Part 8 (1/2)
Kanu now tried to shape his course towards the harbour of the previous night, trying to avoid the more frequented streets. But the instinct by means of which the Bushman could find his way unerringly through the desert s.p.a.ces in the deepest darkness, was useless to him here, in an unnatural environment. He had lost all perception of distance, direction and locality.
But yonder, impa.s.sive above this scene of persecution and confusion, towered the bastioned crags of the great mountain. This at least was a wild, natural object Kanu turned towards it as a drowning man turns towards an islet suddenly seen close at hand in a waste of waters, and pressed up the steepening slope. The shouts of the horrible boys became fainter and fainter as the waifs struggled up the rocky terraces. It was sundown before they reached a rugged ledge at the foot of the main precipice. Here were thick bushes and great irregular ma.s.ses of rock scattered formlessly about; between them the tough mountain gra.s.s was thickly matted. Elsie sank to the ground and lay as if dead. She had got beyond tears; even the sense of pain had nearly died in her.
Fortunately, Kanu still had his wallet, and in it was the piece of bread which their kind entertainer had given them in the morning. There was a bright trickle of cool water issuing from a cleft at the foot of the cliff, and to this Kanu led the child after she had rested for a s.p.a.ce.
She had been for some time dreadfully thirsty, although hardly aware of the fact, and a drink of the cool water somewhat revived her. Then she removed her shoes and stockings, and placed her feet on a stone where the water splashed upon them. When Kanu placed a piece of bread in her hand she began mechanically to eat it.
The site was suitable as a camping-place. It was hemmed in by a loose-linked chain of great, irregular rocks, and, from the absence of paths in the neighbourhood, was evidently not often visited by human beings. Around were strewn soft cus.h.i.+ons of moss and sheaves of waving gra.s.s swayed from high tussocks. Dead wood from the fallen branches of sugar-bushes lay about in considerable quant.i.ties. Kanu gathered a number of these together and lit a fire at the back of the largest of the rocks.
The weather was perfect. At the Cape, Spring performs her duties at the time which chronologically ought to be Winter. Thus, by the time her own proper season arrives, the flowers have already emerged to meet the mild, cloudless, steadfast sky, which, where the ground lies at any considerable elevation, scorches not by day nor chills by night. Thus, the unthinking cruelty of man was, in the case of these derelicts, in a measure compensated for by the careless kindness of the heavens.
”Kanu,--what shall we do?” asked Elsie at length, in a dejected voice.
”I do not know. It seems to be against the law down here to ask about the Governor,” replied the Bushman, reminiscent of the possibility of the whip.
”Kanu,--have you seen the island where the prison is?”
”Yes,--it is far away across the water. If the water were land it would take half a day to walk to it.”
After some further discussion it was finally agreed that next day Kanu was to leave Elsie on the mountain and continue his search for the Governor's residence alone. So at break of day the Bushman stole down the mountain side and continued his quest. At length he met one who vouchsafed a reply to his question. This was a blind Hottentot beggar whom he met being led by a little child to the street-corner where he was wont to ply his trade.
”The Governor,” replied the beggar, with an air of superiority, ”lives at Rondebosch, which is at the other side of the mountain, at this time of the year. I know this, because my niece, who is a washerwoman and washes for his coachman, told me so.”
”Is it against the law to ask where the Governor lives?”
”No,--why should it be against the law?”
”Then one cannot be whipped for asking?”
”Whipped? no; what an idea. But there are many things a Hottentot can get whipped for, all the same.”
”What kind of things?” asked Kanu, starting.
”Oh, plenty; stealing, for instance, or getting drunk, or being found in a garden at night. But who are you and where do you come from?”
Kanu was not prepared to answer on these points. However, he managed to elicit some further particulars,--for instance that if he walked along the main road he would pa.s.s the Governor's house on his right hand; that the house had big pillars of stone before it; that two soldiers with red coats and guns walked up and down in front of it night and day.
Kanu hurried away towards Rondebosch. Two things it was imperatively necessary to do,--to locate the Governor's house, and to get something for Elsie and himself to eat. He had left Elsie a small portion of bread,--hardly enough to serve for the scantiest of breakfasts. His own hunger was horrible. In spite of the tightening of his bark belt, which now nearly cut into his skin--the Bushman tribal expedient for minimising the pangs of famine--he was in agony. He pa.s.sed the fruit market and saw piles of luscious eatables that made his mouth water, and the odour of which made him almost faint with longing. All this plenty around him--whilst he and Elsie were starving. He hurried away, the wild animal in him prompting to a pounce upon the nearest table, to be followed by a bolt. He knew his legs were swift, but there were too many people about and he would be sure to be caught. Stealing, he remembered with a tingling of the shoulders, stood first in the old beggar's category of deeds for which one might get whipped.
A thought struck him,--he would first locate the Governor's house, then return and try, by following the course he had taken the first day, to rediscover the dwelling of the charitable woman who kept the little shop. But Rondebosch was on the other side of the mountain; would he be able to go there and back without food? Well, there was nothing else to be done. He would try it at all events.
But after he had walked a few hundred yards his hunger got the better of him and he turned back and began to search for the woman's dwelling. He reached the hotel with the wide stoep; from there he had no difficulty in reaching the store which the waiter had pointed out to him as the Governor's house. After this, however, he could no more unravel his way among the unfamiliar lines of exactly-similar houses, than a bird could find its way through a labyrinth of mole-burrows.
So the day drew to a close without Kanu obtaining any food. His own agony of hunger had given place, for the time being, to a sick feeling of weakness; it was Elsie's plight that now filled his thoughts. Food he must have, so he decided to steal the first edible thing he saw and trust to his swift running for escape. The whip was only a contingency, albeit a dreadful one,--but the hunger was a horrible actuality. Kanu made for the outskirts of the city and began to prowl about seeking for food to steal.
In the valley between Table Mountain and the Lion's Head were the dwellings of a number of coloured people of the very lowest cla.s.s. Most of the dwellings were miserable huts built of sacking and other rubbish, and standing in small clearings made in the thick, primaeval scrub. In the vicinity of some of these huts fowls were pecking about Kanu skirted the inhabited part of the valley, marking, with a view to possible contingencies, the huts near which fowls appeared to be most plentiful.
In a path near a hut which stood somewhat distant from any others, the matchless eye of the Bushman discerned a well-grown brood of chickens, evidently just released from parental tutelage. A swift glance showed him how he might, un.o.bserved, get between them and the hut. After worming his way through the scrub he emerged close to the unsuspicious poultry, into the midst of which he flung his stick, quick as lightning and with practised hand. Two chickens lay struggling on the ground.
The others fled homeward, with wild cacklings.
Within the s.p.a.ce of a couple of seconds Kanu had clutched the two unhappy fowls, wrung their necks and wrapped them up in his tattered kaross. Then he sprang aside, ran for a few yards and dropped like a stone. A man and a boy came rus.h.i.+ng up the pathway and then commenced searching the thicket in every direction. Once the man pa.s.sed within a yard of the trembling Bushman, whose back began to tingle painfully.
However the danger pa.s.sed, so after a short time he crept along through the thicket to a safe distance, and then fled up to the mountain side to where he had left Elsie.