Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland Read online

  Produced by Sue Asscher

  TROOPER PETER HALKET OF MASHONALAND

  by Olive Schreiner

  Author of "Dreams," "Dream Life and Real Life," "The Story of an AfricanFarm," etc.

  Colonial Edition

  (A photographic plate at the front of the book shows three peoplehanging from a tree by their necks. Around them stand eight men, lookingnot at all troubled by their participation in the scene. Of this eventall the survivors appear to be white, the victims black. The plate istitled "From a Photograph taken in Matabeleland." S.A.)

  To a Great Good Man, Sir George Grey,

  Once Governor of the Cape Colony, who, during his rule in South Africa,bound to himself the Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Natives he governed, byan uncorruptible justice and a broad humanity; and who is rememberedamong us today as representing the noblest attributes of an ImperialRule.

  "Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning."

  Olive Schreiner.

  19, Russell Road, Kensington, W., February, 1897.

  Aardvark - The great anteater. Cape Smoke - A very inferior brandy made in Cape Colony. Kopje - Little hillock. Kraal - A Kaffir encampment. Mealies - Maize (corn). Riem - A thong of undressed leather universally used in South Africa. Vatje of Old Dop - A little cask of Cape brandy. Veld - Open Country.

  Chapter I.

  It was a dark night; a chill breath was coming from the east; not enoughto disturb the blaze of Trooper Peter Halket's fire, yet enough to makeit quiver. He sat alone beside it on the top of a kopje.

  All about was an impenetrable darkness; not a star was visible in theblack curve over his head.

  He had been travelling with a dozen men who were taking provisions ofmealies and rice to the next camp. He had been sent out to act as scoutalong a low range of hills, and had lost his way. Since eight in themorning he had wandered among long grasses, and ironstone kopjes, andstunted bush, and had come upon no sign of human habitation, but theremains of a burnt kraal, and a down-trampled and now uncultivatedmealie field, where a month before the Chartered Company's forces haddestroyed a native settlement.

  Three times in the day it had appeared to him that he had returned tothe very spot from which he had started; nor was it his wish to travelvery far, for he knew his comrades would come back to look for him, tothe neighbourhood where he had last been seen, when it was found at theevening camping ground that he did not appear.

  Trooper Peter Halket was very weary. He had eaten nothing all day; andhad touched little of the contents of a small flask of Cape brandyhe carried in his breast pocket, not knowing when it would again bereplenished.

  As night drew near he determined to make his resting place on the top ofone of the kopjes, which stood somewhat alone and apart from the others.He could not easily be approached there, without his knowing it. He hadnot much fear of the natives; their kraals had been destroyed and theirgranaries burnt for thirty miles round, and they themselves had fled:but he feared, somewhat, the lions, which he had never seen, but ofwhich he had heard, and which might be cowering in the long grasses andbrushwood at the kopje's foot:--and he feared, vaguely, he hardly knewwhat, when he looked forward to his first long night alone in the veld.

  By the time the sun had set he had gathered a little pile of stumps andbranches on the top of the kopje. He intended to keep a fire burning allnight; and as the darkness began to settle down he lit it. It mightbe his friends would see it from far, and come for him early in themorning; and wild beasts would hardly approach him while he knelt besideit; and of the natives he felt there was little fear.

  He built up the fire; and determined if it were possible to keep awakethe whole night beside it.

  He was a slight man of middle height, with a sloping forehead and paleblue eyes: but the jaws were hard set, and the thin lips of the largemouth were those of a man who could strongly desire the material good oflife, and enjoy it when it came his way. Over the lower half of the facewere scattered a few soft white hairs, the growth of early manhood.

  From time to time he listened intently for possible sounds from thedistance where his friends might be encamped, and might fire off theirguns at seeing his light; or he listened yet more intently for soundsnearer at hand: but all was still, except for the occasional crackingof the wood in his own fire, and the slight whistle of the breeze as itcrept past the stones on the kopje. He doubled up his great hat and putit in the pocket of his overcoat, and put on a little two-pointed caphis mother had made for him, which fitted so close that only one lockof white hair hung out over his forehead. He turned up the collar of hiscoat to shield his neck and ears, and threw it open in front that theblaze of the fire might warm him. He had known many nights colder thanthis when he had sat around the camp fire with his comrades, talking ofthe niggers they had shot or the kraals they had destroyed, or grumblingover their rations; but tonight the chill seemed to creep into his verybones.

  The darkness of the night above him, and the silence of the veld abouthim, oppressed him. At times he even wished he might hear the cry of ajackal or of some larger beast of prey in the distance; and he wishedthat the wind would blow a little louder, instead of making that littlewheezing sound as it passed the corners of the stones. He looked downat his gun, which lay cocked ready on the ground at his right side;and from time to time he raised his hand automatically and fingered thecartridges in his belt. Then he stretched out his small wiry hands tothe fire and warmed them. It was only half past ten, and it seemed tohim he had been sitting here ten hours at the least.

  After a while he threw two more large logs on the fire, and took theflask out of his pocket. He examined it carefully by the firelight tosee how much it held: then he took a small draught, and examined itagain to see how much it had fallen; and put it back in his breastpocket.

  Then Trooper Peter Halket fell to thinking.

  It was not often that he thought. On patrol and sitting round camp fireswith the other men about him there was no time for it; and Peter Halkethad never been given to much thinking. He had been a careless boy at thevillage school; and though, when he left, his mother paid the villageapothecary to read learned books with him at night on history andscience, he had not retained much of them. As a rule he lived in theworld immediately about him, and let the things of the moment impingeon him, and fall off again as they would, without much reflection.But tonight on the kopje he fell to thinking, and his thoughts shapedthemselves into connected chains.

  He wondered first whether his mother would ever get the letter he hadposted the week before, and whether it would be brought to her cottageor she would go to the post office to fetch it. And then, he fell tothinking of the little English village where he had been born, and wherehe had grown up. He saw his mother's fat white ducklings creep in andout under the gate, and waddle down to the little pond at the back ofthe yard; he saw the school house that he had hated so much as aboy, and from which he had so often run away to go a-fishing, ora-bird's-nesting. He saw the prints on the school house wall on whichthe afternoon sun used to shine when he was kept in; Jesus of Judeablessing the children, and one picture just over the door where he hungwith his arms stretched out and the blood dropping from his feet. ThenPeter Halket thought of the tower at the ruins which he had climbed sooften for birds' eggs; and he saw his mother standing at her cottagegate when he came home in the evening, and he felt her arms round hisneck as she kissed him; but he felt her tears on his cheek, because hehad run away from school all day; and he seemed to be making apologiesto her, and promising he never would do it again if only she would notcry. He had often thought of her since he left her, on board ship, and
when he was working with the prospectors, and since he had joined thetroop; but it had been in a vague way; he had not distinctly seen andfelt her. But tonight he wished for her as he used to when he wasa small boy and lay in his bed in the next room, and saw her shadowthrough the door as she bent over her wash-tub earning the money whichwas to feed and clothe him. He remembered how he called her and she cameand tucked him in and called him "Little Simon," which was his secondname and had been his father's, and which she only called him when hewas in bed at night, or when he was hurt.

  He sat there staring into the blaze. He resolved he would make a greatdeal of money, and she should live with him. He would build a largehouse in the West End of London, the biggest that had ever been seen,and another in the country, and they should never work any more.

  Peter Halket sat as one turned into stone, staring into the fire.

  All men made money when they came to South Africa,--Barney Barnato,Rhodes--they all made money out of the