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

“Peace at last!” said Edwin Brook to George Dally, on arriving at his ravaged and herdless farm in the Zuurveld, whither George had preceded him.

“Peace is it, sir? Ah, that’s well. It’s about time too, for we’ve got a deal to do—haven’t we, sir?”

George spoke quite cheerily, under the impression that his master required comforting.

“You see, sir, we’ve got to go back pretty well to where we was in 1820, and begin it all over again. It is somewhat aggrawatin’! Might have been avoided, too, if they’d kep’ a few more troops on the frontier.”

“Well, Jack, the treaty is signed at last,” said Robert Skyd to his brother, as he sat on his counter in Grahamstown, drumming with his heels.

“Not too soon,” replied John Skyd, taking a seat on the same convenient lounge. “It has cost us something: houses burnt all over the settlement, from end to end; crops destroyed; cattle carried off, and, worst of all, trade almost ruined—except in the case of lucky fellows like you, Bob, who sell to the troops.”

“War would not have broken out at all,” returned Bob, “if the Kafirs had only been managed with a touch of ordinary common sense in times past. Our losses are tremendous. Just look at the Kafir trade, which last year I believe amounted to above 40,000 pounds,—that’s crushed out altogether in the meantime, and won’t be easily revived. Kafirs in hundreds were beginning to discard their dirty karosses, and to buy blankets, handkerchiefs, flannels, baize, cotton, knives, axes, and what not, while the traders had set up their stores everywhere in Kafirland—to say nothing of your own business, Jack, in the gum, ivory, and shooting way, and our profits thereon. We were beginning to flourish so well, too, as a colony. I believe that we’ve been absorbing annually somewhere about 150,000 pounds worth of British manufactured articles—not to mention other things, and now—Oh, Jack, mankind is a monstrous idiot!”

“Peace comes too late for us, Gertie,” said Hans Marais to his wife, on their return to the old homestead on the karroo, which presented nothing but a blackened heap of dry mud, bricks, and charred timbers; herds and flocks gone—dreary silence in possession—the very picture of desolation.

“Better late than never,” remarked Charlie Considine sadly. “We must just set to work, re-stock and re-build. Not so difficult to do so as it might have been, however, owing to that considerate uncle of mine. We’re better off than some of our poor neighbours who have nothing to fall back upon. They say that more than 3000 persons have been reduced to destitution; 500 farm-houses have been burnt and pillaged; 900 horses, 55,000 sheep and goats, and above 30,000 head of cattle carried off, only a few of which were recovered by Colonel Smith on that expedition when Hintza was killed. However, we’ll keep up heart and go to work with a will—shan’t we, my little wife!”

Bertha—now Bertha Considine—who leaned on Charlie’s arm, spoke not with her lips, but she lifted her bright blue eyes, and with these orbs of light declared her thorough belief in the wisdom of what ever Charlie might say or do.

“They say it’s all settled!” cried Jerry Goldboy, hastily entering Kenneth McTavish’s stable.

“What’s all settled?” demanded Sandy Black.

“Peace with the Kafirs,” said Jerry.

“Peace wi’ the Kawfirs!” echoed Sandy, in a slightly contemptuous tone. “H’m! they should never hae had war wi’ them, Jerry, my man.”

“But ’aving ’ad it, ain’t it well that it’s hover?” returned Jerry.

“It’s cost us a bonnie penny,” rejoined Black.

“Nae doot Glen Lynden has come off better than ither places, for we’ve managed to haud oor ain no’ that ill, but wae’s me for the puir folk o’ the low country! An’ I’ll be bound the Imperial Treasury’ll smart for’t. (See Note 1.) But it’s an ill wind that blaws nae gude. We’ve taken a gude slice o’ land frae the thievin’ craters, for it’s said Sir Benjamin D’Urban has annexed all the country between the Kei and the Keiskamma to the colony. A most needfu’ addition, for the jungles o’ the Great Fish River or the Buffalo were jist fortresses where the Kawfirs played hide-an’-seek wi’ the settlers, an’ it’s as plain as the nose on my face that peace wi’ them is not possible till they’re driven across the Kei—that bein’ a defensible boundary.”

“So, they say that peace is proclaimed,” said Stephen Orpin to a pretty young woman who had recently put it out of his power to talk of his “bachelor home at Salem.” Jessie McTavish had taken pity on him at last!

“Indeed!” replied Jessie, with a half-disappointed look; “then I suppose you’ll be going off again on your long journeys into the interior, and leaving me to pine here in solitude?”

“That depends,” returned Orpin, “on how you treat me! Perhaps I may manage to find my work nearer home than I did in days gone by. At all events I’ll not go into Kafirland just now, for it’s likely to remain in an unsettled state for many a day. It has been a sad and useless war, and has cost us a heavy price. Think, Jessie, of the lives lost—forty-four of our people murdered during the invasion, and eighty-four killed and thirty wounded during the war. People will say that is nothing to speak of, compared with losses in other wars; but I don’t care for comparisons, I think only of the numbers of our people, and of the hundreds of wretched Kafirs, who have been cut off in their prime and sent to meet their Judge. But there has been one trophy of the war at which I look with rejoicing; 15,000 Fingoes rescued from slavery is something to be thankful for. God can bring good out of evil. It may be that He will give me employment in that direction ere long.”

These various remarks, good reader, were uttered some months after the events recorded in the last chapter, for the death of the great chief of Kafirland did not immediately terminate the war. On the contrary, the treaty of peace entered into with Kreli, Hintza’s son and successor, was scouted by the confederate chiefs, Tyali, Macomo, etcetera, who remained still unsubdued in the annexed territory, and both there, and within the old frontier, continued to commit murders and wide-spread depredations.

It was not until the Kafirs had been hunted by our troops into the most impregnable of their woody fortresses, and fairly brought to bay, that the chiefs sent messengers to solicit peace. It was granted. A treaty of peace was entered into, by which the Kafirs gave up all right to the country conquered, and consented to hold their lands under tenure from the British Sovereign. It was signed at Fort Wilshire in September.

Thereafter Sir Benjamin D’Urban laid down with great wisdom and ability plans for the occupation and defence of the annexed territory, so as to form a real obstruction to future raids by the lawless natives—plans which, if carried out, would no doubt have prevented future wars, and on the strength of which the farmers began to return to their desolated farms, and commence re-building and re-stocking with indomitable resolution. Others accepted offers of land in the new territory, and a few of the Dutch farmers, hoping for better times, and still trusting to British wisdom for protection, were prevailed on to remain in the colony at a time when many of their kindred were moving off in despair of being either protected, understood, or fairly represented.

Among these still trusting ones was Conrad Marais. Strongly urged by Hans and Considine, he consented to begin life anew in the old home, and went vigorously to work with his stout sons.

But he had barely begun to get the place into something like order when a shell was sent into the colony, which created almost as much dismay as if it had been the precursor of another Kafir invasion.

Conrad was seated in a friend’s house in Somerset when the said shell exploded. It came in the form of a newspaper paragraph. He looked surprised on reading the first line or two; then a dark frown settled on his face, which, as he read on, became pale, while his compressed lips twitched with suppressed passion.

Finishing the paragraph, he crushed the newspaper up in his hand, and, thrusting it into his pocket, hastened to the stable, where he saddled his horse. Leaping on its back as if he had been a youth of twenty, he drove the spur into its flanks and galloped away at full speed—away over the dusty road leading from Somerset to the hills: away over the ridge that separates it from the level country beyond; and away over the brown karroo, until at last, covered with dust and flecked with foam, he drew up at his own door and burst in upon the family. They were concluding their evening meal.

“Read that!” he cried, flinging down the paper, throwing himself into a chair, and bringing his fist down on the table with a crash that set cups and glasses dancing.

“There!” he added, pointing to the paragraph, as Hans took up the paper—“that despatch from Lord Glenelg—the British Colonial Secretary—at the top of the column. Read it aloud, boy.”

Hans read as follows:—

“‘In the conduct which was pursued towards the Kafir nation by the colonists and the public authorities of the colony, through a long series of years, the Kafirs had ample justification of the late war; they had to resent, and endeavour justly, though impotently, to avenge a series of encroachments; they had a perfect right to hazard the experiment, however hopeless, of extorting by force that redress which they could not expect otherwise to obtain, and the claim of sovereignty over the new province must be renounced. It rests upon a conquest resulting from a war in which, as far as I am at present enabled to judge, the original justice is on the side of the conquered, not of the victorious party.’”

“Mark that!” cried Conrad, starting to his feet when Hans had finished, and speaking loud, as if he were addressing the assembled colony instead of the amazed members of his own family,—“mark that: ‘the claim of sovereignty over the new province must be renounced.’ So it seems that the Kafirs are not only to be patted on the back for having acted the part of cattle-lifters for years, but are to be invited back to their old haunts to begin the work over again and necessitate another war.”

He stopped abruptly, as if to check words that ought not to be uttered. There was a momentary silence in the group as they looked at each other. It was broken by Conrad saying to his youngest son, in a voice of forced calmness—

“Go, lad, get me a fresh horse. I will rouse the Dutch-African farmers all over the colony. The land is too