From Veldt Camp Fires by H. A. Bryden

Author:H. A. Bryden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781634214681
Publisher: Duke Classics

Chapter Seven - Their Last Trek

*

The sun was setting as usual in a glow of marvellous splendour as Alida Van Zyl came out from her hartebeest house—a rough wattle and daub structure, thatched with reeds—and, shading her eyes, looked across the country. The little house stood on the lower slope of the Queebe Hills, no great way from Lake Ngami. It was a wonderful sunset. In the north-west a thousand flakes of cloud flushed with crimson lake, just as they had flushed above the vast plains of that wild Ngami country a million times before. Near the sky-line, in a blaze of red and gold, the sun sank rapidly, a mass of fire so dazzling that Alida's eyes could not bear to dwell upon it. Far upwards the cool and wondrous calm of the clear and translucent pale green sky contrasted strangely with the battle of colour beneath.

Alida shaded her eyes again, looked keenly down the rude waggon-track that led up to the dwelling, and listened. As she had expected—for she had news of her husband's coming from the Lake—she presently heard the faint cries of a native; that would be Hans Hottentot, the waggon driver, and then through the still air the full, thick, pistol-like crack of the waggon-whip. At these sounds her somewhat impassive face lightened and she turned into the hut again.

In twenty minutes' time the waggon had drawn up in front of the dwelling, and Karel Van Zyl, a big, strong Dutchman of seven and twenty, had dismounted from his good grey nag and embraced his wife, who now stood with a face beaming with joy, clasping her two year old child in her arms ready to receive him.

"Zo, Alie," said Karel, holding his young wife by the shoulders and looking first tenderly at her broad kindly face and then at the yellow-haired child lying in her arms, "here we are at last. It has been a long hunt, but a pretty good one. I left a waggon-load of ivory, rhenoster horns, and hides at Jan Stromboom's at the Lake and got a good price for them I traded fifty good oxen as well and sold them at 3 pounds 10 shillings a head to Stromboom also, after no end of a haggle. It was worth a day's bargaining though; the beasts cost me no more than thirty shillings apiece all told."

Then laying the back of his huge sunburnt hand against the cheek of the sleeping babe, which he had just kissed, he added, "And how is little Jan? Surely the child has grown a foot since I left him?"

Alida smiled contentedly, patted her man's arm and answered, "Yes, the child has done well since the cool weather came, and he grows every day. He gets as slim (cunning) as a monkey and crawls so that I have to keep a boy to watch him, the little rascal. But kom binnen and have supper. You must be starving."

Van Zyl gave some orders to his Hottentot man, as to his horse, the trek oxen and some loose cows and calves, and went indoors.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.