Jock of the Bushveld

by Percy Fitzpatrick

  All at once it seemed as if my eyes were opened and all was clear at last. I knew what to do: just make the best of it for the night; listen for shots and watch for fires; and if by morning no help came in that way, then strike a line due south for the road and follow it up until we found the waggons. It might take all day or even more, but we were sure of water that way and one could do it. The relief of really understanding was so great that the thought of a night out no longer worried me.

  There was enough wood gathered and I stretched out on the grass to rest as there was nothing else to do. We were both tired out, hot, dusty and very very thirsty; but it was too late to hunt for water then. I was lying on my side chewing a grass stem and Jock lay down in front of me a couple of feet away. It was a habit of his: he liked to watch my face, and often when I rolled over to ease one side and lie on the other he would get up when he found my back turned to him and come round deliberately to the other side and sling himself down in front of me again. There he would lie with his hindlegs sprawled on one side, his front legs straight out and his head resting on his paws. He would lie like that without a move, his little dark eyes fixed on mine all the time until the stillness and the rest made him sleepy, and he would blink and blink, like a drowsy child, fighting against sleep until it beat him; and then – one long-drawn breath as he rolled gently over on his side, and Jock was away in Snoozeland.

  In the loneliness of that evening I looked into his steadfast resolute face with its darker muzzle and bright faithful eyes that looked so soft and brown when there was nothing to do but got so beady black when it came to fighting. I felt very friendly to the comrade who was little more than a puppy still, and he seemed to feel something too; for as I lay there chewing the straw and looking at him, he stirred his stump of a tail in the dust an inch or so from time to time to let me know that he understood all about it and that it was all right as long as we were together.

  But an interruption came. Jock suddenly switched up his head, put it a bit sideways as a man would do, listening over his shoulder with his nose rather up in the air. I watched him and, thinking that it was probably only a buck out to feed in the cool of the evening, I tickled his nose with the long straw, saying, ‘No good, old chap; only three cartridges left. We must keep them.’

  No dog likes to have his nose tickled: it makes them sneeze; and many dogs get quite offended, because it hurts their dignity. Jock was not offended, but he got up and, as if to show me that I was frivolous and not attending properly to business, turned away from me and with his ears cocked began to listen again.

  He was standing slightly in front of me and I happened to notice his tail: it was not moving; it was drooping slightly and perfectly still, and he kept it like that as he stepped quietly forward on to another sloping rock overlooking a side where we had not yet been. Evidently there was something there, but he did not know what, and he wanted to find out.

  I watched him, much amused by his calm businesslike manner. He walked to the edge of the rock and looked out: for a few minutes he stood stock-still with his ears cocked and his tail motionless; then his ears drooped and his tail wagged gently from side to side.

  Something – an instinct or sympathy quickened by the day’s experience, that I had never quite known before – taught me to understand, and I jumped up, thinking, ‘He sees something that he knows: he is pleased.’ As I walked over to him, he looked back at me with his mouth open and tongue out, his ears still down and wagging – he was smiling all over, in his own way. I looked out over his head, and there, about three hundred yards off, were the oxen peacefully grazing, and the herdboy in his red coat lounging along behind them.

  Shame at losing myself and dread of the others’ chaff kept me very quiet, and all they knew for many months was that we had had a long fruitless chase after kudu and hard work to get back in time.

  I had had my lesson, and did not require to have it rubbed in and be roasted as Buggins had been. Only Jock and I knew all about it; but once or twice there were anxious nervous moments when it looked as if we were not the only ones in the secret. The big Zulu driver, Jim Makokel’ – always interested in hunting and all that concerned Jock – asked me as we were inspanning what I had fired the last two shots at; and as I pretended not to hear or to notice the question, he went on to say how he had told the other boys that it must have been a klipspringer on a high rock or a monkey or a bird, because the bullets had whistled over the waggons. I told him to inspan and not talk so much, and moved round to the other side of the waggon.

  That night I slept hard, but woke up once dreaming that several lions were looking down at me from the top of a big flat rock and Jock was keeping them off.

  Jock was in his usual place beside me, lying against my blankets. I gave him an extra pat for the dream, thinking, ‘Good old boy; we know all about it, you and I, and we’re not going to tell. But we’ve learned some things that we won’t forget.’ And as I dropped off to sleep again I felt a few feeble sleepy pats against my leg, and knew it was Jock’s tail wagging ‘Good night’.

  The Impala Stampede

  Not all our days were spent in excitement – far far from it. For six or seven months the rains were too heavy, the heat too great, the grass too rank and the fever too bad in the Bushveld for anyone to do any good there; so that for more than half the year we had no hunting to speak of, as there was not much to be done above the Berg. But even during the hunting season there were many off days and long spells when we never fired a shot. The work with the waggons was hard when we had full loads, the trekking slow and at night, so that there was always something to do in the daytime – repairs to be done, oxen to be doctored, grass and water to be looked for and so on; and we had to make up sleep when we could. Even when the sport was good and the bag satisfactory, there was usually nothing new to tell about it. So Jock and I had many a long spell when there was no hunting, many a bad day when we worked hard but had no sport and many a good day when we got what we were after, and nothing happened that would interest anyone else. Every hunt was exciting and interesting for us, even those in which we got nothing; indeed some of the most interesting were those in which the worst disappointments occurred, when after hard work and long chases the game escaped us. To tell all that happened would be to tell the same old story many times over; but indeed, it would not be possible to tell all, for there were some things – the most interesting of all, perhaps – which only Jock knew.

  After the fight with the duiker there was never any doubt as to what he would do if allowed to follow up a wounded animal. It made a deal of difference in the hunting to know that he could be trusted to find it and hold on or bay it until I could get up. The bush was so thick that it was not possible to see more than a very few hundred yards at best and the country was so dry and rough that if a wounded animal once got out of sight only an expert tracker had any chance of finding it again. Jock soon showed himself to be better than the best of trackers, for besides never losing the trail he would either pull down the buck or, if too big for that, attack and worry even the biggest of them to such an extent that they would have to keep turning on him to protect themselves and thus give me the chance to catch up.

  But the first result of my confidence in him was some perfectly hopeless chases. It is natural enough to give oneself the benefit of any doubt; the enthusiastic beginner always does so, and in his case the lack of experience often creates a doubt where none should have existed; and the doubt is often very welcome, helping him out with explanations of the unflattering facts. For the listener it is, at best and worst, only amusing or tiresome; but for the person concerned it is different – for, as Rocky said, ‘It don’t fool anyone worth speakin’ of ‘cept yerself.’ And ‘there’s the rub’. Whenever a bullet struck with a thud, and no dust appeared to show that it had hit the ground, I thought that it must have wounded the buck; and once you get the idea that the buck is hit, all sorts of reasons appear in support of it. There is hardly anything that the buck c
an do which does not seem to you to prove that it is wounded. It bounds into the air, races off suddenly or goes away quite slowly; it twitches its tail or shakes its head; it stops to look back or does not stop at all; the spoor looks awkward and scrappy; the rust on the grass looks like dry blood. If you start with a theory instead of weighing the evidence all these things will help to prove that theory: they will, in fact, mean exactly what you want them to mean. You ‘put up a job on yerself’ – to quote Rocky again – and with the sweat of your brow and vexation of spirit you have to work that job out.

  Poor old Jock had a few hard chases after animals which I thought were wounded but were not hit at all – not many, however, for he soon got hold of the right idea and was a better judge than his master. He went off the instant he was sent, but if there was nothing wounded – that is, if he could not pick up a ‘blood spoor’ – he would soon show it by casting across the trail, instead of following hard on it; and I knew then there was nothing in it. Often he would come back of his own accord, and there was something quite peculiar in his look when he returned from these wild goose chases that seemed to say, ‘No good: you were quite wrong. You missed the whole lot of them.’ He would come up to me with his mouth wide open and tongue out, a bit blown, and stand still with his front legs wide apart, looking up at me with that nothing in it sort of look in his eyes and not a movement in his ears or tail and never a turn of his head to show the least interest in anything else. I got to know that look quite well; and to me it meant, ‘Well, that job was a failure – finished and done for. Now is there anything else you can think of?’

  What always seemed to me so curious and full of meaning was that he never once looked back in the direction of the unwounded game, but seemed to put them out of his mind altogether as of no further interest. If was very different when he got on to the trail of a wounded buck and I had to call him off, as was sometimes necessary when the chase looked hopeless or it was too late to go further. He would obey, of course – no amount of excitement made him forget that; but he would follow me in a sort of sideways trot, looking back over his shoulder all the time, and staring intently in the direction of the game with his little tail moving steadily from side to side and his hindlegs crouched as if ready to spring off the instant he got permission.

  Twice I thought he was lost for ever through following wounded game. The first occasion was also the first time that we got among the impala and saw them in numbers. There is no more beautiful and fascinating sight than that of a troop of impala or springbuck really on the move and jumping in earnest. The height and distance that they clear is simply incredible. The impala’s greater size and its delicate spiral horns give it a special distinction; the springbuck’s brilliant white and red, and the divided crest which fans out along the spine when it is excited, are unique. But who can say which of the many beautiful antelopes is the most beautiful? The oldest hunter will tell you of first one, then another, and then another, as they come to mind, just as he saw them in some supreme unforgettable moment; and each at that moment has seemed quite the most beautiful animal in the world.

  It is when they are jumping that the impala are seen at their best. No one knows what they really can do, for there are no fences in their country by which to judge or guess, and as they run in herds it is practically impossible ever to find the takeoff or landing place of any single animal. Once when hunting along the Wenhla Mohali River we managed to turn seven of them into an old run ending in a rocky gorge; but suspecting danger they would not face the natural outlet, and turning up the slope cleared a barrier of thick thorn scrub and escaped. When we looked at the place afterwards we found that the bushes were nine feet high. We were not near enough to see whether they touched the tops or cleared them; all we were sure of was that they did not hesitate for a second to face a jump nine feet high at the top of a sharp rise, and that all seven did it in follow my leader order with the most perfect ease and grace.

  Every hunter has seen a whole troop, old and young, following the example of the leader, clear a road or donga twenty feet wide, apparently in an effortless stride. It is a fine sight, and the steady stream of buck makes an arch of red and white bodies over the road looking like the curve of a great wave. You stand and watch in speechless admiration; and the first gasp at a glorious leap is followed by steady silent wonder at the regularity of the numbers. Then suddenly you see one animal – for no apparent reason: it may be fright or it may be frolic – take off away back behind the others, shoot up and sail high above the arch of all the rest, and with head erect and feet comfortably gathered, land far beyond them – the difference between ease and effort, and oh! the perfect grace of both! Something is wrung from you – a word, a gasp – and you stand breathless with wonder and admiration until the last one is gone. You have forgotten to shoot; but they have left you something better than a trophy, something which time will only glorify – a picture that in daylight or in dark will fill your mind whenever you hear the name Impala.

  Something of this I carried away from my first experience among them. There were a few minutes of complete bewilderment, a scene of the wildest confusion and flashes of incident that go to make a great picture which it is impossible to forget. But then there followed many hours of keen anxiety when I believed that Jock was gone for ever; and it was long before that day found its place in the gallery of happy memories.

  We had gone out after breakfast, striking well away from the main road until we got among the thicker thorns where there was any amount of fresh spoor and we were quite certain to find a troop sooner or later. The day was so still, the ground so dry and the bush so thick that the chances were the game would hear us before we could get near enough to see them. Several times I heard sounds of rustling bush or feet cantering away: something had heard us and made off unseen; so I dropped down into the sandy bed of a dry donga and used it as a stalking trench. From this it was easy enough to have a good look around every hundred yards or so without risk of being heard or seen. We had been going along cautiously in this way for some time when, peering over the bank, I spied a single impala half hidden by a scraggy bush. It seemed queer that there should be only one as their habit is to move in troops, but there was nothing else to be seen; indeed it was only the flicker of an ear on this one that had caught my eye. Nothing else in the land moved.

  Jock climbed the bank also, following so closely that he bumped against my heels, and when I lay flat actually crawled over my legs to get up beside me and see what was on. Little by little he got into the way of imitating all I did, so that after a while it was hardly necessary to say a word or make a sign to him. He lay down beside me and raised his head to look just as he saw me do. He was all excitement, trembling like a wet spaniel on a cold day, and instead of looking steadily at the impala as I was doing and as he usually did, he was looking here, there and everywhere; it seemed almost as if he was looking at things – not for them. It was my comfortable belief at the moment that he had not yet spotted the buck, but was looking about anxiously to find out what was interesting me. It turned out, as usual, that he had seen a great deal more than his master had.

  The stalking looked very easy, as a few yards further up the donga there was excellent cover in some dense thorns, behind which we could walk boldly across open ground to within easy range of the buck and get a clear shot. We reached the cover all right, but I had not taken three steps into the open space beyond before there was a rushing and scrambling on every side of me. The place was a whirlpool of racing and plunging impala; they came from every side and went in every direction as though caught suddenly in an enclosure and, mad with fear and bewilderment, were trying to find a way out. How many there were it was quite impossible to say: the bush was alive with them; and the dust they kicked up, the noise of their feet, their curious sneezy snorts and their wild confusion completely bewildered me. Not one stood still. Never for a moment could I see any single animal clearly enough or long enough to fire at it; another would cross it
; a bush would cover it as I aimed; or it would leap into the air, clearing bushes, bucks and everything in its way, and disappear again in the moving mass. They seemed to me to whirl like leaves in a wind eddy: my eyes could not follow them and my brain swam as I looked.

  It was a hot day; there was no breeze at all; and probably the herd had been resting after their morning feed and drink when we came upon them. By creeping up along the donga we had managed to get unobserved right into the middle of the dozing herd, so they were literally on every side of us. At times it looked as if they were bound to stampede over us and simply trample us down in their numbers; for in their panic they saw nothing, and not one appeared to know what or where the danger was. Time and again, as for part of a second I singled one out and tried to aim, others would come racing straight for us, compelling me to switch round to face them, only to find them swerve with a dart or a mighty bound when within a few paces of me.