CHAPTER X
JOHN HAS AN ESCAPE
On the following Monday, John, taking Jantje to drive him, departed ina rough Scotch cart, to which were harnessed two of the best horses atMooifontein, to shoot buck at Hans Coetzee's.
He reached the place at about half-past eight, and concluded, from thefact of the presence of several carts and horses, that he was not theonly guest. Indeed, the first person whom he saw as the cart pulled upwas his late enemy, Frank Muller.
"_Kek_ (look), Baas," said Jantje, "there is Baas Frank talking to hisservant Hendrik, that ugly Basutu with one eye."
John, as may be imagined, was not best pleased at this meeting. He hadalways disliked the man, and since Muller's conduct on the previousFriday, and Jantje's story of the dark deed of blood in which he hadbeen the principal actor, positively he loathed the sight of him. Hejumped out of the cart, and was going to walk round to the back of thehouse in order to avoid him, when Muller, suddenly seeming to becomeaware of his presence, advanced to meet him with the utmost cordiality.
"How do you do, Captain?" he said, holding out his hand, which John justtouched. "So you have come to shoot buck with _Oom_ Coetzee; going toshow us Transvaalers how do to it, eh? There, Captain, don't look asstiff as a rifle barrel. I know what you are thinking of; that littlebusiness at Wakkerstroom on Friday, is it not? Well, now, I tell youwhat it is, I was in the wrong, and I am not afraid to say so as betweenman and man. I had had a glass, that was the fact, and did not quiteknow what I was about. We have got to live as neighbours here, so let usforget all about it and be brothers again. I never bear malice, not I.It is not the Lord's will that we should bear malice. Hit out from theshoulder, I say, and then forget all about it. If it hadn't been forthat little monkey," he added, jerking his thumb in the directionof Jantje, who was holding the horses' heads, "it would never havehappened, and it is not nice that two Christians should quarrel aboutsuch as he."
Muller jerked out this long speech in a succession of sentences,something as a schoolboy repeats a hardly learnt lesson, fidgeting hisfeet and letting his restless eyes travel about the ground as he spoke.It was evident to John, who stood quite still and listened to it in icysilence, that his address was by no means extemporary; clearly it hadbeen composed for the occasion.
"I do not wish to quarrel with anybody, _Meinheer_ Muller," he answeredat length. "I never do quarrel unless it is forced on me, and then,"he added grimly, "I do my best to make it unpleasant for my enemy. Theother day you attacked first my servant and then myself. I am glad thatyou now see that this was an improper thing to do, and, so far as I amconcerned, there is an end of the matter," and he turned to enter thehouse.
Muller accompanied him as far as where Jantje was standing at thehorses' heads. Here he stopped, and, putting his hand in his pocket,took out a two-shilling piece and threw it to the Hottentot, calling tohim to catch it.
Jantje was holding the horses with one hand. In the other he held hisstick--a long walking kerrie that he always carried, the same on whichhe had shown Bessie the notches. In order to secure the piece of moneyhe dropped the stick, and Muller's quick eye catching sight of thenotches beneath the knob, he stooped down, picked it up, and examinedit.
"What do these mean, boy?" he asked, pointing to the line of big andlittle notches, some of which had evidently been cut years ago.
Jantje touched his hat, spat upon the "Scotchman," as the natives ofthat part of Africa call a two-shilling piece,[*] and pocketed it beforehe answered. The fact that the giver had murdered all his near relationsdid not make the gift less desirable in his eyes. Hottentot moral senseis not very elevated.
[*] Because once upon a time a Scotchman made a great impression on the simple native mind in Natal by palming off some thousands of florins among them at the nominal value of half a crown.
"No, Baas," he said with a curious grin, "that is how I reckon. Ifanybody beats Jantje, Jantje cuts a notch upon the stick, and everynight before he goes to sleep he looks at it and says, 'One day you willstrike that man twice who struck you once,' and so on, Baas. Look, whata line of them there are, Baas. One day I shall pay them all back again,Baas Frank."
Muller abruptly dropped the stick, and followed John towards the house.It was a much better building than the Boers generally indulge in, andthe sitting-room, though innocent of flooring--unless clay and cowdungmixed can be called a floor--was more or less covered with mats made ofspringbuck skins. In the centre of the room stood a table made ofthe pretty _buckenhout_ wood, which has the appearance of having beenindustriously pricked all over with a darning-needle, and round it werechairs and couches of stinkwood, and seated with rimpis or strips ofhide.
In one big chair at the end of the room, busily employed in doingnothing, sat _Tanta_ (Aunt) Coetzee, the wife of Old Hans, a large andweighty woman, who evidently had once been rather handsome; and onthe couches were some half-dozen Boers, their rifles in their hands orbetween their knees.
It struck John as he entered that some of these did not seem bestpleased to see him, and he thought he heard one young fellow, witha hang-dog expression of face, mutter something about the "damnedEnglishman" to his neighbour rather more loudly than was necessary toconvey his sentiments. However, old Coetzee came forward to greet himheartily enough, and called to his daughters--two fine girls, verysmartly dressed for Dutch women--to give the Captain a cup of coffee.Then John made the rounds after the Boer fashion, and beginning with theold lady in the chair, received a lymphatic shake of the hand from everysingle soul in the room. They did not rise--it is not customary to doso--they merely extended their paws, all of them more or less damp, andmuttered the mystic monosyllable "_Daag_," short for good-day. It isa very trying ceremony till one gets used to it, and John pulled uppanting, to be presented with a cup of hot coffee that he did not want,but which it would be rude not to drink.
"The Captain is the _rooibaatje?_" said the old lady "Aunt" Coetzeeinterrogatively, and yet with the certainty of one who states a fact.
John signified that he was.
"What does the Captain come to the 'land' for? Is it to spy?"
The whole audience listened attentively to their hostess's question,then turned their heads to listen for the answer.
"No. I have come to farm with Silas Croft."
There was a general smile of incredulity. Could a _rooibaatje_ farm?Certainly not.
"There are three thousand men in the British army," announced the old_vrouw_ oracularly, and casting a severe glance at the wolf in sheep'sclothing, the man of blood who pretended to farm.
Everybody looked at John again, and awaited his answer in dead silence.
"There are more than a hundred thousand men in the regular British army,and as many more in the Indian army, and twice as many more volunteers,"he said, in a rather irritated voice.
This statement also was received with the most discouraging incredulity.
"There are three thousand men in the British army," repeated the oldlady, in a tone of certainty that was positively crushing.
"Yah, yah!" chimed in some of the younger men in chorus.
"There are three thousand men in the British army," she repeated for thethird time in triumph. "If the Captain says that there are more he lies.It is natural that he should lie about his own army. My grandfather'sbrother was at Cape Town in the time of Governor Smith, and he saw thewhole British army. He counted them; there were exactly three thousand.I say that there are three thousand men in the British army."
"Yah, yah!" said the chorus; and John gazed at this terrible person inbland exasperation.
"How many men do you command in the British army?" she interrogatedafter a solemn pause.
"A hundred," said John sharply.
"Girl," said the old woman, addressing one of her daughters, "you havebeen to school and can reckon. How many times does one hundred go intothree thousand?"
The young lady addressed giggled confusedly, and looked for assistanceto a sardonic Boer w
hom she was going to marry, who shook his headsadly, indicating thereby that these were mysteries into which it wasnot well to pry. Thrown on her own resources, she plunged into therecesses of an intricate calculation, in which her fingers played aconsiderable part, and finally, with an air of triumph, announced thatit went twenty-six times exactly.
"Yah, yah!" said the chorus, "it goes twenty-six times exactly."
"The Captain," said the oracular old lady, who was rapidly driving Johnmad, "commands a twenty-sixth part of the British army, and he says thathe comes here to farm with Uncle Silas Croft. He says," she went on,with withering contempt, "that he comes here to farm when he commands atwenty-sixth part of the British army. It is evident that he lies."
"Yah, yah!" said the chorus.
"It is natural that he should lie!" she continued; "all Englishmen lie,especially the _rooibaatje_ Englishmen, but he should not lie so badly.It must vex the dear Lord to hear a man lie so badly, even though he bean Englishman and a _rooibaatje_."
At this point John burst from the house, and swore frantically tohimself as soon as he was outside. It is to be hoped that he wasforgiven, for the provocation was not small. It is not pleasant to beuniversally set down not only as a _leugenaar_ (liar), but as one of thevery feeblest order.
In another minute old Hans Coetzee came out and patted him warmly on theshoulder, in a way that seemed to say that, whatever others might thinkof the insufficiency of his powers of falsehood, he, for one, quiteappreciated them, and announced that it was time to be moving.
Accordingly the party climbed into their carts or on to theirshooting-horses, as the case might be, and started. Frank Muller, Johnnoticed, was mounted as usual on his fine black horse. After drivingfor more than half an hour along an indefinite kind of waggon track, theleading cart, in which were old Hans Coetzee himself, a Malay driver,and a coloured Cape boy, turned to the left across the open veldt, andthe others followed in turn. This went on for some time, till at lastthey reached the crest of a rise that commanded a large sweep of opencountry, and here Hans halted and held up his hand, whereon theothers halted too. On looking out over the vast plain before him Johndiscovered the reason. About half a mile beneath them was a great herdof blesbuck feeding, three hundred or more of them, and beyond themanother herd of some sixty or seventy much larger and wilder-lookinganimals with white tails, which John at once recognised as vilderbeeste.Nearer to them again, dotted about here and there on the plain, were acouple of dozen or so of graceful yellow springbuck.
Now a council of war was held, which resulted in the men onhorseback--among whom was Frank Muller--being despatched to circumventthe herds and drive them towards the carts, that took up their stationsat various points, towards which the buck were likely to run.
Then came a pause of a quarter of an hour or so, till suddenly, fromthe far ridge of the opposite slope, John saw a couple of puffs of whitesmoke float up into the air, and one of the vilderbeeste below rolledover on his back, kicking and plunging furiously. Thereon the whole herdof buck turned and came thundering towards them, stretched in a longline across the wide veldt; the springbuck first, then the blesbuck,looking for all the world like a herd of great bearded goats, owing totheir peculiar habit of holding their long heads down as they galloped.Behind and mixed up with them were the vilderbeeste, who twisted andturned, and jumped into the air as though they had gone clean off theirheads and were next second going clean on to them. It is very difficult,owing to his extraordinary method of progression, to distinguish onepart of a galloping vilderbeeste from another; now it is his horns, nowhis tail, and now his hoofs that present themselves to the watcher'sbewildered vision, and now again they all seem to be mixed up together.On came the great herd, making the ground shake beneath their footfall:and after them galloped the mounted Boers, from time to time jumpingoff their horses to fire a shot into the line of game, which generallyresulted in some poor animal being left sprawling on the ground, whereonthe sportsmen would remount and continue the chase.
Presently the buck were within range of some of the guns in the carts,and a regular fusillade began. About twenty blesbuck turned and camestraight past John, at a distance of forty yards. Springing to theground he fired both barrels of his "Express" at them as they torealong--alas and alas! without touching them. The first bullet struckunder their bellies, the second must have shaved their backs. Reloadingrapidly, he fired again at about two hundred yards' range, and this timeone fell to his second barrel. But he knew that it was a chance shot: hehad fired at the last buck, and he had killed one ten paces in frontof it. In fact this sort of shooting is extremely difficult till thesportsman understands it. The inexperienced hand firing across a line ofbuck will not kill once in twenty shots, as an infinitesimal differencein elevation, or the slightest error in judging distance--in itselfno easy art on those great plains--will spoil his aim. A Boer almostinvariably gets immediately behind a herd of running buck, and firesat one about half-way down the line. Consequently if his elevation is alittle wrong, or if he has misjudged his sighting, the odds are that hewill hit one either in front of or behind the particular animal firedat. All that is necessary is that the line of fire should be good. ThisJohn soon learnt, and when he had mastered the fact he became as good agame shot as the majority of Boers, but it being his first attempt, muchto his vexation, he did not particularly distinguish himself that day,with the result that his friends the Dutchmen went home firmly convincedthat the English _rooibaatje_ shot as indifferently as he lied.
Jumping into the cart again, and leaving the dead blesbuck to look afteritself for the present--not a very safe thing to do in a country wherethere are so many vultures--John, or rather Jantje, put the horses intoa gallop, and away they went at full tear. It was a most exciting modeof progression, bumping along furiously with a loaded rifle in his handsover a plain on which antheaps as large as an armchair were scatteredlike burnt almonds on a cake. Then there were the antbear holes toreckon with, and the little swamps in the hollows, and other agreeablesurprises. But the rush and exhilaration of the thing were too great toallow him much time to think of his neck, so away they flew, hanging onto the cart as best they could, and trusting to Providence to save themfrom complete disaster. Now they were bounding over an antheap, now oneof the horses was on his nose, but somehow they always escaped thelast dire catastrophe, thanks chiefly to the little Hottentot's skilfuldriving.
Whenever the game was within range they pulled up, and John would springfrom the cart and let drive, then jump in and follow on again. Thiswent on for nearly an hour, in which time he had fired twenty-sevencartridges and killed three blesbuck and wounded a vilderbeeste, whichthey proceeded to chase. But the vilderbeeste was struck in the rump,and an antelope so wounded will travel far, and go very fast also, sothat some miles of ground had been covered before it began to rest, onlyto start on again as they drew near. At last, on crossing the crest ofa little rise, John saw what at first he took to be his vilderbeeste,dead. A second look, however, showed him that, although it was a deadvilderbeeste, most undoubtedly it was not the one which he had wounded,for that animal was standing, its head hanging, about one hundred andtwenty yards beyond the other buck, which, no doubt, had fallen tosomebody else's rifle, or else had been hit farther back and come hereto die. Now this vilderbeeste lay within a hundred yards of them, andJantje pointed out to John that his best plan would be to get out of thecart and creep on his hands and knees up to the dead animal, from thecover of which he would get a good shot at his own wounded bull.
Accordingly Jantje having withdrawn with the cart and horses out ofsight under the shelter of the rise, John crouched upon his hands andknees and proceeded to carry out his stalk. All went well till he wasquite close to the dead cow, and was congratulating himself on theprospect of an excellent shot at the wounded bull, when suddenlysomething struck the ground violently just beneath his body, throwing upa cloud of earth and dust. He stopped amazed, and at that instant heardthe report of a rifle somewhat to his right
and knew that a bullethad passed beneath him. Scarcely had he realised this when there was asudden commotion in his hair, and the soft black felt hat that he waswearing started from his head, apparently of its own accord, and, aftertwirling round twice or thrice in the air, fell gently to the earth,just as the sound of a second report reached his ears. It was nowevident that somebody was firing at him; so, jumping up from hiscrouching position, John tossed his arms into the air and sprang andshouted in a way that left no mistake as to his whereabouts. In anotherminute he saw a man on horseback, cantering easily towards him, in whomhe had little difficulty in recognising Frank Muller. He picked up hishat; there was a bullet-hole right through it. Then, full of wrath, headvanced to meet Frank Muller.
"What the devil do you mean by firing at me?" he asked.
"_Allemachter, carle!_" (Almighty, my dear fellow) was the cool answer,"I thought that you were a vilderbeeste calf. I galloped the cow andkilled her, and she had a calf with her, and when I got the cartridgesout of my rifle--for one stuck and took me some time--and the new onesin, I looked up, and there, as I thought, was the calf. So I got myrifle on and let drive, first with one barrel and then with the other,and when I saw you jump up like that and shout, and that I had beenfiring at a man, I nearly fainted. Thank the Almighty I did not hityou."
John listened coldly. "I suppose that I am bound to believe you,_Meinheer_ Muller," he said. "But I have been told that you have themost wonderful sight of any man in these parts, which makes it odd thatat three hundred yards you should mistake a man upon his hands and kneesfor a vilderbeeste calf."
"Does the Captain think, then, that I wished to murder him; especially,"he added, "after I shook his hand this morning?"
"I don't know what I think," answered John, looking straight intoMuller's eyes, which fell before his own. "All I know is that yourcurious mistake very nearly cost me my life. Look here!" and he took alock of his brown hair out of the crown of his perforated hat and showedit to the other.
"Ay, it was very close. Let us thank God that you escaped."
"It could not well have been closer, _Meinheer_. I hope that, for yourown sake and for the sake of the people who go out shooting with you,you will not make such a mistake again. Good-morning!"
The handsome Boer, or Anglo-Boer, sat on his horse stroking hisbeautiful beard and gazing curiously after John Niel's sturdyEnglish-looking figure as he marched towards the cart, for, of course,the wounded vilderbeeste had long ago vanished.
"I wonder," he said to himself aloud, as he turned his horse's headand rode leisurely away, "if the old _volk_ are right after all, and ifthere is a God." Frank Muller was sufficiently impregnated with modernideas to be a free-thinker. "It almost seems like it," he went on, "elsehow did it come that the one bullet passed under his belly and the otherjust touched his head without harming him? I aimed carefully enough too,and I could make the shot nineteen times out of twenty and not miss.Bah, a God! I snap my fingers at Him. Chance is the only god. Chanceblows men about like the dead grass, till death comes down like theveldt fire and devours them. But there are men who ride chance as onerides a young colt--ay, who turn its headlong rushing and rearing totheir own ends--who let it fly hither and thither till it is weary, andthen canter it along the road that leads to triumph. I, Frank Muller, amone of those men. I never fail in the end. I will kill that Englishman.Perhaps I will kill old Silas Croft and the Hottentot too. Bah! theydo not know what is coming. I know; I have helped to lay the mine; andunless they bend to my will I shall be the one to fire it. I will killthem all, and I will take Mooifontein, and then I will marry Bessie. Shewill fight against it, but that will make it all the sweeter. She lovesthat _rooibaatje_; I know it; and I will kiss her over his dead body.Ah! there are the carts. I don't see the Captain. Driven home, Isuppose, on account of the shock to his nerves. Well, I must talk tothose fools. Lord, what fools they are with their chatter about the'land,' and the '_verdomde Britische Gouvernment_.' They don't know whatis good for them. Silly sheep, with Frank Muller for a shepherd! Ay, andthey shall have Frank Muller for a president one day, and I will rulethem too. Bah! I hate the English; but I am glad that I am halfEnglish for all that, for that is where I get the brains! But thesepeople--fools, fools! Well, I shall pipe and they shall dance!"