Lusk slaps the back of his head and sits down next to his expatriate comrade. The mocking Caffres seem rather sick of the game themselves, but we hear from up here how the humiliated bellwether stirs up the crowd.
I stand on a rock face. I look down on the larger part of the besiegers. As if all of creation combines for this single moment, the eighth day breaks all at once. Believe me, a single beam strikes the rock face – this exact rock face – and bathes me in fire. I fill my lungs with air and thunder a roar down upon them. When I have the attention of one and of all, I address them from there in a hotchpotch of Caffre languages. I hope they will understand a word here and there. I shout that I dispose over magic powers. They mock me. I pour a bag full of piss out in an arc in front of me down the depths. They are silent. I shout that I’m making water up here. I shower down another bag of piss. I bellow and bluster that, should they be of the opinion that we beleaguered are running out of water, they can spare themselves the trouble of guarding the hill. We have so much water that we could quench their thirst as well. I toss two more knapsacks down the slopes so that the piss splashes on the rocks down there like fountains, sparkling in the sun – as the people of that area will tell you to this day. The Caffres are silent. Then they run.
I hear you protest, reader: It was Gabriël who poured the last water or bags of piss down the hill. It was my children who were trapped there and it was their clever ploy. It was twenty years after my death. That is why Buyskop, Buys’ Hill, is called that today, not because of me, but the next generation of Buyses. But hear this: Listen to the talk of the people living there today next to the hot springs. Listen to who they say stood on that rock face that day. The hell with the history books. In local lore it was I, Coenraad, who stood there that day thundering at the Caffres, a smelly water sack in my cramping hand.
Any case. Go and wander around on Buyskop. Do you see what remains of the focking English’s blockhouse? Follow the dirt road cutting between the stone walls. Among the last traces of primordial stone kraals you’ll see the chipped-away rock face. The unfinished blocks of sandstone scattered around. A century after our siege the Christians come to cut the red stones for their Union Buildings. Cart it off in wagons to Pretoria. If you should ever find yourselves at the Union Buildings, sniff at the stones. You may just catch a vague whiff of Buys piss in the walls.
Fed-up and hungry we struggle down the kopje, minus one horse. We swill ourselves silly from the fountain at the foot of the hill. Nobody pursues a sorcerer. We travel on without disturbance through the night following rumours of more hot-water springs a day’s journey or so along. Just before dawn somebody shoots something; we devour it half raw before setting off again.
The following afternoon we see steam rising up from the hills in front of us. Buchanan kneels on the rocks next to the simmering water. He beckons us nearer. A streak of sulphur surrounds the eyes of the boiling springs. Strange bright yellow flowers growing on stone and smelling of rotten eggs. We scrape off the glittering brimstone with our knives and chop it fine and throw it into the saddlebags and get away from there. We take a wide detour back to Thabeng.
Sefunelo is planning a plundering expedition. He says I and my guns must come along. He says he doesn’t look after my wives for free. I say he must wait a few days, we’re making the fire for our guns.
Buchanan gathers the Buys nation and says Tonight we’re going to look for a cave where bats live. It’s Doors and Michiel who find the cave, an hour’s walk from the camp. They see a spurt of bats streaming out of an overhanging rock face. Run back to the camp and light the torches to summon everybody back. Buchanan, I and the two children walk to the cave. Buchuman looks around and nods. He stamps his foot hard on the sand floor, places a white stone next to the footprint. If the print is still here tomorrow, he mutters, we have to keep looking. At dusk the following day he walks to the cave and comes back and says the print next to the stone is almost gone. He says that when the tracks disappear so quickly, the soil is rich in saltpetre. The following morning we are standing in the cave and scooping up the floor of the cave and throwing the sand in bags lashed to the pack ox. Above our heads hundreds, thousands of bats are hanging asleep. Now and again one craps on us, but for the rest they take no notice of the shit stealers.
Back at the camp Buchanan instructs a few of my Hottentots to go find the nearest willow and to cut it down. They have to burn it and make charcoal. As finely ground as the charcoal that wily women smear around their eyes, he says. He calls me and Lusk and says:
An now, boys, I’ll show you the fuckin alchemy of nitre.
We build a lye pit, which Buchanan calls a hopper: a solid funnel with a trough at the lower end. The two Scotsmen drill holes in the planks and carve wooden pegs, nail the frame together with a wooden hammer. I find a thick log and with a small hatchet chop a deep furrow along the length of the trunk. The V-shaped frame of the funnel is balanced on top of the trough. We pack twigs along the bottom of the funnel vat, and scatter straw on the twigs and along the side planks to seal the pit.
The soil from the bat cave is poured into the lye pit until it’s almost full. We empty buckets of water over the soil to leach it of its saltpetre salts, or, as Buchanan refers to it affectionately, the mother liquor.
The mother liquor drips down the sides of the hopper and into the trough. I call a few children and they skim the decoction from the trough into the pots and calabashes and Buchanan says Pour again. They keep on leaching the same liquid through the bat soil, to dissolve all the saltpetre in the shit.
Captain sayd ye have to keep leaching till the solution’s thick enough for a fuckin egg to float on.
To one side we stoke a fire of camel thorn. Buchanan says you use only hardwood for the ash you need here. Once the logs are burnt out, I leach the ash in a vat. We add the ash decoction to the mother liquor until there are no more deposits of white curds. Lusk puts the solution into kettles and makes a fire under them. Buchanan keeps an eye and adds a dash of oxblood to the boiling mixture. Fragments of whatever float to the top. The surface of the kettles starts foaming like beer. While it simmers, Lusk keeps skimming off the foam and flotsam.
By evening Buchanan says it’s boiled long enough. I feel intoxicated. The Scotsmen are grinning too much. I suspect the crazy clouds from the kettles. I ask Buchanan why they call it mother liquor. He laughs and grabs my sore shoulder and says Well it shure as shit ain’t the milk from your ol’ ma’s teets and I say What knows you.
We empty the kettles through cloths. The foam and the bits of solid matter remain behind on the cloth. As it cools, fine, bitter, needle-shaped crystals form on the cloth.
Fuckin nitre, says Buchanan.
We skim off the crystals and lay them out on cloths to bake dry in tomorrow’s sun.
The next morning a crowd gathers to witness the critical mixing. The ground willow charcoal is spread out on a torn-open bag and next to it the mound of ground saltpetre crystals. We spread open a blanket. I help Buchanan add the charcoal to the saltpetre and to mix it. Then we add the sulphur. We squat and blend the stuff with our fingers, guarding against too much friction, so as not to be blown sky-high. Buchanan gets up and dusts his hands and knees over the blanket and takes off his shirt and breeches. I stand up and retreat from the mad Scotsman and look at the crowd, my nation and Sefunelo and his nation.