"Is it deep?" I asked.
By way of answer Hans found a bit of broken rock and threw it into the gulf. I listened, and it was quite a long while before I heard it strike below.
"I told the Baas," said Hans in a superior tone, "that he had better wait until to–morrow when some light comes down this hole, but the Baas would not listen to me and doubtless he knows best. Now would the Baas like to go back to bed, as I think wisest, and return to–morrow?"
If the truth were known there was nothing that I should have liked better, for the place was detestable. But I was in such a rage with Hans for playing me this trick that even if I thought that I was going to break my neck I would not give him the pleasure of mocking me in his sly way.
"No," I answered quietly, "I will go to bed when I have seen this picture you talk about, and not before."
Now Hans grew alarmed and begged me in good earnest not to try to cross the gulf, which reminded me vaguely of the parable of Abraham and Dives in the Bible, with myself playing the part of Dives, except that I was not thirsty, and Hans did not in any way resemble Abraham.
"I see how it is," I said, "there is not any picture and you are simply playing one of your monkey tricks on me. Well, I'm coming to look, and if I find you have been telling lies I'll make you sorry for yourself."
"The picture is there or was when I was young," answered Hans sullenly, "and for the rest, the Baas knows best. If he breaks every bone in his body presently, don't let him blame me, and I pray that he will tell the truth, all of it, to his Reverend Father in the sky who left him in my charge, saying that Hans begged him not to come but that because of his evil temper he would not listen. Meanwhile, the Baas had better take off his boots, since the feet of those Bushmen whose spooks I feel all about me have made the ledge very slippery."
In silence I sat down and removed my boots, thinking to myself that I would gladly give all my savings that were on deposit in the bank at Durban, to be spared this ordeal. What a strange thing is the white man's pride, especially if he be of the Anglo–Saxon breed, or what passes by that name. There was no need for me to take this risk, yet, rather than be secretly mocked at by Hans and those Kaffirs, here I was about to do so just for pride's sake. In my heart I cursed Hans and the cave and the hole and the picture and the thunderstorm that brought me there, and everything else I could remember. Then, as it had no strap like that of Hans, although it smelt horribly, I took the tin loop of my lantern in my teeth because it seemed the only thing to do, put up a silent but most earnest prayer, and started as though I liked the job.
To tell the truth, I remember little of that journey except that it seemed to take about three hours instead of under a minute, and the voices of woe and lamentation from the two Zulus behind, who insisted upon bidding me a tender farewell as I proceeded, amidst other demonstrations of affection, calling me their father and their mother for four generations.
Somehow I wriggled myself along that accursed ridge, shoving my stomach as hard as I could against the wall of the passage as though this organ possessed some prehensile quality, and groping for knobs of rock on which I broke two of my nails. However, I did get over all right, although just towards the end one of my feet slipped and I opened my mouth to say something, with the result that the lantern fell into the abyss, taking with it a loose front tooth. But Hans stretched out his skinny hand, and, meaning to catch me by the coat collar, got hold of my left ear, and, thus painfully supported, I came to firm ground and cursed him into heaps. Although some might have thought my language pointed, he did not resent it in the least, being too delighted at my safe arrival.
"Never mind the tooth, Baas," he said. "It is best that it should be gone without knowing it, as it were, because you see you can now eat crusts and hard biltong again, which you have not been able to do for months. The lantern, however, is another matter, though perhaps we can get a new one at Pretoria or wherever we go."
Recovering myself, I peered over the edge of the abyss. There, far, far below, I saw my lantern, which was a sort that burns oil, flaring upon a bed of something white, for the container had burst and all the oil was on fire.
"What is that white stuff down there?" I asked. "Lime?"
"No, Baas, it is the broken bones of men. Once when I was young, with the help of the Bushmen I let myself down by a rope that we twisted out of rushes and buckskins, just to look, Baas. There is another cave underneath this one, Baas, but I didn't go into it because I was frightened."
"And how did all those bones come there, Hans? Why, there must be hundreds of them!"
"Yes, Baas, many hundreds, and they came this way. Since the beginning of the world the Bushmen lived in this cave and set a trap here by laying branches over the hole and covering them with dust so that they looked like rock, just as one makes a game pit, Baas—yes, they did this until the last of them were killed not so long ago by the Boers and Zulus, whose sheep and beasts they stole. Then when their enemies attacked them, which was often, for it has always been right to kill Bushmen—they would run down the cave and into the cleft and creep along the narrow edge of rock, which they could do with their eyes shut. But the silly Kaffirs, or whoever it might be, running after them to kill them would fall through the branches and get killed themselves. They must have done this quite often, Baas, since there are such a lot of their skulls down there, many of them quite black with age and turned to stone.
"One might have thought that the Kaffirs would have grown wiser, Hans."
"Yes, Baas, but the dead keep their wisdom to themselves, for I believe that when all the attackers were in the passage, then other Bushmen, who had been hiding in the cave, came up behind and shot them with poisoned arrows and drove them on into the hole so that none went back; indeed, the Bushmen told me that this used to be their father's plan. Also, if any did escape, in a generation or two all was forgotten, and the same thing happened again because, Baas, there are always plenty of fools in the world and the fool who comes after is just as big as the fool who went before. Death spills the water of wisdom upon the sand, Baas, and sand is thirsty stuff that soon grows dry again. If it were not so, Baas, men would soon stop falling in love with women, and yet even great ones—like you, Baas—fall in love."
Having delivered this thrust, in order to prevent the possibility of answer Hans began to chat with the driver and the voorlooper on the other side of the gulf.
"Be quick and come over, you brave Zulus there," he said, "for you are keeping your Chief waiting and me also."
The Zulus, holding their candles forward, peered into the pit below.
"Ow!" said one of them, "are we bats that we can fly over a hole like that or baboons that we can climb on a shelf no wider than a spear, or flies that we can walk upon a wall? Ow! we are not coming, we will wait here. That road is only for yellow monkeys like you or for those who have the white man's magic like the Inkoos Macumazahn."
"No," replied Hans reflectively, "you are none of these creatures which are all of them good in their way. You are just a couple of low– born Kaffir cowards, black skins blown up to look like men. I, the 'yellow jackal,' can walk the gulf, and the Baas can walk the gulf, but you, Windbags, cannot even float over it for fear lest you should burst in the middle. Well, Windbags, float back to the wagon and fetch the coil of small rope that is in the voorkissie, for we may want it."
One of them replied in a humbled voice that they did not take orders from him, a Hottentot, whereon I said,