When the sun sets, we don’t make fires; the next morning the area between the tents and wagons is criss-crossed with the tracks of lions and hyenas and leopards. Rather these creatures than the Bushmen in whose hunting ground we’re making ourselves at home.
With the sun full in our eyes we see a lion in the distance, so huge that the missionary believes the children when they tell him it’s a hairy elephant.
Kemp looks more exhausted than ever, his eyes water and he walks stooped over with a hand clutching his breast. I ask him what’s the matter. The missionary strokes the front of his shirt, tells me how he lay under the wagon the night before to get out of the rain. At some stage of the night the horses tied to the wagon balked at the sudden stink of lion on the wind. Kemp scrambled out from under the wagon to find rest for body and soul somewhere, then one of the horses kicked him squarely in the chest. He unbuttons his shirt and shows me the purple bruise.
You’ll live, the horse wasn’t kicking with intent.
Yes, Buys. It’s nothing really, says the missionary, a trifle reluctant to admit that his wound is not life-threatening. But Buys, he adds immediately and excitedly, not an eye could I shut for the rest of that night. The lions were circling me and roaring.
Then we can only thank the Lord that you are still with us, Brother Kemp, I say, and hold back my smile until my back is turned.
Kemp contemplates the bruise and keeps his shirt unbuttoned till that evening.
On 10 January we draw up in front of steep mountains and we rest. My hands are cramping. Maria rubs them with her dear rough fingers. Krieger and Faber are sent to reconnoitre. The next day it’s back across the river, around a mountain as far as a great plain. In front of us lie two rivers, the one winds from east to west, the other south to north. The river closer to us is in flood, but I’m anxious about what Ngqika will do when his Caffres turn up at the Great Place without his Khula and Jank’hanna. We will have to cross here. We unload most of the supplies from the wagons to make them lighter. We wade through the stream with packs on our heads. Then back again through the river to bring through the wagons and cattle. The stream claims a few cattle, but for the rest we get to the other side unharmed. We stop before the second river in a thorn forest.
Say what I like, the lot decide to stay here till they’ve had news from the Colony. Nobody can decide on a final destination. Some want to get to the other side of the Great River, others simply want to get back to the Colony. For two weeks we camp right here in this fair and fertile valley, with the Storms and Bamboes Rivers only a few days’ trek away. All too soon old routines reassert themselves. The women do what women do, the men ride around or hunt or sit and gaze and ruminate on the world. Kemp starts teaching again and Maria follows him around all day and laments the fate of her soul. We see a few Bushmen, but the scum run away. Before the end of the week we’ve built solid laagers of branches around the campsite to keep out the Bushmen and the worst of the beasts. Here and there some of our people even build huts while waiting.
For days on end Kemp walks around wailing to anyone who’ll listen about some scorpion bite that was more probably a mosquito. It is as if he’s become more frail since our departure, as if he’s used up the last of his resilience in surrendering his mission under the Caffres. Just when I think my fellow patriots have at last accepted him, he gets their blood boiling again by starting to pray and preach in focking English for the focking English deserters.
Faber catches two Bushmen driving twenty-six Caffre cattle across the veldt. He can see, of course, that it’s stolen cattle, and he shoots and kills one Bushman from the saddle. The other one manages to stab or maim six of the cattle before Faber pots him too. Faber drives the cattle to the camp. The missionary is highly incensed when he is treated to the Christian’s story. I have to take the old man aside and calm him down before Faber does him harm.
Kemp is seething, his whole body shivers like the reed that he is. I make him sit down and go and stand over him so that I become his shadow and say to him there is no life here without the spilling of blood. If he thinks that he, or the hosts of missionaries streaming into the Colony, are going to ennoble the people here in some way, that unity and accord are possible in this wilderness, then he’s in trouble. Here we devour each other. Christians, Dutchmen, Germans, French, Caffres, Bengalis, Hottentots, Bushmen and whatever else. It’s one great hunting ground. If he’s going to carry on sorrowing about it, it’s going to cost him his soul. His yearning for it to be different is going to consume him till there’s nothing left of him. He can try to save a few errant souls. But mankind has long been beyond saving.
Upon waking up on 29 January, we discover that two Hottentots and the Caffre called something like Dakkam Jamma have absconded during the night with five of our horses and two saddles. Four of us ride out to search for them. Before the sun is shining from overhead, we notice three figures in a copse of thorn trees. The figures are stooped over, swaying. We dismount and walk closer when the deserters neither answer nor flee. The three men are being held upright by their guts that are twined around their arms and shoulders and tied to the branches. The bodies are perforated with arrow wounds. The throats of all three have been slit, the blood on their chests black with flies. The Caffre’s prick is sticking out of his mouth as if he is taunting us from the realm of death with a new tongue. I’m busy cutting the bodies free when we hear a whistling. We are surrounded by a horde of Bushmen who are running around us in the undergrowth and poking out a head here and there to whistle or shout or laugh. The German fires a shot that only elicits more laughter. We leave the deserters to their swaying and jump on our horses that are pawing the ground with rolling eyes and charge away with the Bushmen shouting after us mockingly, some of them with their pizzles in their hands. A stone hits me in the back and I ride on.
Nobody sleeps that night and nobody makes a fire and nobody talks and the following morning we hitch up quickly and cross the next river and trek north to a next river that could be a tributary of the Kei and outspan on the bank and this night as well nobody sleeps and nobody makes a fire and nobody talks, except for the German who stands guard and now again thumps his chest with his fist and shouts searing defiance at the dark bush.
With the coming of the red dawn on the last day of the month we trek further across the plain. To the north, east and west the plain dead-ends in mountains. We linger past bush pigs, antelope, wildebeest, ostriches, buffaloes, lush grass and every conceivable edible root and bulb and fruit. We are surrounded with plenitude and peril.