Jess: Chapter 34
Chapter 34
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.