To Jim there were three big divisions of the human race – White men, Zulus and the rest. Zulu, old or young, was greeted by him as equal, friend and comrade. White men he respected, but the rest were trash. He cherished a most particular contempt for the Shangaans and Chopis, and the sight of them stirred him to contempt and pricked him to hostilities. It was not long before Jim discovered that Jock needed only a little encouragement to share his views.
It was very important to me that Jock should treat strange Black men with suspicion and keep them off the premises. I was glad that he did it by his own choice and instinct; but at the same time I did feel he should be taught where to draw the line. Jim made the already difficult task practically impossible by egging Jock on.
As far as I know the first incident arose out of the intrusion of a strange Black man at one of the outspans. Jock objected, and he forced the man back step by step – doing the same feinting rushes that he practised with game – until the terrified man tripped over a camp stool and sat plump down on the three-legged pot of porridge. I did not see it, for Jock was, as usual, quite silent. It was a roar from Jim that roused me. Jock was standing with his head on one side and his face full of interest, as if he would dearly love another romp in; and the divers were reeling and rolling about on the grass, helpless with laughter.
A dog is just as quick as a child to find out when he can take liberties. He knows that laughter and serious disapproval do not go together; and Jock with the backing of the drivers thoroughly enjoyed himself. That was how it began, and by degrees it developed into what became known as the Shangaan gang trick.
One day a gang of about thirty Shangaan miners each carrying his load of blankets, clothing, pots, billies and other valuables on his head, was coming in single file along a footpath some twenty metres away from the waggons. Jock strolled out and sat himself down in the middle of the path. The leader of the gang was suspicious and shied off wide into the veld. He passed in a semicircle round Jock, a good ten metres away, and came safely back to the path again. The dog with his nose in the air merely eyed him with a look of humorous interest and mild curiosity. The second miner made the loop shorter, and the third made it shorter still, as they found their alarm and suspicious unjustified.
As each came along, the size of the loop was lessened until they passed in safety almost brushing against Jock’s nose. And still he never budged. But as each man approached, he looked up at his face and, slowly turning his head, followed him round with his eyes until he re-entered the path.
There was something extremely funny in the mechanical regularity with which his head swung round. It was so funny that not only did the drivers at the waggons notice it and laugh but the unsuspecting Shangaans themselves shared the joke.
The long heavy bundles on their heads made turning round a slow process, so that, except for the first half-dozen, they were content to enjoy what they saw in front and to know by the laughter from behind that the joke had been repeated all down the line.
The last one walked calmly by, but as he did so there came one short muffled bark from Jock, and he sprang out and nipped the unsuspecting Shangaan from behind. The man let out a yell that made the whole gang jump and clutch wildly at their toppling bundles, and Jock raced along the footpath, leaping, gurgling and snapping behind each one, scattering them this way and that, in a romp of wild enjoyment.
The shouts of the scared men, the clatter of the tins as their bundles toppled down, the scrambling and scratching as they clawed the ground pretending to pick up stones or sticks to stop the rushes, and the ridiculous rout of the thirty Shangaans in every direction, were too much for my principles and far too much for my gravity. To be quite honest, I weakened badly, and from that day on preferred to look another way when Jock sallied out to inspect a gang of Shangaans. Between them Jim and Jock had beaten me.
But the weakening brought its own punishment and the joke was not far from causing a tragedy.
Many times while lying some way off in the shade of a tree or under another waggon I heard Jim, all unconscious of my presence, call in a low deep voice, almost a whisper, ‘Jock; Jock: Shangaans!’ Jock’s head was up in a moment, and a romp of some sort followed unless I intervened. Afterwards, when Jock was deaf, Jim used to reach out and pull his foot or throw a handful of sand or a bunch of grass to rouse him, and when Jock’s head switched up Jim’s big black fist pointing to their common enemy was quite enough.
Jim had his faults, but getting others into mischief while keeping out of it himself was not one of them. If he egged Jock on, he was more than ready to stand by him.
There was a day outside Barberton which I remember well. Jim was lying under his waggon with his chin resting on his arms, staring steadily at the glistening corrugated iron roofs of the town, as morose and unapproachable as a surly old watch-dog. From the tent of my waggon I saw him raise his head, and following his glance, picked out a row of bundles against the skyline. Presently a long string of about fifty time-expired miners came into sight. Jim, on his hands and knees, scrambled over to where Jock lay asleep, and shook him; for this incident occurred after Jock had become deaf.
‘Shangaans, Jock; Shangaans! Kill them; kill, kill, kill!’ said Jim in gusty ferocious whispers. It must have seemed as if Fate had kindly provided an outlet for the rebellious rage and the craving for a fight that were consuming him.
I had had a lot of trouble with Jim that day, and this annoyed me, but my angry call to stop was unavailing. Jim, pretending not to understand, made no attempt to stop Jock, but contented himself with calling to him to come back, and Jock, stone deaf, trotted evenly along with his head, neck, back, and tail, all level – an old trick of Jess’s which generally meant trouble for someone.
Slowing down as he neared the Shangaans he walked quietly on until he headed off the leader, and there he stood across the path. It was just the same as before. The men, finding that he did nothing, merely stepped aside to avoid bumping against him. They were taking their purchases to their kraals. Gaudy blankets, collections of bright tin billies and mugs, tin plates, three-legged pots, clothing, hats, and even small tin trunks painted brilliant yellow, helped to make up their huge bundles.
The last man was wearing a pair of Royal Artillery trousers, and I have no doubt he regarded it ever afterwards as nothing less than a calamity that they were not safely stowed away in his bundle. It was from the seat of these too ample bags that Jock took a good mouthful; and it was the miner’s frantic jump, rather than Jock’s tug, that made the piece come out. The sudden fright and the attempts to face about quickly caused several downfalls. The clatter of these spread the panic; and on top of it all came Jock’s charge along the broken line, and the excited shots of those who thought they were going to be worried to death.
But there came a very unexpected change. One big Shangaan had drawn from his bundle a brand new side-axe. I saw the bright steel head flash as he held it menacingly aloft by the short handle and marched towards Jock. There was a scrambling bound from under the waggon and Jim rushed out. In his right hand he brandished a tough stout fighting stick. In his left I was horrified to see an assegai, and well I knew that, with the fighting fury on him, he would think nothing of using it.
The Shangaan saw him coming, and stopped. Still facing Jim, and with the axe raised and feinting repeatedly to throw it, he began to back away. Jim never paused for a second. He came straight on with wild leaps and blood-curdling yells in Zulu fighting fashion and ended with a bound that seemed to drop him right on top of the others. The stick came down with a whirr and a crash that crimped every nerve in my body; and the Shangaan dropped like a log.
I had shouted myself hoarse at Jim, but he heard or heeded nothing. He wrenched the axe from the kicking man and, without pause, went headlong for the next Shangaan he saw. Everything went wrong: the more I shouted and the harder I ran, the worse the row. The Shangaans seemed to think I had joined in and was directing operations against them. Jim seemed to be inspired to wilder madness by my shouts and gesticulations; and Jock – well, Jock, at any rate had not the remotest doubt as to what he should do. When he saw me and Jim in full chase behind him, his plain duty was to go in for all he was worth; and he did it.
It was half an hour before I got Jim back. He was as unmanageable as a runaway horse. He had walloped the majority of the fifty himself. He had broken his own two sticks and used up a number of theirs. On his forehead there was a small cut and a lump like half an orange; and on the back of his head another cut left by the sticks of the enemy when eight or ten had rallied once in a half-hearted attempt to stand against him.
It was strange how Jim, even in that mood, yielded to the touch of one whom he regarded as his ‘Inkos’. I could not have forced him back.
He yielded to the light grip of my hand on his wrist and walked freely along with me. But a fiery bounding vitality possessed him, and all the time there came from him a torrent of excited gabble in pure Zulu, punctuated and paragraphed by bursting allusions to ‘dogs of Shangaans’, ‘axes’, ‘sticks’, and ‘Jock’.
Near the waggons we passed over the ‘battlefield’, and a huge guffaw of laughter broke from Jim as we came on the abandoned impedimenta of the defeated enemy. Jim looked on it all as the spoils of war, and wanted to stop and gather in his loot there and then. When I pressed on, he shouted to the other drivers to come out and collect the booty.
But my chief anxiety was to end the wretched escapade as quickly as possible and get the Shangaans on their way again. So I sent Jim back to his place under the waggon, and told the cook to give him the rest of my coffee and half a cup of sugar to provide him with something else to think of and to calm him down.
After a wait of half an hour or so, a head appeared just over the rise, and then another, and another, at irregular intervals and at various points. They were scouting very cautiously before venturing back again. I sat in the tent waggon out of sight and kept quiet, hoping that in a few minutes they would gain confidence, collect their goods, and go their way again. Jim, lying flat under the waggon, was much lower than I was, and – continuing his gabble to the others – saw nothing. Unfortunately he looked round just as a scared face peered cautiously over the top of an antheap. The temptation was, I suppose, irresistible. He scrambled to his knees with a pretence of starting afresh, let out one ferocious yell that made my hair stand up, and in that second every head bobbed down and the field was deserted once more.
If this went on there could be but one ending: the police would be appealed to, Jim arrested, and I should spend days hanging about the courts waiting for a trial from which the noble Jim would probably emerge with three months’ hard labour. So I sallied out as my own herald of peace. But the position was more difficult than it looked: As soon as the Shangaans saw my head appearing over the rise, they scattered like chaff before the wind, and ran as if they would never stop. They evidently took me for the advance guard in a fresh attack. I stood upon an antheap and waved and called, but each shout resulted in a fresh spurt and each movement only made them more suspicious. It seemed a hopeless case, and I gave it up.
On the way back to the waggons, however, I thought of Sam – Sam, with his neatly patched European clothes, his slack lanky figure and serious timid face. Sam would surely be the right envoy; even the routed Shangaans would feel that there was nothing to fear there. But Sam was by no means anxious to earn laurels, and it was a poor-looking weak-kneed and much dejected scarecrow that dragged its way reluctantly out into the veld to hold parley with the routed enemy that day.
At the first mention of Sam’s name Jim had twitched round with a snort, but the humour of the situation tickled him when he saw the too obvious reluctance with which his rival received the honour conferred on him. To Sam’s relief, the Shangaans seemed to view him merely as a decoy, even more dangerous than I was. They were widely scattered more than a kilometre away when Sam came in sight. A brief pause followed in which they looked anxiously around, and then, after some aimless dashes about like a startled troop of buck, they seemed to find the line of flight and headed off in a long string down the valley towards the river.
Now, no one had ever run away from Sam before, and the exhilarating sight so encouraged him that he marched boldly on after them. Goodness knows when, if ever, they would have stopped, if Sam had not met a couple of other Black men whom the Shangaans had passed and induced them to turn back and reassure the fugitives.
An hour later Sam came back in mild triumph, at the head of the Shangaan gang, and stood guard and super-intended while they collected their scattered goods – all except the axe that caused the trouble. That they failed to find. The owner may have thought it wise to make no claim on me. Sam, if he remembered it, would have seen the Shangaans and all their belongings burned in a pile rather than raise so delicate a question with Jim. I had forgotten all about it – being anxious only to end the trouble and get the Shangaans off; and that villain Jim ‘lay low’. At the first outspan from Barberton next day I saw him carving his mark on the handle, unabashed, under my very nose.
The next time Jim got drunk he added something to his opinion of Sam:
‘Sam no good: Sam leada Bible! Shangaan, Sam; Shangaan!’
