Part 8 (2/2)

Bitter was the poor child's disappointment when she heard that the Governor did not live in Cape Town after all. However, Kanu was sanguine now of being able to locate the dwelling they had so long and so painfully sought for.

Kanu soon lit a fire and cooked the chickens, which proved tender and toothsome. The Bushman ate hardly anything but the entrails. He lied freely to Elsie in regard to the manner in which he had come by the birds, and waxed n.o.bly mendacious as to the amount of food which he pretended to have enjoyed during the day.

Next morning Elsie's feet were still so much inflamed that she could hardly put them to the ground. Kanu gave her the rest of the meat,-- which, as the chickens had been but small to begin with--came to very little. Then he bade her farewell, promising to be back as early in the afternoon as possible, and started on his way along the western flank of the mountain to Rondebosch.

He crossed the high neck which connects the eminence known as ”the Devil's Peak” with Table Mountain. This name used then to cause great scandal to the Dutch colonists,--the term being an unconscious perversion by the English of the original name of ”Duiven's,” or ”Dove's” Peak. Then he descended the almost perpendicular gorge to the thickets behind Groot Schuur, and soon found himself in the straggling village of Rondebosch.

It did not take him long to find the big house with the tall stone shafts before it, as described by the old beggar. His eye caught a glint of scarlet through the trees,--yes, there were the two soldiers walking up and down, armed with guns from the muzzles of which long bright knives projected.

However, it was best to make sure, so he took up a position fronting the house, but on the opposite side of the road. He saw people going in and coming out, some in scarlet and some in wonderfully s.h.i.+ny black clothes.

Several people pa.s.sed by, but they all looked too important for him to accost. At length a miserable-looking coloured woman hobbled by and he plucked up courage to address her:

”What are those two men walking up and down for?”

”Who are you that you don't know soldiers when you see them?”

”Are these soldiers;--and what are they doing here?”

”Taking care of the Governor, of course. That is his house.”

At last. Well, he had found what he wanted, and there was nothing to do now but to tell Elsie, and bring her out here as soon as her feet were better.

But now that the excitement of the quest which had sustained him hitherto was over, a sudden agony of hunger gripped his vitals like a vice, and he felt that he must presently eat or die. Elsie, too! He had only left her a bite of cold chicken. He would go and seek for more prey. The whip was clean forgotten. Hunger--supremely agonising hunger--held him by the throat. He would go and seek for more fowls.

There must be other places on the outskirts of the city where they were obtainable. So Kanu started swiftly back along the main road to Cape Town, with all his faculties concentrated upon fowls and the stealing thereof.

It was early afternoon when he reached the outskirts of the city. The sun shone oppressively; there was hardly a soul to be seen.

He pa.s.sed a little shop, the proprietor of which,--a stout Malay, was apparently sleeping under a small awning hung over the front to protect the wares from the sun. A barrow, piled with cakes and other comestibles, stood at his side. They were queer, outlandish-looking eatables, such as Kanu had never seen before. The sight and the smell made him wolfish. He looked up and down the street; not a soul was in sight. He tightened his left arm against his side and let a fold of the ragged kaross hang over it like a bag. Then he shuffled his feet on the ground to test the slumber of the Malay, who gave no sign of observance.

Then he clutched as many of the cakes as his hands would hold, placed them in his improvised bag, and hurried away on tip-toe. Just afterwards a strong grasp compressed his neck and he was borne to the ground. When he managed to turn his head he saw the enraged countenance of the Malay glaring down upon him.

Kanu stood in the dock, looking like the terrified wild animal that he was, and pleaded ”guilty” to stealing the cakes. He had spent the night in a foetid cell with a number of other delinquents who had been sc.u.mmed off the streets. The case attracted no particular attention, being one of a cla.s.s very common in, it may be supposed, every city.

The prisoner took some pains to explain to the bench how hungry--how _very_ hungry he had been, and how he had found it impossible to pa.s.s by the food after he had seen and smelt it.

The magistrate asked Kanu where he had come from and what he was doing in. Cape Town. The reply came in the form of a long, rambling statement which caused the minor officials to t.i.tter audibly, and the obvious untruthfulness of which caused His Wors.h.i.+p, to frown with judicial severity. He had, come--the Bushman said--from a great distance, but from what exact locality he begged to be excused from saying. His business in Cape Town was ”a big thing”; no less than an interview with the Governor. If Mynheer would only let him go to seek a companion who was waiting for him, and who must, by this time, be very hungry indeed;--and would let him have a piece of bread--just one little piece of bread no bigger than his hand, he would promise to return at once.--And if Mynheer would let him and his companion be taken before the Governor, Mynheer would soon see that the story he told was true.

Then he went on to say that he knew that he had done wrong in stealing the cakes, and consequently he deserved punishment, but Mynheer must please remember how hungry he had been, and how hungry his companion had been, and not give him the whip. He had heard that ”brown people” were whipped in Cape Town if they stole, which was quite right if they stole when they were not hungry. He had never stolen before; he had only stolen this time because he could get nothing to eat, and had been unable to find the Governor. Only two things he begged of Mynheer: to let him go to his companion with a little piece of bread;--she had had nothing to eat since yesterday morning, and must be very hungry now, and frightened, for she had been alone all night. The other favour was that Mynheer might spare him the whip.

By this time everyone in court,--except His Wors.h.i.+p, who had no sense of humour,--was almost convulsed with merriment at the quaint and guileful fictions of the Bushman. Where, wondered carelessly some of the more thoughtful, had this ”_onbeschafte_” savage learnt to practise such artful hocus pocus. It was, they thought, an interesting object lesson, as proving the essential and hopelessly-mendacious depravity of the Bushman race.

His Wors.h.i.+p was ”down on” vagrancy in all its forms. Probably, being responsible for the good order of the city, he had to be. His official harangue in pa.s.sing sentence was not long, nor,--with the exception of the last paragraph,--interesting, even to Kanu. This last paragraph struck into the brain of the Bushman with a smart like that produced by one of the poisoned arrows of his own race, for it sentenced him to receive that whipping the dread of which had persistently haunted his waking and sleeping dreams. In addition he was to be imprisoned for a week--the greater portion of which had to be spent upon spare diet.

After this he had to leave the precincts of the city within twenty-four hours, on pain of a further application of the lash.

Kanu, the Bushman thief, received his stripes dumbly, as a wild animal should; but the bitter physical agony which he underwent when the cruel lash cut through the skin of his emaciated body expressed itself in writhings and contortions which, the prison warders said (and they spoke from an extended experience), were funnier than any they had ever seen before. The spare diet he did not so much mind, being well accustomed to that sort of thing.

After the shock of his punishment, which had dulled every other feeling for the time, had somewhat pa.s.sed away, Kanu realised that by this time Elsie must surely be dead, and he fell, accordingly, into bitter, if savage, tribulation. But soon he found himself thinking, in quite a civilised way, that it was better, after all, that the blind child should be free from her sufferings. Then Kanu turned his face to the wall of his cell and slept with inconsiderable waking intervals, throughout the rest of his period of durance.

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