the earth. Goodrick knew so well his powers with the rifle, with which he was famous as a deadly shot, that he could not bring himself to believe he had missed twice within fifty yards. From this incident he could form no other conclusion, and he shivered as he thought so, than that the night disturber was not of human mould.

Meanwhile the horses were becoming worn to shadows, their coats stared, they lost flesh and looked altogether miserable. Fresh horses had been brought in, but the effect was ever the same. Shortly after, two of the Swellendam Hottentots left, and the other two, with Cupido and Mrs Goodrick’s servant, alone remained. Goodrick was now in great straits; he could not immediately procure other native servants, and only managed to get through his farm work with the greatest trouble and exertion.

Things drifted on uncomfortably for another week or two, and each day as it came and went, seemed to Goodrick and his wife to increase the gloom and uncertainty of their life in the kloof. At length a climax arrived. Christmas, but a sombre one, had sped, and South African summer, with its heat, its flies, and other manifold troubles, was now at its height.

On the 15th of January, 1861, a day of intense heat was experienced. All day the landscape had sweltered under a still oppression that was almost unbearable, and the very animals about the farm seemed touched and depressed by some mysterious influence.

Towards nightfall dark clouds gathered together suddenly in dense masses; in the distance, long, rolling thunder-peals were heard approaching in strangely slow, yet none the less certain movement. Cupido, the old Hottentot, had fidgetted about the house a good deal all the evening, and finally, just before ten o’clock, he asked his master if he might for that night sleep on the floor of the kitchen, in order, as he put it, to attend more quickly to the horses if anything scared them. Goodrick noticed that the old man looked agitated, and good-naturedly said “Yes.”

Still slowly onward marched the stormy batteries of the sky, until at eleven o’clock they burst overhead with a terrific crash (preceded by such lightning as only Africa can show) that literally seemed to tear and rend each nook and corner of the gorge, reverberating with deafening repetition from every krantz and hollow and rocky inequality in the rude landscape. Rain fell in torrents for a time, then ceased. Again and again the thunder broke overhead, while the lightning played with fiery tongue upon mountain and valley, showing momentarily, with photographic clearness, every object around. Sleep on such a night was out of the question, and Goodrick and his wife sat together listening with solemn faces to the hideous tumult. At length, at about twelve o’clock, the storm for a brief space rolled away, only to return in half an hour with increased severity.

Goodrick had gone for a few moments to the back door, which faced partly towards the entrance to the kloof, and found Cupido standing there, seemingly listening intently. As the tempest approached again with renewed ferocity, some strange confused noises, shrieks and shouts as it seemed, were borne upon the strong breeze that now preceded and hurried along the thunder clouds.

“Hallo!” said Goodrick, “what the deuce is that? There surely can’t be a soul about on such a night as this?” Again a hideous scream was borne up the valley. “Good God! that’s the very yell we’ve heard so often round here at night,” repeated the Englishman. “It’s not leopard, it’s not hyaena; what on earth is it, Cupido?” The Hottentot was now trembling in every limb; his yellow, monkeylike face had turned ashy grey, and his bleared eyes seemed full of some intense terror. “Baas,” he stammered out, “it’s Jan Prinsloo’s night, and if you’re wise you’ll shut the doors fast, pull down the blinds, and not stir or look out for an hour.”

“What do you mean, man?”

“I mean that the ghosts of Jan Prinsloo, who was slain here years ago, and his murderers, are coming up the kloof.” At that moment the cries and shoutings sounded closer and closer up the valley, and it seemed as if the rattling of horses galloping along the rock-strewn path could be distinguished through the storm. Just then the other two Hottentots, who at length had also heard the din, rushed across from their shed and huddled into the kitchen. Mrs Goodrick at the same instant ran into the room. “What’s the matter, Stephen?” she cried; “I am certain there is some dreadful work going on.”

“Yes, wife, there is some devilish thing happening, and I mean to get to the bottom of it. I haven’t hunted fifteen years in the interior to be frightened by a few strange noises.” So speaking, the young farmer went to the sitting-room, took down and rapidly loaded two rifles and his revolver, and returned to the kitchen. Handing one rifle to the Hottentot, he said, “Here, Cupido, take this; I know you can shoot straight, and, if needful, you’ll have to do so. Wife, give the Totties a soupje each of brandy.”

This was quickly done; the result seemed, on the whole, satisfactory, and the Hottentots somewhat reassured. In a few more seconds the storm burst again in one appalling roar; after it could now be heard the clattering of hoofs up the hillside, mingled with shrieks and shouts. This time the tempest passed rapidly overhead, the dense black clouds rushed on, and suddenly the moon shone out with wonderful brightness.

Onward came the strange noises, sweeping past the side of the house as if up to the great stone cattle kraal, that lay sixty yards away. Then was heard the loud report of a gun. Stephen could stand it no longer. “Come on, you fellows, with me,” he exclaimed, as he ran out towards the kraal. Cupido and Mrs Goodrick, who would not be left behind, alone followed him; the white servant woman and the remaining two Hottentots stayed in the kitchen, halfddead with fright, the one on a chair, her apron clasped to her head and ears, the others huddled up in a corner. The three adventurers were not long in reaching the kraal, whence they heard proceeding the same dreadful cries and shrieks, mingled with the trampling of feet Goodrick first approached the entrance, which he found wide open. The sight that met his eyes, and those of his wife and Cupido close behind, was enough to have shaken the stoutest heart.

Under the clear illumination of the moon, which now shone forth calm and serene, the inclosure seemed as light as day. In the far corner, to the right hand, seventy paces distant, the half-dozen horses that had been turned in stood huddled with their heads together like a flock of sheep. On the opposite side from the entrance, a frightful looking group was tearing madly round. First ran a tall, stout figure, clad in the broad-brimmed hat and quaint old-fashioned leathern costume, which Goodrick in a moment recognised. In its hands it grasped a huge, long, old flint “roer,” a smooth-bore elephant gun, such as the Boers used in earlier days. The figure, as it fled, had its face half-turned to its pursuers, who consisted of six half-naked Hottentots armed with assegais and knives. As the chase, for such it was, swept round the kraal and the figures approached the entrance, every face could be plainly discerned; and this was the horrible part of it. These faces were all the faces of the dead, gaunt, ghastly, and grim, and yet possessed of such fiendish and dreadful expressions of anger, cruelty, and lust for blood, as to strike a chilling terror to the hearts of the three spectators. Brave man and ready though he was, Goodrick felt instinctively that he was in the presence of the dead, and his rifle hung listlessly in his hand.

Closer the fearful things approached the spellbound trio, till, when within thirty yards, the leading figure stumbled and fell. In an instant, with diabolical screams, the ghostly Hottentots fell upon their quarry, plying assegai and knife. Again the awful scream that the kloof knew so well rang out upon the night; then followed a torrent of Dutch oaths and imprecations; and then the dying figure, casting off for a moment its slayers, stood up and laid about it with the heavy “roer” grasped at the end of the barrel.

The three living beings who looked upon that face will never to their last days forget it. If the expression of every crime and evil passion could be depicted upon the face of the dead, they shone clear under the pale moonlight upon the face of the dying Dutchman—dying again though dead. Once again with wild yells the Hottentots closed on their victim, and once more rang the fiendish dying yell. Then, still more awful, the Hottentots, as it seemed in an instant, stripped the half-dead body, hacked off the head and limbs, and tore open the vitals, with which they bedabbled and smeared themselves as they again tore shrieking round the kraal. Flesh and blood could stand the sight no longer; Mrs Goodrick, who had clung to her husband spellbound during the scene, which had taken in its enactment but a few seconds, fainted away. Goodrick turned to take his wife in his arms with the intention of making hurriedly for the house. At that instant the horrid din ceased suddenly, and was succeeded by a deathly silence. Turning once more to the kraal gate, Goodrick at once perceived that the whole of the enactors of this awful drama had vanished. He rubbed his eyes in vain to see if they deceived him, but a nod from the half-dead Cupido convinced him that this was not so. No, there was no doubt about it, the waning moon cast her pure and silvery beams calmly and peacefully upon a silent scene. Not a trace of the bloody drama remained; not a whisper, save of the soft night breeze, told of the dreadful story.

“Baas,” whispered the Hottentot, “they’ll come no more to-night.” Quickly Goodrick raised his fainting wife and carried her into the house, where, after long and anxious tending, she was restored to consciousness. Placing her in the sitting-room upon a couch which he had himself made from the soft skins, “brayed” by the Kaffirs, of the antelopes he had shot, he at length induced her to sleep, promising not for a moment to leave her, and with his hands clasped in hers.

At length the night wore away, the sun of Africa shot his glorious rays upward from behind the rugged mountain walls of the kloof, and broad daylight again spread over the landscape. Goodrick was glad indeed to find that with the bright sunshine his wife, brave-hearted woman that she was, had shaken off much of the night’s terrors; but her nerves were much shaken. For the last time the goats were unkraaled and sent out, with the two somewhat unwilling Hottentots, to pasture. Breakfast and some strong coffee that followed this operation made things look brighter; and then, taking the couch and setting it upon the stoep (veranda), just outside the windows of their room, and placing a chair for himself, Goodrick went out to the back and called Cupido in with him to the “stoep,” where he made the little ancient yellow man squat down. “Cupido,” said he, “I am going to inspan this morning, load up one of the waggons, and send my wife and servant under your charge out of this cursed place to Hemming’s farm—the next one, twenty-five miles out on the karroo. To-morrow, with the help of some Kaffirs I shall borrow from Mr Hemming, I shall get down the horses from the mountain, load up both the waggons with the rest of the furniture and farm tackle (as soon as you return, which you will do very early), and trek out of the kloof, never again to set foot in it. But first of all, you will tell me at once, without lying, why you have never said a word to me of this horrible secret, and what it all means. Now speak and be careful.”

“Well, baas,” said Cupido, speaking in Boer Dutch, the habitual language of the Hottentots, “you have been a kind baas to me, and the jevrouw,” (nodding to his mistress) “has been good to me too; and I will tell you all I know about this story. I would have warned you long ago, but Baas Van der Meulen, when he left, made me promise, under pain of being shot, not to say anything. I believe he would have kept his word, for he often gave me the sjambok, and I dare not speak. I was born here in the kloof many years ago, many years even before slavery was abolished and the emigrant Boers trekked out into the Free State and Transvaal, and you will know that is long since.

“My father lived as a servant under that very Jan Prinsloo, whom you saw murdered last night in yonder kraal, and many a time has he told me of Prinsloo and his evil doings and his dreadful end. Well, Jan Prinsloo was a grown man years before the English came across the shining waters and took the country from the Dutch. He was one of the wild and lawless gang settled about Bruintjes Hoogte, on the other side of Sunday River, who bade defiance to all laws and Governments, and who, under Marthinus Prinsloo (a kinsman of Jan’s) and Adriaan Van Jaarsveld, got up an insurrection two years after the English came, and captured Graaff Reinet.

“General Vandeleur soon put this rising down, and Marthinus Prinsloo and Van Jaarsveld were hanged, but Jan Prinsloo, who was implicated, somehow retired early in the insurrection, and was pardoned. Some years before this, Jan was fast friends, as a younger man, with Jan Bloem, who, as you may have heard, was a noted freebooter who fled from the Colony across the Orange River, raised a marauding band of Griquas and Korannas, and plundered, murdered, and devastated amongst many of the Bechuana tribes, besides trading and shooting ivory as well. The bloody deeds of these men yet live in Bechuana story. Jan Bloem at last, however, drank from a poisoned fountain in the Bechuana country and died like a hyaena as he deserved. Then Jan Prinsloo took all his herds, waggons, ivory and flocks, came back over the Orange River, sold off the stock at Graaff Reinet, and came and settled in this kloof. He had brought with him some poor Makatese, and these people, who are in their way, as you know, great builders in stone, he made to build this house and the great stone kraal out there, where we saw him last night. He had, too, a number of Hottentots, besides Mozambique slaves, and those he ill-treated in the most dreadful manner, far worse even than any Boer was known to, and that is saying much. At last one day, not long after the Bruintjes Hoogte affair, he came home in a great passion, and found that two of the Hottentots’ wives and one child had gone off without leave to see some of their relatives, Hottentots, who were squatted some miles away.

“When these women came back in the evening, Prinsloo made their husbands tie them and the child to two trees, and then and there, after flogging them frightfully, he shot the poor creatures dead, child and all. As for the husbands, he sjambokked them nearly to death for letting their wives go, and then turned in to his ‘brandwein’ and bed. That night all his Hottentots, including seven men who had witnessed the cruel deed—God knows such deeds were common enough in those wild days—fled through the darkness out of the kloof, and never stopped till they reached the thick bush-veldt country, between Sunday River and the Great Fish River. Just at that time, other Hottentots, roused by the evil deeds of the Boers, rose in arms, and joined hands with the Kaffirs, who were then advancing from beyond the Fish River.

“Well, the Kaffirs and Hottentots, to the number of 700, for some time had all their own way, and ravaged, plundered, burned, and murdered, among the Boers and their farms, even up to Zwartberg and Lange Kloof, between here and the sea. While they were in that neighbourhood, a band of them, inspired by the seven Hottentots of Prinsloo’s Kloof, came up the Gamtoos River, in this direction, and met with Jan Prinsloo and a few other Boers, who were trekking out of the disturbed district with their waggons, and who had come to reconnoitre in a poort, fifteen miles away from here. All the Boers were surprised and slain, excepting Prinsloo; and while the Kaffirs and other Hottentots stayed to plunder the waggons, Prinsloo’s seven servants, who were all mounted on stolen horses, chased him, like ‘wilde honde’ hunting a hartebeest, for many hours; for Jan rode like a madman, and gave them the slip for three hours, while he lay hid up in a kloof, until, at last, as night came on, they pressed him into his own den here.

“It was yesterday, but years and years ago, just when the summer is hottest and the thunder comes on, and just in such a storm as last night’s, that the maddened Hottentots, thirsting for the murderer’s blood, hunted Prinsloo up through the poort. They were all light men and well mounted, and towards the end gained fast upon him, although Jan, who rode a great ‘rooi schimmel’ (red roan) horse, the best of his stud, rode as he had never ridden before. Up the kloof they clattered, the Hottentots close at his heels now; Prinsloo galloped to the great kraal there, jumped off his horse, and ran inside, like a leopard among his rocks, fastening the gate behind him, and there determined to make a last desperate stand for it.

“The Hottentots soon forced the gate and swarmed over the walls, not, however, before one was killed by Prinsloo’s great elephant ‘roer.’ Round the kraal they chased him, giving him no time to load again; at last, as you know, he fell and was slain, and the Hottentots cut off his head, and arms, and legs, and tore out his black heart, and in their mad, murderous joy and fury, smeared themselves with his blood. Then the men looted the house, set fire to what they could, and afterwards rejoined their comrades next morning. They told my father, who had known Prinsloo, the whole story when they got back. These six men were all killed in a fight soon afterwards when the insurrection was put down, and the Kaffirs and Hottentots were severely punished.

“Well, ever since that night the thing happens once a year upon the same night. Many Boers have tried to live in this place since that time, but have always left in a hurry after a few weeks’ trial. I believe one man did stay for nearly two years; but he was deaf, and knew nothing of what was going on around, until one Prinsloo’s night when he saw something that quickly made him trek I once saw the scene we witnessed last night; it was many years ago, when I was a young man in the service of a Boer, who had just come here—before then I had been with my father in the service of another Boer, forty miles away towards Sunday River. Next morning after seeing Prinsloo and his murderers, my master trekked out horror-stricken. I never thought to have seen the horrible thing again, but eight months ago, when the Van der Meulens came here, I was hard up and out of work, and though I didn’t half like coming into the kloof again, I thought, perhaps, after so many years, the ghosts might have vanished. I hadn’t been many nights here, though, before I knew too well I was mistaken. Even then I would have left, but Van der Meulen swore I should not. He and his family came here soon after Prinsloo’s night, and left before it came round again; but after the old man and his sons had twice been face to face with Jan’s spook prowling about the stable and kraals, and even looking in at the windows, they were not long before they wanted to clear out, and now you know their reason, baas.”

“Yes, Cupido, to my cost, I do,” said Goodrick, “I don’t suppose I shall ever come across that delightful family again, for it is a far cry to Zoutpansberg, in the north of the Transvaal, and a wild enough country when you get there. But tell me, why is it that this dreadful thing is always in and out of the stables and kraals frightening the horses?”

“Well, baas, I am not certain, but I believe, for my father always told me so, that Prinsloo was very fond of horseflesh, extraordinarily so for a Boer; for you know as a rule they don’t waste much time on their horses, and use them but ill. He had the finest stud in the Colony, and took great pains and trouble with it; and they say that Jan’s ghost is still just as fond as ever of his favourites, and is always in and out of the stable in consequence. Anyhow, the horses don’t care about it, as you know, they seem just as scared at him as any human being.”

Cupido, like all Hottentots, could tell a story with the dramatic force and interest peculiar to his race, and the bald translation here given renders very scant justice to the grim legend that came from his lips. After the quaint little yellow man had finished, Mrs Goodrick gave him some coffee, and immediately afterwards the party set about loading up one waggon with a part of the furniture. This done, and Mrs Goodrick and her servant safely installed, Cupido, the oxen being inspanned, took the leading riems of the two first oxen and acted as foreloper, while Goodrick sat on the box and wielded the whip.

Twelve miles away beyond the poort that opened into the kloof there was a Kaffir kraal, and having arrived there, Goodrick was able to hire a leader, and Cupido having relieved his master of the whip and received instructions to hasten to Hemming’s farm as quickly as possible with his mistress, Goodrick saddled and bridled his horse, which had been tied to the back of the waggon, and rode back to his farm. The night passed quietly away; the two remaining Hottentots begged to be allowed to sleep in the kitchen, and this favour their master not unwillingly accorded them. Next morning, at ten o’clock, Cupido, who had trekked through a good part of the night, arrived, and with him came Mr Hemming, the farmer, and four of his Kaffirs. Hearing of his neighbour’s trouble, and having seen Mrs Goodrick comfortably settled with his own wife, he had good-naturedly come to his assistance. “So Jan Prinsloo has driven you out at last,” said he, upon meeting Goodrick. “I heard from your wife last evening what you had seen the night before. I was afraid it would happen and would have warned you in time if I had known. But I never even heard that the Van der Meulens had sold the farm till they had cleared out and I met you about a month after you had been here; and as you were a determined looking Englishman, and the half-dozen people who have tried the farm in the last twenty years have been superstitious Dutch, I thought perhaps you might succeed in beating the ghost where they failed. I haven’t been in the kloof for many years, and after this experience, which bears out what my father and others who knew the story well have always told me, I shan’t be in a hurry to come in here again. It’s a strange thing, and I don’t think, somehow, the curse that seems on the place will ever disappear.”

“Nor I,” said Goodrick, “I’m not in a hurry to try it. I never believed in spooks till the night before last, for I never thought they were partial to South Africa; but after what I saw I can never again doubt upon that subject. The shock to me was terrible enough, and what my wife suffered must have been far worse.”

With the willing aid of his neighbour and his Kaffirs, as well as his own Hottentots, Goodrick got clear of the kloof that day, and, after a few days spent at Mr Hemming’s, trekked away again for Swellendam, to his father’s house. Six months later he finally settled in a fertile district not far from Swellendam, where he and his wife and family still remain. Cupido died in his service some fourteen years since. After much trouble Goodrick sold his interest in Prinsloo’s Kloof and the farm around for a sum much less even than what he gave Van der Meulen for it; it is only fair to say he warned the purchaser of the evil reputation of the place before this was done. It is a singular fact that on his way to take possession of the kloof the new purchaser fell ill and died, and the place has never since been occupied.

Although it is nearly forty years since these events took place, and Mrs Goodrick is now an old lady, with children long since grown to man and womanhood, she has never quite thrown off the terror of that awful night. Even now she will wake with a start if she hears any sudden cry in her sleep, thinking for the moment it is the death scream of Prinsloo’s Kloof. As for the haunted kloof, it lies to this day in desolation black and utter. No footfall wakes its rugged echoes; the grim baboons keep watch and ward; the carrion aasvogels wheel and circle high above its cliffs, gazing down from their aerial dominion with ever-searching eyes; the black and white ravens seek in its fastnesses for their food, looking, as they swoop hither and thither, as if still in half mourning for the deed of blood of bygone years; and the antelopes and leopards wander free and undisturbed. But no sign of human life is there, or seems ever likely to be; and if, by cruel fate, the straying traveller should haplessly outspan for his night’s repose by the haunted farmhouse on the night of the 15th of January, he will yet see enacted, so the neighbouring farmers say, the horrible drama of Jan Prinsloo’s death.