The Settler and the Savage by R. M. Ballantyne (universal ebook reader txt) 📖

Seated one evening at the door of their dug-out hut or cavern on the banks of the river, the three brothers Skyd discussed the affairs of the colony and smoked their pipes.

“Never knew such a country,” said John Skyd, “never!”

“Abominable!” observed James.

“Detestable!” remarked Robert.

“Why don’t you Skyd-addle then?” cried Frank Dobson. “If I thought it as bad as you do, I’d leave it at once. But you are unjust.”

“Unjust!” echoed John Skyd; “that were impossible. What could be worse? Here have we been for three years, digging and ploughing, raking and hoeing, carting and milking, churning and—and—and what the better are we now? Barely able to keep body and soul together, with the rust ruining our wheat, and an occasional Kafir raid depriving us of our cattle, while we live in a hole on the river’s bank like rabbits; with this disadvantage over these facetious creatures, that we have more numerous wants and fewer supplies.”

“That’s so,” said Bob; “if we could only content ourselves with a few bulbous roots and grass all would be well, but, Frank, we sometimes want a little tea and sugar; occasionally we run short of tobacco; now and then we long for literature; coffee sometimes recurs to memory; at rare intervals, especially when domestic affairs go wrong, the thought of woman, as of a long-forgotten being of angelic mould, will come over us. Ah! Frank, it is all very well for you to smile, you who have been away enjoying yourself for months past hunting elephants and other small game in the interior, but you have no notion how severely our failures are telling on our spirits. Why, Jim there tried to make a joke the other day, and it was so bad that Jack immediately went to bed with a sick-headache.”

“True,” said Jack solemnly, “quite true, and I couldn’t cure that headache for a whole day, though I took a good deal of Cape-smoke before it came on, as well as afterwards.”

“But, my dear chums,” remonstrated Dobson, “is it not—”

“Now don’t ask, ‘Is it not your own fault?’ with that wiseacre look of yours,” said John Skyd, testily tapping the bowl of his pipe on a stone preparatory to refilling it. “We are quite aware that we are not faultless; that we once or twice have planted things upside down, or a yard too deep, besides other little eccentricities of ignorance; but such errors are things of the past, and though we now drive our drills as straight as once, heigho! we ruled our account-books, things don’t and won’t improve.”

“If you had not interrupted me, Jack, you might have spared much breath and feeling. I was about to say, Is it not a fact that many of the other settlers are beginning to overcome their difficulties though you are not? True, it has now been found that the wheat crops, on which we at first expected almost entirely to depend, have for three seasons proved an entire failure, and sheep do not thrive on our sour grass pasturage, though they seem to have done admirably with the Scotch at Baviaans River; but have not many of those around us been successful in raising rye, barley, oats, and Indian corn? have they not many herds of healthy cattle? are not pumpkins and potatoes thriving pretty well, and gardens beginning to flourish? Our roasted barley makes very fair coffee, and honey is not a bad substitute for sugar.”

“You have made a successful bag this trip, I see, by your taking such a healthy view of our circumstances,” said Bob.

“Yes, I’ve done very well,” returned Dobson; “and I find the hunter’s life so congenial, and withal so profitable, that I’m really thinking of adopting it as a profession. And that brings me to the object of my visit here to-night. The fact is, my dear fellows, that men of your genius are not fit for farmers. It takes quiet-going men of sense to cultivate the soil. If you three were to live and dig to the age of Methuselah you’d never make a living out of it.”

“That’s plain speaking,” said John, with a nod, “and I agree with you entirely.”

“I mean to speak plainly,” rejoined Dobson, “and now what I propose is, that you should give it up and join me in the ivory business. It will pay, I assure you.”

Here their friend entered into a minute and elaborate account of his recent hunting expedition, and imparted to John Skyd some of his own enthusiasm, but James and Robert shook their heads. Leaving them to think over his proposal, their friend went to make a call on the Brooks of Mount Hope.

“Drat that boy! he’s escaped again, and after mischief I’ll be bound!” was the first sound that saluted him as he walked towards the house. It was Mrs Scholtz’s voice, on the other side of the hedge with which the garden was surrounded. The remark was immediately followed by a piercing shriek from the nurse, who repeated it again and again. Dobson could see her through an opening in the branches, standing helpless, with her hands clasped and eyeballs glaring. Thoroughly alarmed, he dashed towards the gate. At the same moment the voice of a child was heard:—

“Oh, look!—look ’ere, nuss, ain’t I cotched a pritty ting—such a pritty ting!”

Springing through the gate, Dobson beheld Master Junkie, staggering up the track like a drunken man, with one hand clasped tight round the throat of a snake whose body and tail were twining round the chubby arm of its captor in a vain effort at freedom, while its forked tongue darted out viciously. It was at once recognised as one of the most deadly snakes in the country.

“Ain’t it a booty?” cried Junkie, confronting Dobson, and holding up his prize like the infant Hercules, whom he very much resembled in all respects.

Dobson, seizing the child’s hand in his own left, compressed it still tighter, drew his hunting-knife, and sliced off the reptile’s head, just as Edwin Brook with his wife and daughter, attracted by the nurse’s outcry, rushed from the cottage to the rescue. Scholtz and George Dally at the same time ran out respectively from stable and kitchen.

Mrs Scholtz had gone into a hysterical fit of persistent shrieking and laughter, which she maintained until she saw that her darling was saved; then, finishing off with a prolonged wail, she fell flat on the grass in a dead faint.

Junkie at the same moment, as it were, took up the cry. To be thus robbed of his new-found pet would have tried a better temper than his. Without a moment’s hesitation he rushed at Frank Dobson and commenced violently to kick his shins, while he soundly belaboured his knees with the still wriggling tail of the poor snake.

“What a blessing!” exclaimed Mrs Brook, grasping Dobson gratefully by the hand.

“What a mercy!” murmured Gertie, catching up the infant Hercules and taking him off to the cottage.

“What a rumpus!” growled Dally, taking himself off to the kitchen.

Scholtz gave no immediate expression to his feelings, but, lifting his better half from the grass, he tucked her under one of his great arms, and, with the muttered commentary, “zhe shrieckz like von mad zow,” carried her off to his own apartment, where he deluged her with cold water and abuse till she recovered.

“Your arrival has created quite a sensation, Dobson,” said Edwin Brook, with a smile, as they walked up to the house.

“Say, rather, it was opportune,” said Mrs Brook; “but for your prompt way of using the knife our darling might have been bitten. Oh! I do dread these snakes, they go about in such a sneaking way, and are so very deadly. I often wonder that accidents are not more frequent, considering the numbers of them that are about.”

“So do I, Mrs Brook,” returned Dobson; “but I suppose it is owing to the fact that snakes are always most anxious to keep out of man’s way, and few men are as bold as your Junkie. I never heard of one being collared before, though a friend of mine whom I met on my last visit to the karroo used sometimes to catch hold of a snake by the tail, whirl it round his head, and dash its brains out against a tree.”

“You’ll stay with us to-day, Dobson!” said Brook.

Frank, involuntarily casting a glance at the pretty face of Gertie—who had by that time attained to the grace of early womanhood,—accepted the invitation, and that day at dinner entertained the family with graphic accounts of his experiences among the wild beasts of the Great Fish River jungles, and dilated on his prospects of making a fortune by trading in ivory. “If that foolish law,” he said, “had not been made by our Governor, prohibiting traffic with the Kafirs, I could get waggon-loads of elephants’ tusks from them for an old song. As it is, I must knock over the elephants for myself—at least until the laws in question are rescinded.”

“The Governor seems to have a special aptitude,” said Brook, with a clouded brow, “not only for framing foolish laws, but for abrogating good ones.”

The Governor referred to was Lord Charles Somerset, who did more to retard the progress of the new settlements on the frontiers of Kafirland than any who have succeeded him. Having complicated the relations of the colonists and Kafirs, and confused as well as disgusted, not to say astonished, the natives during his first term of office, he went to England on leave of absence, leaving Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin to act as Governor in his place.

Lord Charles seems to have been a resentful as well as an incapable man, for immediately after his return to the colony in 1821 he overturned the policy of the acting Governor, simply because he and Sir Rufane were at personal enmity. The colony at that time, and the Home Government afterwards, approved of the wise measures of the latter. He had arranged the military forces on the frontier so as to afford the new settlers the greatest possible amount of protection; the Cape corps men had been partly placed at their disposal, both to assist and defend; those who found their allotted farms too small, had them increased to the extent of the farms of their Dutch neighbours; acceptable public officers were appointed; provisions were supplied on credit, and everything, in short, had been done to cheer and encourage the settlers during the period of gloom which followed their first great calamity, the failure of the wheat-crops. All this was upset on the return of Lord Charles Somerset. With a degree of tyranny and want of judgment worthy of a mere “Jack-in-office,” he immediately removed from the magistracy of the British Settlement of Albany a favourite and able man, to make room for one of his own protégés and supporters. He withdrew troops from one of the most important frontier villages (in a strategic point of view), and stopped the formation of a road to it, thus compelling the settlers to desert it and leave their standing crops to the surprised but pleased Kafirs, who were perplexed as well as emboldened by the vacillating policy of white Governors! In addition to this he gave permission to the savage chief Macomo to occupy the land so vacated, thus paving