Читать книгу Between Sun and Sand: A Tale of an African Desert - W. C. Scully - Страница 7

There was only one camp at Namies (pronounced “Namees”), for all the wells but one had run dry. It was somewhat early in summer, and as yet no thunderstorms had visited the immediate neighbourhood. The camp consisted of a wagon with a fore-and-aft canvas hood, or, as it is called in South Africa, a “tent.” On either side of it stood, respectively, a mat-house and a square tent. The particular Trek-Boer who was the owner of this establishment was a somewhat distinguished specimen of his class. Old Schalk Hattingh had, like his father before him, lived his life upon the fringes of the Bushmanland Desert. Tall and corpulent, with a long, silvery-white beard, he spent his days sitting in a big, cushionless, wooden chair. This chair would, according to the weather, be placed either just inside or just outside the mat-house. His legs had become too weak to sustain his large body, so he was only able to walk with the assistance of a long, strong Stick, which never was out of the reach of his hand. In the coldest weather he wore no warmer clothing than a shirt of unbleached calico—always open at the throat, and thus revealing a large area of red skin—a cheap and very thin corduroy coat, a pair of breeches, much too short for him, of tanned sheepskin, and a jackal-skin cap. These clothes he invariably slept in; in fact, the tradition as to when he had last taken them off had been long since lost. On his extremely large feet he wore “veldschoens” of his own make. Socks he would have looked upon as a criminal luxury; pocket-handkerchiefs he had never used in the whole course of his life. Winter and summer he sat, drinking weak coffee all day long, smoking strong tobacco at intervals, and continually expectorating in all directions.

Namies was his headquarters, and had been so for nearly forty years. His well was the best there. Even that, however, ran dry during the early part of summer about once in three years, and he would then shift his camp to some more fortunate spot. But he was always the last to leave and the first to return. No one ever dreamt of camping upon Old Schalk’s favourite spot or taking possession of his well, yet to these he had no special right which could be legally enforced.

Old Schalk was a well-known character, and was looked upon as a patriarch and an oracle by the Trek-Boers for hundreds of miles around. He had been a famous man in his day, and could tell interesting, semi-veracious anecdotes of adventures with Bushmen, lions, and other things—predatory or preyed upon. He had never seen a village in his life, excepting the adventitious assemblages of the Trek-Boers. He was known to be a hard man at a bargain, and extremely avaricious; nevertheless he was poor. A few years previous to the period at which this tale opens he had been rich in flocks and herds. Then came the inevitably recurring drought, this time one of exceptional severity. The sheep and goats became thinner and thinner, until they were too weak to go abroad and seek for pasturage. They lay on the sand all day long, eyeing piteously the troughs to which their diminishing dole of water was lifted from the well by the creaking derrick. At last the maddened cattle flung themselves down the well, and their ruined owners were hardly able to drag themselves to the arid banks of the Orange River down the sand-choked gorge at Pella. Here was at least water to drink.

Old Schalk, like most of his neighbours, found himself a poor man. Since the famine he had managed to get a little stock together again, but he was in debt to several Jew hawkers, and had some difficulty in keeping his head above water.

He held the appointment under Government of Assistant Field Cornet. It was his duty in this capacity to report all crimes to the Special Magistrate, to arrest criminals, and to hold inquests in cases of deaths by violence in regard to which there was no suspicion of foul play. This office gave him a certain position among the Trek-Boers and added considerably to his influence.

Old Schalk’s wife was only a few years younger than himself, but, as is especially the case with Boer women, she looked much older. His special grievance against Providence was that Mrs Hattingh had lived so long, and thus kept him out of the enjoyment of the charms of younger women.

“There is my brother Gert,” he would say in moments of confidence, and without considering whether his wife were present or not, “he has now married his third wife; Willem only the other day lost his second; Jan, who is fifteen years younger than I, buried his first wife only five months ago and is going to marry a fine young girl at the next Nachtmaal—and here I am still sitting with my old ‘Bogh’,”—a word which may be freely translated as “frump.”

From Old Schalk’s point of view he undoubtedly had a grievance, for one rarely meets an old Boer—and more especially a Trek-Boer—who has not been married several times.

Mrs Hattingh never appeared to be hurt by such outbursts against unpropitious Fate. She had no intention of dying just yet; sentiment was to her unknown, and she had always taken life philosophically.

“Ja,” she would sometimes rejoin, “it is true that I am an old ‘Bogh,’ but there’s not a woman in Bushmanland who can sew karosses as well as I; and if it had not been for the money you got from the Jews for those I made from the skins of the sheep that died in the drought, you would not have any stock to-day.”

“Ja; that is true,” Old Schalk would grudgingly admit.

“And you would be a fine one to follow a young wife about and keep her in order; with those legs you could not walk the length of the trek-chain.”

Old Schalk always resented any reference to his unserviceable legs, so his wife usually had the last word at these discussions.

The junior members of the Hattingh family consisted of two granddaughters and a grand-niece. The sons and daughters of the camp had married and were scattered over the fringe of the Desert. The three girls were orphans. The two granddaughters were tall, listless-looking girls, with dark hair and eyes, and that transparent and unhealthy complexion which sometimes gives a fugacious beauty and is often found in young women whose diet does not embrace a sufficiency of green vegetable food. Their chests were hollow, their shoulders drooped, and they looked incapable of taking much interest in anything. Their ages were respectively, eighteen and nineteen; their names—Maria and Petronella.

Their cousin, Susannah, was a girl of a different type. She was small of stature, well built, and had a keen and alert look. Her features were strongly marked, her eyes and hair were black, and the redness of her lips was rendered more striking by the pallor of the rest of her face. Her movements were distinguished by an energy which was in striking contrast to the listlessness of the other girls. She suggested a well-favoured squirrel among a family of moles. Her features had a strongly Jewish cast. Although not much admired by the young Boers with whom she came in contact—probably because she did not reach their standard of stoutness—she would have been in other surroundings considered a very pretty girl. There was some mystery in connection with her parentage which gave rise to whisperings among the women. It was, however, certain that she was the daughter of one of Old Schalk’s nieces.

The spot known as Namies is marked by a few stony, irregular kopjes which lie like a small archipelago in the ocean-like waste of the Bushmanland Desert, not far from its northern margin. The highest of these kopjes is less than four hundred feet above the general level of the plains; a circle two miles in circumference would enclose them all. They are formed of piles of granite boulders, between which grow a few hardy shrubs and koekerbooms.