Chapter Seventeen
Abe Pike and the Ghon-ya
Old Abe had strolled over to my place to see a new Harvester tried on a good crop of wheat. In the previous reaping season I had been left suddenly in the lurch by my Kaffirs, who had silently vanished in the night for other scenes without a word of explanation, or a single regret for the loss they would put me to, and I determined to be prepared in future for such another vagary. Hence the Harvester, which reaped the corn and bound up the sheaves, aided only by one man and a boy. We were just sweeping clear the last square in the small field when Abe came up and hung himself on the fence, with his back bent like a bow, and his toes hitched under the lower wire. There, all bunched up, he eyed the machine in silence.
“Well, Uncle, what do you think of it?” I said, with some pride, as the last sheaf was tossed on one side by the human-like grippers.
He looked at me vacantly, then climbed slowly down, examined the sheaf and the tie, and then took a look all round the country.
“Things is changing,” he said.
“Yes; this is the age of progress and electricity.”
“And snorting steam engines and that there man machine – that thing without a heart, or a stomach, or eyes to see. Where’s the good?”
“It is a labour-saving machine, and enables me to produce more.”
“’Tis all vanity, an’ foolishness, an laziness – that’s what. Laziness and pride,” and the old sinner, who never did a fair day’s work in a month, wore an air of virtuous indignation as he resumed his seat on the fence.
“Things is changing – that’s so; and mankind’s on the down track. Time was when a reaper would take his sickle and harken to the rustlin’ of the yaller corn as he cut his way along, with the smell o’ the yearth in his nostrils, and the sight of all manner o’ living insects below him. And bymby he would straighten his back and look away over the land, or at the shining layers behind, and then he would stoop to it again with the thoughts busy in his mind as bees about a comb concerning the going out of the wheat in waggons an’ trains, an’ ships across the sea to the feeding of the nations. An’ look at this yer cast-iron reaper; what’s it good for but to work for a cast-iron man? That’s what’s the world’s comin’ to, with all the people cast in a mould. I’m gwine home!”
“Nonsense; come back with me and try the new lot of rolled tabak from the Transvaal.”
For all his disgust with the Harvester, Uncle Abe did not mind “riding,” to the house on the driver’s seat; neither was he cast down after supper when he sat out on the stoep. The day’s work was done for man and beast and the great quiet of the evening brooded over the place. There we sat and smoked in silence, until the glow died out of the sky, when the night creatures began to stir, sending forth inquiring notes as if to assure themselves that the time was really at hand for the starting of the wonderful orchestra of the insect band. And, as we listened, there rang out above the shrill drummings and chirpings and whistling, the weird, mournful cry of the “ghon-ya,” calling “ghon-ya!” “ghon-ya!” at regular intervals, until the melancholy of its far-reaching cry stilled the other noisy voices.
Abe stirred uneasily. “There’s the lost sperrit,” he muttered.
“Why, that’s the night locust!”
“Soh; jes’ a locust.”
“Yes, with a transparent drum in place of a body which he blows out when he wishes to make that noise, and rubs his legs upon the drum.”
“How big is this yer drum?”
“About as large as a hen’s egg.”
“So; and with such a small thunder-bag he can send out a noise that booms further than the greatest drum in the British army. Don’t tell me. That’s no insect; it’s a cry that comes from beyond.”
“Beyond where?”
“Beyond the dark. I tell you, sonny, when the ghon-ya cries he ain’t bothering himself about any glass-eyed beetle-hunter who’s just hankering to label all the critturs in this yearth; he’s not thinkin’ about you nor me, but he’s jes’ wailing in that shudderous voice to the shadders that pass by in the night; whether it’s to comfort ’em, or to put ’em on the right track, or to warn ’em of danger, I can’t say. One night I had taken the short cut past the big krantz, being late from the shop where I’d been for a tin of o’ black sugar, and thinkin’ of nothin’ at all when I yeard the ghon-ya’s cry passin’ overhead. There was nothin’ more’n ordinary solemn in the wail of it, but when I came to the thick of the wood it seemed to me there was a queer whisperin’ going on among the trees. Have you ever marked a bee against the shadder? Of course you have, and you’ll know how he moves like a drop o’ light as the sun strikes on his wings against the dark of the hill behind. Well, I happened to look back over my shoulder to the other side of the valley where ’twas as black as black, and in the glance of my eyes, with the blue and red light snapping from ’em as it does sometimes when you blink, in that very moment of turning, I seed a passing of a many shadders.”
“Tree shadows?”
“Shadders of dreams, sonny, I tell you. Jes’ in a flash I seed ’em moving up, and then all was black groups of trees; but I knowed where that whisperin’ come from. Yes, a many shadders hurryin’ on up that valley with the cry of the ‘ghon-ya’ pealin’ out ahead. Well, I got outer that valley pretty quick, and were hurryin’ by the top of the krantz overlooking the big kloof when the ‘ghon-ya’ cried jes’ ahead o’ me. A locust! Lor’, sonny, right afore me there was a something shaddery – a darker patch on the blackness, standing on the brink of the krantz overlooking the deep kloof that lay below stretching towards the sea, and the ‘ghon-ya,’ loud, long, mournful as the solitary toll of the death-bell, went out on the air, an’ I jes’ went to the ground as if the bones had all been drawed out. Looking along the top, with my eyes to the light that was in the sky over the sea, I seed them shadders from the valley file down into the kloof. A many shadders, sonny, come out of the valley – passed by that dark patch, and jes’ floated down into the kloof – whispering as they went. What sort o’ shadders they were I couldn’t tell you, my lad; but they belong, sure enough, to the other world beyond the dark. Many a time I yeard them same things in the kloof, when the dead quiet has been broken by a movement in the air, and a sort o’ creepin’ sound ’sif somethin’ were peepin’ at you from behind a tree. You’ve felt it, too, of course. The dogs they know, ’cos they’re not so cock-sure as we are about knowin’ everything jes’ bekose we can make a cast-iron reaper.”
The ghon-ya from the darkness called again, as if the sorrows of the world were in the cry.
“A locust!” cried Abe scornfully; “that’s no locust. It’s calling the sperits of the woods together, and the ghostses of animiles – that’s what; and that’s why all the other noises is hushed.”
Chapter Eighteen
Abe Pike and the Kaffir War
“Were you ever in the wars, Abe?” I asked the old chap on one of my off-days, when I had called on him to go out after rhea-buck.
“Were I ever in the wars? Did I ever grow pumpkins? There’s some fellows go through life asking questions about things that’s as plain as plain – why, blow me, I’ve known ’em ask ef ’twdn’t be a fine day when there’s bin no rain for a month and not a stir o’ wind.”
“So you have been in the wars?”
Grunt.
“I suppose,” said I, unmoved by Abe’s indignation, “you never got into a fix – always kept with the rear column?”
“What, me! Jes’ you look here,” and cocking up his chin, he showed a long scar under his beard. “Assegai!” he said.
“Must have been a close shave!”
“’Twarnt no barber held that wepin I tell you, sonny. No, sir! I jes’ seed the whites of his eyes and the gleam of his teeth, and whizz! – whough! – the assegai darted like a serpent’s tongue. He was painted red, he were!”
“Who?”
“The Kaffir, you blind eyed calabash. It was in Blaauw krantz in ’45. You don’t remember those days, ’cos you weren’t born, but Blaauw krantz were jes’ where it is now, and the red Kaffirs had suddenly got back their old idea they could drive us into the sea. Wonderful how sot they are on getting us into the salt water; and that time they was partikler keen on making us take to the sea without so much as a plank. Of course we knew there was something in the wind. When Kaffirs mean to fight they don’t fire off blank cartridges in the papers; they jes’ keep dark, uncommon dark an’ sulky, but for all that they can’t keep down the human nature that’s in ’em, and they have a way of giving you the shoulder when you order them about that means mischief. When a Kaffir clicks at you with his tongue you don’t want him to tell you in plain words that he’s quaai and would like to belt you over the head. Well, I tell you, you dursen’t order a boy to step a yard but he’d click, an’ some of the chaps with families took the hint and shifted into Grahamstown; but, lor’ bless yer, the Government didn’t take any notice. Oh no; the Government knew the Kaffirs and it knew the whites, and it believed in the Kaffirs. Look here, sonny, Government’s a ass – alus was a ass, and alus will be a ass. Alus so darned cock-sure, and so blamed ignorant that any Kaffir chief could best it every time. You know, sonny, the chief he would jes’ come along – simple an’ humble – and pitch in a yarn about how he loved the ‘great white ox,’ how he wished to herd his cattle in peace, and how thankful he’d be if the great white chief would send him a little white chief to keep the wicked white men from his kraals. All he wanted was peace – since he had listened to the words of wisdom from the Government. Then the chief would say: ‘That is my speech,’ and the Government would up and pat him on the back; an’ when the farmers said the Kaffirs meant to fight, Government would tell ’em they was a passel of fools. Oh, I tell you, Government is vain as a boy in a new weskit, an’ as easily humbugged. Well, about 1845 Government was laced up and smoothed down by the chiefs, with their tongues in their cheeks, and on a sudden the war smoke rose on the frontier.”
“The war smoke!”
“Ay, bossie; the heaven-high columns of smoke going up blue and round in the still air, as a sign to the Kaffirs waiting silently in the bush and the kloofs. At the sign out they came, slipping from the bush paths stealthy as leopards on the trail, and one morning the hill-sides yonder were red, as though the aloes had blossomed.”
“What – with fire?”
“Neh! karel with red clay smeared thick over the black faces, and with the red blankets carried by the bearers. Then there was in-spanning of horses, hurrying of women after their children, and the trail of dust about each flying cart. The red Kaffirs! Ay, lad! many a mother an’ wife has gone white at times of peace at the sight of a Kaffir in his paint – squatting, maybe, like a tame dog at the back door, waiting for his women-folk in the kitchen to hand him out a bone – for in the smouldering eyes of him she can see the leaping flames of a burning homestead and assegais runnin’ red, and if it’s so in peace what must she feel when her roving eye, searching the veld for the little ones to bid them to breakfast, lights on the far-off streak on the border hills, and when her ear catches a murmur that is not from the sea – the murmur of fighting-men singing of death? The sun was level when it shone upon the red Kaffirs, and when the shadder was close up to my heels in the mid-day the country was empty of whites, except maybe a solitary cuss like me, hating to leave his home, and lurking in the bush close to his belongings.”
“And the cattle?”
“It’s the horned beasts that you think of – well, why not? they’re meat and drink and a roof over your head. A few there were who saved their herds, but the bulk were swept in the net of the robbers. There was not a many human fish caught in that net that time, ’cept old Dave Harkins, an’ his five sons who fell all in one spot by Palmiet Fontein fighting to the last grain o’ powder, and ole Sam Parkes. Poor ole Sam. He found religion, did ole Sam, and many the day I’ve a-harkened to him holdin’ forth on his stoep, where he would sit for the rheumatism kep’ him from moving. Well, ole Sam, when they told him that he must fly, he said, ‘Lift my chair to the stoep. The Kaffirs will not harm me.’ They placed him there with his face to the east, and there the Kaffirs found him. I passed the house the next day, and he was leanin’ back lookin’ so peaceful that I hailed him. But he were dead, sonny, with a gash in his heart. Ay, they struck him as he sat, but they left the house standing and when I peeped in at the window there was the table set with all the chiney in the house. The Kaffirs did that One on ’em had been about a white man’s house, and he showed his friends how the white man prepared his table. A little one’s vanity and the blood dropping from the assegai.”
“What were you doing all this time, Uncle Abe?”
“Shiverin’ and hidin’, sonny; for a party on ’em swooped down on my place led by a thunderin’ ole thief I had once lammed with a sjambok for stealin’ my sugar. There was a fine bedstead in the house and a whole shelf o’ crockery, for I had some idees then of marryin’, and, blow me, if they didn’t smash the lot, besides breaking all the winders and burning the thatched roof. Then they killed an ox, a fine rooi bonte, roasted him whole, and ate him – by gosh. After that they slept with their bellies full! Yes, they did that; slep’ with me a watching ’em from an ant bear hole. I nearly spiflicated ’em, but somehow I didn’t. Then they moved off all but three, including that ole thief, which gathered my cows an heifers an’ calves an’ oxen together, and druv ’em off. ’Twas like partin’ with my heart strings, and I followed ’em up. That evenin’ I druv the lot inter the big kloof.”
“You recaptured them?”
“I s’pose so, sonny!”
“And the three Kaffirs?”
“I speck they ate too much beef, sonny, I speck they did. Any way they died. They did so – and after I had druv the cattle into the kloof I sot off for Grahamstown, passing ole Sam Parkes on the way. I came pretty nigh close to parties o’ Kaffirs, but ’twas when I came to Blaauw krantz that I got the shivers. I were goin’ along mighty keerful, I tell you jes’ ’sif I were ‘still huntin’’ but ne’r a sound o’ a Kaffir I could hear. Well you know one side the road there’s a yellow bank with a bush on the top. I had turned a corner on the listen, with my eyes every way, when I caught the move of a insect, or something like that, on the left. Blow me, sonny, there was a big Kaffir standing agin’ the bank, all naked, but red with clay. What caught my eye was the roll of his eyes, for he were jes’ like a part of the wall. He’d been walking down the road when he must a’ yeard me comin’ for all I went so soft. My! I jes’ give a jerk o’ my head as he launched out with his assegai. Then I gave him a charge o’ buck-shot in the stummick and jumped back inter the bush on the lower side. I yeard a shout from other Kaffirs, and, you b’lieve me, I dodged through the bush like a blue-bok until I got right under the big krantz, where I crep’ inter a cave. I seed then the blood running down, and like a streak I were out o’ that cave inter a pool o’ water until I got under a thick ‘dry-my-throat’ bush where I hid. The Kaffirs they followed on the blood-spoor right up to the cave, but they missed me where I lay in the dark o’ the pool, an’ next evenin’ I were in Grahamstown, where the doctor stitched up the wound.”
“A very close call, Uncle.”
“Oh, I’ve been in many tight places, sonny – a many, an’ maybe I’ll tell you about ’em.”
Chapter Nineteen
A Black Christmas
“How is it you never married?” I asked of Abe on an evening after the mealie cobs had been shelled, and we were too dead tired to brush the husks from our hair.
“Me! Well, you see this yer cob. It’s worth nothin’, ’cos all the mealies been shelled off. That’s me – I’m a shelled cob, and wimmen folk isn’t got any use for that sort of bargain.”
“But you told me the other day that you were thinking of marriage once. That time, you know, when the Kaffirs smashed your furniture.”
“Jes’ so – the critturs. They broke a fine four-posted bed and a hull lot o’ chiney.”
“And the lady.”
“You see, bossie, she was gone on that four-poster and the chiney. ’Twasn’t me she was thinkin’ of nohow.”
“Nonsense, Abe; you’re too modest.”
“Well, she forgot me, an’ took up with a armchair an’ a copper kettle which belonged to young Buck Wittal, son to ole Bob. A armchair an’ a shiney kettle, that’s what cut me out, sonny; but Buck went up the gum ’cos she would have a swing lookin’-glass. That’s so! Wimmen is mighty keen on the look o’ things, an’ that kettle fetched her. Them was times!”
“Courting times?”
“Fighting times, sonny; all up an’ down the country, in an’ out the kloofs, an’ over the mountains, by gum. I tole you about that chief – how I spoored him a full forty mile from the Chumie after Black ’Xmas?”
“Black ’Xmas!”
“You mean by that raising o’ the voice you never yeard o’ Black Xmas! Well, well, the ignorance an’ the vanity o’ learnin’ which takes no account of the great happenings in your own country, and you come swaggerin’ about with your Greek turnips.”
“I assure you I never heard of Black ’Xmas.”
“Never yeard of the soldier settlers away up by the Chumie – them as were planted there by Sir Harry Smith – of their wives and children, making merry on Christmas Day, 1850 – making merry with the old custom, and the sounds of the laughing going out into the dark kloof, where the Kaffirs crouched, eyeing them as they fingered their assegais. Lor’ love you, lad: when the poor little children were running at their games, and the women were talking over their washing up, and the men at their pipes in the quiet of the afternoon, the war shout broke suddenly from the wood. There was stabbing, and a blaze, a great gasp, and the life went out of them all that Christmas Day. That was Black Xmas – men, and women, and children, and dogs, and every crawlin’ crittur given to the assegai. I were on my way there after stray cattle, and I yeard the cry of a little child, sonny, and the sand went out o’ young Abe Pike that day. I seed it all – yes – lad, and I see it now in the nights, the stabbing of the women and little ones.”
“And what did you do, old man?”
“What did I do? I dunno, sonny – I dunno! I must a walked an’ walked all through the night, for the nex’ morning I were away beyond the Chumie in a deep kloof, without knowing how I came there. Then the cry of the little one went out o’ my ears and out of my eyes with the sight of them leapin’ devils about the burnin’ houses, an’ I saw the rifle in my hand – for ther’ came boomin’ through the trees the sound of a Kaffir singing from his chest. I found him in a clearin’, stampin’ with his feet and swingin’ his kerrie before the chief and his headmen seated all aroun’ against the trees, with their long pipes all agoin’. The blood was still caked on his arms, an’ I plunked him in the breast.”
“You shot him? Good old Abe!”
“It were a ole muzzle-loader – one smooth, one rifle – and I shifted, but it weren’t long afor’ they picked up my spoor, and in the fust rush I could hear the rattle of assegais as they follered. Then it was quiet in the kloof, an’ I knew what a animile must feel when the hunter’s after him, or the tiger’s tracking him down. Bymby I yeard the call of the bush-dove every side, and I gave the call too at a venture, keepin’ my eye on a dark spot where the last cry came from. Sure enough I seed the leaves tremble, and there was a show of red paint where the Kaffir stood. That were the bush-dove, and he called again; then he came steppin’ along to the fern chump where I were hid, movin’ like a shadder with the whites of his eyes showin’ as he glanced around. By gum, lad, I thought it was all over, but another dove called an’ he moved off. I yeard the calls growin’ softer an’ softer, and I made a move to slip away; but there’s no gettin’ to the bottom of a red Kaffir’s cuteness.”
“How is that?”
“Why, sonny; that chap never went off when he made as if he would. He jes’ slipped behind a tree, and when I ris my head out of them ferns he druv his assegai at me, and it clean pinned my left arm to my side. See, here’s the scar;” and the old man rolled back the sleeve of his worn shirt until a white scar was revealed on the fleshy part of the upper arm.
“I fetched a groan, and he sprang out to belt me over the head, but I kep’ my senses, an’ knocked the wind clear outer him with a straight thrust of the muzzle. As he stood gasping, I give him back his own assegai.”
“You killed him?”
“Maybe he died; but Kaffirs is tough, and at the thrust he gave his cry, standin’ there with his legs wide apart, afore he sank among the ferns. I turned an’ ran, keeping down the little stream till I come to a krantz, with the water slidin’ down, an’ I swung over, holdin’ fast to a monkey tow. I slid down fifty feet, and then let go, holdin’ the rifle high over head, and fell feet first inter a little round pool at the bottom. It was a chance, sonny, but I kep’ my bones sound and the powder dry. I did that. I tell you young Abe Pike was some pumpkins. Then I pushed on an’ on till I went over a ridge into another kloof, an’ through that to another kop, standing up above the wood in a mass of stone. I sat down in a cleft, and the weakness came on me from the loss of blood and the want of food. Well, I tell you, sonny, I fit ag’inst the weakness, an’ with a spread of shirt, holdin’ one end in my teeth, I bound up the wound after plugging it with dirt. Right away I looked over the country, an’ I see’d to the right the smoke rising and across a stretch of veld I seed a black patch movin’. ’Twere Kaffirs on the march, an’ following the directshun they were taking, I seed a white speck to the left; a farmhouse, sonny, with a thin trail of smoke going up from the one chimney.”
“The Kaffirs were on their way to sack the place.”
“They were that, and I set off to beat ’em. But look here, I said when I started talking, I was going to tell you how I trekked the Kosa chief, and here I been a’ spinnin’ on about another thing.”
“Did you get to the house first?”
“What – me! I did that, sonny. I got there fust, an’ there was nobody in – not a one though the pot was on the fire. I went off with the pot into a patch of mealies, and when the Kaffirs came up an’ smashed things I were eatin’ pap outer the pot, yes, that’s so.”
“And did they find you?” I ventured after a long pause.
“That pap were good, but it wanted salt – it did that. So long, sonny, so long,” and the old man moved off to bed.