Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Fiction; English fiction; Xhosa (African people) -- Fiction
He had never rested after his rescue till he traced out the Trails, who
had terrible misgivings about him; but they could not prevail upon him
to return to Westleyfield; their settled mode of life was by no means so
agreeable to him as the one he led with the troops. He could seldom be
coaxed from head-quarters, the band acted upon him as a spell; but he
grew attached to Captain Frankfort before he became his servant, and
hung about the stable with the groom, who was happy to find his
recommendation of May confirmed in a way that satisfied the sportsman.
The English groom remained at head-quarters while trusty May went up the
country with Frankfort and Ormsby.
He had married in the colony, and made a bridal tour into the Winterberg
mountains with his wife--a Christian Hottentot gin with a dash of white
blood on her father's side, of which she was justly proud!--to introduce
her to his friends the Trails, and repeated his visit on the birth of
his child, when Mr Trail christened the creature Ellen, after his wife.
They did not return to Westleyfield; that station was handed over to
the charge of an older missionary, whose tall sons made almost a
garrison of defence among themselves.
May returned to the colony with Fitje and his child. Fitje, like
himself, had been brought up among people from whom she had imbibed
habits of civilisation,--would I could say, industry! but this would be
contrary to the nature of the Hottentot, however utter idleness and vice
may be overcome by good example: but they worked when they were
penniless, and, in spite of indolent propensities, Fitje made a good and
tender mother, and a most kind wife. She loved gossiping in the
sunshine, she could not resist a dance to the music of the drums and
fifes; but she did not smoke a pipe, she was an excellent washerwoman,
and she was a regular attendant at the Dutch chapel. She had a
Hottentot taste for smart _douks_, but she never tasted Cape brandy; and
when May fell under Captain Frankfort's care, she was so proud, that she
would not associate with her earlier acquaintance. She and May had a
little Kafir hut to themselves near Frankfort's garden, and the family
of the bushman, his merry-hearted wife and good-tempered baby, presented
a picture as agreeable to look at, in a moral point of view, as that of
any independent gentleman on earth.
I think we left him retiring to his mat under the store-waggon of the
sportsmen. Fitje and the child slept beside him soundly, albeit at
midnight the moon's rays slanted right across their swarthy faces.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning in Kafirland! The air is filled with delicious perfume. The
toman is spinning about in the hazy atmosphere, the jackals are quietly
wending their way across the plains, looking back at times, in brute
wonderment, perhaps at that great sun; the spider has spread her silver
tissue across the pathways to ensnare the unwary; and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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