The Outspan: Tales of South Africa. Fitzpatrick Percy
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winked solemnly at me.
The Judge brought matters to a practical issue by telling our friend that he “had much better wait at our waggons for the good boy that speaks English so well.”
“It ain’t,” said Key, “es if he couldn’t find you. A Kaffir kin find you most anywhere if he wants to – ’specially them English-speakin’ ones,” he added, with a twinkle in his eyes.
Key did not wait for any reply, but turned the “yaller gripsack” over and looked at the name, “Adolf Soltké,” painted in big white letters.
“Your name?” he asked in chaff, rather than that he doubted it.
“My name, yea Soltké – Adolf Soltké – coom from Germany, but in der colonie I was leetle times.”
“Took you for Amurrikan,” said the Judge, without a vestige of a smile.
I looked hastily at Soltké, feeling that his broken, halting English should have protected him from such outrageous fooling, but my solicitude was misplaced. Soltké calmly, but firmly, disclaimed all knowledge of America, and repeated that he was a German.
Key shouldered the portmanteau with the curt suggestion, “Waal, let’s git!” and as our friend – except by his protestations of gratitude and wild endeavours to carry the whole of the kit himself – offered no hindrance to the proposed scheme, we marched along briskly to overtake the waggons.
A bullock-waggon is a slow one to travel with, but a bad one to catch, as anyone knows who has tried it; and it was close on midnight when, tired and dusty, we came suddenly on the waggons outspanned in a small opening in the Bush.
The silence was absolutely ghostly, except when now and then a bullock would give a big long sigh, or a sappy stick in the fire would crack and hiss.
Gowan was sitting over the fire on a three-legged rough-wood stool, head in hands and elbows on knees, with the odd jets of flame lighting up his solemn old face and shaggy brown beard. The others had turned in. He stood up slowly as we came up and extended a hand to Soltké, saying baldly:
“How are ye?”
Our friend took the inquiry in a literal sense, and was engaged in answering it, when Gowan cut in with a remark that it was “time to be in bed,” and, accepting his own hint, he hooked his finger in the “reimpje” of his camp-stool and strolled off to where his blankets were already spread under one of the waggons.
As he turned, he pointed with his foot to the fire, growling out that there was a billy of tea and some stew warmed up “for him” (looking back at Soltké), and adding, “Bread’s in the grub-box. ’Night!” he turned in.
It was just like him to remember these things, for in our routine there was as a rule no eating during the night outspan. It was breakfast after the morning trek, and supper before the evening one. Gowan had also thrown out a couple of blankets, and between us we made up pretty well for the lost bedding; so Soltké was installed as one of the party. It says something for him that, in spite of our eight-mile walk and that yellow portmanteau, the verdict under our waggons that night was: “Seems a decent sort, after all, and it would ha’ been a bit rough to leave him to shift for himself.”
Soltké’s stupendous greenness should have disarmed chaff; and, indeed, at first we all felt that fooling him was like misleading a child: there was no fun to be got out of it. He believed anything that was told him. He accepted literally those palpable exaggerations which are not expected or wanted to be believed. He took for gospel the account of the Munchausen of the Bush veld who told how his team of donkeys had been disturbed by a lion during the early morning trek, and how, to his infinite surprise and alarm, he found that the savage brute had actually eaten his way into one donkey’s place, and when day broke was found still pulling in the team, to the great dismay of the other members. He was anxious to make a personal experiment of the efficacy of dew taken off a bullock’s horn, which we had recommended as an infallible snake charm. At considerable risk he had secured the dew, and the scene of Soltké’s struggling with the bewildered bullock at early dawn one morning was one to be remembered. However, he pledged himself not to carry the experiment further without the assistance of one of us, and a day or two later we removed immediate risk by losing his phial of dew. I am convinced that he would have tried the experiment on any snake he might have met, and with absolute confidence as to the result.
His mind was such as one would expect in a child who had known neither mental nor physical fear. He seemed absolutely void, not only of personal knowledge of evil, but even of that cognisance of its existence which shows itself in a disposition to seek corroborative evidence, to consult probabilities, and to inquire into motives. I am convinced that Soltké never questioned a motive in his life, nor ever hesitated to accept as a fact anything told in apparent seriousness. Irony and sarcasm were to him as to a child or a savage. He was intensely literal, single-minded and direct, and perfectly fearless in thought, word or act. Such a disposition in a child would have been charming. In a well-set-up, active young man of three-and-twenty or so it was embarrassing. Donald Mackay, who was of a choleric disposition, complained a day or two after Soltké joined us that “he was blanked if he could blank well stand it. Why, that morning, when he was about to give one o’ the boys a lambastin’, the kiddie turns white as a girl wi’ the first swear and a sight of the sjambok, an’ Aa tell ye, mon, Aa was nigh to bustin’ wi’ a’ the drawing-room blether Aa was gettin’ off.” It was quite true. Soltké was not shocked nor affecting to be shocked at the vigorous language he heard; he was simply unlearned in it, and shrank as a girl might from the outburst of violence.
Gradually the feeling of strangeness wore off, and the restraint which the new presence had imposed was no longer felt except on odd occasions. On our side, we chaffed and shook him up, partly on the impulse of the time, and partly with good-natured intent to make him better fitted to take care of himself among the crowd with whom he would mix later on. On his side, he had never felt restraint, and of course rapidly became familiar with us and our ways, and seemed thoroughly to enjoy the chaff and his initiation into the system of good-humoured imposture. With all his greenness, he was no fool; in fact, he was in odd, unexpected ways remarkably shrewd and quick, as he often showed in conversation. He was, moreover, a poor subject for practical jokes, and several of the stock kind recoiled on the perpetrators, because, as I have said, he did not know what fear was.
When a notorious practical joker named Evans, with whom we travelled in company for a couple of days, “put up” the lion scare on Soltké, it didn’t come off. He asked our young friend to dine at his waggons on the other side of a dry donga, and, after telling the most thrilling lion yarns all the evening, left Soltké to walk back alone, while he slipped off to waylay him at the darkest and deepest part of the donga. There was the rustle of bushes and sudden roar which had so often played havoc before; but Soltké only stepped back, and lugged out in unfamiliar fashion a long revolver which no one knew he carried. Ignoring the fact that a lion could have half eaten him in the time expended, Soltké calmly cocked the weapon, and, to the terror of his late host, poured all six barrels into the bush from which the noise had come. He then retreated quietly out of the donga to where we, hearing the shots and Evans’s shouts of terror, had run down to see what was up. Soltké was excited, but quiet, and the noise of the reports had evidently prevented him from detecting the man’s voice. He said:
“It was something what make ‘Har-r-r-!’ by me, and I shoot; but I haf no more cartridge.”
We did not see Evans again for some months. The story of Soltké’s lion made the road too hot for him that winter.
When we told Soltké the real facts, his face was a study. For some days he was very quiet and thoughtful; he was completely puzzled, and for the life of him could not imagine the motive that had actuated Evans; nor could he, on the other hand, realise the possibility of anyone acting differently from the way in which he had done.
Before this there had been some horseplay when we were crossing the Komatie River. The stream was running strong, and was then from four to five feet deep at the drift; and, although it was known to be full of crocodiles, there was little or no danger at the regular crossing. However, Key had primed Soltké with some gorgeous stories of hairbreadth escapes, intending to play