Jock of the Bushveld
Page 16
The kudu was up again then. I had rushed in with rifle clubbed, with the wild idea of stunning it before it could rise, but was met by the lowered horns and unmistakable signs of charging, and beat a retreat quite as speedy as my charge.
It was a running fight from then on: the instant the kudu turned to go Jock was on to the leg again and nothing could shake his hold. I had to keep at a respectful distance, for the bull was still good for a furious charge, even with Jock hanging on, and eyed me in the most unpromising fashion whenever I attempted to head it off or even to come close up.
The big eyes were bloodshot then, but there was no look of fear in them – they blazed with baffled rage. Impossible as it seemed to shake Jock off or to get away from us, and in spite of the broken leg and loss of blood, the furious attempts to beat us off did not slacken. It was a desperate running fight, and right bravely he fought it to the end.
Partly barring the way in front were the whitened trunks and branches of several trees struck down by some storm of the year before, and running ahead of the kudu I made for these, hoping to find a stick straight enough for a ramrod to force the empty cartridge out. As I reached them the kudu made for me with half a dozen plunges that sent me flying off for other cover; but the broken leg swayed over one of the branches, and Jock with feet planted against the tree hung on; and the kudu, turning furiously on him, stumbled, floundered, tripped and came down with a crash amongst the crackling wood. Once more like a flash Jock was over the fallen body and had fastened on the nose – but only to be shaken worse than before. The kudu literally flogged the ground with him, and for an instant I shut my eyes; it seemed as if the plucky dog would be beaten into pulp. The bull tried to chop him with its forefeet, but could not raise itself enough, and at each pause, Jock, with his watchful little eyes ever on the alert, dodged his body round to avoid the chopping feet without letting go his hold.
Then with a snort of fury the kudu, half rising, gave its head a wild upward sweep and shook. As a springing rod flings a fish, the kudu flung Jock over its head and on to a low flat-topped thorn-tree behind. The dog somersaulted slowly as he circled in the air, dropped on his back in the thorns some twelve feet from the ground and came tumbling down through the branches. Surely the tree saved him, for it seemed as if such a throw must break his back. As it was he dropped with a sickening thump; yet even as he fell I saw again the scrambling tearing movement, as if he was trying to race back to the fight even before he reached ground. Without a pause to breathe or even to look, he was in again, and trying once more for the nose.
The kudu lying partly on its side, with both hindlegs hampered by the mass of dead wood, could not rise, but it swept the clear space in front with the terrible horns and for some time kept Jock at bay. I tried stick after stick for a ramrod, but without success; at last, in desperation at seeing Jock once more hanging to the kudu’s nose, I hooked the lever on to a branch and setting my foot against the tree wrenched until the empty cartridge flew out, and I went staggering backwards.
In the last struggle, while I was busy with the rifle, the kudu had moved and it was then lying against one of the fallen trunks. The first swing to get rid of Jock had literally slogged him against the tree; the second swing swept him under it where a bend in the trunk raised it about a foot from the ground, and gaining his foothold there Jock stood fast – there, there, with his feet planted firmly and his shoulder humped against the dead tree. The kudu with its head twisted back, as caught at the end of a swing, could put no weight to the pull; yet the wrenches it gave to free itself drew the nose and upper lip out like tough rubber and seemed to stretch Jock’s neck visibly. I had to come round within a few feet of them to avoid risk of hitting Jock, and it seemed impossible for bone and muscle to stand the two or three terrible wrenches that I saw. The shot was the end; and as the splendid head dropped slowly over, Jock let go his hold.
He had not uttered a sound except the grunts that were knocked out of him.
Jim Makokel’
Jim Makokel’ was Jock’s ally and champion. There was a great deal to like and something to admire in Jim; but, taking him all round, I am very much afraid that most people would consider him rather a bad lot. The fact of the matter is he belonged to another period and other conditions. He was simply a great passionate fighting savage and, instead of wearing the cast-off clothing of the white man and peacefully driving bullock waggons along a transport road, should have been decked in his savage finery of leopard skin and black ostrich feathers, showing off the powerful bronzed limbs and body all alive with muscle and sharing in some wild war dance; or, equipped with shield and assegais, leading in some murderous fight. Yes, Jim was out of date: he should have been one of the great Shaka’s fighting guard – to rise as a leader of men, or be killed on the way. He had but one argument and one answer to everything: fight! It was his nature, bred and born in him; it ran in his blood and grew in his bones. He was a survival of a great fighting race – there are still thousands of them in the kraals of Zululand and Swaziland – but it was his fate to belong to one of the expelled families, and to have to live and work among the white men under the Boer Government of the Transvaal.
In a fighting nation Jim’s kraal was known as a fighting one, and the turbulent blood that ran in their veins could not settle down into a placid stream merely because the Great White Queen had laid her hand upon his people and said, ‘There shall be peace!’ Shaka, the ‘black Napoleon’ whose wars had cost South Africa over a million lives, had died – murdered by his brother Dingane – full of glory, lord and master wherever his impis could reach. ‘Dogs whom I fed at my kraal!’ he gasped as they stabbed him. Dingane his successor, as cruel as treacherous, had been crushed by the gallant little band of Boers under Potgieter for his fiendish massacre of Piet Retief and his little band. Panda, the third of the three famous brothers – Panda the peaceful – had come and gone! Cetshwayo, after years of arrogant and unquestioned rule, had loosed his straining impis at the people of the Great White Queen. The awful day of Isandhlwana – where the 24th Regiment died almost to a man – and the fight on Hlobani Mountain had blooded the impis to madness; but Rorke’s Drift and Kambula had followed those bloody victories – each within a few hours – to tell another tale: and at Ulundi the tides met – the black and the white. And the kingdom and might of the house of Shaka were no more.
Jim had fought at Isandhlwana and could tell of an umfaan sent out to herd some cattle within sight of the British camp to draw the troops out raiding while the impis crept round by hill and bush and donga behind them; of the fight made by the redcoats as, taken in detail, they were attacked hand to hand with stabbing assegais, ten and twenty to one; of one man in blue – a sailor – who was the last to die, fighting with his back to a waggon wheel against scores before him, and how he fell at last, stabbed in the back through the spokes of the wheel by one who had crept up behind.
Jim had fought at Rorke’s Drift! Wild with lust of blood, he had gone on with the maddest of the victory maddened lot to invade Natal and eat up the little garrison on the way. He could tell how seventy or eighty white men behind a little rampart of biscuit tins and flour bags had fought through the long and terrible hours, beating off five thousand of the Zulu best, fresh from a victory without parallel or precedent; how, from the burning hospital, Sergeant Hook, VC, and others carried sick and wounded through the flames into the laager; how a man in black with a long beard, Father Walsh, moved about with calm face, speaking to some, helping others, carrying wounded back and cartridges forward – Father Walsh, who said ‘Don’t swear, boys: fire low’; how Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead – VCs too for that day’s work – led and fought, and guided and heartened their heroic little band until the flour bags and biscuit tins stood lower than the pile of dead outside, and the Zulu host was beaten and Natal saved that day.
Jim had seen all that – and Ulundi, the Day of Despair! And he knew the power of the Great White Queen and the way that her people fight. Bu
t peace was not for him or his kraal: better any fight than no fight. He rallied to Usibepu in the fight for leadership when his King, Cetshwayo, was gone, and Jim’s kraal had moved – and moved too soon: they were surrounded one night and massacred; and Jim fought his way out, wounded and alone. Without kith or kin, cattle, king or country, he fled to the Transvaal – to work for the first time in his life!
Waggon boys – as the drivers were called – often acquired a certain amount of reputation on the road or in the locality where they worked; but it was, as a rule, only a reputation as good or bad drivers. In Jim’s case it was different. He was a character and had an individual reputation, which was exceptional in a kaffir. I had better say at once that not even his best friend would claim that that reputation was a good one. He was known as the best driver, the strongest nigger, the hardest fighter and the worst drinker on the road.
His real name was Makokela, but in accordance with a common Zulu habit it was usually abbreviated to Makokel’. Among a certain number of the white men – of the sort who can never get any name right – he was oddly enough known as McCorkindale. I called him Jim as a rule – Makokel’ when relations were strained. The waggon boys found it safer to use his proper name. When anything had upset him it was not considered wise to take the liberty of shouting ‘Jim’; the answer sometimes came in the shape of a hammering.
Many men had employed Jim before he came to me, and all had ‘sacked’ him for fighting, drinking and the unbearable worry he caused. They told me this, and said that he gave more trouble than his work was worth. It may have been true: he certainly was a living test of patience, purpose and management; but, for something learned in that way, I am glad now that Jim never ‘got the sack’ from me. Why he did not is not easy to say; perhaps the circumstances under which he came to me and the hard knocks of an unkind fate pleaded for him. But it was not that alone: there was something in Jim himself – something good and fine, something that shone out from time to time through his black skin and battered face as the soul of a real man.
It was in the first season in the Bushveld that we were outspanned one night on the sand-hills overlooking Delagoa Bay among scores of other waggons dotted about in little camps – all loading or waiting for loads to transport to the Transvaal. Delagoa was not a good place to stay in, in those days: liquor was cheap and bad; there was very little in the way of law and order; and everyone took care of himself as well as he could. The kaffir kraals were close about the town and the natives of the place were as rascally a lot of thieves and vagabonds as you could find anywhere. The result was everlasting trouble with the waggon boys and a chronic state of war between them and the natives and the banyans or Arab traders of the place. The boys, with pockets full of wages, haggled and were cheated in the stores, and by the hawkers, and in the canteens; and they often ended up the night with beer-drinking at the kraals or reprisals on their enemies. Every night there were fights and robberies: the natives or Indians would rob and half-kill a waggon boy; then he in turn would rally his friends, and raid and clear out the kraal or the store. Most of the waggon boys were Zulus or of Zulu descent, and they were always ready for a fight and would tackle any odds when their blood was up.
It was the third night of our stay, and the usual row was on. Shouts and cries, the beating of tom-toms, and shrill ear-piercing whistles, came from all sides; and through it all the dull hum of hundreds of human voices, all gabbling together.
Near to us there was another camp of four waggons drawn up in close order, and as we sat talking and wondering at the strange babel in the beautiful calm moonlight night, one sound was ever recurring, coming away out of all the rest with something in it that fixed our attention. It was the sound of two voices from the next waggons. One voice was a kaffir’s – a great, deep, bull-throated voice; it was not raised – it was monotonously steady and low; but it carried far, with the ring and the lingering vibration of a big gong.
‘Funa ‘nyama, Inkos; funa ‘nyama!’ (‘I want meat, Chief; I want meat!’) was what the kaffir’s voice kept repeating at intervals of a minute or two with deadly monotony and persistency.
The white man’s voice grew more impatient, louder and angrier with each refusal; but the boy paid no heed. A few minutes later the same request would be made, supplemented now and then with, ‘I am hungry, Baas, I can’t sleep. Meat! Meat! Meat!’; or ‘Porridge and bread are for women and piccaninnies. I am a man: I want meat, Baas, meat.’ From the white man it was, ‘Go to sleep, I tell you!’ ‘Be quiet, will you?’ ‘Shut up that row!’ ‘Be still, you drunken brute, or I’ll tie you up!’ and ‘You’ll get twenty-five in a minute!’
It may have lasted half an hour when one of our party said, ‘That’s Bob’s old driver, the big Zulu. There’ll be a row tonight; he’s with a foreigner chap from Natal now. New chums are always roughest on the niggers.’
In a flash I remembered Bob Saunderson’s story of the boy who had caught the lion alive, and Bob’s own words, ‘A real fine nigger, but a terror to drink and always in trouble. He fairly wore me right out.’
A few minutes later there was a short scuffle and the boy’s voice could be heard protesting in the same deep low tone: they were tying him up to the waggon wheel for a flogging. Others were helping the white man, but the boy was not resisting.
At the second thin whistling stroke someone said, ‘That’s a sjambok he’s using, not a nekstrop!’ Sjambok, that will cut a bullock’s hide! At about the eighth there was a wrench that made the waggon rattle and the deep voice was raised in protest, ‘Ow, Inkos!’
It made me choke: it was the first I knew of such things, and the horror of it was unbearable; but the man who had spoken before – a good man too, straight and strong, and trusted by black and white – said, ‘Sonny, you must not interfere between a man and his boys here; it’s hard sometimes, but we’d not live a day if they didn’t know who was baas.’
I think we counted eighteen, and then everything seemed going to burst.
The white man looked about at the faces close to him – and stopped. He began slowly to untie the outstretched arms and blustered out some threats. But no one said a word!
The noises died down as the night wore on, until the stillness was broken only by the desultory barking of a kaffir dog or the crowing of some awakened rooster who had mistaken the bright moonlight for the dawn and thought that all the world had overslept itself. But for me there was one other sound for which I listened into the cool of morning with the quivering sensitiveness of a bruised nerve. Sometimes it was a long catchy sigh, and sometimes it broke into a groan just audible, like the faintest rumble of most distant surf. Twice in the long night came the same request to one of the boys near him, uttered in a deep clear unshaken voice and in a tone that was civil but firm, and strangely moving from its quiet indifference.
‘Landela manzi, Umganaam!’ (‘Bring water, friend!’) was all he said; and each time the request was so quickly answered that I had the guilty feeling of being one in a great conspiracy of silence. The hush was unreal; the stillness alive with racing thoughts; the darkness full of watching eyes.
There is, we believe, in the heart of every being a little germ of justice which men call conscience! If that be so, there must have been in the heart of the white man that night some uneasy movement – the first life-throb of the thought which one who had not yet written has since set down:
Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
The following afternoon I received an ultimatum. We had just returned from the town when from a group of boys squatting round the fire there stood up one big fellow – a stranger – who raised his hand high above his head in Zulu fashion and gave their salute in the deep bell-like voice that there was no mistaking, ‘Inkos! Bayete!’
He stepped forward, looking me all over, and announced with calm and settled conviction, ‘I have come to work for you
!’ I said nothing. Then he rapped a chest like a big drum, and nodding his head with a sort of defiant confidence added in quaint English, ‘My naam Makokela! Jim Makokel’! Yes! My catchum lion ‘live! Makokela, me!’
He had heard that I wanted a driver, had waited for my return, and annexed me as his future ‘baas’ without a moment’s doubt or hesitation.
I looked him over. Big, broad-shouldered, loose-limbed and straight as an assegai! A neck and head like a bull’s; a face like a weather-beaten rock, storm scarred and furrowed, rugged and ugly, but steadfast, massive and strong! So it looked then, and so it turned out: for good and for evil Jim was strong.
I nodded and said, ‘You can come.’
Once more he raised his head aloft and, simply and without a trace of surprise or gratification, said: ‘Yes, you are my chief, I will work for you.’ In his own mind it had been settled already: it had never been in doubt.
Jim – when sober – was a splendid worker and the most willing of servants and, drunk or sober, he was always respectful in an independent, upstanding, hearty kind of way. His manner was as rough and rugged as his face and character; in his most peaceful moments it was – to one who did not understand him – almost fierce and aggressive; but this was only skin deep; for the childlike simplicity of the African native was in him to the full and rude bursts of titanic laughter came readily – laughter as strong and unrestrained as his bursts of passion.