Henry Bryden - From Veldt Camp Fires

“From the search we had had, I made no doubt that a fortnight’s careful hunting in this valley would make me a millionaire, or something very like it. At length I was satisfied, and as the westering sun was fast stooping to his couch, with a light heart and elastic step I turned with Klaas to depart. The excitement of the ‘find’ had quite banished the remembrance of that awful tunnel passage so recently encountered.

“‘We’ll go back now, Klaas,’ said I, ‘sleep in your grandfather’s kraal, and get to the waggon first thing in the morning; then I shall arrange to return and camp a fortnight in Paarl Kloof, leaving the waggon at the pool. In that time we shall be able to pick up diamonds enough to enrich ourselves and all belonging to us for generations. I don’t mind then who discovers the valley; they can make another Kimberley of it if they choose, for aught I care.’

“At half-past five we again entered the tunnel. It was a nasty business when one thought of it again, but it would soon be over. As it flashed across my brain, I thought at the moment that two such journeys a day for six or seven days would be quite as much as even the greediest diamond lover could stomach. As before, Klaas went first, and for half the distance all went well. Suddenly, as we came to a sandy part of the tunnel, there was a scuffle in front, a fierce exclamation in Bushman language, and then Klaas called out in a hoarse voice, ‘Allemaghte, sieur, een slang het mij gebissen!’” (Almighty, sir, a snake has bitten me!)

“Heavens, what a situation! Cooped up in this frightful burrow, face to face with probably a deadly snake, which had already bitten my companion! Almost immediately Klaas’s voice came back to me in a hoarse guttural whisper, ‘I have him by the neck, sieur; it is a puff-adder and his teeth are sticking into my shoulder. If you will creep up and lay hold of his tail, which is your side of me, we can settle him, but I can’t get his teeth out without your help.’ As you will remember, the puff-adder’s striking fangs are very curved and are often difficult to disengage once it has made its strike. Poor Klaas! I felt certain his days must be numbered, but there was nothing for it; I must help him.

“Crawling forwards and feeling my way with fright-benumbed fingers, I touched Klaas’s leg. Then softly moving my left hand I was suddenly smitten by a horrible writhing tail. I seized it with both hands, and finally gripped the horrid reptile (which I felt to be swollen with rage, as is the brute’s habit) in an iron grasp with both hands. Then I felt, in the black darkness, Klaas take a fresh grip of the loathsome creature’s neck, and with an effort, disengage the deadly fangs from his shoulder. Immediately I felt him draw his knife, and after a struggle, sever the serpent’s head from its body. The head he pushed away to the right, as far out of our course as possible, and then I dragged the writhing body from him, and, shuddering, cast it behind me as far as possible.

“At that moment I thought that, for the first time in my life, I must have swooned. But, luckily, I bethought me of poor faithful Klaas, sore stricken, and I called to him in as cheerful a voice as I could muster, ‘Get forward, Klaas, for your life, as hard as you can, and, please God, we’ll pull you through.’

“Never had I admired the Bushman’s fierce courage more than now. Most men would have sunk upon the sand and given up life and hope. Not so this aboriginal. ‘Ja, sieur, I will loup,’ was all he said.

“Then we scrambled onward, occasionally halting as the deadly sickness overtook Klaas; but all the while I pushed him forwards and urged him with my voice. At last the light came, and as my poor Bushman grew feebler and more slow, I found room to pass him and so dragged him behind me to the opening into Paarl Kloof. Here I propped him for a moment on the sand outside, with his back to the mountain, and loudly called ‘Ariseep,’ while I got breath for a moment.

“The sun was sinking in blood-red splendour behind the mountains, and the kloof and rock-walls were literally aglow with the parting blush of day. Nature looked calm and serenely beautiful and hushed in a splendour that ill-accorded with the agitating scene there at the mouth of the tunnel. All this flashed across me as I called for the old man. I looked anxiously at Klaas and examined his wound; there were two deep punctures in the left shoulder, and from his having had to use some degree of force to drag off the reptile, the orifices were more torn than is usual in cases of snake-bite. Klaas was now breathing heavily and getting dull and stupefied I took him in my arms and carried him to Ariseep’s kraal, whence the old man was just emerging. At sight of his grandfather, Klaas rallied and rapidly told him what had happened, and the old man at once plunged into his hut for something.

“Thin Klaas’s eyelids drooped and he became drowsy, almost senseless. In vain I roused him and tried to make him walk and so stay the baleful effects of the poison now running riot in his blood; he was too far gone. Ariseep now re-appeared with a small skin bag, out of which he took some dirty-looking powder. With an old knife he scored the skin and flesh around Klaas’s wound and then rubbed in the powder. I had no brandy or ammonia to administer, and therefore let the old Bushman pursue his remedy, though I felt, somehow, it would be useless. So it proved; either the antidote, with which I believe Bushmen often do effect wonderful cures, was stale and inefficacious, or the poison had obtained too strong a hold. My poor Klaas never became conscious again, though I fancied eagerly that he recognised me before he died, for his lips moved as he turned to me once. His pulse sank and sank, his face became dull and ashen, his eyelids quivered a little, his breath came hard and laboured, and at last, within an hour and a half from the time he was bitten, he lay dead.

“So perished my faithful and devoted henchman; the stoutest, truest, bravest soul that ever African sun shone upon. I cannot express to you the true and unutterable grief I felt, as, with old Ariseep, I buried poor Klaas when the moon rose that night. We placed him gently in a deep sandy spruit, and over the sand piled heavy stones to keep the vermin from him.

“Then, laying myself within Ariseep’s kraal, I waited for the slothful dawn. As it came, I rose, called Ariseep from his hut, and bade farewell to him as best I could, for we neither of us understood one another. I noticed, by-the-bye, that no sign of grief seemed to trouble the old man. Probably he was too aged, and had seen too much death to think much about the matter.

“The rest of my story is soon finished. I made my way back to camp, told my men what had happened, and indeed took some of them back with me to Klaas’s grave and made them exhume the body to satisfy themselves of the cause of death – for these men are sometimes very suspicious – then we covered him again securely against wandering beasts and birds.

“I trekked back to the Old Colony, sold off my things and came home. The diamonds I had brought away realised in England 22,000 pounds. I have never dreamt of going to the fatal valley again; nothing on earth would tempt me after that ill-starred journey, heavy with the fate of Klaas and the Bechuana boy, Amazi. As for the tunnel, I would not venture once more into its recesses for all the diamonds in Africa, even if they lay piled in heaps at the other end of it. Except old Ariseep, Klaas had no relation that I knew of, and it was useless to think of spending the diamond-money in that quarter. The old fellow had, so far as I could make him understand me, utterly refused to accompany me from the kloof, where he evidently meant to end his days; even if he had come, what could I have done for him? At his time of life, and with his peculiar habits, he could hardly have begun the world again, even if I had brought him home, bought him a country house, taken rooms in Piccadilly, dressed him in the height of fashion and launched him upon society.