SHORT STORIES

Otago Witness, Issue 2669, 10 May 1905, Page 81

SHORT STORIES

THE IRONY OF REVENGE.

(By H. A. Bkydf.n-, author of "Tales of

South Africa,"' etc.)

So you, too, want revenge? Well, revenge in due season is good for all of vs — that is to say, i£ the cause be deep and Litter enough. I have nursed mine these 20 seasons past, in the far-away deserts to the north, alone, alone — always alone with the wild beasts and the birds and the creeping things, and the sun, moon, and stars — brooding oA*er my wrongs, and now, si last, something tells ;ne that the time has come. . It was /in old, lean South African native who uttered these words in the soft, liquid Basuto tongue. His woolly hair Mas grizzled, his face deeply lined and indented: the pitiless sun of the desert had manifestly not spared him ; he looked withered and burnt up ; folds of skin drooped down at the sides of his eyes in curious fashion, &o that only a small part of the bloodshot whito and the faded brown his peeped from behind the leathery curtains.

They sat. the old and the young Kaffir — the latter a well-grown, well-nourished Basuto of three or four and twenty — in a broad grassy kloof of the Eastern Transvaal. Amid the long green grasses, now flourishing since the recent rains, grazed, belly-deep, a herd of prosperous-looking cattle, the property of a rich Boer who had trekked into this fair region, and chosen himself a fat farm of 12,000 acres 15 years before. The place- lay far distant from his main homestead, and he camped here, for grazing, part of the year. Many lovely flowers starred valley and the hillsides : big rose-coloured lilies by the stream, purple Berg lilies, and others of rich.crimson or of white with roseate bands Splendid gladioli, many lovely heaths, and quantities of neliophilas (white, rosecoloured, yellow, and oky-blue) bloomed in noble profusion about this favoured spot, one of the loveliest valley* in all the fertile Transvaal country.

It was the year 1860. Gold had not jet been discovered there. The population — almost entirely Dutch, the Voortrekkers and their descendants — wis in those days thinly scattered about the land ; the burghers only just able to hold their own, by the aid of their rifles, strong arms, and inflexible wills, against the difficulties of a new country and the large native population, which, in a state of almost complete independence, maintaiaed itself within the borders of what these rude and v arlike farmers chose to call their State.

" Revenge ?" said the young man, passionately. "Yes, of course I want revenge. Some day I mean to Lave it, too. Is it fov nothing that I have been the slave of Baas Van Heerden all these years? I was stolen as a child, and have never known parents or friends. I am a fullgrown man, yet I have never received wages, noi even owneJ a goat of my own. I cannot marry, because I urn too poor. What father woulrl give me his daughter, when I have nbt a head rf stock to offer him in return? I love a certain maiden at Sequati's kraal away in Jie hills yonder, three days' journey distant, and I mean to have her, even if I turn thief or cattle-stealer. But first, before I fly f/om this place and join Sequati's people, I want revenge — revenge for my life of slavery, for the insults, the blows, the floggings I have had to put up with all these weary yeais. I am eaten irp with shame.'

The old man looked very oddly at him. "Perhaps I can help you," he said. "Listen, and I will tell yoii my story. We will see then what can be done, you and I. Long ago, when you must have been a baby, or a very young child, the Boers came up into this country. They had many waggons, and they* brought" with them their families and flocks and herds. After suffering some loss in the earlier fights, they defeated Moselikatse and his Amabaka Zulus [the old name for the Matabele], and drove him far north of the Limpopo. Then they turned their, attention to the weaker tribe?, we of tie Makatese, who had had much tido to keep our heads above water while the- tyrant Moselikatse and his murdering " warrior? were over-runniag the country. I was then a chief, ' living with my clan in one of the richest parts vf all this land. I had goodly herds of cattle, plenty of sheep and goats, and four hundred spearm?n at my command. But the Boers came presently into my country, seeking to parcel out among themselves the best farms. They picked a- quarrel with me — nothing was easier for them ; it was and still is a part of their system of getting country. Although I and my people fought as well as we w.ere able, we bad nothing but assaarais andi men on foot to offer against mounted Boers armed with guns, and we were beaten. They slew 60 of my tribesmen, shooting after the fight those who were merely wounded. I myself, badly hit in the thigh^ crawled away into the bush and so escaped them. I learned afterwards that, of my two wives, one was killed by a stray bullet, and the other became the house-slave of a Dutchwoman. My four children were parcelled) out among the farmers like dogs. I hid among the mountains until my wound was healed, and then, getting the" remnants of my people together, tried to persuade them to enter with m/s into a fresh warfare of harassment against the Boers, cutting them off by nigh.fr, spearing them in small parties, and so trying to regain our own. But my people had Lad enough. They were beaten, and tliey deemed it useless to war with, the inevitable. They would submit to their conquerors, as other clans hadi done, and try and eke out an existence under th.c protection of the Ama-Boona [the native name for the Boers]. At that, mad with rage and despair, I cast off moy

tribesmen from me, relinquished the chieftaincy to my brother, and betook myself away to rh,e far northern deserts, there to live with the wild beasts. I hated the society of mankind, hated alike the white men who had destroyed me and mine own people who were craven enough to submit quietly to the hard yoke of the oppressors. I abode chiefly in the great solitudes beyond Bainangwato, towards the Zambesi, alone, always alone, with the wild creatures of the wilderness. In one spot where, season after season, I made my headquarters, I sowed, before the rains fell, some Kaffir corn ; here I reaped my supplies for the year. Flesh I had at need when I chose i.o snare a small antelope, and the desert gave me wild

melons and) other fruits in their season. jSometunes I grew restless and travelled to the great river, and, sitting by the mighty waterfall of Mosi-oa-tunya [the "Smoke-sounding," the native name for the Victoria Falls], 6olaced my weary soul with the sound of its mighty roar (a roar heard twenty miles away) and the sight of the giant columns of spray rearing themselves skyward from the falls, and the fclorious rainbows that arch the chasm into which the river Leaps. 'In these long, silent, and solitary years I cam© to know by heart the ways of every living thing about the desert. The lions knew me, and at first attempted to molest me; but I was always prepared for them, find) gave them one or two little surprises .which made them^think better of it. At last they left me. in peace, and for my , fart I tolerated them. I knew their kills, and while they were away sleeping during __ the daylight, often took what I required of the flesh of an eland., or a zebra, or perchance a fat buffalo cow. Even the shy giraffes knew me after a time, and finding that, unlike the: Bushmen, I molested jthem not, often fed in their majestic way _ about the thorn trees near my desert home. 4Every "snake, every lizard, every tortoise of the parched veldlfc 'interested me, and I grew to know a thousand of. their . ways and habits of wbict even^tlie black man, "who understands something about the creatures of bis own country, is ignorant." "What can you tell me about these things that I don't know myself?" interposed the younger man. "Do you see anything in yonder tree?" answered the old Makatese, indicating with Jiis head a big, spreading acacia twenty away. - - The young man looked,^crutinising keenly every portion of ,the kameel-doorn. "Nay," he said, "I see nothing. Not a bird, not a. lizard moves." The old man .pursed his broad African lips together and uttered a strange, soft, fluty, vibrating whistle — such a whistle as the younger man had never jAt heard. Then slowly from out the thick portion of the deep green foliage was reared the dark head and 'neck of a black mamba, the deadliest, fiercest, and most active of all South African snakes. The serpent was in its. newest and most shining apparel ; its old skin had manifestly been sloughed. off but a few days previously. Its fierce, menacing eye surPisyed the natives with a glittering alertness ; its long, forked tongue nickered- at intervals from between its lips. For a full, half-minute it gazed at them ; . then, the wicked head was - lowered, and] the thing disappeared into its screen of leafage. "Come," whispered- the young man ; "let IBs go. One can.- manage most snakes with a. good stick ; but when a mamba comes your way give him the road, says the proverb." "Nay," rejoined the old man ; "she has eaten a dove to-day, and will not stir. To-morrow or next day she will be abroad again, she and her mate. I know them both. They paired) but a week since. - Her husband, a snake of two seasons, - fought and vanquished his rival upon the day I came hither. I watched the fight quite unseen ; it was a grisat one. The conqueror sleeps" not far away, amid the long grass yonder, in a shallow rain-pool rwarmed by the sun. Let him rest ; I Shall want him and his mate this evening." The old African chuckled to himself, a -«trange,~ grating, hollow chuckle, which Bet his companion's teeth on edge. "Who are you?" queried the young man, 'shifting his seat a little, and gazing doubtfully at tfie old fellow by his side, "and .what plan are you hatching? I misdoubt jme you' mean no good. Are you a witchdoctor?" * "Nay, my son, I am no witch-doctor; sought, indeed, but an aged, worn-out Makatese who wishes to ipay off an old score before he takes his way to the kingdom of the departed. Listen, and I ~>rill tell you more. Do you know who you are?" "No," said the young man, "save that I too am Makatese, as any man may tell ■tvho looks at me. I know no more. Ask the old Baas Van Heerden. He may tell you. No one else can." "Look at the tip of the little finger of your right hand/ pursued the old man. !"It is broken, and the nail is gone. Is 5t not so?" "It is even so," returned the young man, gazing- at the mutilated member. "The finger has been so as long as I can recall things to my mind." "How many medicine-scars are there upon your chest?" asked the old man. "1 cannot tell," said the youth, putting ' Ids hand inside the breast of his tattered and none too clean cotton shirt. "I have not seen your breast since you ■trere a child of three," went on the old Makatese, "but I know there are five 6cars — four in a row, and one beneath." He iturned and bared the young man's chest. iPive whitish cicatrices were there. .He 'v touched each one of them. "Those scars," he went on, "were made fey Imveezi, the witch-doctor or medicine :- anan of my clan, when you were a babe of * ;iwo, just beginning to totter upon your jiyfegs. You" had fever, and Imveezi cut iSve places with his knife to let the pouon Ibufc. You yourself are Logepe, the son o& jLewana, once chief of the Makatese clan JBationa; and Lewana, your father, sits Reside you! " - The two— the young, lusty African, frigorous with life, his eyes bright, his ihpcolate skin gleaming with the glow of jhealth and strength, and the^ old, -withered jbroken 'man— sat looking into _ one another's eyes, their glances inquiring, sponsive."So yon are mv father," said the young |aan simply, taking the old man's hand pud resting It for a moment upon his bead. "Well, lam glad to know that |E have my own at last. The Boers call >ac October, because, I suppose, Baas Van Eeerden took me in that month, and the Makatese name me Mutla [the hare], betause lam swift of foot. And now.

Lewana, my father, what do you do here?"

" I am here on your business and my own, Lopepe," replied his father. "Revenge! — that is what calls me hither. It is not for nothing that I have lived these many years past an outcast, knowing only the wild creatures of the veldt. This night one of them shall obey my behest. For many months past I have wandered through the Transvaal, as they now call it. looking for mine ancient enemy Van Heerden, the destroyer of my race. Ten moons ago it came upon me in the desert that my tame was approaching. Something called softly, softly, 'Lewana, go south. Your time has come.' It was the spirit of revenge crying to me in the deserts, and crying not in vain ; and now at last I am here, and the hours speed to the conclusion. You, too, want revenge. Yours shall be mingled with mine!'

The old man's eyes burned fiercely ; the flame of life seemed for the time rekindled within his withered frame, scorched by the desert suns of 20 years.

"Listen ! The old* man Van Heerden sits for an hour after his supper smoking by the camp-fire — does h« not? I have watched him these six nights past, and that seems to be his habit. Then he calls to you, and you go to his waggon and light " a lantern, so that he may see to take off his coat and velschoons and get under his sheepskin kaross. Is it not so?"

"Yes," answered Lopepe, "it is so. It is always his custom, out here in the veldt away from the house, during this season." "Well, to-night, Lopepe, go not on any account to the waggon. Hide yourself ; disobey Van Heerden's voice — he is no longer your master — go not near the waggon, or you are a dead man. Ask me no questions ; but watch and wait. Tonight after the old Boer has gone to his bed we shall leave this place, and take our way to Sequati's or elsewhither."

So Lopepe promised as his father desired. * The Van Heerdens' camp just at this season, when they trekked from the house and sought other pastures, was a marvellously pleasant one. Plenty of water and plenty of grass flourished around them, bush was abundant, and the giraffe-acacias and bastard yellow-wood timber furnished roaring fires at night. In the veldt adjacent, in the broad valleys and the deep kloofs, by the pleasant streams, and upon the mountain-slopes game ran everywhere. Buffalo, and. koodoo and sable antelope, vast troops of the graceful red pallah and noble water-buck, bush-buck and tsesseby, red-buck, rhebpk, and klip-springer, all were at hand for the shooting. The Van Heerdens — the old man, now verging on seventy years of age, and his vrouw, and their grown-up sons with their wives and families, and a daughter or two with their husbands and families — all these were outspanned here for a pleasant spell. The cattle were putting on flesh, the outing was an enjoyable one for all, the hunters daily brought in game, the flesh-pots were always full, and there was continual jollity and feasting.

Old Jacob Van Heerden had changed far less than the whilom Basuto chief Lewana, whom he had driven forth and dispossessed a score of years before. His frame was still strong, vigorous, oak-like ; he seemed to defy time. His hair and beard were, it is true, now snow-white ; but his cheek showed ruddy b-eneath its tan, and his great voice sounded forth commands and menaces or roared with boisterous laughter just as it had roared more than two decades since. Jacob was a hard man still, feared by all his black servants-; a man whom even his huge sons, stalwart men between thirty and five-and-forty, dared not to cross ; at whose frown -all quaked — all save one, the short, stout, bitter-looking, black -haired vrouw, Johanna Van Heerden, who cared no more for her husband's temper than the snap of a finger, and who was in truth the baasraak and tamer of the fierce old man himself. He feared neither man nor devil nor anything else upon this broad earth save his stout vrouw, whose will-power was stronger even than his own, and whose sharp, subacid tongue had routed him utterly in many a stormy debate. If Jacob Van Heerden was the master,. Johanna, his wife, was truly the master's master of all that camp. Supper wag over. Night .had fallen more than an hour since. The canip fire blazed cheerily. Old Jacob Van Heerden was in his glory, smoking pipe after pipe, emptying basin after basin of coffee, telling yarn after yarn, sending his deep guttural notes and his ear-splitting laughter far out into the wilderness around them. Never in his stark old age had Jacob Van Heerden &ecmed in greater force or imbued with more abounding vitality than that evening. Meanwhile the old Basuto, Lewana, had — half a mile away from the Boer outspan — been busying himself in various ways. An hour before sunset he approached very quietly the low acacia tree, where, as he well kn.ew. thti black mamba still rested. This fierce and pugnacious serpent, the most dreaded of all reptiles in South Africa, has itself little fear of mankind, seeming to be. conscious of its own deadly powers and of the respect — the respect of terror — which its ready fangs and terrible venom ensure to itself. The snake still lay stretched along the treebranch, a turn or two of her tail securing her position. She was not asleep ; but her meal of the morning had rendered" her inert, and she lay there digesting it at leisure. Again she heard that clear, low, vibrating whistle which she had heard in the lieat of the afternoon. Th« sound, fluting softly among the leafage in which she lay, seemed very pleasant in her ears. Gently she raised her head and neck again to hear more of it and discover its source. In that instant a blow from a long, supple stick, wielded by Lewana, caught her full upon the neck and broke her spine. She lell struggling to the ground, fierce, writli-

ing, but impotent. Another stroke or two, and she was harmless ; three thudding blows from the Basuto's heavy knobkerrie crushed her skull to a pulp and destroyed any life that remained to her. The old native retired to some bush, and now waited' patiently for darkness.

An hour after sunset he returned to the spot, picked up the dead mamba by the tail, and, trailing her nine feet of length tvhind him, made his way straight for Van Hee-rden's camp. The old Boer's wa gg° n > as the Basuto well knew, stood upon one side of the encampment, half of it exposed to the ruddy glow of the great fire, the other half wrapped in gloom. Now creeping softly through the darkness, Lewana, still trailing his hideqys burden behind him, stole noiselessly to the great tent-waggon, mounted unobserved to the box, and in a few seconds had coiled the dead snake deftly upon the farther part of the sheepskin kaross which covered the old Boer's sleeping kartel. Then, as swiftly descending, he hastened away unperceived.

His next move was one, as he well recognised, of some danger. But the full African moon was rising from behind the line of mountain towards which h.^ returned ; there would be enough light for his purpose ; and he was in his present mood prepared to accept any risk. He stole softly, swiftly, towards the little pool where the male mamba had lain that afternoon. He knew that the reptile had quitted the water towards sunset, and lay snugly coiled in the grass hard by. Seeking a little elevation thirty yardls away, Lewana, who had provided -himself with a dozen stones, now began to cast them into the grass sheltering the serpent. This was the moment of peril. A male black mamba, with the breeding-fev.er full upon him — fiercer, more active, and more venomous by fifty times than was his wont — if he should turn haply in that direction would be little likely to spare his disturber. There would) h^ no escape. But, as the crafty old native had confidently reckoned, the mamba sped away in the direction of the tree where he had last seen his mat.?. Something had happened there ! What exactly the fierce serpent could not tell. Now, finding the scent of his beloved upon the soil, the snake followed the trail with amazing swiftness to the Dutch encampment, and, tracing it unerringly to Van Heerden's waggon, mounted in a flash to the kaross whereon lay coiled his dead mate. Lewana's dark plot had worked out exactly as he had intended it to do. Meanwhile, by another path, the aged Basuto made his way to the outskirts of the encampment, there to await what was to follow. Surely, surely, vengeance, after all these years, was now to be his own! The old man's heart beat more rapidly than was its wont ; his hands, moist with the sweat of anticipation, opened and shut convulsively. He squatted there amid the shelter of a patch of bush, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Old Jacob Van Heerden was late tonight ! As a rule ha sought his kartel punctually at half-past 8. His vrouw, sleeping with two of her grand-children at the rear of a buck-waggon, was already snoring peacefully. But to-night the old fellow had sat up half an hour longer than was his wont. He had shot a big buffalo cow that day, Besides a couple of reed-buck, andi the achievement had set him talking after supper upon old adventures and ancient successful hunts. Now, at last, he called loudly in his great voice for October, his Basuto, to light his lantern for him. But October did not answer, did not come. The old man was sleepy. He would light his lantern himself ; October should answer for his misdeeds in the morning. No dioubt the rascal was away courting some Kaffir girl in the kraal a mile or two away. Van Heerden knocked out his pipe, walked to his waggon, climbed to the box, and then, stooping over the kartel, was struck twice upon the cheek by something that pricked him violently, painfully, like the sting of a wasp or a tsetse fly. At the same instant something rustled past him from the gloom of his waggon interior and passed away outside. It was the mamba, which foi an hour and more had been lying on the sheepskin kaross close to the dead body of its mate. Something was wrong, the fierce reptile knew ; what exactly it could not tell. It lay there waiting for the awakening of its spouse. When Van Heerden had crept on to his kartel and reached for his lantern, the fierce reptile had resented the intrusion, and with its deadly poison-fanjjs had struck him twice upon his broad, fleshy face. Then as swiftly it had disappeared. The old man knew instinctively that something terrible had happened. Rubbing his smarting cheek, he roared out for help, and, leaping from his waggonbox betook himself to the camp fire. The cutspan was speedily in an uproar. From the assembled waggons there came pouring forth sleepy, unkf-mpt Boers, natives, women, and the elder children.

Meanwhile the mamba, as it retreated from the waggon, had, by a strange stroke of fate, encountered the old Basuto's son, October, or Lopepe, as his father called him. Lopepe, attracted by the unwonted accents of fear in his master's voice, had sprung instinctively from his hiding place beyond the firelight, and run to the waggon. His path met the inamba's. The reptile poised itself for one fleeting hundredth part of a second!, and. before Lop>?pe had even seen it, stiuck him upon the fleshy part of the leg, just above the knee.

In the morning two corpses, a black man's and a white's, both hideously swollen and discoloured, lay in the Boer encampment. Lewana's Jlong-delaved, long-hop.ed-for vengeance had recoiled upon himself. He had slain his ancient oppressor, it is true, but he had slain also his own son, that first -bora son for wliqdi h.e has £]9n.ued^

during his long years of exile, so many great things — the revival of his clan, a renewed chieftaincy, a new era of prosperity and power. He had made himself acquainted with the fell double disaster, the twin-fruit of his hatred and revenge. And now all, all was in the dust!

The old Makatese, more broken, more aged-looking than ever, crept away through the bush, heading for the north again, there to leave his bones in that desert in which he had so long and so fruitlessly nuised' his vengeance. — Chambers's Journal.