Jock of the Bushveld

by Percy Fitzpatrick

  When he recovered consciousness he was lying face upwards in the sun, with nothing to rest his head on and only sticks and thorns around him. He did not know where he was or what had happened; he tried to move, but one arm was useless and the effort made him slip and sag, and he thought he was falling through the earth. Presently he heard regular tramping underneath him and the breath of a big animal: and the whole incident came back to him. By feeling about cautiously he at last located the biggest branch under him, and getting a grip on this he managed to turn over and ease his right side. He could then see the buffalo: it had tramped a circle round the tree and was doing sentry over him. Now and again the huge creature stopped to sniff, snort and stamp, and then resumed the round, perhaps the reverse way. The buffalo could not see him and never once looked up, but glared about at its own accustomed level; and, relying entirely on its sense of smell, it kept up the relentless vengeful watch for hours, always stopping in the same place, to leeward, to satisfy itself that the enemy had not escaped.

  Late in the afternoon the buffalo, for the first time, suddenly came to a stand on the windward side of the tree, and after a good minute’s silence, turned its tail on Jantje and with angry sniffs and tosses stepped swiftly and resolutely forward some paces. There was nothing to be seen; but Jantje judged the position and yelled out a warning to his master whom he guessed to be coming through the bush to look for him, and at the same time he made what noise he could in the treetop to make the buffalo think he was coming down. The animal looked round from time to time with swings and tosses of the head and threatening angry sneezes, much as one sees a cow do when standing between her young calf and threatened danger: it was defending Jantje, for his own purposes, and facing the danger.

  For many minutes there was dead silence: no answer came to Jantje’s call, and the bull stood its ground glaring and sniffing towards the bush. At last there was a heavy thud below, instantly followed by the report of the rifle – the bullet came faster than the sound; the buffalo gave a heavy plunge and with a grunting sob slid forward on its chest.

  Round the campfire at night Jantje used to tell tales in which fact, fancy and superstition were curiously mingled; and Jantje when not out of humour was free with his stories. The boys, for whose benefit they were told, listened open-mouthed; and I often stood outside the ring of gaping boys at their fire, an interested listener.

  The tale of his experiences with the honeyguide which he had cheated of its share was the first I heard him tell. Who could say how much was fact, how much fancy and how much the superstitions of his race? Not even Jantje knew that. He believed it all.

  The honeyguide met him one day with cheery cheep-cheep, and as he whistled in reply it led him to an old tree where the beehive was: it was a small hive, and Jantje was hungry; so he ate it all. All the time he was eating, the bird kept fluttering about, calling anxiously and expecting some honey or fat young bees to be thrown out for it; and when he had finished, the bird came down and searched in vain for its share. As he walked away the guilty Jantje noticed that the indignant bird followed him with angry cries and threats.

  All day long he failed to find game; whenever there seemed to be a chance an angry honeyguide would appear ahead of him and cry a warning to the game; and that night as he came back, empty-handed and hungry, all the portents of bad luck came to him in turn. An owl screeched three times over his head; a goat-sucker with its long wavy wings and tail flitted before him in swoops and rings in most ghostly silence – and there is nothing more ghostly than that flappy wavy soundless flitting of the goat-sucker; a jackal trotted persistently in front looking back at him; and a striped hyena, humpbacked, savage and solitary, stalked by in silence, and glared.

  At night as he lay, unable to sleep, the bats came and made faces at him; a night adder rose up before his face and slithered out its forked tongue – the two black beady eyes glinting the firelight back; and whichever way he looked there was a honeyguide, silent and angry, yet with a look of satisfaction, as it watched. So it went all night: no sleep for him; no rest!

  In the morning he rose early and taking his gun and chopper set out in search of hives: he would give all to the honeyguide he had cheated, and thus make amends.

  He had not gone far before, to his great delight, there came a welcome chattering in answer to his low whistle, and the busy little fellow flew up to show himself and promptly led the way, going ahead ten to twenty yards at a flight. Jantje followed eagerly until they came to a small donga with a sandy bottom, and then the honeyguide, calling briskly, fluttered from tree to tree on either bank, leading him on.

  Jantje, thinking the hive must be nearby, was walking slowly along the sandy bed and looking upwards in the trees when something on the ground caught his eye and he sprang back just as the head of a big puff adder struck where his bare foot had been a moment before. With one swing of his chopper he killed it; he took the skin off for an ornament, the poison glands for medicine and the fangs for charms, and then whistled and looked about for the honeyguide; but it had gone.

  A little later on, however, he came upon another, and it led him to a big and shady wild fig-tree. The honeyguide flew to the trunk itself and cheeped and chattered there, and Jantje put down his gun and looked about for an easy place to climb. As he peered through the foliage he met a pair of large green eyes looking full into his: on a big limb of the tree lay a tiger, still as death, watching him with a cat-like eagerness for its prey. Jantje hooked his toe in the riem sling of his old gun and slowly gathered it up without moving his eyes from the tiger’s and, backing away slowly, foot by foot, he got out into the sunshine and made off as fast as he could.

  It was the honeyguide’s revenge: he knew it then!

  He sat down on some bare ground to think what next to do; for he knew he must die if he did not find honey and make good a hundred times what he had cheated.

  All day long he kept meeting honeyguides and following them; but he would no longer follow them into the bad places, for he could not tell whether they were new birds or the one he had robbed! Once he had nearly been caught; the bird had perched on an old ant heap, and Jantje, thinking there was a ground hive there, walked boldly forward. A small misshapen tree grew out of the ant heap, and one of the twisted branches caught his eye because of the thick ring around it: it was the coil of a long green mamba; and far below that, half hidden by the leaves, hung the snake’s head with the neck gathered in half loop coils ready to strike at him.

  After that Jantje kept in the open, searching for himself among rocks and in all the old dead trees for the telltale stains that mark the hive’s entrance, but he had no luck, and when he reached the river in the early afternoon he was glad of a cool drink and a place to rest. For a couple of hours he had seen no honeyguides, and it seemed that at last his pursuer had given him up, for that day at least. As he sat in the shade of the high bank, however, with the river only a few yards from his feet, he heard again a faint chattering: it came from the riverside beyond a turn in the bank, and it was too far away for the bird to have seen Jantje from where it called, so he had no doubt about this being a new bird. It seemed to him a glorious piece of luck that he should find honey by the aid of a strange bird, and be able to take half of it back to the hive he had emptied the day before and leave it there for the cheated bird.

  There was a beach of pebbles and rocks between the high bank and the river and, as Jantje walked along it on the keen lookout for the bird, he spotted it sitting on a root halfway down the bank some twenty yards ahead. Close to where the chattering bird perched there was a break in the pebbly beach, and there shallow water extended up to the perpendicular bank. In the middle of this little stretch of water, and conveniently placed as a stepping stone, there was a black rock, and the barefooted Jantje stepped noiselessly from stone to stone towards it.

  An alarmed cane-rat, cut off by Jantje from the river, ran along the foot of the bank to avoid him; but when it reached the little patch of shallow water
it suddenly doubled back in fright and raced under the boy’s feet into the river.

  Jantje stopped! He did not know why; but there seemed to be something wrong. Something had frightened the cane-rat back on to him, and he stared hard at the bank and the stretch of beach ahead of him. Then the rock he meant to step on to gave a heave and a long blackish thing curved towards him; he sprang into the air as high as he could, and the crocodile’s tail swept under his feet!

  Jantje fled back like a buck – the rattle on the stones behind him and crash of reeds putting yards into every bound.

  For four days he stayed in camp waiting for someone to find a hive and give him honey enough to make his peace; and then, for an old snuffbox and a little powder, he bought a huge basketful of comb, young and old, from a kaffir woman at one of the kraals some miles away, and put it all at the foot of the tree he had cleaned out.

  Then he had peace.

  The boys believed every word of that story: so, I am sure, did Jantje himself. The buffalo story was obviously true, and Jantje thought nothing of it: the honeyguide story was not, yet he gloried in it; it touched his superstitious nature, and it was impossible for him to tell the truth or to separate fact from fancy and superstition.

  How much of fact there may have been in it I cannot say: honeyguides gave me many a wild goose chase, but when they led to anything at all it was to hives, and not to snakes, tigers and crocodiles. Perhaps it is right to own up that I never cheated a honeyguide! We pretended to laugh at the superstition, but we left some honey all the same – just for luck. After all, as we used to say, the bird earned its share and deserved encouragement.

  Round the campfire at nights it was no uncommon thing to see someone jump up and let out with whatever was handiest at some poisonous intruder. There was always plenty of dead wood about and we piled on big branches and logs freely, and as the ends burnt to ashes in the heart of the fire we kept pushing the logs further in. Of course dead trees are the home of all sorts of ‘creepy-crawly’ things and as the log warmed up and the fire ate into the decayed heart and drove thick hot smoke through the cracks and corridors and secret places in the logs the occupants would come scuttling out at the butt ends. Small snakes were common – the big ones usually clearing away when the log was first disturbed – and they slipped away into the darkness, giving hard quick glances about them; but scorpions, centipedes and all sorts of spiders were by far the most numerous.

  Occasionally in the mornings we found snakes under our blankets, where they had worked in during the night for the warmth of the human body; but no one was bitten, and one made a practice of getting up at once, and with one movement, so that unwelcome visitors should not be warned or provoked by any preliminary rolling. The scorpions, centipedes and tarantulas seemed to be more objectionable; but they were quite as anxious to get away as we were and it is wonderful how little damage was done.

  One night when we had been watching them coming out of a big honeycombed log like the animals from the Ark, and were commenting on the astonishing number and variety of these things, I heard Jantje conveying in high-pitched tones fanciful bits of information to the credulous waggon boys. When he found that we too were listening – and Jantje had the storyteller’s love for a ‘gallery’ – he turned our way and dropped into a jargon of broken English, helped out with Hottentot-Dutch, which is impossible to reproduce in intelligible form.

  He had made some allusion to ‘the great battle’, and when I asked for an explanation he told us the story. It is well enough known in South Africa, and similar stories are to be found in the folklore of other countries, but it had a special interest for us in that Jantje gave it as having come to him from his own people. He called it ‘The Great Battle between the Things of the Earth and the Things of the Air’.

  For a long time there had been jealousy between the Things of the Earth and the Things of the Air, each claiming superiority for themselves; each could do something the others could not do, and each thought their powers greater and their qualities superior. One day a number of them happened to meet on an open plain near the river’s bank, and the game of brag began again as usual. At last the Lion, who was very cross, turned to the old Black Aasvoël, as he sat half asleep on a dead tree, and challenged him.

  ‘You only eat the dead: you steal where others kill. It is all talk with you; you will not fight!’

  The Aasvoel said nothing, but let his bald head and bare neck settle down between his shoulders, and closed his eyes.

  ‘He wakes up soon enough when we find him squatting above the carcass,’ said the Jackal. ‘See him flop along then.’

  , ‘When we find him!’ the Aasvoël said, opening his eyes wide. ‘Sneaking prowler of the night! Little bastard of the Striped Thief!’

  ‘Come down and fight,’ snarled the Hyena angrily. ‘Thief and scavenger yourself!’

  So the Things of the Air gathered about and joined in backing the Black Aasvoël; and the Things of the Earth kept on challenging them to come down and have it out; but nobody could hear anything because the Jackal yapped incessantly and the Go-away bird, with its feathers all on end and its neck craned out, screamed itself drunk with passion.

  Then the Eagle spoke out: ‘You have talked enough. Strike – strike for the eyes!’ and he swept down close to the Lion’s head, but swerving to avoid the big paw that darted out at him, he struck in passing at the Jackal, and took off part of his ear.

  ‘I am killed! I am killed!’ screamed the Jackal, racing for a hole to hide in. But the other beasts laughed at him; and when the Lion called them and bade them take their places in the field for the great battle, the Jackal walked close behind him holding his head on one side and showing each one what the Eagle had done.

  ‘Where is my place?’ asked the Crocodile, in a soft voice, from the bank where no one had noticed him come up.

  The Things of the Earth that were near him moved quietly away.

  ‘Your place is in the water,’ the Lion answered. ‘Coward and traitor whom no one trusts! Who would fight with his back to you?’

  The Crocodile laughed softly and rolled his green eyes from one to another; and they moved still further away.

  ‘What am I?’ asked the Ostrich. ‘Kindred of the Birds, I am of the winged ones; yet I cannot fight with them!’

  ‘Let him fly!’ said the Jackal, grinning, ‘and we shall then see to whom he belongs! Fly, old Three Sticks! Fly!’

  The Ostrich ran at him, waltzing and darting with wings outspread, but the Jackal dodged away under the Lion and squealed out, ‘Take your feet off the ground, Clumsy, and fly!’

  Then it was arranged that there should be two Umpires, one for each party, and that the Umpires should stand on two high hills where all could see them. The Ostrich was made Umpire for the Things of the Air, and as long as the fight went well with his party he was to hold his head high so that the Things of the Air might see the long thin neck upright and, knowing that all was well, fight on.

  The Jackal asked that he might be Umpire for the Things of the Earth.

  ‘You are too small to be seen!’ objected the Lion gruffly.

  ‘No! No!’ urged the Jackal, ‘I will stand on a big ant heap and hold my bushy tail on high where all will see it shining silver and gold in the sunlight.’

  ‘Good!’ said the Lion. ‘It is better so, perhaps, for you would never fight; and as soon as one begins to run, others follow!’

  The Things of the Air gathered in their numbers, and the Eagle led them, showing them how to make up for their weakness by coming swiftly down in numbers where they found their enemies alone or weak; how to keep the sun behind them so that it would shine in their enemies’ eyes, and blind them; how the loud voiced ones should attack on the rear and scream suddenly, while those with bill and claw swooped down in front and struck at the eyes.

  And for a time it went well with the Things of the Air. The little birds and locusts and butterflies came in clouds about the lion and he could see nothing as
he moved from place to place; and the Things of the Earth were confused by these sudden attacks; and, giving up the fight, began to flee from their places.

  Then the Jackal, believing that he would not be found out, cheated: he kept his tail up to make them think they were not beaten. The Lion roared to them, so that all could hear, to watch the hill where the Jackal stood and see the sign of victory; and the Things of the Earth, being strong, gathered together again and withstood the enemy and drove them off.

  The battle was going against the Things of the Air when the Go-away bird came to the Eagle and said: ‘It is the Jackal who has done this. Long ago we had won; but, Cheat and Coward, he kept his tail aloft and his people have returned and are winning now.’

  Then the Eagle, looking round the field, said, ‘Send me the Bee.’

  And when the Bee came the Eagle told him what to do; and setting quickly about his work, as his habit is, he made a circuit through the trees that brought him to the hill where the Jackal watched from the ant heap.

  While the Jackal stood there with his mouth open and tongue out, laughing to see how his cheating had succeeded, the Bee came up quietly behind and, as Jantje put it, ‘stuck him from hereafter!’

  The Jackal gave a scream of pain and, tucking his tail down, jumped from the ant heap and ran away into the bush; and when the Things of the Earth saw the signal go down they thought that all was lost, and fled.

  So was the Great Battle won!

  Monkeys and Wildebeest

  Mungo was not a perfect mount, but he was a great improvement on Snowball; he had a wretched walk, and led almost as badly as his predecessor; but this did not matter so much because he could be driven like a pack donkey and relied on not to play pranks. In a gallop after game he was much faster than Snowball, having a wonderfully long stride for so low a pony.