Jock of the Bushveld

by Percy Fitzpatrick

  That was the kind of life to which Jock seemed to have settled down.

  He was then in the very prime of life and I still hoped to get him back to me some day to a home where he would end his days in peace. Yet it seemed impossible to picture him in a life of ease and idleness – a watchdog in a house sleeping away his life on a mat, his only excitement keeping off strange kaffirs and stray dogs, or burrowing for rats and moles in a garden, with old age, deafness and infirmities growing year by year to make his end miserable. I had often thought that it might have been better had he died fighting – hanging on with his indomitable pluck and tenacity, tackling something with all the odds against him; doing his duty and his best as he had always done – and died as Rocky’s dog had died. If on that last day of our hunting together he had got at the lioness and gone under in the hopeless fight; if the sable bull had caught and finished him with one of the scythe-like sweeps of the scimitar horns; if he could have died – like Nelson – in the hour of victory! Would it not have been better for him – happier for me? Often I thought so. For to fade slowly away; to lose his strength and fire and intelligence; to outlive his character, and no longer be himself! No, that could not be happiness!

  Well, Jock is dead! Jock, the innocent cause of Seedling’s downfall and death, lies buried under the same big fig-tree: the graves stand side by side. He died, as he lived – true to his trust; and this is how it happened, as it was faithfully told to me.

  It was a bright moonlight night – think of the scores we had spent together, the mild glorious nights of the Bushveld! – and once more Tom was roused by a clatter of falling boxes and the wild screams of fowls in the yard. Only the night before the thieves had beaten him again; but this time he was determined to be even with them. Jumping out of bed, he opened the little window looking out on to the fowl-house and, with his gun resting on the sill, waited for the thief. He waited long and patiently; and by and by the screaming of the fowls subsided enough for him to hear the gurgling and scratching about in the fowl-house, and he settled down to a still longer watch; evidently the kaffir dog was enjoying his stolen meal in there.

  ‘Go on! Finish it!’ Tom muttered grimly, ‘I’ll have you this time if I wait till morning!’

  So he stood at the window waiting and watching, until every sound had died away outside. He listened intently: there was not a stir; there was nothing to be seen in the moonlit yard; nothing to be heard; not even a breath of air to rustle the leaves in the big fig-tree.

  Then, in the same dead stillness, the dim form of a dog appeared in the doorway, stepped softly out of the fowl-house and stood in the deep shadow of the little porch. Tom lifted the gun slowly and took careful aim. When the smoke cleared away, the figure of the dog lay still, stretched out on the ground where it had stood; and Tom went back to bed, satisfied.

  The morning sun slanting across the yard shone in Tom’s eyes as he pushed the reed gate open and made his way towards the fowl-house. Under the porch where the sunlight touched it, something shone like burnished gold.

  He was stretched on his side – it might have been in sleep; but on the snow-white chest there was one red spot.

  And inside the fowl-house lay the kaffir-dog – dead.

  Jock had done his duty.

  Notes

  Snake stories are proverbially an ‘uncommercial risk’ for those who value a reputation for truthfulness. Hailstorms are scarcely less disastrous; hence these notes!

  Mamba – This is believed to be the largest and swiftest of the deadly snakes and one of the most wantonly vicious. The late Dr Colenso (Bishop of Zululand) in his Zulu dictionary describes them as attaining a length of twelve feet, and capable of chasing a man on horseback. The writer has seen several of this length, and has heard of measurements up to fourteen feet (which, however, were not sufficiently verified); he has also often heard stories of men on horseback being chased by black mambas, but has never met the man himself, nor succeeded in eliciting the important facts as to pace and distance. However that may be, the movements of a mamba, even on open ground, are, as the writer has several times observed, so incredibly swift as to leave no other impression on the mind than that of having witnessed a magical disappearance. How often and how far they ‘travel on their tails’, whether it is a continuous movement, or merely a momentary uprising to command a view, and what length or what proportion of the body is on the ground for support or propulsion, the writer has no means of knowing: during the Zulu war an Imperial officer was bitten by a mamba while on horseback and died immediately.

  Hailstorms – Bad hailstorms occur every year in South Africa, but they do not last long (ten minutes is enough to destroy everything that stands). The distances are immense, and the area of disturbance is usually a narrow strip; hence, except when one strikes a town, very few people ever witness them. This summer hailstorms were more general and more severe in the Transvaal than for some time past. A bad storm baffles description. The size of the hailstones is only one of the factors – a strong wind enormously increases the destructiveness; yet some idea may be gathered from the size of the stones. The writer took a plaster cast of one picked up at Zuurf ontein (near Johannesburg) in November 1906, which measured 4½ inches long, 3½ inches wide and 11/8 inches thick – a slab of white ice. In the Hekpoort Valley (near Johannesburg) and in Barberton, about the same date, the veld was like a glacier; the hail lay like snow, inches deep, and during the worst spells the general run of the hailstones varied in size from pigeons’ eggs to hens’ eggs; but the big ones, the crash of whose individual blows was distinctly heard through the general roar, are described as ‘bigger than cricket balls’ and ‘the size of breakfast cups’, generally with an elongation or tail – like a balloon. Sheep and buck were killed and full-grown cattle so battered that some were useless and others died of the injuries; wooden doors were broken in, the panels being completely shattered; corrugated iron roofs were perforated and in some cases the hailstones drove completely through them. The writer photographed a portion of a roof in Barberton which had suffered thus, and saw plaster casts – formed by pouring plaster of Paris into the indentations which two hailstones had made in a flower bed – in diameter equalling, respectively, tennis and cricket balls.

  Near Harrismith, ORC, in 1903, two herdboys with a troop of about a hundred goats and calves were caught by the hail. The boys and all the stock, except one old goat, were killed.

  Ant heap – Mound made by termites or ‘white ants’. Usually formed by one colony of ants; about two to four feet in base diameter and height, but often in certain localities very much larger. The writer photographed one this year near the scene of the Last Hunt, eighteen feet base diameter and ten feet high, and another in Rhodesia which formed a complete background for a travelling waggonette and six mules. In both cases these mounds were ‘deserted cities’, and trees, probably fifty to one hundred years old, were growing out of them.

  He has Come

  Come along, citizens, come and see

  The stock of the famous JHP

  Every article under the sun

  Of guaranteed excellence every one,

  From a white elephant down to a mouse

  All to be had at the Pilgrim’s House.

  Take what you like – one or the heap,

  Retail and wholesale, equally cheap,

  Frying pan, saucepan, gridiron, pot,

  Good and as cheap as the Lord knows what.

  Native gold bought and sold,

  Toys for the young, goods for the old,

  Fruits, preserves, jellies and jams,

  Potted tongues and Limerick hams,

  Tea and coffee, sugar and rice,

  Mustard, pepper, curry and spice,

  Pâté de fois gras, cafe au lait,

  Swiss milk of the best, as the labels say.

  Pipes in quantities, baccy and snuff,

  All varieties, more than enough,

  Ploughs and harrows, scythes and sickles,

  Worce
stershire sauce and Morton’s pickles,

  Long-handled shovels, forks and picks,

  Riems and voorslags, yokes and sticks,

  Holloway’s ointment and wonderful pills,

  Sarsaparilla and syrup of squills,

  Eno’s fruit salt, Rough on Rats,

  Paper collars and smasher hats,

  Cups and saucers, dishes and plates,

  Chairs and tables, scuttles and grates,

  Flour and mealies, corn and meal,

  Needles and thread, by skein or reel,

  Beaker, pannikin, bucket and can,

  Come along, criticise, cavil and scan,

  Say what you like, do what you can,

  Prices to suit the most miserly man.

  Coats and waistcoats, breeches and shirts,

  Ladies’ arrangements, dresses and shirts,

  Trousseaux complete from Madame Elise’s,

  Steel crinolettes and fancy chemises,

  Slight or stout, dandy or lout,

  JHP will fit you all out.

  Short and bulky, lanky or slim,

  Eccentric figures are nothing to him,

  Calf’s foot jelly, best corn beef,

  Boer tobacco in roll and leaf,

  Paraffin candles, blue mottled soap,

  Chains and trektous, canvas and rope,

  Boards for ceiling, skirting and floors,

  Ready-made houses, windows and doors,

  Ribbons, laces, stays and busks,

  Palmer’s biscuits, cakes and rusks,

  Choicest selection of wholesale rations,

  Bonnets and hats of the latest fashions,

  Boots for big and boots for small,

  Young or old, short or tall,

  Boots for many, boots for few,

  Walk up, citizens, walk up do.

  Knives and axes, carpenter’s tools,

  Spirit levels and two-foot rules,

  Pigskin saddles and hunting crops,

  Riding breeches and Wellington tops,

  Colt’s revolvers, swords and rifles,

  Biggest concerns and merest trifles,

  Dynamite fuse, powder and shot,

  There’s nothing on earth that he hasn’t got.

  So walk up, citizens, come and see

  The stocks of the famous JHP

  (From FitzPatrick’s diary of 1885; first published in Poems for Performance, 1978)

  Postscript to Jock

  It was no use saying that the work of the Convention was quite enough, and there was no time for anything else, or that one was already doing one’s best to forward the cause of Union! The editors of The State with smiling firmness insisted that the writer of Jock owed it to the Little People of South Africa, from whom he has received so many evidences of friendship, to show his gratitude by writing something more about Jock, so that they might read this magazine and become interested in the great question of the Union of South Africa.

  ‘Write a sequel – more stories about Jock!’ they urged.

  ‘No! There will never be a sequel. A good deal was cut out and more was never told, but apart from that, the story of Jock is as simply true as the writer’s memory could make it. There will never be a sequel!’

  ‘Then let us have the verities of Jock. Tell us the little corroborative things, and what the men who knew the life think of it!’

  ‘I have letters from several of the men mentioned in the book – men who knew Jock and Jess, Rocky and Jim Makokela – men who lived it all through! You can see what they think of it! But please tell me what in the world has Jock to do with the Union of South Africa?’

  ‘That is what you have to show the Little People!’ was the reply of the editors – still smiling.

  But for two days the mere narrator was unable to find the answer; and then the light came from the old familiar quarter – the Little People themselves!

  For one of them had said: ‘I love it because it’s full of things that we know, and because it’s a true story about our own country!’

  Our own country!

  It was a little past five in the morning when the light came; and standing at an open window on the Camp Ground, one saw the other light, the light of day, steal softly over the face of the grand old mountain. Away up on the shoulder of the Devil’s Peak the Old Block House stared into the face of the rising sun: below it stands Groote Schuur. Two and a half centuries and a mile of mountainside divide them; and between the two lies the history of Our Own Country.

  It was at the Block House they kept watch for the raiding Hottentots; it was against that little breakwater that the waves from the ocean of barbarism used to thunder and break; it was from there that they sallied out on great hunting expeditions among the elephants and lions, giraffe and eland, in the far hinterland of the Cape Flats (where the suburban trains take you now in fifteen minutes). In those days hippos were plentiful in Princess Vlei, near the Wynberg Golf Links.

  Below the old Block House the sun picked out another little building – the Lions’ Den; and suddenly Jock came back again to prove the faith of the Little People that it is Our Country. Do you know the story of Rhodes’s lions?

  They were caught by Farmer Francis, the brave hunter, who was with me on the buffalo hunt described in the chapter of Jock called ‘Buffalo, Bushfire and Wild Dogs’, and the place where he caught them is quite close to where Jock chased the monkeys and the crocodile chased me; and it is only a few miles from where ‘Mad’ Owen hammered the crocodile, and no further from the lonely grave where Francis himself lies buried where he fell fighting in the late war. Francis shot a lioness, and on going up to the body found three very young cubs hiding behind small tufts of grass within two or three yards of the lioness; they made no attempt to escape, and he had time to photograph them. He took them back to his camp and gave them to an old setter of his – instead of her own puppies – and I have a photograph of the foster-mother feeding the three cubs; they are stretched out contentedly on the lioness’s skin. Francis gave the cubs to me, but as they grew up they became too troublesome and expensive, and I offered them to Mr Rhodes, with the suggestion that he should build a den at Groote Schuur. Before they could be delivered, however, one was killed by a snake-bite, but the other two are still at Groote Schuur, and so are the photographs.

  Farmer Francis is dead – he fell in the late war – and a braver or a stauncher comrade no man could want; Rhodes is dead, but from the lap of the mountain which he saved for us you may look North as he did, and see Our Country and what he did for it. Jock is dead: and one knows it was only a dog’s instinct that, in his case too, led him to stake life itself for the trust. But the lesson is the same. And it is only one of life’s little ironies that the lions are still alive to make one of the links which connect us here and there, far and near, living and dead, throughout our country.

  Many people doubt if the story of how ‘Mad’ Owen horsewhipped the crocodile can be true! Only last week I had a letter from Sir Duncan McKenzie, the distinguished Commandant of the Natal Militia – one of the pioneers in the days of Jock – in which he adds another detail: ‘I don’t know if you are aware that the horse Mad Owen rode through the Komati when the crocodile caught it by the leg belonged to my late brother Jock, and as far as I know the story as related by you is substantially correct.’ Four other old hands have written in similar strain – two of them helped to doctor the horse the night the affair occurred.

  There are a score of letters which might be of interest to the Little People, but the most valued are those from the old comrades. Ted Sivewright – the owner of Jess – wrote recalling many things; and added: ‘In twenty-five years I have had many, many dogs, but never one to touch Jess and Jock in fidelity, courage and intelligence.’

  Other old comrades – Jimmy Donaldson (Colonel of the Imperial Light Horse and DSO) and Hughie Hall, of Nelspruit – also know all that is to be known; and Jess, Jock and Jim are to them very real personages whom they remember well.

  There are lett
ers from them, too: and no greater reward could have been desired than the thanks of the old comrades whose friendship has outlasted time and change. There is only one criticism and it is a well-deserved one. Hall writes: ‘It’s all right enough, except those two pictures of Snowball and Tsetse climbing that bank! They did a wonderful thing that day, but no horse can climb the wall of a house!’ My friend Mr Caldwell, to whose beautiful drawings so much is due, has authorised me to put the blame on him. I did write asking him to ‘take three feet off the bank, and make it not quite plumb’, so that it might agree with the text; but it was too late, and the book was already printed.

  One more member of our party – Jamie Fullerton, in the wilds of Swaziland, who figures as Robbie in the book – has written to add something. When Jock was published, there came a characteristic letter: ‘I see in the papers a review of another book you have written: it seems to be a pretty decent one. You may know there are not many booksellers in these parts and, if there were, I’ve no cash to spare for such things: so send along a copy. From what the papers say, I fancy that must be the brindled pup Ted Sivewright gave you the day he gave me my dog Nugget. He must have been a good deal like Nugget from the accounts, and I could just as well write a book about my dog: he was the bravest and best dog I ever saw and made a name for himself from one end of Swaziland to the other. Nothing could touch him, he would tackle anything and was a good friend to have in this country. He died at the game: charged down a hole after an antbear and got jammed between rocks. We were footing it, and before we could dig him out he was dead.’ Nugget was ‘Billy’s Pup’. I had not heard of him again until this letter came.

  There were eight of us who trekked, or camped, or worked together from choice in the year that Jock was born, twenty-four years ago: all are alive today, and I think that is a record. There were four of us who lived together in the year he died; and only one is left. And there was another friendly camp in those days where we often dropped in, whose members were always welcome. Who could have guessed how their names would become known? There was Knapp, who fell at Lang Valley, Ladysmith, leading his troop of the ILH; and our ‘Sambo’ – to wit, Colonel Sir Aubrey Woolls-Sampson, KCB, whose name and fame are known throughout the land and far beyond it; and Alan Wilson, of glorious memory. That was a trio it would be hard to beat anywhere! This camp was not far from the route of the Last Trek, where the drought broke and the cattle began to die.