第 五 章 · OUR MARCH INTO THE DESERT
. OUR MARCH INTO THE DESERT
We had killed nine elephants, and it took us two days to cut out the
tusks, and having brought them into camp, to bury them carefully in the
sand under a large tree, which made a conspicuous mark for miles round.
It was a wonderfully fine lot of ivory. I never saw a better, averaging
as it did between forty and fifty pounds a tusk. The tusks of the great
bull that killed poor Khiva scaled one hundred and seventy pounds the
pair, so nearly as we could judge.
As for Khiva himself, we buried what remained of him in an ant-bear
hole, together with an assegai to protect himself with on his journey
to a better world. On the third day we marched again, hoping that we
might live to return to dig up our buried ivory, and in due course,
after a long and wearisome tramp, and many adventures which I have not
space to detail, we reached Sitanda’s Kraal, near the Lukanga River,
the real starting-point of our expedition. Very well do I recollect our
arrival at that place. To the right was a scattered native settlement
with a few stone cattle kraals and some cultivated lands down by the
water, where these savages grew their scanty supply of grain, and
beyond it stretched great tracts of waving “veld” covered with tall
grass, over which herds of the smaller game were wandering. To the left
lay the vast desert. This spot appears to be the outpost of the fertile
country, and it would be difficult to say to what natural causes such
an abrupt change in the character of the soil is due. But so it is.
Just below our encampment flowed a little stream, on the farther side
of which is a stony slope, the same down which, twenty years before, I
had seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach
Solomon’s Mines, and beyond that slope begins the waterless desert,
covered with a species of karoo shrub.
It was evening when we pitched our camp, and the great ball of the sun
was sinking into the desert, sending glorious rays of many-coloured
light flying all over its vast expanse. Leaving Good to superintend the
arrangement of our little camp, I took Sir Henry with me, and walking
to the top of the slope opposite, we gazed across the desert. The air
was very clear, and far, far away I could distinguish the faint blue
outlines, here and there capped with white, of the Suliman Berg.
“There,” I said, “there is the wall round Solomon’s Mines, but God
knows if we shall ever climb it.”
“My brother should be there, and if he is, I shall reach him somehow,”
said Sir Henry, in that tone of quiet confidence which marked the man.
“I hope so,” I answered, and turned to go back to the camp, when I saw
that we were not alone. Behind us, also gazing earnestly towards the
far-off mountains, stood the great Kafir Umbopa.
The Zulu spoke when he saw that I had observed him, addressing Sir
Henry, to whom he had attached himself.
“Is it to that land that thou wouldst journey, Incubu?” (a native word
meaning, I believe, an elephant, and the name given to Sir Henry by the
Kafirs), he said, pointing towards the mountain with his broad assegai.
I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that
familiar way. It is very well for natives to have a name for one among
themselves, but it is not decent that they should call a white man by
their heathenish appellations to his face. The Zulu laughed a quiet
little laugh which angered me.
“How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi whom I
serve?” he said. “He is of a royal house, no doubt; one can see it in
his size and by his mien; so, mayhap, am I. At least, I am as great a
man. Be my mouth, O Macumazahn, and say my words to the Inkoos Incubu,
my master, for I would speak to him and to thee.”
I was angry with the man, for I am not accustomed to be talked to in
that way by Kafirs, but somehow he impressed me, and besides I was
curious to know what he had to say. So I translated, expressing my
opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow, and that his
swagger was outrageous.
“Yes, Umbopa,” answered Sir Henry, “I would journey there.”
“The desert is wide and there is no water in it, the mountains are high
and covered with snow, and man cannot say what lies beyond them behind
the place where the sun sets; how shalt thou come thither, Incubu, and
wherefore dost thou go?”
I translated again.
“Tell him,” answered Sir Henry, “that I go because I believe that a man
of my blood, my brother, has gone there before me, and I journey to
seek him.”
“That is so, Incubu; a Hottentot I met on the road told me that a white
man went out into the desert two years ago towards those mountains with
one servant, a hunter. They never came back.”
“How do you know it was my brother?” asked Sir Henry.
“Nay, I know not. But the Hottentot, when I asked what the white man
was like, said that he had thine eyes and a black beard. He said, too,
that the name of the hunter with him was Jim; that he was a Bechuana
hunter and wore clothes.”
“There is no doubt about it,” said I; “I knew Jim well.”
Sir Henry nodded. “I was sure of it,” he said. “If George set his mind
upon a thing he generally did it. It was always so from his boyhood. If
he meant to cross the Suliman Berg he has crossed it, unless some
accident overtook him, and we must look for him on the other side.”
Umbopa understood English, though he rarely spoke it.
“It is a far journey, Incubu,” he put in, and I translated his remark.
“Yes,” answered Sir Henry, “it is far. But there is no journey upon
this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There is
nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may not
climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross, save a mountain and a
desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he
holds his life in his hands counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or
lose it as Heaven above may order.”
I translated.
“Great words, my father,” answered the Zulu—I always called him a Zulu,
though he was not really one—“great swelling words fit to fill the
mouth of a man. Thou art right, my father Incubu. Listen! what is life?
It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither,
sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried
away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may
perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try
and journey one’s road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the
worst he can but die a little sooner. I will go with thee across the
desert and over the mountains, unless perchance I fall to the ground on
the way, my father.”
He paused awhile, and then went on with one of those strange bursts of
rhetorical eloquence that Zulus sometimes indulge in, which to my mind,
full though they are of vain repetitions, show that the race is by no
means devoid of poetic instinct and of intellectual power.
“What is life? Tell me, O white men, who are wise, who know the secrets
of the world, and of the world of stars, and the world that lies above
and around the stars; who flash your words from afar without a voice;
tell me, white men, the secret of our life—whither it goes and whence
it comes!
“You cannot answer me; you know not. Listen, I will answer. Out of the
dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we
fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of
the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing.
Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the
glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it
is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that
runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset.”
“You are a strange man,” said Sir Henry, when he had ceased.
Umbopa laughed. “It seems to me that we are much alike, Incubu. Perhaps
_I_ seek a brother over the mountains.”
I looked at him suspiciously. “What dost thou mean?” I asked; “what
dost thou know of those mountains?”
“A little; a very little. There is a strange land yonder, a land of
witchcraft and beautiful things; a land of brave people, and of trees,
and streams, and snowy peaks, and of a great white road. I have heard
of it. But what is the good of talking? It grows dark. Those who live
to see will see.”
Again I looked at him doubtfully. The man knew too much.
“You need not fear me, Macumazahn,” he said, interpreting my look. “I
dig no holes for you to fall in. I make no plots. If ever we cross
those mountains behind the sun I will tell what I know. But Death sits
upon them. Be wise and turn back. Go and hunt elephants, my masters. I
have spoken.”
And without another word he lifted his spear in salutation, and
returned towards the camp, where shortly afterwards we found him
cleaning a gun like any other Kafir.
“That is an odd man,” said Sir Henry.
“Yes,” answered I, “too odd by half. I don’t like his little ways. He
knows something, and will not speak out. But I suppose it is no use
quarrelling with him. We are in for a curious trip, and a mysterious
Zulu won’t make much difference one way or another.”
Next day we made our arrangements for starting. Of course it was
impossible to drag our heavy elephant rifles and other kit with us
across the desert, so, dismissing our bearers, we made an arrangement
with an old native who had a kraal close by to take care of them till
we returned. It went to my heart to leave such things as those sweet
tools to the tender mercies of an old thief of a savage whose greedy
eyes I could see gloating over them. But I took some precautions.
First of all I loaded all the rifles, placing them at full cock, and
informed him that if he touched them they would go off. He tried the
experiment instantly with my eight-bore, and it did go off, and blew a
hole right through one of his oxen, which were just then being driven
up to the kraal, to say nothing of knocking him head over heels with
the recoil. He got up considerably startled, and not at all pleased at
the loss of the ox, which he had the impudence to ask me to pay for,
and nothing would induce him to touch the guns again.
“Put the live devils out of the way up there in the thatch,” he said,
“or they will murder us all.”
Then I told him that, when we came back, if one of those things was
missing I would kill him and his people by witchcraft; and if we died
and he tried to steal the rifles I would come and haunt him and turn
his cattle mad and his milk sour till life was a weariness, and would
make the devils in the guns come out and talk to him in a way he did
not like, and generally gave him a good idea of judgment to come. After
that he promised to look after them as though they were his father’s
spirit. He was a very superstitious old Kafir and a great villain.
Having thus disposed of our superfluous gear we arranged the kit we
five—Sir Henry, Good, myself, Umbopa, and the Hottentot Ventvögel—were
to take with us on our journey. It was small enough, but do what we
would we could not get its weight down under about forty pounds a man.
This is what it consisted of:—
The three express rifles and two hundred rounds of ammunition.
The two Winchester repeating rifles (for Umbopa and Ventvögel), with
two hundred rounds of cartridge.
Five Cochrane’s water-bottles, each holding four pints.
Five blankets.
Twenty-five pounds’ weight of biltong—i.e. sun-dried game flesh.
Ten pounds’ weight of best mixed beads for gifts.
A selection of medicine, including an ounce of quinine, and one or two
small surgical instruments.
Our knives, a few sundries, such as a compass, matches, a pocket
filter, tobacco, a trowel, a bottle of brandy, and the clothes we stood
in.
This was our total equipment, a small one indeed for such a venture,
but we dared not attempt to carry more. Indeed, that load was a heavy
one per man with which to travel across the burning desert, for in such
places every additional ounce tells. But we could not see our way to
reducing the weight. There was nothing taken but what was absolutely
necessary.
With great difficulty, and by the promise of a present of a good
hunting-knife each, I succeeded in persuading three wretched natives
from the village to come with us for the first stage, twenty miles, and
to carry a large gourd holding a gallon of water apiece. My object was
to enable us to refill our water-bottles after the first night’s march,
for we determined to start in the cool of the evening. I gave out to
these natives that we were going to shoot ostriches, with which the
desert abounded. They jabbered and shrugged their shoulders, saying
that we were mad and should perish of thirst, which I must say seemed
probable; but being desirous of obtaining the knives, which were almost
unknown treasures up there, they consented to come, having probably
reflected that, after all, our subsequent extinction would be no affair
of theirs.
All next day we rested and slept, and at sunset ate a hearty meal of
fresh beef washed down with tea, the last, as Good remarked sadly, we
were likely to drink for many a long day. Then, having made our final
preparations, we lay down and waited for the moon to rise. At last,
about nine o’clock, up she came in all her glory, flooding the wild
country with light, and throwing a silver sheen on the expanse of
rolling desert before us, which looked as solemn and quiet and as alien
to man as the star-studded firmament above. We rose up, and in a few
minutes were ready, and yet we hesitated a little, as human nature is
prone to hesitate on the threshold of an irrevocable step. We three
white men stood by ourselves. Umbopa, assegai in hand and a rifle
across his shoulders, looked out fixedly across the desert a few paces
ahead of us; while the hired natives, with the gourds of water, and
Ventvögel, were gathered in a little knot behind.
“Gentlemen,” said Sir Henry presently, in his deep voice, “we are going
on about as strange a journey as men can make in this world. It is very
doubtful if we can succeed in it. But we are three men who will stand
together for good or for evil to the last. Now before we start let us
for a moment pray to the Power who shapes the destinies of men, and who
ages since has marked out our paths, that it may please Him to direct
our steps in accordance with His will.”
Taking off his hat, for the space of a minute or so, he covered his
face with his hands, and Good and I did likewise.
I do not say that I am a first-rate praying man, few hunters are, and
as for Sir Henry, I never heard him speak like that before, and only
once since, though deep down in his heart I believe that he is very
religious. Good too is pious, though apt to swear. Anyhow I do not
remember, excepting on one single occasion, ever putting up a better
prayer in my life than I did during that minute, and somehow I felt the
happier for it. Our future was so completely unknown, and I think that
the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.
“And now,” said Sir Henry, “_trek_!”
So we started.
We had nothing to guide ourselves by except the distant mountains and
old José da Silvestra’s chart, which, considering that it was drawn by
a dying and half-distraught man on a fragment of linen three centuries
ago, was not a very satisfactory sort of thing to work with. Still, our
sole hope of success depended upon it, such as it was. If we failed in
finding that pool of bad water which the old Dom marked as being
situated in the middle of the desert, about sixty miles from our
starting-point, and as far from the mountains, in all probability we
must perish miserably of thirst. But to my mind the chances of our
finding it in that great sea of sand and karoo scrub seemed almost
infinitesimal. Even supposing that da Silvestra had marked the pool
correctly, what was there to prevent its having been dried up by the
sun generations ago, or trampled in by game, or filled with the
drifting sand?
On we tramped silently as shades through the night and in the heavy
sand. The karoo bushes caught our feet and retarded us, and the sand
worked into our veldtschoons and Good’s shooting-boots, so that every
few miles we had to stop and empty them; but still the night kept
fairly cool, though the atmosphere was thick and heavy, giving a sort
of creamy feel to the air, and we made fair progress. It was very
silent and lonely there in the desert, oppressively so indeed. Good
felt this, and once began to whistle “The Girl I left behind me,” but
the notes sounded lugubrious in that vast place, and he gave it up.
Shortly afterwards a little incident occurred which, though it startled
us at the time, gave rise to a laugh. Good was leading, as the holder
of the compass, which, being a sailor, of course he understood
thoroughly, and we were toiling along in single file behind him, when
suddenly we heard the sound of an exclamation, and he vanished. Next
second there arose all around us a most extraordinary hubbub, snorts,
groans, and wild sounds of rushing feet. In the faint light, too, we
could descry dim galloping forms half hidden by wreaths of sand. The
natives threw down their loads and prepared to bolt, but remembering
that there was nowhere to run to, they cast themselves upon the ground
and howled out that it was ghosts. As for Sir Henry and myself, we
stood amazed; nor was our amazement lessened when we perceived the form
of Good careering off in the direction of the mountains, apparently
mounted on the back of a horse and halloaing wildly. In another second
he threw up his arms, and we heard him come to the earth with a thud.
Then I saw what had happened; we had stumbled upon a herd of sleeping
quagga, on to the back of one of which Good actually had fallen, and
the brute naturally enough got up and made off with him. Calling out to
the others that it was all right, I ran towards Good, much afraid lest
he should be hurt, but to my great relief I found him sitting in the
sand, his eye-glass still fixed firmly in his eye, rather shaken and
very much frightened, but not in any way injured.
After this we travelled on without any further misadventure till about
one o’clock, when we called a halt, and having drunk a little water,
not much, for water was precious, and rested for half an hour, we
started again.
On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of
a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed
presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the
desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they
vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out
against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man.
Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the
boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the
desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day.
Still we did not halt, though by this time we should have been glad
enough to do so, for we knew that when once the sun was fully up it
would be almost impossible for us to travel. At length, about an hour
later, we spied a little pile of boulders rising out of the plain, and
to this we dragged ourselves. As luck would have it, here we found an
overhanging slab of rock carpeted beneath with smooth sand, which
afforded a most grateful shelter from the heat. Underneath this we
crept, and each of us having drunk some water and eaten a bit of
biltong, we lay down and soon were sound asleep.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon before we woke, to find our
bearers preparing to return. They had seen enough of the desert
already, and no number of knives would have tempted them to come a step
farther. So we took a hearty drink, and having emptied our
water-bottles, filled them up again from the gourds that they had
brought with them, and then watched them depart on their twenty miles’
tramp home.
At half-past four we also started. It was lonely and desolate work, for
with the exception of a few ostriches there was not a single living
creature to be seen on all the vast expanse of sandy plain. Evidently
it was too dry for game, and with the exception of a deadly-looking
cobra or two we saw no reptiles. One insect, however, we found
abundant, and that was the common or house fly. There they came, “not
as single spies, but in battalions,” as I think the Old Testament[6]
says somewhere. He is an extraordinary insect is the house fly. Go
where you will you find him, and so it must have been always. I have
seen him enclosed in amber, which is, I was told, quite half a million
years old, looking exactly like his descendant of to-day, and I have
little doubt but that when the last man lies dying on the earth he will
be buzzing round—if this event happens to occur in summer—watching for
an opportunity to settle on his nose.
[6] Readers must beware of accepting Mr. Quatermain’s references as
accurate, as, it has been found, some are prone to do. Although his
reading evidently was limited, the impression produced by it upon his
mind was mixed. Thus to him the Old Testament and Shakespeare were
interchangeable authorities.—_Editor_.
At sunset we halted, waiting for the moon to rise. At last she came up,
beautiful and serene as ever, and, with one halt about two o’clock in
the morning, we trudged on wearily through the night, till at last the
welcome sun put a period to our labours. We drank a little and flung
ourselves down on the sand, thoroughly tired out, and soon were all
asleep. There was no need to set a watch, for we had nothing to fear
from anybody or anything in that vast untenanted plain. Our only
enemies were heat, thirst, and flies, but far rather would I have faced
any danger from man or beast than that awful trinity. This time we were
not so lucky as to find a sheltering rock to guard us from the glare of
the sun, with the result that about seven o’clock we woke up
experiencing the exact sensations one would attribute to a beefsteak on
a gridiron. We were literally being baked through and through. The
burning sun seemed to be sucking our very blood out of us. We sat up
and gasped.
“Phew,” said I, grabbing at the halo of flies which buzzed cheerfully
round my head. The heat did not affect _them_.
“My word!” said Sir Henry.
“It is hot!” echoed Good.
It was hot, indeed, and there was not a bit of shelter to be found.
Look where we would there was no rock or tree, nothing but an unending
glare, rendered dazzling by the heated air that danced over the surface
of the desert as it dances over a red-hot stove.
“What is to be done?” asked Sir Henry; “we can’t stand this for long.”
We looked at each other blankly.
“I have it,” said Good, “we must dig a hole, get in it, and cover
ourselves with the karoo bushes.”
It did not seem a very promising suggestion, but at least it was better
than nothing, so we set to work, and, with the trowel we had brought
with us and the help of our hands, in about an hour we succeeded in
delving out a patch of ground some ten feet long by twelve wide to the
depth of two feet. Then we cut a quantity of low scrub with our
hunting-knives, and creeping into the hole, pulled it over us all, with
the exception of Ventvögel, on whom, being a Hottentot, the heat had no
particular effect. This gave us some slight shelter from the burning
rays of the sun, but the atmosphere in that amateur grave can be better
imagined than described. The Black Hole of Calcutta must have been a
fool to it; indeed, to this moment I do not know how we lived through
the day. There we lay panting, and every now and again moistening our
lips from our scanty supply of water. Had we followed our inclinations
we should have finished all we possessed in the first two hours, but we
were forced to exercise the most rigid care, for if our water failed us
we knew that very soon we must perish miserably.
But everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it, and
somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening. About three o’clock
in the afternoon we determined that we could bear it no longer. It
would be better to die walking than to be killed slowly by heat and
thirst in this dreadful hole. So taking each of us a little drink from
our fast diminishing supply of water, now warmed to about the same
temperature as a man’s blood, we staggered forward.
We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness. If the reader will
refer to the rough copy and translation of old da Silvestra’s map, he
will see that the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across,
and the “pan bad water” is set down as being about in the middle of it.
Now forty leagues is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we
ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if
any should really exist.
Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along, scarcely
doing more than a mile and a half in an hour. At sunset we rested
again, waiting for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to get
some sleep.
Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct
hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away. At the
distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to sleep
I fell to wondering what it could be.
With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully exhausted, and
suffering tortures from thirst and prickly heat. Nobody who has not
felt it can know what we went through. We walked no longer, we
staggered, now and again falling from exhaustion, and being obliged to
call a halt every hour or so. We had scarcely energy left in us to
speak. Up to this Good had chatted and joked, for he is a merry fellow;
but now he had not a joke in him.
At last, about two o’clock, utterly worn out in body and mind, we came
to the foot of the queer hill, or sand koppie, which at first sight
resembled a gigantic ant-heap about a hundred feet high, and covering
at the base nearly two acres of ground.
Here we halted, and driven to it by our desperate thirst, sucked down
our last drops of water. We had but half a pint a head, and each of us
could have drunk a gallon.
Then we lay down. Just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard Umbopa
remark to himself in Zulu—
“If we cannot find water we shall all be dead before the moon rises
to-morrow.”
I shuddered, hot as it was. The near prospect of such an awful death is
not pleasant, but even the thought of it could not keep me from
sleeping.