CHAPTER IX
JANTJE'S STORY
Shortly after the old Boer had gone, John went into the yard of thehotel to see to the inspanning of the Cape cart, where his attentionwas at once arrested by the sight of a row in active progress--at least,from the crowd of Kafirs and idlers and the angry sounds and curseswhich proceeded from them, he judged that it was a row. Nor was he wrongin his conclusion. In the corner of the yard, close by the stable-door,surrounded by the aforesaid crowd, stood Frank Muller; a heavy_sjambock_ in his raised hand, as though in the act to strike. Beforehim, a very picture of drunken fury, his lips drawn up like a snarlingdog's, so that the two lines of white teeth gleamed like polished ivoryin the sunlight, his small eyes all shot with blood and his face workingconvulsively, was the Hottentot Jantje. Nor was this all. Across hisface was a blue wheal where the whip had fallen, and in his hand a heavywhite-handled knife which he always carried.
"Hullo! what is all this?" said John, shouldering his way through thecrowd.
"The _swartsel_ (black creature) has stolen my horse's forage, and givenit to yours!" shouted Muller, who was evidently almost off his head withrage, making an attempt to hit Jantje with the whip as he spoke. Thelatter avoided the blow by jumping behind John, with the result that thetip of the _sjambock_ caught the Englishman on the leg.
"Be careful, sir, with that whip," said John to Muller, restraining histemper with difficulty. "Now, how do you know that the man stole yourhorse's forage; and what business have you to touch him? If there wasanything wrong, you should have reported it to me."
"He lies, Baas, he lies!" yelled out the Hottentot in tremulous,high-pitched tones. "He lies; he has always been a liar, and worse thana liar. Yah! yah! I can tell things about him. The land is English now,and Boers can't kill the black people as they like. That man--thatBoer, Muller, he shot my father and my mother--my father first, then mymother; he gave her two bullets--she did not die the first time."
"You yellow devil!--You black-skinned, black-hearted, lying son ofSatan!" roared the great Boer, his very beard curling with fury."Is that the way you talk to your masters? Out of the light,_rooibaatje_"--this was to John--"and I will cut his tongue out of him.I'll show him how we deal with a yellow liar;" and without further adohe made a rush for the Hottentot.
As he came, John, whose blood was now thoroughly up, put out his openhand, and, bending forward, pushed with all his strength on Muller'sadvancing chest. John was a very powerfully made man, though not a largeone, and the push sent Muller staggering back.
"What do you mean by that, _rooibaatje?_" shouted Muller, his face lividwith fury. "Get out of my road or I will mark that pretty face of yours.I owe you for some goods as it is, Englishman, and I always paymy debts. Out of the path, curse you!" and he again rushed for theHottentot.
This time John, who was now almost as angry as his assailant, did notwait for the man to reach him, but, springing forward, hooked his armaround Muller's throat and, before he could close with him, with onetremendous jerk managed not only to stop his wild career, but toreverse the motion, and then, by interposing his foot with considerableneatness, to land him--powerful as he was--on his back in a pool ofdrainage that had collected from the stable in a hollow of the inn-yard.Down he went with a splash, amid a shout of delight from the crowd,who always like to see an aggressor laid low, his head bumping withconsiderable force against the lintel of the door. For a moment he laystill, and John was afraid that the man was really hurt. Presently,however, he rose, and, without attempting any further hostiledemonstration or saying a single word, tramped off towards the house,leaving his enemy to compose his ruffled nerves as best he could. NowJohn, like most gentlemen, hated a row with all his heart, though he hadthe Anglo-Saxon tendency to go through with it unflinchingly when onceit began. Indeed, the incident irritated him almost beyond bearing,for he knew that the story with additions would go the round ofthe countryside, and what is more, that he had made a powerful andimplacable enemy.
"This is all your fault, you drunken little blackguard!" he said,turning savagely on the Tottie, who, now that his excitement had lefthim, was snivelling and drivelling in an intoxicated fashion, andcalling him his preserver and his Baas in maudlin accents.
"He hit me, Baas; he hit me, and I did not take the forage. He is a badman, Baas Muller."
"Be off with you and get the horses inspanned; you are half-drunk," Johngrowled, and, having seen that operation advancing to a conclusion, hewent to the sitting-room of the hotel, where Bessie was waiting in happyignorance of the disturbance. It was not till they were well on theirhomeward way that he told her what had passed, whereat, remembering thescene she had herself gone through with Frank Muller, and the threatsthat he had then made use of, she looked very grave. Her old uncle, too,was very much put out when he heard the story on their arrival home thatevening.
"You have made an enemy, Niel," he said, as they sat upon the verandahafter breakfast on the following morning, "and a bad one. Not but whatyou were right to stand up for the Hottentot. I would have done as muchmyself had I been there and ten years younger, but Frank Muller is notthe man to forget being put upon his back before a lot of Kafirs andwhite folk too. Perhaps that Jantje is sober by now. I will go andcall him, and we will hear what this story is about his father and hismother."
Presently he returned followed by the ragged, dirty-faced littleHottentot, who, looking very miserable and ashamed of himself, took offhis hat and squatted down on the drive, in the full glare of the Africansun, to the effects of which he appeared to be totally impervious.
"Now, Jantje, listen to me," said the old man. "Yesterday you got drunkagain. Well, I'm not going to talk about that now, except to say that ifI hear of your being drunk once more--you leave this place."
"Yes, Baas," said the Hottentot meekly. "I was drunk, though not very; Ionly had half a bottle of Cape smoke."
"By getting drunk you made a quarrel with Baas Muller, so that blowspassed between Baas Muller and the Baas here on your account, which wasmore than you are worth. Now when Baas Muller had struck you, you saidthat he had shot your father and your mother. Was that a lie, or whatdid you mean by saying it?"
"It was no lie, Baas," answered the Hottentot excitedly. "I have saidit once, and I will say it again. Listen, Baas, and I will tell you thestory. When I was young--so tall"--and he held his hand high enoughto indicate a Tottie of about fourteen years of age--"we, that is,my father, my mother, my uncle--a very old man, older than the Baas"(pointing to Silas Croft)--"were _bijwoners_ (authorised squatters) ona place belonging to old Jacob Muller, Baas Frank's father, down inLydenburg yonder. It was a bush-veldt farm, and old Jacob used to comedown there with his cattle from the High veldt in the winter when therewas no grass in the High veldt, and with him came the Englishwoman, hiswife, and the young Baas Frank--the Baas we saw yesterday."
"How long was all this ago?" asked Mr. Croft.
Jantje counted on his fingers for some seconds, and then held up hishand and opened it four times in succession. "So," he said, "twentyyears last winter. Baas Frank was young then, he had only a little downupon his chin. One year when _Oom_ Jacob went away, after the firstrains, he left six oxen that were too _poor_ (thin) to go, withmy father, and told him to look after them as though they were hischildren. But the oxen were bewitched. Three of them took the lung-sickand died, a lion got one, a snake got one, and one ate 'tulip' and diedtoo. So when _Oom_ Jacob came back the next year all the oxen were gone.He was very angry with my father, and beat him with a yoke-strap till hewas all blood, and though we showed him the bones of the oxen, he saidthat we had stolen them and sold them.
"Now _Oom_ Jacob had a beautiful span of black oxen that he loved likechildren. Sixteen of them there were, and they would come up to the yokewhen he called them and put down their heads of themselves. They weretame as dogs. These oxen were thin when they came down, but in twomonths they grew fat and began to want to trek about as oxen do. At thistime there was a Basutu, one of Sequat
i's people, resting in our hut,for he had hurt his foot with a thorn. When _Oom_ Jacob found that theBasutu was there he was very angry, for he said that all Basutus werethieves. So my father told the Basutu that the Baas said that he must goaway, and he went that night. Next morning the span of black oxen weregone too. The kraal-gate was down, and they had gone. We hunted all day,but we could not find them. Then _Oom_ Jacob went mad with rage, andthe young Baas Frank told him that one of the Kafir boys had said to himthat he had heard my father sell them to the Basutu for sheep which hewas to pay to us in the summer. It was a lie, but Baas Frank hated myfather because of something about a woman--a Zulu girl.
"Next morning when we were asleep, just at daybreak, _Oom_ Jacob Mullerand Baas Frank and two Kafirs came into the hut and pulled us out, theold man my uncle, my father, my mother, and myself, and tied us up tofour mimosa-trees with buffalo-hide reims. Then the Kafirs went away,and _Oom_ Jacob asked my father where the cattle were, and my fathertold him that he did not know. Then _Oom_ Jacob took off his hat andsaid a prayer to the Big Man in the sky, and when he had done Baas Frankcame up with a gun and stood quite close and shot my father dead, and hefell forward and hung quiet over the reim, his head touching his feet.Then he loaded the gun again and shot the old man my uncle, and heslipped down dead, and his hands stuck up in the air against the reim.Next he shot my mother, but the bullet did not kill her, and cut thereim, and she ran away, and he ran after her and killed her. When thatwas done he came back to shoot me; but I was young then, and did notknow that it is better to be dead than to live like a dog, and I criedand prayed for mercy while he was loading the gun.
"But the Baas only laughed, and said he would teach Hottentots how tosteal cattle, and old _Oom_ Jacob prayed out loud to the Big Man andsaid he was very sorry for me, but it was the dear Lord's will. Andthen, just as Baas Frank lifted the gun, he dropped it again, for there,coming softly, softly over the brow of the hill, in and out between thebushes, were all the sixteen oxen! They had got out in the night andstrayed away into some kloof for a change of pasture, and came back whenthey were full and tired of being alone. _Oom_ Jacob turned quite whiteand scratched his head, and then fell upon his knees and thanked thedear Lord for saving my life; and just then the Englishwoman, BaasFrank's mother, came down from the waggon to see what the firing was at,and when she saw all the people dead and me weeping, tied to the tree,and learnt what it was about, she went quite mad, for sometimes she hada kind heart when she was not drunk, and said that a curse would fall onthem, and that they would all die in blood. And she took a knife and cutme loose, though Baas Frank wanted to kill me, so that I might tell notales; and I ran away, travelling by night and hiding by day, for I wasvery much frightened, till I reached Natal, and there I stopped, workingin Natal till this land became English, when Baas Croft hired me todrive his cart up from Maritzburg; and living by here I found BaasFrank, looking bigger but just the same except for his beard.
"There, Baas, that is the truth, and all the truth, and that is whyI hate Baas Frank, because he shot my father and mother, and why BaasFrank hates me, because he cannot forget that he did it and because Isaw him do it, for, as our people say, 'one always hates a man one haswounded with a spear.'"
Having finished his narrative, the miserable-looking little man pickedup his greasy old felt hat that had a leather strap fixed round thecrown, in which were stuck a couple of frayed ostrich feathers, andjammed it down over his ears. Then he fell to drawing circles on thesoil with his long toes. His auditors only looked at one another. Such aghastly tale seemed to be beyond comment. They never doubted its truth;the man's way of telling it carried conviction with it; indeed, two ofthem at any rate had heard such stories before. Most people have wholive in the wilder parts of South Africa, though they are not all to betaken for gospel.
"You say," remarked old Silas at last, "that the Englishwoman said thata curse would fall on them, and that they would die in blood? She wasright. Twelve years ago _Oom_ Jacob and his wife were murdered by aparty of Mapoch's Kafirs down on the edge of that very Lydenburg veldt.There was a great noise about it at the time, I remember, but nothingcame of it. Baas Frank was not there. He was away shooting buck, so heescaped, and inherited all his father's farms and cattle, and came tolive here."
"So!" said the Hottentot, without showing the slightest interest orsurprise. "I knew it would be so, but I wish I had been there to see it.I saw that there was a devil in the woman, and that they would die asshe said. When there is a devil in people they always speak the truth,because they can't help it. Look, Baas, I draw a circle in the sand withmy foot, and I say some words so, and at last the ends touch. There,that is the circle of _Oom_ Jacob and his wife the Englishwoman. Theends have touched and they are dead. An old witch-doctor taught me howto draw the circle of a man's life and what words to say. And now I drawanother of Baas Frank. Ah! there is a stone sticking up in the way. Theends will not touch. But now I work and work and work with my foot, andsay the words and say the words, and so--the stone comes up and the endstouch now. Thus it is with Baas Frank. One day the stone will come upand the ends will touch, and he too will die in blood. The devil inthe Englishwoman said so, and devils cannot lie or speak half the truthonly. And now, look, I rub my foot over the circles and they are gone,and there is only the path again. That means that when they have diedin blood they will be quite forgotten and stamped out. Even their graveswill be flat," and Jantje wrinkled up his yellow face into a smile, orrather a grin, and then added in a matter-of-fact way:
"Does the Baas wish the grey mare to have one bundle of green forage ortwo?"