CHAPTER XXXIV
TANTA COETZEE TO THE RESCUE
After Jess had been set free by the Boers outside Hans Coetzee's
place, John was sharply ordered to dismount and off-saddle his horse.
This he did with the best grace that he could muster, and the horse
was knee-haltered and let loose to feed. It was then indicated to him
that he was to enter the house, and this he also did, closely attended
by two of the Boers. The room into which he was conducted was the same
that he had first become acquainted with, on the occasion of the buck
hunt that had so nearly ended in his murder. There was the Buckenhout
table, and there were the stools and couches made of stinkwood. Also,
in the biggest chair at the other end of the room, a moderate-sized
slop-basin full of coffee by her side, sat Tanta Coetzee, still
actively employed in doing absolutely nothing. There, too, were the
showily dressed maidens, there was the sardonic lover of one of them,
and all the posse of young men with rifles. The /sit-kammer/ and its
characteristics were quite unchanged, and on entering it John felt
inclined to rub his eyes and wonder whether the events of the last few
months had been nothing but a dream.
The only thing that had changed was his welcome. Evidently he was not
expected to shake hands all round on the present occasion. Fallen
indeed would that Boer have been considered who, within a few days of
Majuba, offered to shake hands with a wretched English /rooibaatje/,
picked up like a lame buck on the veldt. At the least he would have
kept the ceremony for private celebration, if only out of respect to
the feelings of others. On this occasion John's entry was received in
icy silence. The old woman did not deign to look up, the young ones
shrugged their shoulders and turned their backs, as though they had
suddenly seen something that was not nice. Only the countenance of the
sardonic lover softened to a grin.
John walked to the end of the room where there was a vacant chair and
stood by it.
"Have I your permission to sit down, ma'am?" he said at last in a loud
tone, addressing the old lady.
"Dear Lord!" said the old lady to the man next to her, "what a voice
the poor creature has! it is like a bull's. What does he say?"
The man explained.
"The floor is the right place for Englishmen and Kafirs," said the old
lady, "but after all he is a man, and perhaps sore with riding.
Englishmen always get sore when they try to ride." Then with startling
energy she shouted out:
"/Sit!/"
"I will show the /rooibaatje/ that he is not the only one with a
voice," she added by way of explanation.
A subdued sniggle followed this sally of wit, during which John took
his seat with such native grace as he could command, which at the
moment was not much.
"Dear me!" she went on presently, for she was a bit of a humorist, "he
looks very dirty and pale, doesn't he? I suppose the poor thing has
been hiding in the ant-bear holes with nothing to eat. I am told that
up in the Drakensberg yonder the ant-bear holes are full of
Englishmen. They had rather starve in them than come out, for fear
lest they should meet a Boer."
This provoked another snigger, and then the young ladies took up the
ball.
"Are you hungry, /rooibaatje/?" asked one in English.
John was boiling with fury, but he was also starving, so he answered
that he was.
"Tie his hands behind him, and let us see if he can catch in his
mouth, like a dog," suggested a gentle youth.
"No, no; make him eat pap with a wooden spoon, like a Kafir," said
another. "I will feed him--if you have a very long spoon."
Here again was legitimate cause for merriment, but in the end matters
were compromised by a lump of biltong and a piece of bread being
thrown to John from the other end of the room. He caught them and
began to eat, trying to conceal his ravenous hunger as much as
possible from the circle of onlookers who clustered round to watch the
operation.
"Carolus," said the old lady to the sardonic affianced of her
daughter, "there are three thousand men in the British army."
"Yes, my aunt."
"There are three thousand men in the British army," she repeated,
looking round angrily as though somebody had questioned the truth of
her statement. "I tell you that my grandfather's brother was at Cape
Town in the time of Governor Smith, and he counted the whole British
army, and there were three thousand of them."
"That is so, my aunt," answered Carolus.
"Then why did you contradict me, Carolus?"
"I did not intend to, my aunt."
"I should hope not, Carolus; it would vex the dear Lord to see a boy
with a squint" (Carolus was slightly afflicted in this way)
"contradict his future mother-in-law. Tell me how many Englishmen were
killed at Laing's Nek?"
"Nine hundred," replied Carolus promptly.
"And at Ingogo?"
"Six hundred and twenty."
"And at Majuba?"
"One thousand."
"Then that makes two thousand five hundred men; yes, and the rest were
finished at Bronker's Spruit. Nephews, that /rooibaatje/ there,"
pointing to John, "is one of the last men left in the British army."
Most of her audience appeared to accept this argument as conclusive,
but some mischievous spirit put it into the breast of the saturnine
Carolus to contradict her, notwithstanding the lesson he had just
received.
"That is not so, my aunt; there are many damned Englishmen still
sneaking about the Nek, and also at Pretoria and Wakkerstroom."
"I tell you it is a lie," said the old lady, raising her voice, "they
are only Kafirs and camp-followers. There were three thousand men in
the British army, and now they are all killed except that
/rooibaatje/. How dare you contradict your future mother-in-law, you
dirty squint-eyed, yellow-faced monkey? There, take that!" and before
the unfortunate Carolus knew where he was, he received the slop-basin
with its contents full in the face. The bowl broke upon the bridge of
his nose, and the coffee flew all about him, into his eyes and hair,
down his throat and over his body, making such a spectacle of him as
must have been seen to be appreciated.
"Ah!" went on the old lady, much soothed and gratified by the eminent
and startling success of her shot, "never you say again that I don't
know how to throw a basin of coffee. I haven't practised at my man
Hans for thirty years for nothing, I can tell you. Now you, Carolus, I
have taught you not to contradict; go and wash your face and we will
have supper."
Carolus ventured no reply, and was led away by his betrothed half
blinded and utterly subdued, while her sister set the table for the
evening meal. When it was ready the men sat down to meat and the women
waited on them. John was not asked to join them, but one of the girls
threw him a boiled mealiecob, for which, being still very hungry, he
was duly grateful, and afterwards he managed to secure a mutton bone
and another bit of bread.
When supper was over, some bottles of peach brandy were produced, and
the Boers began to drink freely, and then it was that matters
commenced to look dangerous for the Englishman. Suddenly one of the
men remembered about the young fellow whom John had thrown backwards
off the horse, and who was lying very sick in the next room, and
suggested that measures of retaliation should be taken, which would
undoubtedly have been done if the elderly Boer who had commanded the
party had not interposed. This man was getting drunk like the others,
but fortunately for John he grew amiably drunk.
"Let him alone," he said, "let him alone. We will send him to the
commandant to-morrow. Frank Muller will know how to deal with him."
John thought to himself that he certainly would.
"Now, for myself," the man went on with a hiccough, "I bear no malice.
We have thrashed the British and they have given up the country, so
let bygones be bygones, I say. Almighty, yes! I am not proud, not I.
If an Englishman takes off his hat to me I shall acknowledge it."
This staved the fellows off for a while, but presently John's
protector went away, and then the others became playful. They took
their rifles and amused themselves with levelling them at him, and
making sham bets as to where they would hit him. John, seeing the
emergency, backed his chair well into the corner of the wall and drew
his revolver, which fortunately for himself he still had.
"If any man interferes with me, by God, I'll shoot him!" he said in
good English, which they did not fail to understand. Undoubtedly as
the evening went on it was only the possession of this revolver and
his evident determination to use it that saved his life.
At last things grew very bad indeed, so bad that John found it
absolutely necessary to keep his eyes continually fixed, now on one
and now on another, to prevent their putting a bullet through him
unawares. He had twice appealed to the old woman, but she sat in her
big chair with a sweet smile upon her fat face and refused to
interfere. It is not every day that a Boer /frau/ has the chance of
seeing a real live English /rooibaatje/ baited like an ant-bear on the
flat.
Presently, just as John in desperation was making up his mind to begin
shooting right and left, and take his chance of cutting his way out,
the saturnine Carolus, whose temper had never recovered the bowl of
coffee, and who was besides very drunk, rushed forward with an oath
and dealt a tremendous blow at him with the butt-end of his rifle.
John dodged the blow, which fell upon the back of the chair and
smashed it to bits, and in another second Carolus's gentle soul would
have departed to a better sphere, had not the old /frau/, seeing that
the game had gone beyond a joke, waddled down the room with marvellous
activity and thrown herself between them.
"There, there," she said, cuffing right and left with her fat fists,
"be off with you, every one. I can't have this noise going on here.
Come, off you all go, and get the horses into the stable; they will be
right away by morning if you trust them to the Kafirs."
Carolus collapsed, and the other men also hesitated and drew back,
whereupon, following up her advantage, the old woman, to John's
astonishment and relief, bundled the whole tribe of them bodily out of
the front door.
"Now then, /rooibaatje/," said the old lady briskly when they had
gone, "I like you because you are a brave man, and were not afraid
when they mobbed you. Also, I don't want to have a mess made upon my
floor here, or any noise or shooting. If those men come back and find
you here they will first get rather drunker and then kill you, so you
had better be off while you have the chance," and she pointed to the
door.
"I really am much obliged to you, my aunt," said John, utterly
astonished to find that she possessed a heart at all, and more or less
had been playing a part throughout the evening.
"Oh, as to that," she said drily, "it would be a great pity to kill
the last English /rooibaatje/ in the whole British army; they ought to
keep you as a curiosity. Here, take a tot of brandy before you go; it
is a wet night, and sometimes when you are clear of the Transvaal and
remember this business, remember, too, that you owe your life to Tanta
Coetzee. But I would not have saved you, not I, if you had not been so
plucky. I like a man to be a man, and not like that miserable monkey
Carolus. There, be off!"
John poured out and swallowed half a tumblerful of the brandy, and in
another moment he was outside the house and had slipped off into the
night. It was very dark and wet, for the rain-clouds had covered up
the moon, and he soon learned that any attempt to look for his horse
would end in failure and probably in his recapture. The only thing to
do was to get away on foot in the direction of Mooifontein as quickly
as he could; so off he went down the track across the veldt as fast as
his stiff legs would take him. He had a ten miles trudge before him,
and with that cheerful acquiescence in circumstances over which he had
no control which was one of his characteristics, he set to work to
make the best of it. For the first hour or so all went well, then to
his intense disgust he discovered that he was off the track, a fact at
which anybody who has ever had the pleasure of wandering along a so-
called road on the African veldt on a dark night will scarcely be
surprised.
After wasting a quarter of an hour or more in a vain attempt to find
the path, John struck out boldly for a dim mass that loomed in the
distance, and which he took to be Mooifontein Hill. And so it was,
only instead of keeping to the left, where he would have arrived at
the house, or rather where the house had stood, unwittingly he bore to
the right, and thus went half round the hill before he found out his
mistake. Nor would he have discovered it then had he not chanced in
the mist and darkness to turn into the mouth of the great gorge known
as Leeuwen Kloof, where once, months ago, he had had an interesting
talk with Jess just before she went to Pretoria. It was whilst he was
blundering and stumbling up this gorge that at length the rain ceased
and the moon revealed herself, it being then nearly midnight. Her very
first rays lit upon one of the extraordinary pillars of balanced
boulders, and by it he recognised the locality. As may be imagined,
strong man though he was, by this time John was quite exhausted. For
nearly a week he had been travelling incessantly, and for the last two
nights he had not only not slept, but also had endured much mental
excitement and bodily peril. Were it not for the brandy that Tanta
Coetzee gave him he could never have tramped the fifteen miles or so
of ground which he had covered. Now he was quite broken down, and felt
that the only thing which he could do, wet through as he was, would be
to lie down somewhere, and sleep or die as the case might be. Then it
was that he remembered the little cave near the top of the Kloof, the
same from which Jess had watched the thunder-storm. He had visited it
once with Bessie after their engagement, and she had told him that it
was one of her sister's favourite haunts.
If he could but reach the cave at any rate he would find shelter and a
dry place to lie in. It could not be more than three hundred yards
away. So he struggled on bravely through the wet grass and over the
scattered boulders, till at last he came to the base of the huge
column that had been shattered by the lightning before Jess's eyes.
Thirty paces more and John was in the cave.
With a sigh of utter exhaustion he flung himself down upon the rocky
floor, and almost instantly was buried in a profound sleep.
