Jock of the Bushveld

by Percy Fitzpatrick

  When the camp is away in the trackless bush, it needs a good man always to find the way home after a couple of hours’ chase with all its twists and turns and doublings; but when camp is made on a known road – a long main road that strikes a fair line between two points of the compass – it seems impossible for anyone to be hopelessly lost. If the road runs east and west you, knowing on which side you left it, have only to walk north or south steadily and you must strike it again. The old hands told the beginners this and we were glad to know that it was only a matter of walking for a few hours, more or less, and that in the end we were bound to find the road and strike some camp. ‘Yes,’ said the old hands, ‘it is simple enough here where you have a road running east and west; there is only one rule to remember. When you have lost your way, don’t lose your head.’ But indeed that is just the one rule that you are quite unable to observe.

  Many stories have been told of men being lost: many volumes could be filled with them for the trouble of writing down what any hunter will tell you. But no one who has not seen it can realise how the thing may happen; no one would believe the effect that the terror of being lost, and the demoralisation which it causes, can have on a sane man’s senses. If you want to know that a man can persuade himself to believe against the evidence of his senses – even when his very life depends upon his holding to the absolute truth – then you should see a man who is lost in the bush. He knows that he left the road on the north side; he loses his bearings; he does not know how long, how fast or how far he has walked; yet if he keeps his head he will make due south and must inevitably strike the road. After going for half an hour and seeing nothing familiar, he begins to feel that he is going in the wrong direction; something pulls at him to face right about. Only a few minutes more of this, and he feels sure that he must have crossed the road without noticing it and therefore that he ought to be going north instead of south, if he hopes ever to strike it again. How, you will ask, can a man imagine it possible to cross a big dusty road twenty or thirty feet wide without seeing it? The idea seems absurd; yet they do really believe it. One of the first illusions that occurs to men when they lose their heads is that they have done this and it is the cause of scores of cases of ‘lost in the bush’. The idea that they may have done it is absurd enough; but stranger still is the fact that they actually do it.

  If you cannot understand a man thinking he had done such a thing, what can you say of a man actually doing it? Impossible, quite impossible, you think. Ah! but it is a fact: many know it for a fact, and I have witnessed it twice myself, once in Mashonaland and once on the Delagoa Road. I saw men, tired, haggard and wild-eyed, staring far in front of them, never looking at the ground, pressing on, on, on and actually cross well-worn waggon roads, coming from hard veld into a sandy wheel-worn track and kicking up a cloud of dust as they passed, and utterly blind to the fact that they were walking across the roads they had been searching for – in one case for ten hours and in the other for three days. When we called to them they had already crossed and were disappearing again into the bush. In both cases the sound of the human voice and the relief of being ‘found’ made them collapse. The knees seemed to give way: they could not remain standing.

  The man who loses his head is really lost. He cannot think, remember, reason or understand; and the strangest thing of all is that he often cannot even see properly – he fails to see the very things that he most wants to see, even when they are as large as life before him.

  Crossing the road without seeing it is not the only or the most extraordinary example of this sort of thing. We were out hunting once in a mounted party, but to spare a tired horse I went on foot and took up my stand in a game run among some thorn-trees on the low spur of a hill, while the others made a big circuit to head off a troop of kudu. Among our party there was one who was very nervous: he had been lost once for six or eight hours and, being haunted by the dread of being lost again, his nerve was all gone and he would not go fifty yards without a companion. In the excitement of shooting at and galloping after the kudu probably this dread was forgotten for a moment: he himself could not tell how it happened that he became separated, and no one else had noticed him.

  The strip of wood along the hills in which I was waiting was four or five miles long but only from one to three hundred yards wide, a mere fringe enclosing the little range of koppies; and between the stems of the trees I could see our camp and waggons in the open a quarter of a mile away. Ten or twelve shots faintly heard in the distance told me that the others were on to the kudu and, knowing the preference of those animals for the bush, I took cover behind a big stump and waited. For over half an hour, however, nothing came towards me and, believing then that the game had broken off another way, I was about to return to camp when I heard the tapping of galloping feet a long way off. In a few minutes the hard thud and occasional ring on the ground told that it was not the kudu; and soon afterwards I saw a man on horseback. He was leaning eagerly forward and thumping the exhausted horse with his rifle and his heels to keep up its staggering gallop. I looked about quickly to see what it was he was chasing that could have slipped past me unnoticed, but there was nothing; then, thinking there had been an accident and he was coming for help, I stepped out into the open and waited for him to come up. I stood quite still, and he galloped past within ten yards of me – so close that his muttered ‘Get on, you brute; get on, get on!’ as he thumped away at his poor tired horse was perfectly audible.

  ‘What’s up, sportsman?’ I asked, no louder than you would say it across a tennis court; but the words brought him up, white-faced and terrified, and he half slid, half tumbled off the horse, gasping out, ‘I was lost, I was lost!’ How he had managed to keep within that strip of bush, without once getting into the open where he would have seen the line of koppies to which I had told him to stick, or could have seen the waggons and the smoke of the big campfire, he could never explain. I turned him round where he stood, and through the trees showed him the white tents of the waggons and the cattle grazing nearby, but he was too dazed to understand or explain anything.

  There are many kinds of men. That particular kind is not the kind that will ever do for veld life: they are for other things and other work. You will laugh at them at times – when the absurdity is greatest and no harm had been done. But see it! See it – and realise the suspense, the strain and the terror, and then even the funniest incident has another side to it. See it once; and recall that the worst of endings have had just such beginnings. See it in the most absurd and farcical circumstances ever known; and laugh – laugh your fill; laugh at the victim and laugh with him, when it is over – and safe. But in the end will come the little chilling thought that the strongest, the bravest and the best have known something of it too; and that even to those whose courage holds to the last breath, there may come a moment when the pulse beats a little faster and the judgment is at fault.

  Buggins who was with us in the first season was no hunter, but he was a good shot and not a bad fellow. In his case there was no tragedy; there was much laughter and – to me – a wonderful revelation. He showed us, as in a play, how you can be lost; how you can walk for ever in one little circle, as though drawn to a centre by magnetic force, and how you can miss seeing things in the bush if they do not move.

  We had outspanned in a flat covered with close grass about two feet high and shady flat-topped thorn-trees. The waggons, four in number, were drawn up a few yards off the road, two abreast. The grass was sweet and plentiful; the day was hot and still; and as we had had a very long early morning trek there was not much inclination to move. The cattle soon filled themselves and lay down to sleep; the boys did the same; and we, when breakfast was over, got into the shade of the waggons, some to sleep and others to smoke.

  Buggins – that was his pet name – was a passenger returning to ‘England, Home and Beauty’ – that is to say, literally, to a comfortable home, admiring sisters and a rich indulgent father – after having sought his fortune u
nsuccessfully on the goldfields for fully four months. Buggins was good-natured, unselfish and credulous, but he had one fault – he ‘yapped’: he talked until our heads buzzed. He used to sleep contentedly in a rumpled tarpaulin all through the night treks and come up fresh as a daisy and full of accumulated chat at the morning outspan, just when we – unless work or sport called for us – were wanting to get some sleep.

  We knew well enough what to expect, so after breakfast Jimmy, who understood Buggins well, told him pleasantly that he could ‘sleep, shoot or shut up’. To shut up was impossible, and to sleep again – without a rest – difficult, even for Buggins; so with a good-natured laugh he took the shotgun, saying that he ‘would potter around a bit and give us a treat’. Well, he did!

  We had outspanned on the edge of an open space in the thorn bush; there are plenty of them to be found in the Bushveld – spaces a few hundred yards in diameter, like open park land, where not a single tree breaks the expanse of wavy yellow grass. The waggons with their greyish tents and bucksails and dusty woodwork stood in the fringe of the trees where this little arena touched the road, and into it sallied Buggins, gently drawn by the benevolent purpose of giving us a treat. What he hoped to find in the open on that sweltering day he only could tell; we knew that no living thing but lizards would be out of the shade just then, but we wanted to find him employment harmless to him and us.

  He had been gone for more than half an hour when we heard a shot and a few minutes later Jimmy’s voice roused us.

  ‘What the dickens is Buggins doing?’ he asked in a tone so puzzled and interested that we all turned to watch the sportsman. According to Jimmy, he had been walking about in an erratic way for some time on the far side of the open ground – going from the one end to the other and then back again; then disappearing for a few minutes in the bush and reappearing to again manoeuvre in the open in loops and circles, angles and straight lines. Now he was walking about at a smart pace, looking from side to side, apparently searching for something. We could see the whole of the arena as clearly as you can see a cricket field from the railings – for our waggon formed part of the boundary – but we could see nothing to explain Buggins’s manoeuvres. Next we saw him face the thorns opposite, raise his gun very deliberately and fire into the tops of the trees.

  ‘Green pigeons,’ said Jimmy firmly and we all agreed that Buggins was after specimens for stuffing; but either our guess was wrong or his aim was bad, for after standing dead still for a minute he resumed his vigorous walk. By this time Buggins fairly fascinated us; even the kaffirs had roused each other and were watching him. Away he went at once off to our left and there he repeated the performance, but again made no attempt to pick up anything and showed no further interest in whatever it was he had fired at, but turned right about face and walked across the open ground in our direction until he was only a couple of hundred yards away. There he stopped and began to look about him and, making off some few yards in another direction, climbed on to a fair-sized ant heap five or six feet high. Balancing himself cautiously on this, he deliberately fired off both barrels in quick succession. Then the same idea struck us all together and ‘Buggins is lost’ came from several – all choking with laughter.

  Jimmy got up and stepping out into the open beside the waggon, called, ‘Say, Buggins, what in thunder are you doing?’

  To see Buggins slide off the ant heap and shuffle shamefacedly back to the waggon before a gallery of four white men and a lot of kaffirs, all cracking and crying with laughter, was a sight never to be forgotten.

  I did not want to get lost and be eaten alive, or even look ridiculous, so I began very carefully: glanced back regularly to see what the track, trees, rocks or koppies looked like from the other side; carefully noted which side of the road I had turned off; and always kept my eye on the sun. But day after day and month after month went by without accident or serious difficulty, and then the same old thing happened: familiarity bred contempt, and I got the beginner’s complaint, conceit fever, just as others did: thought I was rather a fine fellow, not like other chaps who always have doubts and difficulties in finding their way back, but something exceptional with the real instinct in me which hunters, natives and many animals are supposed to have; thought, in fact, I could not get lost. So each day I went further and more boldly off the road and grew more confident and careless.

  The very last thing that would have occurred to me on this particular day was that there was any chance of being lost or any need to take note of where we went. For many weeks we had been hunting in exactly the same sort of country, but not of course in the same part; and the truth is I did not give the matter a thought at all, but went ahead as one does with the things that are done every day as matters of habit.

  Lost in the Veld

  We were outspanned near some deep shaded waterholes, and at about three o’clock I took my rifle and wandered off in the hope of dropping across something for the larder and having some sport during the three hours before the evening trek would begin; and as there was plenty of spoor of many kinds, the prospects seemed good enough.

  We had been going along slowly, it may be for half an hour, without seeing more than a little stembuck scurrying away in the distance, when I noticed that Jock was rather busy with his nose, sniffing about in a way that looked like business. He was not sure of anything; that was clear, because he kept trying in different directions; not as you see a pointer do, but very seriously, silently and slowly, moving at a cautious walk for a few yards and then taking a look about.

  The day was hot and still, as usual at that time of the year, and any noise would be easily heard, so I had stopped to give Jock a chance of ranging about. At the moment we were in rather open ground and, finding that Jock was still very suspicious, I moved on towards where the bush was thicker and we were less likely to be seen from a distance. As we got near the better cover there was a rasping, squawky cry in a cockatoo’s voice, ‘Go ‘way; go ‘way; go ‘way!’ and one of those ugly big-beaked go-away birds came sailing up from behind and flapped on to the trees we were making for. No doubt they have another name, but in the Bushveld they were known as go-away birds, because of this cry and because they are supposed to warn the game when an enemy is coming. But they are not like the tickbird and the rhinoceros bird, which stick close to their friends and as soon as they see or hear anything suspicious flutter straight up, filling the air with twittering cries of alarm; the go-away birds do not feed on ticks and have nothing to do with the game; you find them where there is no game, and it always seemed to me that it is not concern for the game at all, but simply a combination of vulgar curiosity, disagreeableness and bad manners that makes them interfere as they do.

  The reason why I do not believe the go-away birds care a rap about the game and only want to worry you is that often one of them will make up its mind to stick to you, and you can turn, twist and double as many ways as you like, but as soon as you begin to walk on again the wretched thing will fly over your head and perch twenty yards or so in front of you, screeching out ‘Go ‘way’ at the top of its voice. There it will sit ready to fly off again as you come on, its ugly head on one side and big hooked bill like an aggressive nose, watching you mercilessly, as vigilant as a hungry fowl and as cross as a tired nurse in a big family. They seem to know that you cannot shoot them without making more row and doing more harm than they do.

  I stood still for a few minutes to give this one a chance to fly away, and when it would not do so, but kept on screeching and craning its neck at me, I threw a stone at it. It ducked violently and gave a choking hysterical squawk of alarm and anger as the stone whizzed close to its head; then flying on to another tree a few yards off, screamed away more noisily than ever. Evidently the best thing to do was to go ahead, taking no notice of the creature and trusting that it would tire and leave me alone; so I walked off briskly.

  There was a slight rustling in the bush ahead of us as I stepped out, and then the sound of feet. I made a dash
for the chance of a running shot, but it was too late, and all we saw was half a dozen beautiful kudu disappearing among the tree stems.

  I turned towards that go-away bird. Perhaps he did not like the look on my face or the way I held the rifle, for he gave one more snarling shriek, as if he was emptying himself for ever of his rage and spite, and flapped away.

  Jock was standing like a statue, leaning slightly forward, but with head very erect, jaws tightly closed and eyes looking straight in front, as bright as black diamonds.

  It was a bad disappointment; for that was the first time we had fairly and squarely come upon kudu. However, it was still early and the game had not been scared, but had gone off quietly; so, hoping for another chance, we started off at a trot along the fresh spoor.

  A big kudu bull stands as high as a bullock and, although they have the small shapely feet of an antelope, the spoor is heavy enough to follow at a trot, except on stony ground. Perhaps they know this, for they certainly prefer the rough hard ground when they can get it. We went along at a good pace, but with many short breaks to make sure of the spoor in the stony parts; and it was pretty hot work, although clothing was light for hunting. A rough flannel shirt, open at the throat, and moleskin trousers dyed with coffee – for khaki was unknown to us then – was the usual wear; and we carried as little as possible. Generally a water bottle filled with unsweetened cold tea and a cartridge belt were all we took, besides the rifle. This time I had less than usual. Meaning to be out only for a couple of hours at most and to stick close to the road, I had pocketed half a dozen cartridges and left both bandolier and water bottle behind.