Part 21 (1/2)
Of the chain of beautiful and pleasant suburban towns following the railway north, the most important as a summer resort, is Kalk Bay. One who has visited the beach at Newport, R. I., in the United States, will, upon visiting Kalk Bay, see a resemblance. Unlike the long sweep of ocean at Atlantic City, the beach is narrow, being rather a bay than an open ocean front. Instead of the cliffs as at Newport, we have the ma.s.sive mountains standing almost perpendicularly on the east side, at the foot of which the town is situated.
The princ.i.p.al vocation among the laboring men there is fis.h.i.+ng. In this respect it is very much like Bermuda. They go to sea and return according to the tide. Some days they are out by two and three o'clock in the morning. When they go this early they may be expected to return by noon or even before noon.
I was told that of the sixty-five fis.h.i.+ng boats on the Bay fifty-six are owned by colored men. There are six men to a crew, five beside the captain, who is the owner of the boat. They sail out to sea, drop anchor, and fish with hook and line. Half of what is caught belongs to the captain, and the other half is equally divided among the other five men. They can scarcely supply the market, so great is the demand for fish at the Bay and in Cape Town. We were informed that a captain has been known to make as much as eight pounds in a single day; that is nearly forty dollars. Of course, there are days when they have poorer luck. Some days the wind blows such a gale that they are unable to go to sea at all.
It is a beautiful sight to see the little fleet return. Hundreds of people will gather about the landing and await their coming.
Farther up the bay, a drag net is used. On the day of our visit we were fortunate in being just in time to see a net land ”full of great fishes.” As the net is hauled near the sh.o.r.e, the fishermen all get around it, holding the lower portion of it down to keep the fish from escaping under it and holding the upper portion above the water to keep them from jumping over it. As the fish are drawn into shallow water they become very active, and notwithstanding the vigilance of the crew, some will make their escape. The captain would shout impulsively to the men; I could not understand him as he expressed himself in ”Cape Dutch,”
but from the contortions of his face and the frightened look of the men, I guess he must have been using language that would not have been suitable in a church service. ”A good haul,” some one remarked when the net was finally landed.
BISHOP ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD
W. H. CROGMAN
It is indeed the peculiar glory of the truly great man, that he cannot be restricted within the State lines or race lines. Wide as the sweep of his sympathies is the empire of hearts over which he rules. To those of us, therefore, whose good fortune it was to be personally acquainted with Bishop Haygood, it was never a surprise that his influence in both sections of country and among all cla.s.ses of people was so large and so commanding. He was a man of large sympathy, that royal quality in the human breast which invariably distinguishes the generous person from the mean, that divine quality which, despite our prejudices and antipathies, ”makes the whole world kin,” and is at the bottom of all Christian and philanthropic endeavor.
A thousand instances of kindness on the part of the good bishop to persons of all sorts and colors might, I suppose, be cited here in support of the statement made with reference to his sympathetic disposition. Many of these little acts of pure benevolence, never intended for the light, are fast coming to light under the shadow cast by his death. For as dark nights best reveal the stars, so the gloom that at times envelopes a human life discovers to us its hidden virtues.
This much, however, the world knows in common of Bishop Haygood: He was not a man who pa.s.sed through life inquiring, ”Who is my neighbor?” His neighbor was the ignorant that needed to be instructed, the vicious that needed to be reclaimed, the despondent that needed to be encouraged.
Wherever honest effort was being made for a n.o.ble purpose, there he found his neighbor, and his neighbor found a helper. Like ”The Man of Galilee,” he was abroad in the land, studying the needs of the people and striving to reach and influence individual lives.
HOW TWO COLORED CAPTAINS FELL
RALPH W. TYLER
A colored unit was ordered to charge, and take, if possible, a very difficult objective held by the Germans. Captains Fairfax and Green, two colored officers, were in command of the detachments. They made the charge, running into several miles of barb-wire entanglements, and hampered by a murderous fire from nests of German machine guns which were camouflaged.
Just before charging, one of the colored sergeants, running up to Captain Fairfax, said: ”Do you know there is a nest of German machine guns ahead?”
The Captain replied: ”I only know we have been ordered to go forward, and we are going.”
Those were the last words he said, before giving the command to charge, ”into the jaws of death.” The colored troops followed their intrepid leader with all the enthusiasm and dash characteristic of patriots and courageous fighters. They went forward, they obeyed the order, and as a result sixty-two men and two officers were listed in the casualties reported.
Captain Fairfax's last words, ”I only know we have been ordered to go forward, and we are going,” are words that will forever live in the memory of his race; they are words that match those of Sergeant Carney, the color sergeant of the 54th Ma.s.sachusetts during the Civil War, who, although badly wounded, held the tattered, shot-pierced Stars and Stripes aloft and exclaimed, ”The old flag never touched the ground!”
Men who have served under Captains Fairfax and Green say two braver officers never fought and fell.
THE YOUNG WARRIOR
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON