There is a spot on the edge of the Drakensberg which we made our summer quarters. When September came round and the sun swung higher in the steely blue sky; and the little creeks were running dry and the water-holes became saucers of cracked mud; when the whole country smelt of fine impalpable dust; it was a relief to quit the bushveld, and even the hunting was given up almost without regret.
Paradise Camp perched on the very edge of the mountain range. Behind us rolled green slopes to the feet of the higher peaks, and in front of us lay the bushveld. The breeze blew cool and fresh there. The waters trickled and splashed in every little break or tumbled with steady roar down the greater gorges. Deep pools, fringed with masses of ferns, smooth as mirrors or flecked with dancing sunlight, were set like brilliants in the silver chain of each little stream; and rocks and pebbles, wonderful in their colours, were magnified and glorified into polished gems by the sparkling water.
But Nature has her moods, and it was not always thus at Paradise Camp. When the cold mist-rains, like wet grey fogs, swept over us and for a week blotted out creation, it was neither pleasant nor safe to grope along the edge of the Berg, in search of strayed cattle – wet and cold, unable to see, and checked from time to time by a keener straighter gust that leapt up over the unseen precipice a few metres off.
And there was still another mood when the summer rains set in and the storms burst over us, and the lightning stabbed viciously in all directions. The crackling crash of the thunder made it seem as if the very Berg itself must be split and shattered. Then the rivers rose; the roar of waters was all around us; and Paradise Camp was isolated from the rest by floods which no man would lightly face.
Paradise Camp stood on the edge of the kloof where the nearest timber grew. Tumbling Waters, where stood the thousand grey sandstone sentinels of strange fantastic shapes, was three kilometres away facing Black Bluff, the highest point of all, and The Camel, The Wolf, The Sitting Hen, and scores more, rough casts in rock by Nature’s hand, stood there. Close below us was the Bathing Pool, with its six metres of purest water, its three rock-ledge ‘springboards’, and its banks of moss and canopies of tree ferns.
Further down, the stream spread in a thousand pools and rapids over a kilometre of black bedrock and then poured in one broad sheet over Graskop Falls. And still further down were the Mac Mac Falls, a hundred metres straight down into the rock-strewn gorge, where the walls were draped with staghorn moss, like countless folds of delicate green lace, bespangled by the spray. We were felling and slipping timber for the gold-fields then, and it was in these surroundings that the work was done.
It was a Sunday morning, and I was lying on my back on a sack-stretcher taking it easy, when Jock gave a growl and trotted out. Presently I heard voices in the next hut and wondered who the visitors were. Then a cold nose was poked against my cheek and I looked round to see Jess’s little eyes and flickering ears within centimetres of my face. For the moment she did not look cross, but as if a faint smile of welcome were flitting across a soured face. Then she trotted back to the other hut where Ted was patting Jock and trying to trace a likeness to the Rat.
It was a long time since mother and son had been together, and if the difference between them was remarkable, the likeness seemed to me more striking still. Jock had grown up by himself and made himself. He was so different from other dogs that I had forgotten how much he owed to good old Jess. But now that they were once more side by side everything he did and had done recalled the likeness and yet showed the difference between them. Many times as we moved about the camp or worked in the woods they walked or stood together, sometimes sniffing along some spoor and sometimes waiting and watching for us to come up – handsome son and ugly mother. Ugly she might be, with her little fretful hostile eyes, her uncertain ever-moving ears, and her silent, sour cross nature. But stubborn fidelity and reckless courage were hers too; and all the good Jock had in him came from Jess.
To see them side by side was enough. Every line in his golden brindled coat had its counterpart in her dull markings. His jaw was hers, with a difference. Every whit as determined but without the savage look. His eyes were hers – brown to black as the moods changed – yet not fretful and cross, but serenely observant, when quiet, and black, hot and angry, when roused. His ears were hers – and yet different; not shifting, flickering and ever on the move, nor flattened back with the look of most uncertain temper, but sure in their movements and faithful reflectors of more sober moods and a more balanced temper.
The work kept us close to camp and we gave no thought to shooting; yet Jess and Jock had some good sport together.
Once they caught an ant-bear in the open, and there was a rough-and-tumble. We had no weapons – not even sticks – with us, and the dogs had it all to themselves.
Once they killed a tiger-cat. We heard the rush and the row, and when we came up to them it was all over and they were tugging and tearing at the lifeless black and white body. Jess at the throat and Jock at the stomach. They thoroughly enjoyed it and searched the place afresh every time we passed it, as regularly as a boy looks about where he once picked up a sixpence.
One day while at work in the woods there came to us a grizzled worn-looking old Black man, whose head ring of polished black wax attested his dignity as a kehla. He carried an old musket and was attended by two youngsters armed with throwing-sticks and a hunting assegai each. He appeared to be a ‘somebody’ in a small way, and we knew at a glance that he had not come for nothing.
There is a certain courtesy and a good deal of formality observed among the Black men of Africa which is appreciated by very few of the White men who come in contact with them. One reason for this failure in appreciation is that this type of courtesy is in its method and expression sometimes just the reverse of what we consider proper. The old man, passing and ignoring the group of drivers, came towards us as we sat in the shade for the midday rest, and slowly came to a stand a few metres off, leaning on his long flint-lock quietly taking stock of us each in turn, and waiting for us to inspect him. Then, after three of four minutes of this, he proceeded to salute us separately with ‘Sakubona, Umlungu!’ delivered with measured deliberation at intervals of about a quarter of a minute. Each salutation was accompanied by the customary upward movement of the head – their respectful equivalent of our nod or bow. When he had done the round, his two attendants took their turns, and when this was over, and another long pause had served to mark his respect, he drew back a few paces, and, tucking his loin skins comfortably under him, squatted down. Ten minutes more elapsed before he allowed his eyes to wander absently round towards the drivers and finally to settle on them for a repetition of the performance that we had been favoured with. But in this case it was they who led off with the ‘Sakubona, Umganaam!’ which he acknowledged with the raising of the head and a soft murmur of contented recognition, ‘A-hé’.
Once more there was silence for a spell, while he waited to be questioned in the customary manner, and to give an account of himself, before it would be courteous or proper to introduce the subject of his visit. It was Jim’s voice that broke the silence – clear and imperative, as usual, but not uncivil. It always was Jim who cut in, as those do who are naturally impatient of delays and formalities.
‘Velapi, Umganaam?’ (Where do you come from, friend?) he asked, putting the question which is recognised as courteously providing the stranger with an opening to give an account of himself. He is expected and required to do so to their satisfaction before he in turn can ask all about them, their occupations, homes, destination and master, and his occupation, purpose and possessions.
The talk went round in low exchanges until at last the old man moved closer and joined the circle. The other voices dropped out, only to be heard once in a while in some brief question or that briefest of all comments, ‘Ow!’ It may mean anything, according to the tone, but it was clearly sympathetic on that occasion. The old man’s voice went on monotonously in a low-pitched impassive tone; but the drivers hung intent on every word to the end. Then one or two questions, briefly answered in the same tone of detached philosophic indifference, brought their talk to a close. The old fellow tapped his carved wood snuff-box with the carefully preserved long yellowish nail of one forefinger, and pouring some snuff into the palm of his hand, drew it into each nostril in turn with long luxurious sniffs; and then, resting his arms on his knees, he relapsed into complete silence.
We called the drivers to start work again, and they came away, as is their custom, without a word or look towards the man whose story had held them for the last half-hour. Nor did he speak or stir, but sat on unmoved, a picture of stoical indifference. But who can say if it be indifference or fatalism or the most astute diplomacy?
We asked no questions, for we knew it was no accident that had brought the old man our way. He wanted something, and we would learn soon enough what it was. So we waited.
As we gathered round the fallen tree to finish the cleaning and slip it down to the track, Jim remarked irrelevantly that leopards were ‘schelms’, and it was his conviction that there were a great many in the kloofs round about. At intervals during the next hour or so he dropped other scraps about leopards and their ways, and how to get at them and what good sport it was, winding up with a short account of how two seasons back an English ‘capitaine’ had been killed by one only a few kilometres away.
Jim was no diplomat. He had leopard on the brain, and showed it. So, when I asked him bluntly what the old man had been talking about, the whole story came out. There was a leopard – it was of course the biggest ever seen – which had been preying on the old chief’s kraal for the last six months. Dogs, goats and sheep innumerable had disappeared, even fowls were not despised. Only two days ago the climax had been reached when, in the cool of the afternoon and in defiance of the yelling herdboy, it had slipped into the herd at the drinking place and carried off a calf – a heifer-calf too. The old man was poor. The leopard had nearly ruined him, and he had come up to see if we, ‘who were great hunters’, would come down and kill the thief, or at least lend him a leopard trap, as he could not afford to buy one.
In the evening when we returned to camp we found the old fellow there, and heard the story told with the same patient resignation or stoical indifference with which he had told it to the drivers.
The chance seemed good enough, and we decided to go. Leopards were plentiful enough and were often to be heard at night in the kloofs below, but they are extremely wary animals and in the inhabited parts rarely move about by day. However, the marauding habits and the audacity of this fellow were full of promise.
The following afternoon we set off with our guns and blankets, a little food for two days, and the leopard trap. By nightfall we had reached the foot of the Berg by paths and ways which you might think only a baboon could follow.
It was moonlight, and we moved along through the heavily timbered kloofs in single file behind the shadowy figure of the shrivelled old chief. His years seemed no handicap to him, as with long easy soft-footed strides he went on hour after hour.
The air was delightfully cool and sweet with the fresh smells of the woods. The damp carpet of moss and dead leaves dulled the sound of our more blundering steps. Now and again through the thick canopy of evergreens we caught glimpses of the moon, and in odd places the light threw stumps or rocks into quaint relief or turned some tall bare trunk into a ghostly sentinel of the forest.
We had crossed the last of the many mountain streams and reached open ground when the old chief stopped, and pointing to the face of a high krans, said that somewhere up there was a cave which was the leopard’s home, and it was from this safe refuge that he raided the countryside.
We started on again down an easy slope passing through some bush, and at the bottom came on level ground thinly covered with big shady trees and scattered undergrowth. As we walked briskly through the flecked and dappled light and shade, we were startled by the sudden and furious rush of Jess and Jock off the path and away into the scrub on the left; and immediately after there was a grunting noise, a crashing and scrambling, and then one sharp clear yelp of pain from one of the dogs. There were other sounds in the bush – something like a faint scratching, and something like smothered sobbing grunts, but so indistinct as to be more ominous and disquieting than absolute silence.
‘He has killed the dogs,’ the old chief said, in a low voice.
But as he said it there was a rustle in front, and something came out towards us. The guns were up and levelled instantly, but dropped again when we saw it was a dog. Jess came back limping badly and stopping every few paces to shake her head and rub her mouth against her fore-paws. She was in great pain and breathed out faint barely audible whines from time to time.
We waited for minutes, but Jock did not appear. As the curious sounds still came from the bush we moved forward in open order, very slowly and with infinite caution. As we got closer, scouting each bush and open space, the sounds grew clearer, and suddenly it came to me that it was the noise of a body being dragged and the grunting breathing of a dog. I called sharply to Jock and the sound stopped. Taking a few paces forward, I saw him in a moonlit space turning round and round on the pivot of his hind legs and swinging or dragging something much bigger than himself.
Jim gave a yell and shot past me, plunging his assegai into the object and shouting, ‘Porcupine, porcupine’, at the top of his voice. We were all round it in a couple of seconds, but I think the porcupine was as good as dead even before Jim had stabbed it.
The encounter with the porcupine gave us a better chance of getting the leopard than we ever expected – too good a chance to be neglected. So, we cut the animal up and used the worthless parts to bait the big trap, having first dragged them across the veld for a good distance each way to leave a blood spoor which would lead the leopard up to the trap. This, with the quantity of blood spread about in the fight, lying right in the track of his usual prowling ought to attract his attention, we thought; and we fastened the trap to a big tree, making an avenue of bushes up to the bait so that he would have to walk right over the trap hidden under the dead leaves, in order to get at the bait. We hoped that, if it failed to hold, it would at least wound him badly enough to enable us to follow him up in the morning.
Jock was none the worse for his fight with the porcupine and was the picture of contentment as he lay beside me in the ring facing the fire. But Jess was a puzzle. From the time that she had come hobbling back to us, carrying her one foot in the air and stopping to rub her mouth on her paws, we had been trying to find out what was the matter. The foot trouble was clear enough, for there was a quill 35 centimetres long still piercing the ball of her foot. Fortunately it had not been driven far through and the hole was small, so that once it was drawn and the foot bandaged she got along fairly well. It was not the foot that was troubling her. All though the evening she kept repeating the movement of her head, either rubbing it on her front legs or wiping her muzzle with the paws, much as a cat does when washing its face. She would not touch food and could not lie still for five minutes; and we could do nothing to help her.
