Jock of the Bushveld

Chapter Twelve.

Jim Makokel’

I am very much afraid that most people would consider him rather a bad lot. The fact of the matter is he belonged to another period and other conditions. He was simply a great passionate fighting savage, and, instead of wearing the cast-off clothing of the white man and peacefully driving bullock waggons along a transport road, should have been decked in his savage finery of leopard skin and black ostrich-feathers, showing off the powerful bronzed limbs and body all alive with muscle, and sharing in some wild war-dance; or, equipped with shield and assegais, leading in some murderous fight. Yes, Jim was out of date: he should have been one of the great Chaka’s fighting guard – to rise as a leader of men, or be killed on the way. He had but one argument and one answer to everything: Fight! It was his nature, bred and born in him; it ran in his blood and grew in his bones. He was a survival of a great fighting race – there are still thousands of them in the kraals of Zululand and Swaziland – but it was his fate to belong to one of the expelled families, and to have to live and work among the white men under the Boer Government of the Transvaal.

In a fighting nation Jim’s kraal was known as a fighting one, and the turbulent blood that ran in their veins could not settle down into a placid stream merely because the Great White Queen had laid her hand upon his people and said, “There shall be peace!” Chaka, the ‘black Napoleon’ whose wars had cost South Africa over a million lives, had died – murdered by his brother Dingaan – full of glory, lord and master wherever his impis could reach. “Dogs whom I fed at my kraal!” he gasped, as they stabbed him. Dingaan his successor, as cruel as treacherous, had been crushed by the gallant little band of Boers under Potgieter for his fiendish massacre of Piet Retief and his little band. Panda the third of the three famous brothers – Panda the peaceful – had come and gone! Ketshwayo, after years of arrogant and unquestioned rule, had loosed his straining impis at the people of the Great White Queen. The awful day of ’Sandhl’wana – where the 24th Regiment died almost to a man – and the fight on H’lobani Mountain had blooded the impis to madness; but Rorke’s Drift and Kambula had followed those bloody victories – each within a few hours – to tell another tale; and at Ulundi the tides met – the black and the white. And the kingdom and might of the house of Chaka were no more.

Jim had fought at ’Sandhl’wana, and could tell of an umfaan sent out to herd some cattle within sight of the British camp to draw the troops out raiding while the impis crept round by hill and bush and donga behind them; of the fight made by the red-coats as, taken in detail, they were attacked hand to hand with stabbing assegais, ten and twenty to one; of one man in blue – a sailor – who was the last to die, fighting with his back to a waggon-wheel against scores before him, and how he fell at last, stabbed in the back through the spokes of the wheel by one who had crept up behind.

Jim had fought at Rorke’s Drift! Wild with lust of blood, he had gone on with the maddest of the victory-maddened lot to invade Natal and eat up the little garrison on the way. He could tell how seventy or eighty white men behind a little rampart of biscuit-tins and flour-bags had fought through the long and terrible hours, beating off five thousand of the Zulu best, fresh from a victory without parallel or precedent; how, from the burning hospital, Sergeant Hook, V.C., and others carried sick and wounded through the flames into the laager; how a man in black with a long beard, Father Walsh, moved about with calm face, speaking to some, helping others, carrying wounded back and cartridges forward – Father Walsh who said “Don’t swear, boys: fire low;” how Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead – V.C.s too for that day’s work – led and fought, and guided and heartened their heroic little band until the flour-bags and biscuit-tins stood lower than the pile of dead outside, and the Zulu host was beaten and Natal saved that day.

Jim had seen all that – and Ulundi, the Day of Despair! And he knew the power of the Great White Queen and the way that her people fight. But peace was not for him or his kraal: better any fight than no fight. He rallied to Usibepu in the fight for leadership when his King, Ketshwayo, was gone, and Jim’s kraal had moved – and moved too soon: they were surrounded one night and massacred; and Jim fought his way out, wounded and alone. Without kith or kin, cattle, king, or country, he fled to the Transvaal – to work for the first time in his life!

Waggon-boys – as the drivers were called – often acquired a certain amount of reputation on the road or in the locality where they worked; but it was, as a rule, only a reputation as good or bad drivers. In Jim’s case it was different. He was a character and had an individual reputation, which was exceptional in a Kaffir. I had better say at once that not even his best friend would claim that that reputation was a good one. He was known as the best driver, the strongest nigger, the hardest fighter, and the worst drinker on the road.

His real name was Makokela, but in accordance with a common Zulu habit, it was usually abbreviated to Makokel’! Among a certain number of the white men – of the sort who never can get any name right – he was oddly enough known as McCorkindale. I called him Jim as a rule – Makokel’, when relations were strained. The waggon-boys found it safer to use his proper name. When anything had upset him it was not considered wise to take the liberty of shouting “Jim”: the answer sometimes came in the shape of a hammering.

Many men had employed Jim before he came to me, and all had ‘sacked’ him for fighting, drinking, and the unbearable worry he caused. They told me this, and said that he gave more trouble than his work was worth. It may have been true: he certainly was a living test of patience, purpose, and management; but, for something learnt in that way, I am glad now that Jim never ‘got the sack’ from me. Why he did not, is not easy to say; perhaps the circumstances under which he came to me and the hard knocks of an unkind fate pleaded for him. But it was not that alone: there was something in Jim himself – something good and fine, something that shone out from time to time through his black skin and battered face as the soul of a real man.

It was in the first season in the Bushveld that we were outspanned one night on the sand-hills overlooking Delagoa Bay among scores of other waggons dotted about in little camps – all loading or waiting for loads to transport to the Transvaal. Delagoa was not a good place to stay in, in those days: liquor was cheap and bad; there was very little in the way of law and order; and every one took care of himself as well as he could. The Kaffir kraals were close about the town, and the natives of the place were as rascally a lot of thieves and vagabonds as you could find anywhere. The result was everlasting trouble with the waggon-boys and a chronic state of war between them and the natives and the banyans or Arab traders of the place. The boys, with pockets full of wages, haggled and were cheated in the stores, and by the hawkers, and in the canteens; and they often ended up the night with beer-drinking at the kraals or reprisals on their enemies. Every night there were fights and robberies: the natives or Indians would rob and half-kill a waggon-boy; then he in turn would rally his friends, and raid and clear out the kraal or the store. Most of the waggon-boys were Zulus or of Zulu descent, and they were always ready for a fight and would tackle any odds when their blood was up.

It was the third night of our stay, and the usual row was on. Shouts and cries, the beating of tomtoms, and shrill ear-piercing whistles, came from all sides; and through it all the dull hum of hundreds of human voices, all gabbling together. Near to us there was another camp of four waggons drawn up in close order, and as we sat talking and wondering at the strange babel in the beautiful calm moonlight night, one sound was ever recurring, coming away out of all the rest with something in it that fixed our attention. It was the sound of two voices from the next waggons. One voice was a kaffir’s – a great, deep, bull-throated voice; it was not raised – it was monotonously steady and low; but it carried far, with the ring and the lingering vibration of a big gong.

“Funa ’nyama, Inkos; funa ’nyama!” (“I want meat, Chief; I want meat!”) was what the kaffir’s voice kept repeating at intervals of a minute or two with deadly monotony and persistency.

The white man’s voice grew more impatient, louder, and angrier, with each refusal; but the boy paid no heed. A few minutes later the same request would be made, supplemented now and then with, “I am hungry, Baas, I can’t sleep. Meat! Meat! Meat!” or, “Porridge and bread are for women and piccaninnies. I am a man: I want meat, Baas, meat.” From the white man it was, “Go to sleep, I tell you!”

“Be quiet, will you?”

“Shut up that row!”

“Be still, you drunken brute, or I’ll tie you up!” and “You’ll get twenty-five in a minute!”

It may have lasted half an hour when one of our party said, “That’s Bob’s old driver, the big Zulu. There’ll be a row to-night; he’s with a foreigner chap from Natal now. New chums are always roughest on the niggers.”

In a flash I remembered Bob Saunderson’s story of the boy who had caught the lion alive, and Bob’s own words, “a real fine nigger, but a terror to drink, and always in trouble. He fairly wore me right out.”

A few minutes later there was a short scuffle, and the boy’s voice could be heard protesting in the same deep low tone: they were tying him up to the waggon-wheel for a flogging. Others were helping the white man, but the boy was not resisting.

At the second thin whistling stroke some one said, “That’s a sjambok he’s using, not a nek-strop!” Sjambok, that will cut a bullock’s hide! At about the eighth there was a wrench that made the waggon rattle, and the deep voice was raised in protest, “Ow, Inkos!”

It made me choke: it was the first I knew of such things, and the horror of it was unbearable; but the man who had spoken before – a good man too, straight and strong, and trusted by black and white – said, “Sonny, you must not interfere between a man and his boys here; it’s hard sometimes, but we’d not live a day if they didn’t know who was baas.”

I think we counted eighteen; and then everything seemed going to burst.

The white man looked about at the faces close to him – and stopped. He began slowly to untie the outstretched arms, and blustered out some threats. But no one said a word!

The noises died down as the night wore on, until the stillness was broken only by the desultory barking of a kaffir dog or the crowing of some awakened rooster who had mistaken the bright moonlight for the dawn and thought that all the world had overslept itself. But for me there was one other sound for which I listened into the cool of morning with the quivering sensitiveness of a bruised nerve. Sometimes it was a long catchy sigh, and sometimes it broke into a groan just audible, like the faintest rumble of most distant surf. Twice in the long night there came the same request to one of the boys near him, uttered in a deep clear unshaken voice and in a tone that was civil but firm, and strangely moving from its quiet indifference.

“Landela manzi, Umganaam!” (“Bring water, friend!”) was all he said; and each time the request was so quickly answered that I had the guilty feeling of being one in a great conspiracy of silence. The hush was unreal; the stillness alive with racing thoughts; the darkness full of watching eyes.

There is, we believe, in the heart of every being a little germ of justice which men call conscience! If that be so, there must have been in the heart of the white man that night some uneasy movement – the first life-throb of the thought which one who had not yet written has since set down:

The following afternoon I received an ultimatum. We had just returned from the town when from a group of boys squatting round the fire there stood up one big fellow – a stranger – who raised his hand high above his head in Zulu fashion and gave their salute in the deep bell-like voice that there was no mistaking, “Inkos! Bayete!”

He stepped forward, looking me all over, and announced with calm and settled conviction, “I have come to work for you!” I said nothing. Then he rapped a chest like a big drum, and nodding his head with a sort of defiant confidence added in quaint English, “My naam Makokela! Jim Makokel’! Yes! My catchum lion ’live! Makokela, me!”

He had heard that I wanted a driver, had waited for my return, and annexed me as his future ‘baas’ without a moment’s doubt or hesitation.

I looked him over. Big, broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, and as straight as an assegai! A neck and head like a bull’s; a face like a weather-beaten rock, storm-scarred and furrowed, rugged and ugly, but steadfast, massive and strong! So it looked then, and so it turned out: for good and for evil Jim was strong.

I nodded and said, “You can come.”

Once more he raised his head aloft, and, simply and without a trace of surprise or gratification, said:

“Yes, you are my chief, I will work for you.” In his own mind it had been settled already: it had never been in doubt.

Jim – when sober – was a splendid worker and the most willing of servants, and, drunk or sober, he was always respectful in an independent, upstanding, hearty kind of way. His manner was as rough and rugged as his face and character; in his most peaceful moments it was – to one who did not understand him – almost fierce and aggressive; but this was only skin deep; for the childlike simplicity of the African native was in him to the full, and rude bursts of Titanic laughter came readily – laughter as strong and unrestrained as his bursts of passion.

To the other boys he was what his nature and training had made him – not really a bully, but masterful and over-riding. He gave his orders with the curtness of a drill sergeant and the rude assurance of a savage chief. Walking, he walked his course, giving way for none of them. At the outspan or on the road or footpath he shouldered them aside as one walks through standing corn, not aggressively but with the superb indifference of right and habit unquestioned. If one, loitering before him, blocked his way unseeing, there was no pause or step aside – just “Suka!” (“Get out”) and a push that looked effortless enough but sent the offender staggering; or, if he had his sticks, more likely a smart whack on the stern that was still more surprising; and not even the compliment of a glance back from Jim as he stalked on. He was like the old bull in a herd – he walked his course; none molested and none disputed; the way opened before him.

When sober Jim spoke Zulu; when drunk, he broke into the strangest and most laughable medley of kitchen-Kaffir, bad Dutch, and worse English – the idea being, in part to consider our meaner intelligences and in part to show what an accomplished linguist he was. There was no difficulty in knowing when Jim would go wrong: he broke out whenever he got a chance, whether at a kraal, where he could always quicken the reluctant hospitality of any native, at a wayside canteen, or in a town. Money was fatal – he drank it all out; but want of money was no security, for he was known to every one and seemed to have friends everywhere; and if he had not, he made them on the spot – annexed and overwhelmed them.

From time to time you do meet people like that. The world’s their oyster, and the gift of a masterful and infinite confidence opens it every time: they walk through life taking of the best as a right, and the world unquestioningly submits.

I had many troubles with Jim, but never on account of white men: drunk or sober, there was never trouble there. It may have been Rorke’s Drift and Ulundi that did it; but whatever it was, the question of black and white was settled in his mind for ever. He was respectful, yet stood upright with the rough dignity of an unvanquished spirit; but on the one great issue he never raised his hand or voice again. His troubles all came from drink, and the exasperation was at times almost unbearable – so great, indeed, that on many occasions I heartily repented ever having taken him on. Warnings were useless, and punishment – well, the shiny new skin that made patterns in lines and stars and crosses on his back for the rest of his life made answer for always upon that point.

The trials and worries were often great indeed. The trouble began as soon as we reached a town, and he had a hundred excuses for going in, and a hundred more for not coming out: he had some one to see, boots to be mended, clothes to buy, or medicine to get – the only illness I ever knew him have was ‘a pain inside,’ and the only medicine wanted – grog! – some one owed him money – a stock excuse, and the idea of Jim, always penniless and always in debt, posing as a creditor never failed to raise a laugh, and he would shake his head with a half-fierce half-sad disgust at the general scepticism and his failure to convince me. Then he had relations in every town! Jim, the sole survivor of his fighting kraal, produced ‘blulus,’ ‘babas,’ ‘sisteles,’ and even ‘mamas,’ in profusion, and they died just before we reached the place, as regularly as the office-boy’s aunt dies before Derby Day, and with the same consequence – he had to go to the funeral.