As December runs its course, we Christians keep to ourselves. There are whisperings and suppressed curses and plans made and abandoned. All that becomes clear is that we are on our way, and quickly. We are informed that Ngqika has survived his fever and is lively as a cricket again, but even more unpredictable. We start slowly gathering our few possessions and stealthily packing. The plan is simple: Get out of Caffraria and fight our way through the eastern Bushmen. And after that? you ask. After that nobody knows.
It’s a battle to persuade Kemp to come with us. Messengers from Maynier bring him a pile of letters and a bag full of clothes. They’ve hardly left or he distributes the clothes among the Caffres. One of the letters mentions that the Reverends Read and Van der Lingen have arrived at the Cape. They are looking forward to ministering to the Heathens with him, but for the time being they’re remaining in the background until things calm down on the frontier. The evening before our departure I sit and talk to my friend for a long time. He agrees at long last to leave Caffraria when he is told that Sara and the other converted Hottentot women are leaving with us.
My labours under the Caffres were not exactly a success, he says. I should rather throw in my lot with the few women for whom I do mean something.
He gazes for a while in the direction of the Great Place.
I must be led in my life choices by my weakness, he says, not my strength. I must acknowledge my wounds, make my frailty my armour.
Why should I at this moment think of Geertruy and childhood writing lessons under the giant tree? Kemp drones on:
Do you respect this, Buys, you who get stronger by the day? You who are led by your strength?
Respect? In this wilderness you mustn’t go looking for respect, Kemp. Here there is only meat and blood and cunt.
We let Ngqika know that we are going to shoot a few elephants and will bring back the finest tusks for him and on the last day of 1800 we clear out of Caffraria.
6
We trek to the Colony by one hell of a detour. What a cock-up this outing turned out to be. We had to travel in a wide north-western arc to avoid Caffraria and to forge our way through inhospitable and trackless landscapes. In the course of the next four months and some weeks we would travel in a half-moon, from the Kabusie down next to the west bank of the Kei as far as the Stormberg, then west to the Bamboesberg and at last south to Schapenkraal in the Tarka district.
Yes, Ngqika, we’re going to hunt elephants. What do you mean, of course we’re coming back. We’re going to fetch Bezuidenhout and Faber from the Kabusie and then we’re going to disport ourselves merrily in your kingdom with our guns. Yes, thank you for sending a whole gang of Caffres with us to help us with the hunting; thank you for not being over-friendly and mistrustful. Damn.
On New Year’s Day 1801 we and our wagons cross the mountainous and invisible border between Caffre and Bushman. From the mountain we survey the whole of Caffraria, all the way to the sea. It’s beautiful here, and wild. We sleep in the river sand of the Kabusie. The next morning I kick the lot awake, where they’re snoring away, half buried in the sand like tortoise eggs. There are quite a few of us; every single Christian and deserter and outlaw has joined our trek. We must get going early if we want to do a day’s journey in a day. Our flight needs to be swift, before Ngqika’s mind changes again, like the fickle weather of his country. Into the saddle and through the river. Kemp leads his horse by the bridle. He falls, the horse gets a fright, stumbles and falls on top of him. The horse tramples him badly; I pull him out from under the floundering animal just before it’s too late. The missionary is once again in tears. Nowadays if he’s not puking he’s bawling.
I could see them under the flood, Buys. I saw my Antje and Styntje. Rest awaits me in the waters, Buys. They await me.
Come on now, Kemp. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today.
As we ride away, Kemp keeps looking back over his shoulder, back to the river.
By afternoon we have crossed the nek and reached the stands of Faber and Bezuidenhout. I’m almost glad to see the old bellwethers again.
The veldt here is teeming with lion and wildebeest, with us in the midst of this ancient confrontation. People who use their eyes to gaze heavenward sometimes see earthly things differently to those of us with our eyes to the ground. See what our missionary writes in his report: He says the wildebeest is so called in Dutch because it is indeed a wilde beest, a wild beast, a creature made up out of segments of different animals. It has the rump of an ox, the mane of a horse, the fringe of an eland, the horns of a buffalo, the tail of a quagga, the beard of a goat and the paws of a reindeer.
On the sixth we get rid of Ngqika’s Caffres. Up to now they’ve trekked along with us with the few cattle they wanted to barter for tusks. We come across two Bushmen who are on their way to Caffraria to trade two tusks for a cow. We give them a cow and take the tusks. They are young tusks and freshly cut. There are more elephants around here and they’re close. The Bushmen ask for another calf before they’ll divulge where they found the elephant. We go and look for the troop and shoot two big bulls and pile the Caffres’ arms high with tusks and hides and fat and feet. We give them an ox-cart and say Keep your cattle, these are gifts. I say we’ll carry on hunting until our wagons are also full of tusks. I send them and their cattle back to their king with all good wishes and a prosperous New Year.
Without Ngqika’s gawkers the group of wanderers is now composed as follows:
4 Dutch rascals – yours truly, Bezuidenhout, Faber and Krieger,
2 Dutch women,
2 Dutch children,
5 English deserters,
1 German deserter,
13 little bastards,
1 Caffre,
1 Caffre woman,
4 Hottentots,
6 Hottentot women,
15 or so Hottentot children,
2 little Caffre girls,
1 Tambookie boy,
1 slave and
1 missionary.
Only in these parts would such an assortment of oddities huddle together for the sake of survival. For the rest:
a flock of sheep,
a herd of goats,
300 cattle,
25 horses,
3 wagons,
1 ox-cart and would you believe it,
1 printing press.
The aloes grow high here and look different to those in Caffraria. The plants branch out luxuriantly, sometimes with fifty heads to as many branches of the same tree. The sap is richer, the leaves sparser, the leaf edges less curved and the teeth sharper. Cycads are everywhere in the veldt between grazing eland and wildebeest. On this day a herd of bontebok numbering more than four thousand moves past.
We cross a stream and spend another night on the bank, where Bushmen attack us before dawn. The Bushmen are driven back with a few shots. The only soul to get wounded is the Englishman Bentley, in the way as always. Kemp is immediately on duty with bandages and ointments that he conjures up from nowhere. The first arrow just glanced Bentley’s head. The second remained lodged in his forearm – near the lower join of the radius and the ulna, if our doctor is to be believed. Kemp has been here with us in the bush for how long and he still believes that you can cure anything if you know the words for a man’s component parts. The doctor manages to extract the shaft of the arrow, but the point has penetrated too far to be removed safely. He leaves the arrow point inside the Englishman and bandages him. I wait for the poison to start doing its job, but nothing. The deserter is evidently immune, or the Bushmen have run out of poison. The creatures also pot a dog and a cow.