by James Whyle
The irregulars halted. They could hear the sound of fighting to the north but they awaited orders and the sun was so hot that Herrid ordered them to stretch blankets over the stands of their piled arms so that they would be cool enough to handle when needed. The kid wandered among the homesteads and he saw gourds and beads and bridles and hatchets and cloaks of ox hide and blankets and bags of seed and bowls of soft red clay. He saw thongs of leather and large pieces of peeled root.
What is this?
Noe-boom, said the joiner.
What they use it for?
They eat it.
The kid turned a root in his hand and then he sniffed at it.
Heard there was a root they chew for magic. Say it turns our lead to water.
That’s a different root, said the joiner.
And it doesn’t work, said Evans.
The three irregulars entered a hut and saw a collapsed camp table that was partly covered by a white cloth which bore a circular stain in the place where a bottle of red wine had been placed upon it. There was a pile of bullock horns against the wall and several bullet moulds and a daghasack containing a quantity of newly cast balls.
In the next hut they came upon a litter of half-blind puppies jealously guarded by a famished bitch who cowered and snarled at them. The Captain heard the sound and he came in and he saw the bitch and the puppies. He squatted down and held out his hand and the bitch bared its teeth and growled. The Captain spoke softly to it and he lifted his Adams and thumbed back the hammer. The bitch jumped at him. The ball came down from above and tore off her shoulder and she fell and howled and then a second ball took her in the head.
The men stood staring down at the dead dog and then the kid squatted to examine the puppies which mewled together in a huddle.
Which one do we take, said the Captain.
The men looked at him.
Pick a dog.
They looked at the puppies. A grumbling melee of skin and bone and teeth.
Dog or bitch, said Evans.
Dog.
The joiner pointed to a yellow animal which growled at his finger in imitation of something much larger than itself.
That one.
What’s his name?
Jack.
The Captain looked at the yellow dog and then he nodded. The kid picked the puppy up and held it to his chest and the animal gnawed at his neck.
Jack, said the kid.
The puppy stopped biting and grunted. The Captain nodded again and then he picked up a puppy by the shoulders and twisted its head round with his other hand so that its neck broke and it went limp in his hands. He killed the remaining whelps and threw them in a pile next to their dam.
The men went out of the hut and the kid held the yellow dog inside his shirt. He walked with the joiner out to the edge of the forest and they stood there and listened to the gunfire. The fighting was to the north and it was not far away but they could not see it. There was a range of mountains to the north-west and their lower slopes showed in great folds of dark purple and their peaks were white with snow. They looked out across the rolling plains and saw how the colours of the grasses shifted as the wind passed over them.
Good country for sheep, said the joiner.
The joiner pointed.
Put a house over there. Catch the sun.
What about the heathen?
They’ll be Christians like you and me.
The kid looked at him and the joiner looked at the mountains. The wind sighed across the plain and sometimes it brought the smell of burnt powder from the fighting. The two men stood in the sunlight and the dog slept warm and bony against the kid’s chest.
At noon a mule wagon came over from the General’s brigade with a supply of meal which was the first food the irregulars had seen since the night previous. They cooked it up into a species of thin porridge. The kid poured some of this gruel into an impression formed by a hoof print in the mud and placed the dog before it. The puppy shivered and put its face in the depression and devoured porridge and earth indiscriminately and its tail wagged. The irregulars were slurping on the same meal when they received orders to move forward in support of the infantry.
The Captain took the puppy and put it in a bag in his pack and the men took up their packs and weapons and proceeded along the fringe of bush towards the mouth of the narrow ridge and ate as they went. As they came closer to the gunfire they extended and took cover in the undergrowth among loose rocks. Stray balls fell among them and some bounced from the stones and buzzed away into the undergrowth but they could not see their origin.
A force came up on their left on slightly higher ground and opened a steady fire on the heathen. The infantry before began to withdraw and they came through the irregulars’ lines. Their faces were begrimed with burnt powder and they brought their dead and wounded with them. When the redcoats had passed, the artillery opened fire from behind. The shells howled above and fell down into the valley but the heathen gathered on the shattered face of a rocky outcrop and fired from behind the boulders.
The Captain’s horse was concealed in the trees and the kid lay nearby and guarded it and the puppy slept in the leather bag on the horse’s side. The General’s column came up in the rear and his howitzers joined with the Lieutenant Colonel’s artillery and found their range and the heathen began to retreat from the rocky outcrop.
A round shot hit a stone and the kid ducked as the great ball ricocheted and growled away and bounced and cleared its path into the forest with a tectonic hum. The irregulars moved forward and they began to see the heathen position just as it was being vacated under the combined artillery fire. The Captain climbed a protected rock and took out his field glass and saw warriors retreating over the highlands and down into the forests towards the Kromme. Their women walked among them and they carried their possessions in great bundles on their heads. They walked with a stately gait dictated by the momentum of their burdens and when they turned to speak with one another they did so slowly so that the burdens turned slowly with them. The Captain noted that they made a fine and steady target even at great range.
In the evening the irregulars returned to their bivouac and the puppy shared the kid’s biscuit and slept in his blanket and on the day following they trudged across the dark uplands before daylight and the dog travelled on the Captain’s horse once more. At dawn they came to the mouth of the narrow ridge and halted for a few minutes to allow those before to file down the path into the Southern Twin. The kid stood and looked about and saw a Dutchman lying on his stomach and staring across the valley. The kid looked where the Dutchman was looking but he saw nothing. He lay down next to the Dutchman and the Dutchman pointed to a spot where the northern ramparts of the Kromme formed the horizon. The kid saw warriors silhouetted clear against the skyline as they crept along the heights.
Can you get them?
Get them?
The kid lifted his hands as though shooting.
Can you hit them from here?
The Dutchman shook his head.
De wilden is te ver, he said.
They made their way down through steep forest and came to a ruined farmhouse. There was no sign of the heathen apart from deserted camp fires and they ascended the narrow ridge again towards its eastern extremity and climbed down into the Northern Twin and as they went they could see in the east how it gave out into the greater valley of the Shining Water.
They came down into the gorge and extended across it and moved forward destroying crops and homesteads and cattle enclosures as they went. On the cliffs to the north a group of heathen stood and shouted down at them to spare their homes but it was to no effect. At noon the irregulars reached the military post in the Shining Water Valley and joined with regiments of infantry and artillery and marines and the Cape Mounted Rifles.
Traders had come out with winkel wagons and the men thronged about them. Evans and the kid and the joiner bought at exorbitant prices some black sugar and some bread and a tin of sardines
and another of pickled salmon. They took these spoils back to their lines and Waine eyed them as they ate. The dog growled and chewed at the kid’s boot and the kid gave him a crust and he gnawed at it and bared his teeth at any that came near.
Wagons arrived with tents from Fort Cox and markers were placed and streets laid out. There was a hammering of pegs on every side and the tents were stretched out on the grounds of each company and then a bugler blew two clear ringing notes and a canvas city rose up in the most exact order and the transformation was accomplished in less time than it took for the wood parties to bring in fuel or the water parties to fill the kettles.
In the evening the mail came up from Fort Cox and its bearers had seen several parties of Hottentot defectors on the way and the return bag was despatched with double escort. Not long after they had left a heathen spy was spotted near the camp. The irregulars and Fingos rose and gave chase but the heathen’s tracks led to the water and they did not come out.
Gone down river, said the joiner.
Providence the Fingo held up a hand for stillness and he stared at the reeds downstream on the far bank and he pointed. The men gazed in the direction indicated and the kid saw a small dark object which rose half an inch above the water among the reeds.
That’s a rock, said Evans.
The kid shook his head.
It’s a nose. There’s ripples.
It’s a rock.
One of the Dutchmen primed his great flintlock and patched and seated a ball. He charged the pan and thumbed back the hammer. He took aim at the object and pulled the trigger and the weapon roared and the Dutchman took a pace back in a cloud of smoke. On the bank opposite there was an explosion of water and a naked heathen rose dancing and writhing and then he fell back into the water and floated away towards the sea.
In the evening the rain started again and on the day following the last party from the Northern Highlands passed through the outpost on their way to Fort Cox. They brought Hottentot prisoners with them and one of these was a woman and it was said that she had been wearing Hartung’s coat when she was taken. The column laboured past in their rags and the rain fell upon them. They had suffered much during their last nights and many were barefooted and some were gaunt and weak from dysentery.
They tramped away into the rain and the party at the Shining Water Post remained and the floors of their tents were as wet as the flooded plain without. The horses stood with trembling bellies drawn up and the irregulars splashed up and down the long rows of soaked canvas and they looked almost as wretched as the blanketed Fingos who crouched around their smoky fires.
XVI
Land as incentive – Ownership – Forces assembled against Jinqi – Commerce and war – Entanglement – Teleology in the universe – Johnny bring stretcher – The kid finds an amulet – Figures in the mist – Waxworks – A cortège to Post Retief – Sentimentality of the English – Return to Shining Water Post.
IT RAINED FOR THREE days and then it stopped and the water in the camp flowed away into the muddy river and the ground began to dry out. On the 4th of November the Lieutenant Colonel’s brigade left the post under the guard of invalids and the yellow dog Jack stayed with Clayton whose hand was much inflamed. They marched up the Shining Water Pass and took a position at its head to cover the ascent of the commissariat wagons. The sun shone and the irregulars lay about in the shade of a spreading mimosa and looked down over the lowlands. Evans was whittling at a branch with his reaping hook and he laid it down and Waine picked it up and turned it in his hand.
Anyone who volunteered is getting land, he said. Meant to be.
Land, said Evans.
What I said.
What sort of land?
I don’t know. Land. A parcel of land. A farm.
In one of these valleys?
Could be.
Evans stared at Waine and then he spat.
We volunteered, he said.
I know, said Waine.
So why we not getting land?
Skipper was meant to tell us, said Waine. He has to sign it off. Give us good behaviour.
He knows we meant to get land and he didn’t tell us?
That’s what Jack said.
Jack, said Evans.
Yes.
Happy Jack?
Yes.
Where’d you see Jack?
Gatestown. He’s working in a shop there. Working for a trader.
When were you in Gatestown?
I went with the post, said Waine. I volunteered.
Evans looked at him.
Some of those farms are already planted, said Waine. They have orchards.
Lots of them have orchards, said Evans.
Who owns them?
Settlers, said the joiner.
What if they dead, said Waine.
The men stared down into the valley.
Belonged to the Gaika before, said the joiner. Then to Totties. Totties planted those orchards. They’ll also want them.
And before that, said the kid.
What you mean before that?
Who owned them first?
Bushmen lived here, said the joiner. Like I told you. But they didn’t own the farms.
Why not?
Didn’t believe in it. They think it owns them.
It?
Yes.
What’s it?
Everything.
The men pondered.
How do you know, said the kid.
My father had one.
Owned one?
Yes.
They pondered further.
I’ve never seen a bushman, said Evans.
They gone, said the joiner. So it doesn’t matter.
So who gets the farms, said Waine.
The men stared at him.
You can get what you want, said Waine. Or you can just get old.
First we have to get through tomorrow, said the joiner.
Far below them to the south a great brigade moved into the Shining Water camp in readiness to work up the twins and clear the forest at the base of the Kromme. Beyond them a column of the Cape Corps and the Horse Brigade and detachments of settlers and Dutchmen and Fingo levies marched west below the southern slopes of the plateau towards the mouth of the Great Western Ravine and so there were three brigades ready to converge upon Mount Misery.
The day was spent in anticipation of battle and in the evening the Lieutenant Colonel moved through the lines from fire to fire and he conversed with each group of officers about the deployment of other forces and the strength of the enemy and the prospects for the weather.
Jinqi and Branders are somewhere on Mount Misery, said the Lieutenant Colonel. They disdain the open ground and fight in the forest. So we will occupy that forest and the other brigades will come up through the bush of the twins and the Great Ravine and the heathen will be squeezed in a vice. We are a band of brothers, said the Lieutenant Colonel, and tomorrow will be decisive, and then he retired to his patrol tent and he drank a generous measure of brandy and he slept.
At half past four o’clock on the morning of the 6th of November the brigade assembled without bugle call in dense fog and marched towards Mount Misery. Just after dawn the fog fell from the uplands like a receding tide. It exposed the plain above a sea of cloud and from this sea the higher peaks thrust up like islands. Some were wooded and some were bare and rocky and their jutting peninsulas stretched out into the soft whiteness and a man might almost have imagined that a prophet could step out and walk upon it.
The Captain sat his horse and took out his Dollond and trained it on Mount Misery. There were warriors gathered about a chieftain who stood next to a white horse and as the Captain watched further detachments came up out of the forest from the east and west and their leaders conferred with the heathen general on the high slope.
At seven o’clock the scouts watched a brigade moving up the Great Ravine and the irregulars advanced as part of four extended companies and entered the bush below Mount Mise
ry. The village at the head of the pass had been rebuilt and the irregulars went forward to fire it.
The kid stood in a hut and saw the piles of bullock horns and hides that it contained.
They trade these for powder, said the joiner.
Who with, said the kid.
Traders, said the joiner. Settlers.
I meet one of them in a dark alley, said Evans. I’ll cut his throat.
The kid looked at him.
What you go to Norfolk Island for?
Lack of money, said Evans.
He took flint from his pocket and struck sparks onto a bundle of dry grass and kindling and after a time a flame licked up and the men watched it and then they stepped outside and watched the hut burn and then they moved on through the bush to turn the flank of an enemy position on the slopes above them.
They struggled through forest studded with immense boulders and all interwoven with twining asparagus trees and monkey ropes and other creepers and covered with thorny underwood. There were bushes of small hooked barbs which attached themselves to their victim with every movement so that the more a man struggled the more tangled he became. The Captain struggled in such a bush and it occurred to him that his situation was analogous to that of the European in Africa and he set a mental reminder to develop this theme in his notebook.
The Captain cursed softly and freed himself and proceeded over leafy ground which concealed fatal clefts and crevices and was strewn with fallen logs. Some of these logs supported the Captain’s weight and others were rotten and crumbled maliciously beneath his foot and deposited him cursing on the ground.
They battled through the bush and balls of lead flew twisting and humming about them. They had little idea of where they came from but stopped from time to time and fired in the direction of the reports. The Captain began to fear being cut off and he passed on an order to form a closer column and they veered to the right and came to a heathen homestead at the edge of the bush. The place came under fire and the irregulars took cover behind its low stone wall. The kid crawled along the wall and found a chink he could see through. There was open ground before him and then trees which rose up a rocky slope. The heathen were all among the trees and there were more gathering. They poured down a steady stream of fire and sometimes their balls struck the stones of the breastworks and splintered them and then they buzzed away into the clearing like large and lethal insects.