CHAPTER XXXIV
TANTA COETZEE TO THE RESCUE
After Jess had been set free by the Boers outside Hans Coetzee's place,John was sharply ordered to dismount and off-saddle his horse. Thishe did with the best grace that he could muster, and the horse wasknee-haltered and let loose to feed. It was then indicated to him thathe was to enter the house, and this he also did, closely attended by twoof the Boers. The room into which he was conducted was the same that hehad first become acquainted with, on the occasion of the buck hunt thathad so nearly ended in his murder. There was the Buckenhout table,and there were the stools and couches made of stinkwood. Also, in thebiggest chair at the other end of the room, a moderate-sized slop-basinfull of coffee by her side, sat Tanta Coetzee, still actively employedin doing absolutely nothing. There, too, were the showily dressedmaidens, there was the sardonic lover of one of them, and all the posseof young men with rifles. The _sit-kammer_ and its characteristics werequite unchanged, and on entering it John felt inclined to rub his eyesand wonder whether the events of the last few months had been nothingbut a dream.
The only thing that had changed was his welcome. Evidently he was notexpected to shake hands all round on the present occasion. Fallen indeedwould that Boer have been considered who, within a few days of Majuba,offered to shake hands with a wretched English _rooibaatje_, pickedup like a lame buck on the veldt. At the least he would have kept theceremony for private celebration, if only out of respect to the feelingsof others. On this occasion John's entry was received in icy silence.The old woman did not deign to look up, the young ones shrugged theirshoulders and turned their backs, as though they had suddenly seensomething that was not nice. Only the countenance of the sardonic loversoftened to a grin.
John walked to the end of the room where there was a vacant chair andstood by it.
"Have I your permission to sit down, ma'am?" he said at last in a loudtone, addressing the old lady.
"Dear Lord!" said the old lady to the man next to her, "what a voice thepoor creature has! it is like a bull's. What does he say?"
The man explained.
"The floor is the right place for Englishmen and Kafirs," said theold lady, "but after all he is a man, and perhaps sore with riding.Englishmen always get sore when they try to ride." Then with startlingenergy she shouted out:
"_Sit!_"
"I will show the _rooibaatje_ that he is not the only one with a voice,"she added by way of explanation.
A subdued sniggle followed this sally of wit, during which John took hisseat with such native grace as he could command, which at the moment wasnot much.
"Dear me!" she went on presently, for she was a bit of a humorist, "helooks very dirty and pale, doesn't he? I suppose the poor thing has beenhiding in the ant-bear holes with nothing to eat. I am told that up inthe Drakensberg yonder the ant-bear holes are full of Englishmen. Theyhad rather starve in them than come out, for fear lest they should meeta Boer."
This provoked another snigger, and then the young ladies took up theball.
"Are you hungry, _rooibaatje_?" asked one in English.
John was boiling with fury, but he was also starving, so he answeredthat he was.
"Tie his hands behind him, and let us see if he can catch in his mouth,like a dog," suggested a gentle youth.
"No, no; make him eat pap with a wooden spoon, like a Kafir," saidanother. "I will feed him--if you have a very long spoon."
Here again was legitimate cause for merriment, but in the end matterswere compromised by a lump of biltong and a piece of bread being thrownto John from the other end of the room. He caught them and began toeat, trying to conceal his ravenous hunger as much as possible from thecircle of onlookers who clustered round to watch the operation.
"Carolus," said the old lady to the sardonic affianced of her daughter,"there are three thousand men in the British army."
"Yes, my aunt."
"There are three thousand men in the British army," she repeated,looking round angrily as though somebody had questioned the truth of herstatement. "I tell you that my grandfather's brother was at Cape Town inthe time of Governor Smith, and he counted the whole British army, andthere were three thousand of them."
"That is so, my aunt," answered Carolus.
"Then why did you contradict me, Carolus?"
"I did not intend to, my aunt."
"I should hope not, Carolus; it would vex the dear Lord to see a boywith a squint" (Carolus was slightly afflicted in this way) "contradicthis future mother-in-law. Tell me how many Englishmen were killed atLaing's Nek?"
"Nine hundred," replied Carolus promptly.
"And at Ingogo?"
"Six hundred and twenty."
"And at Majuba?"
"One thousand."
"Then that makes two thousand five hundred men; yes, and the restwere finished at Bronker's Spruit. Nephews, that _rooibaatje_ there,"pointing to John, "is one of the last men left in the British army."
Most of her audience appeared to accept this argument as conclusive, butsome mischievous spirit put it into the breast of the saturnine Carolusto contradict her, notwithstanding the lesson he had just received.
"That is not so, my aunt; there are many damned Englishmen stillsneaking about the Nek, and also at Pretoria and Wakkerstroom."
"I tell you it is a lie," said the old lady, raising her voice, "theyare only Kafirs and camp-followers. There were three thousand men in theBritish army, and now they are all killed except that _rooibaatje_. Howdare you contradict your future mother-in-law, you dirty squint-eyed,yellow-faced monkey? There, take that!" and before the unfortunateCarolus knew where he was, he received the slop-basin with its contentsfull in the face. The bowl broke upon the bridge of his nose, and thecoffee flew all about him, into his eyes and hair, down his throat andover his body, making such a spectacle of him as must have been seen tobe appreciated.
"Ah!" went on the old lady, much soothed and gratified by the eminentand startling success of her shot, "never you say again that I don'tknow how to throw a basin of coffee. I haven't practised at my man Hansfor thirty years for nothing, I can tell you. Now you, Carolus, I havetaught you not to contradict; go and wash your face and we will havesupper."
Carolus ventured no reply, and was led away by his betrothed halfblinded and utterly subdued, while her sister set the table for theevening meal. When it was ready the men sat down to meat and the womenwaited on them. John was not asked to join them, but one of the girlsthrew him a boiled mealiecob, for which, being still very hungry, hewas duly grateful, and afterwards he managed to secure a mutton bone andanother bit of bread.
When supper was over, some bottles of peach brandy were produced, andthe Boers began to drink freely, and then it was that matters commencedto look dangerous for the Englishman. Suddenly one of the men rememberedabout the young fellow whom John had thrown backwards off the horse, andwho was lying very sick in the next room, and suggested that measures ofretaliation should be taken, which would undoubtedly have been done ifthe elderly Boer who had commanded the party had not interposed. Thisman was getting drunk like the others, but fortunately for John he grewamiably drunk.
"Let him alone," he said, "let him alone. We will send him to thecommandant to-morrow. Frank Muller will know how to deal with him."
John thought to himself that he certainly would.
"Now, for myself," the man went on with a hiccough, "I bear no malice.We have thrashed the British and they have given up the country, so letbygones be bygones, I say. Almighty, yes! I am not proud, not I. If anEnglishman takes off his hat to me I shall acknowledge it."
This staved the fellows off for a while, but presently John's protectorwent away, and then the others became playful. They took their riflesand amused themselves with levelling them at him, and making sham betsas to where they would hit him. John, seeing the emergency, backed hischair well into the corner of the wall and drew his revolver, whichfortunately for himself he still had.
"If any man interferes wi
th me, by God, I'll shoot him!" he said ingood English, which they did not fail to understand. Undoubtedly asthe evening went on it was only the possession of this revolver and hisevident determination to use it that saved his life.
At last things grew very bad indeed, so bad that John found itabsolutely necessary to keep his eyes continually fixed, now on one andnow on another, to prevent their putting a bullet through him unawares.He had twice appealed to the old woman, but she sat in her big chairwith a sweet smile upon her fat face and refused to interfere. It isnot every day that a Boer _frau_ has the chance of seeing a real liveEnglish _rooibaatje_ baited like an ant-bear on the flat.
Presently, just as John in desperation was making up his mind to beginshooting right and left, and take his chance of cutting his way out, thesaturnine Carolus, whose temper had never recovered the bowl of coffee,and who was besides very drunk, rushed forward with an oath and dealt atremendous blow at him with the butt-end of his rifle. John dodged theblow, which fell upon the back of the chair and smashed it to bits, andin another second Carolus's gentle soul would have departed to a bettersphere, had not the old _frau_, seeing that the game had gone beyond ajoke, waddled down the room with marvellous activity and thrown herselfbetween them.
"There, there," she said, cuffing right and left with her fat fists, "beoff with you, every one. I can't have this noise going on here. Come,off you all go, and get the horses into the stable; they will be rightaway by morning if you trust them to the Kafirs."
Carolus collapsed, and the other men also hesitated and drew back,whereupon, following up her advantage, the old woman, to John'sastonishment and relief, bundled the whole tribe of them bodily out ofthe front door.
"Now then, _rooibaatje_," said the old lady briskly when they had gone,"I like you because you are a brave man, and were not afraid when theymobbed you. Also, I don't want to have a mess made upon my floor here,or any noise or shooting. If those men come back and find you here theywill first get rather drunker and then kill you, so you had better beoff while you have the chance," and she pointed to the door.
"I really am much obliged to you, my aunt," said John, utterlyastonished to find that she possessed a heart at all, and more or lesshad been playing a part throughout the evening.
"Oh, as to that," she said drily, "it would be a great pity to kill thelast English _rooibaatje_ in the whole British army; they ought to keepyou as a curiosity. Here, take a tot of brandy before you go; it isa wet night, and sometimes when you are clear of the Transvaal andremember this business, remember, too, that you owe your life to TantaCoetzee. But I would not have saved you, not I, if you had not been soplucky. I like a man to be a man, and not like that miserable monkeyCarolus. There, be off!"
John poured out and swallowed half a tumblerful of the brandy, and inanother moment he was outside the house and had slipped off into thenight. It was very dark and wet, for the rain-clouds had covered up themoon, and he soon learned that any attempt to look for his horse wouldend in failure and probably in his recapture. The only thing to do wasto get away on foot in the direction of Mooifontein as quickly as hecould; so off he went down the track across the veldt as fast as hisstiff legs would take him. He had a ten miles trudge before him, andwith that cheerful acquiescence in circumstances over which he had nocontrol which was one of his characteristics, he set to work to make thebest of it. For the first hour or so all went well, then to his intensedisgust he discovered that he was off the track, a fact at which anybodywho has ever had the pleasure of wandering along a so-called road on theAfrican veldt on a dark night will scarcely be surprised.
After wasting a quarter of an hour or more in a vain attempt to find thepath, John struck out boldly for a dim mass that loomed in the distance,and which he took to be Mooifontein Hill. And so it was, only instead ofkeeping to the left, where he would have arrived at the house, or ratherwhere the house had stood, unwittingly he bore to the right, and thuswent half round the hill before he found out his mistake. Nor would hehave discovered it then had he not chanced in the mist and darkness toturn into the mouth of the great gorge known as Leeuwen Kloof, whereonce, months ago, he had had an interesting talk with Jess just beforeshe went to Pretoria. It was whilst he was blundering and stumbling upthis gorge that at length the rain ceased and the moon revealed herself,it being then nearly midnight. Her very first rays lit upon one of theextraordinary pillars of balanced boulders, and by it he recognised thelocality. As may be imagined, strong man though he was, by this timeJohn was quite exhausted. For nearly a week he had been travellingincessantly, and for the last two nights he had not only not slept, butalso had endured much mental excitement and bodily peril. Were it notfor the brandy that Tanta Coetzee gave him he could never have trampedthe fifteen miles or so of ground which he had covered. Now he was quitebroken down, and felt that the only thing which he could do, wet throughas he was, would be to lie down somewhere, and sleep or die as the casemight be. Then it was that he remembered the little cave near the topof the Kloof, the same from which Jess had watched the thunder-storm. Hehad visited it once with Bessie after their engagement, and she had toldhim that it was one of her sister's favourite haunts.
If he could but reach the cave at any rate he would find shelter and adry place to lie in. It could not be more than three hundred yards away.So he struggled on bravely through the wet grass and over the scatteredboulders, till at last he came to the base of the huge column that hadbeen shattered by the lightning before Jess's eyes.
Thirty paces more and John was in the cave.
With a sigh of utter exhaustion he flung himself down upon the rockyfloor, and almost instantly was buried in a profound sleep.
Jess Page 42