CHAPTER IX
JANTJE'S STORY
Shortly after the old Boer had gone, John went into the yard of the
hotel to see to the inspanning of the Cape cart, where his attention
was at once arrested by the sight of a row in active progress--at
least, from the crowd of Kafirs and idlers and the angry sounds and
curses which proceeded from them, he judged that it was a row. Nor was
he wrong in his conclusion. In the corner of the yard, close by the
stable-door, surrounded by the aforesaid crowd, stood Frank Muller; a
heavy /sjambock/ in his raised hand, as though in the act to strike.
Before him, a very picture of drunken fury, his lips drawn up like a
snarling dog's, so that the two lines of white teeth gleamed like
polished ivory in the sunlight, his small eyes all shot with blood and
his face working convulsively, was the Hottentot Jantje. Nor was this
all. Across his face was a blue wheal where the whip had fallen, and
in his hand a heavy white-handled knife which he always carried.
"Hullo! what is all this?" said John, shouldering his way through the
crowd.
"The /swartsel/ (black creature) has stolen my horse's forage, and
given it to yours!" shouted Muller, who was evidently almost off his
head with rage, making an attempt to hit Jantje with the whip as he
spoke. The latter avoided the blow by jumping behind John, with the
result that the tip of the /sjambock/ caught the Englishman on the
leg.
"Be careful, sir, with that whip," said John to Muller, restraining
his temper with difficulty. "Now, how do you know that the man stole
your horse's forage; and what business have you to touch him? If there
was anything wrong, you should have reported it to me."
"He lies, Baas, he lies!" yelled out the Hottentot in tremulous, high-
pitched tones. "He lies; he has always been a liar, and worse than a
liar. Yah! yah! I can tell things about him. The land is English now,
and Boers can't kill the black people as they like. That man--that
Boer, Muller, he shot my father and my mother--my father first, then
my mother; he gave her two bullets--she did not die the first time."
"You yellow devil!--You black-skinned, black-hearted, lying son of
Satan!" roared the great Boer, his very beard curling with fury. "Is
that the way you talk to your masters? Out of the light, /rooibaatje/"
--this was to John--"and I will cut his tongue out of him. I'll show
him how we deal with a yellow liar;" and without further ado he made a
rush for the Hottentot.
As he came, John, whose blood was now thoroughly up, put out his open
hand, and, bending forward, pushed with all his strength on Muller's
advancing chest. John was a very powerfully made man, though not a
large one, and the push sent Muller staggering back.
"What do you mean by that, /rooibaatje?/" shouted Muller, his face
livid with fury. "Get out of my road or I will mark that pretty face
of yours. I owe you for some goods as it is, Englishman, and I always
pay my debts. Out of the path, curse you!" and he again rushed for the
Hottentot.
This time John, who was now almost as angry as his assailant, did not
wait for the man to reach him, but, springing forward, hooked his arm
around Muller's throat and, before he could close with him, with one
tremendous jerk managed not only to stop his wild career, but to
reverse the motion, and then, by interposing his foot with
considerable neatness, to land him--powerful as he was--on his back in
a pool of drainage that had collected from the stable in a hollow of
the inn-yard. Down he went with a splash, amid a shout of delight from
the crowd, who always like to see an aggressor laid low, his head
bumping with considerable force against the lintel of the door. For a
moment he lay still, and John was afraid that the man was really hurt.
Presently, however, he rose, and, without attempting any further
hostile demonstration or saying a single word, tramped off towards the
house, leaving his enemy to compose his ruffled nerves as best he
could. Now John, like most gentlemen, hated a row with all his heart,
though he had the Anglo-Saxon tendency to go through with it
unflinchingly when once it began. Indeed, the incident irritated him
almost beyond bearing, for he knew that the story with additions would
go the round of the countryside, and what is more, that he had made a
powerful and implacable enemy.
"This is all your fault, you drunken little blackguard!" he said,
turning savagely on the Tottie, who, now that his excitement had left
him, was snivelling and drivelling in an intoxicated fashion, and
calling him his preserver and his Baas in maudlin accents.
"He hit me, Baas; he hit me, and I did not take the forage. He is a
bad man, Baas Muller."
"Be off with you and get the horses inspanned; you are half-drunk,"
John growled, and, having seen that operation advancing to a
conclusion, he went to the sitting-room of the hotel, where Bessie was
waiting in happy ignorance of the disturbance. It was not till they
were well on their homeward way that he told her what had passed,
whereat, remembering the scene she had herself gone through with Frank
Muller, and the threats that he had then made use of, she looked very
grave. Her old uncle, too, was very much put out when he heard the
story on their arrival home that evening.
"You have made an enemy, Niel," he said, as they sat upon the verandah
after breakfast on the following morning, "and a bad one. Not but what
you were right to stand up for the Hottentot. I would have done as
much myself had I been there and ten years younger, but Frank Muller
is not the man to forget being put upon his back before a lot of
Kafirs and white folk too. Perhaps that Jantje is sober by now. I will
go and call him, and we will hear what this story is about his father
and his mother."
Presently he returned followed by the ragged, dirty-faced little
Hottentot, who, looking very miserable and ashamed of himself, took
off his hat and squatted down on the drive, in the full glare of the
African sun, to the effects of which he appeared to be totally
impervious.
"Now, Jantje, listen to me," said the old man. "Yesterday you got
drunk again. Well, I'm not going to talk about that now, except to say
that if I hear of your being drunk once more--you leave this place."
"Yes, Baas," said the Hottentot meekly. "I was drunk, though not very;
I only had half a bottle of Cape smoke."
"By getting drunk you made a quarrel with Baas Muller, so that blows
passed between Baas Muller and the Baas here on your account, which
was more than you are worth. Now when Baas Muller had struck you, you
said that he had shot your father and your mother. Was that a lie, or
what did you mean by saying it?"
"It was no lie, Baas," answered the Hottentot excitedly. "I have said
it once, and I will say it again. Listen, Baas, and I will tell you
the story. When I was young--so tall"--and he held his hand high
enough to indicate a Tottie of about fourteen years of age--"we, that
is, my father, my mother, my uncle--a very old man, older than the
Baas" (pointing to Silas Croft)--"were /bijwoners/ (authorised
squatters) on a place belonging to old Jacob Muller, Baas Frank's
father, down in Lydenburg yonder. It was a bush-veldt farm, and old
Jacob used to come down there with his cattle from the High veldt in
the winter when there was no grass in the High veldt, and with him
came the Englishwoman, his wife, and the young Baas Frank--the Baas we
saw yesterday."
"How long was all this ago?" asked Mr. Croft.
Jantje counted on his fingers for some seconds, and then held up his
hand and opened it four times in succession. "So," he said, "twenty
years last winter. Baas Frank was young then, he had only a little
down upon his chin. One year when /Oom/ Jacob went away, after the
first rains, he left six oxen that were too /poor/ (thin) to go, with
my father, and told him to look after them as though they were his
children. But the oxen were bewitched. Three of them took the lung-
sick and died, a lion got one, a snake got one, and one ate 'tulip'
and died too. So when /Oom/ Jacob came back the next year all the oxen
were gone. He was very angry with my father, and beat him with a yoke-
strap till he was all blood, and though we showed him the bones of the
oxen, he said that we had stolen them and sold them.
"Now /Oom/ Jacob had a beautiful span of black oxen that he loved like
children. Sixteen of them there were, and they would come up to the
yoke when he called them and put down their heads of themselves. They
were tame as dogs. These oxen were thin when they came down, but in
two months they grew fat and began to want to trek about as oxen do.
At this time there was a Basutu, one of Sequati's people, resting in
our hut, for he had hurt his foot with a thorn. When /Oom/ Jacob found
that the Basutu was there he was very angry, for he said that all
Basutus were thieves. So my father told the Basutu that the Baas said
that he must go away, and he went that night. Next morning the span of
black oxen were gone too. The kraal-gate was down, and they had gone.
We hunted all day, but we could not find them. Then /Oom/ Jacob went
mad with rage, and the young Baas Frank told him that one of the Kafir
boys had said to him that he had heard my father sell them to the
Basutu for sheep which he was to pay to us in the summer. It was a
lie, but Baas Frank hated my father because of something about a woman
--a Zulu girl.
"Next morning when we were asleep, just at daybreak, /Oom/ Jacob
Muller and Baas Frank and two Kafirs came into the hut and pulled us
out, the old man my uncle, my father, my mother, and myself, and tied
us up to four mimosa-trees with buffalo-hide reims. Then the Kafirs
went away, and /Oom/ Jacob asked my father where the cattle were, and
my father told him that he did not know. Then /Oom/ Jacob took off his
hat and said a prayer to the Big Man in the sky, and when he had done
Baas Frank came up with a gun and stood quite close and shot my father
dead, and he fell forward and hung quiet over the reim, his head
touching his feet. Then he loaded the gun again and shot the old man
my uncle, and he slipped down dead, and his hands stuck up in the air
against the reim. Next he shot my mother, but the bullet did not kill
her, and cut the reim, and she ran away, and he ran after her and
killed her. When that was done he came back to shoot me; but I was
young then, and did not know that it is better to be dead than to live
like a dog, and I cried and prayed for mercy while he was loading the
gun.
"But the Baas only laughed, and said he would teach Hottentots how to
steal cattle, and old /Oom/ Jacob prayed out loud to the Big Man and
said he was very sorry for me, but it was the dear Lord's will. And
then, just as Baas Frank lifted the gun, he dropped it again, for
there, coming softly, softly over the brow of the hill, in and out
between the bushes, were all the sixteen oxen! They had got out in the
night and strayed away into some kloof for a change of pasture, and
came back when they were full and tired of being alone. /Oom/ Jacob
turned quite white and scratched his head, and then fell upon his
knees and thanked the dear Lord for saving my life; and just then the
Englishwoman, Baas Frank's mother, came down from the waggon to see
what the firing was at, and when she saw all the people dead and me
weeping, tied to the tree, and learnt what it was about, she went
quite mad, for sometimes she had a kind heart when she was not drunk,
and said that a curse would fall on them, and that they would all die
in blood. And she took a knife and cut me loose, though Baas Frank
wanted to kill me, so that I might tell no tales; and I ran away,
travelling by night and hiding by day, for I was very much frightened,
till I reached Natal, and there I stopped, working in Natal till this
land became English, when Baas Croft hired me to drive his cart up
from Maritzburg; and living by here I found Baas Frank, looking bigger
but just the same except for his beard.
"There, Baas, that is the truth, and all the truth, and that is why I
hate Baas Frank, because he shot my father and mother, and why Baas
Frank hates me, because he cannot forget that he did it and because I
saw him do it, for, as our people say, 'one always hates a man one has
wounded with a spear.'"
Having finished his narrative, the miserable-looking little man picked
up his greasy old felt hat that had a leather strap fixed round the
crown, in which were stuck a couple of frayed ostrich feathers, and
jammed it down over his ears. Then he fell to drawing circles on the
soil with his long toes. His auditors only looked at one another. Such
a ghastly tale seemed to be beyond comment. They never doubted its
truth; the man's way of telling it carried conviction with it; indeed,
two of them at any rate had heard such stories before. Most people
have who live in the wilder parts of South Africa, though they are not
all to be taken for gospel.
"You say," remarked old Silas at last, "that the Englishwoman said
that a curse would fall on them, and that they would die in blood? She
was right. Twelve years ago /Oom/ Jacob and his wife were murdered by
a party of Mapoch's Kafirs down on the edge of that very Lydenburg
veldt. There was a great noise about it at the time, I remember, but
nothing came of it. Baas Frank was not there. He was away shooting
buck, so he escaped, and inherited all his father's farms and cattle,
and came to live here."
"So!" said the Hottentot, without showing the slightest interest or
surprise. "I knew it would be so, but I wish I had been there to see
it. I saw that there was a devil in the woman, and that they would die
as she said. When there is a devil in people they always speak the
truth, because they can't help it. Look, Baas, I draw a circle in the
sand with my foot, and I say some words so, and at last the ends
touch. There, that is the circle of /Oom/ Jacob and his wife the
Englishwoman. The ends have touched and they are dead. An old witch-
doctor taught me how to draw the circle of a man's life and what words
to say. And now I draw another of Baas Frank. Ah! there is a stone
sticking up in the way. The ends will not touch. But now I work and
work and work with my foot, and say the words and say the words, and
so--the stone comes up and the ends touch now. Thus it is with Baas
Frank. One day the stone will come up and the ends will touch, and he
too will die in blood. The devil in the Englishwoman said so, and
devils cannot lie or speak half the truth only. And now, look, I rub
my foot over the circles and they are gone, and there is only the path
again. That means that when they have died in blood they will be quite
forgotten and stamped out. Even their graves will be flat," and Jantje
wrinkled up his yellow face into a smile, or rather a grin, and then
added in a matter-of-fact way:
"Does the Baas wish the grey mare to have one bundle of green forage
or two?"
