By Veldt and Kopje - W. C. Scully

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words upon the stone at my wish.”

      I held silence, so he shortly afterwards asked—“Would you like me to tell you of what happened?”

      “Yes, I should be most grateful.”

      “I was born on this farm,” he said; “my father was one of the first to take up land about here. When a young man, hunting was my passion. I made friends with the wild Bushmen who then dwelt on the mountain, and they used to drive the game for me. I built a hut near the spring just below the summit, and there I sometimes stayed for weeks together.

      “I was proud of my eyesight and my skill with the rifle. I did not care for the society of others; I neglected my wife and children; I neither feared God nor regarded man. The mountain I looked upon as my home. Living so near the sky makes one different to others. The sins of the Flesh lose their breath and cannot climb so high, but those of the Spirit beset you sorely. You will remember that Satan tempted the Lord on the top of a high mountain.

      “One day in summer, about forty years ago, I was riding across the head of the kloof where the stone stands whereon you read those words to-day. A thunderstorm was sweeping down from the north-west, but I took no heed, for I had never known fear of lightning nor anything else. The Bushmen were driving on a troop of elands, and I expected them to cross the saddle at the head of the kloof; so I left the horse concealed in a hollow and took my stand, with the rifle on my arm, at the foot of the rock.

      “Soon the elands appeared; they ran for a short distance down the kloof, then halted just opposite where I was standing. One great bull stood apart from the others. As I lifted my rifle to take aim a flash leaped out of the cloud and struck the ground close to where the bull was standing, igniting the grass. The animal sprang back in terror. I fired—and it rolled over, dead.

      “Then I laughed aloud and shouted that my aim was more true than that of the Almighty. An instant afterwards the heavens opened and flame enveloped me like a sheet. I fell, senseless, to the ground.

      “When I recovered I thought night had fallen. I could smell that my clothing was scorched, but I felt no hurt. The rain had ceased and I was conscious of a sensation of warmth. I still thought it was night, but night blacker than I had ever known. After a while I stood up and groped about in terror, for I now imagined that the end of the world had come and that the sun had been quenched. Then I heard a bird singing: I still wondered; but when I heard the Bushmen calling to me from the other side of the kloof, where the dead eland lay, the truth struck me in all its terror: I was blind.

      “I shrieked and blasphemed as I staggered about. I found my gun and tried to shoot myself, but the lightning had twisted it as you might twist a handful of straw. The Bushmen led me down to the homestead.

      “Afterwards, I spent many days and nights in hell, but the day arrived when my pride lay broken in the dust, and I came to acknowledge that God’s Angel was sitting on that thundercloud, charged to save my soul.”

      That night I lay long awake, thinking of old Sard’s tale. I had a very clear recollection of the inscribed stone and its surroundings, so tried to picture the tremendous episode of forty years back. The sultry summer day; the white thundercloud curdling into shape upon the hot north-western horizon and towering into the ether, until its spreading tentacles seemed to seize the world in a mighty grip. Later, the low muttering of thunder, pulsing from the monster’s baleful heart, and the thin streak of fire darting out far in advance of the rain and igniting the dry grass. Then the blasphemous jest of the strong man proud of his skill. Lastly, the thunderbolt winged to smite but not to slay, touching not so much as a hair of the head of the defiant human atom, but crushing the gun in his hand as though it were a reed, and filling his eyes with such excess of light that nothing less vivid could stir their sense for evermore.

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      Tommy’s Evil Genius.

      “Greater love hath no man than this.”—S. John XV. 13.

      His name was Danster. His age might have been anything between fifteen and forty-five. His cheekbones were high, and his eyes oblique like those of a Mongolian. Scattered unevenly over his bullet-shaped skull were thin tufts of wool, each culminating in a minute, solid pellet. His only clothing was a noisome sheep-skin kaross which had formerly belonged to a great-grandfather—long since deceased.

      Danster was a Hottentot—or rather what is called by that indefinite term at the Cape. In his much-mixed blood that of the Bushman evidently preponderated. An anthropologist would have valued his skull, which seemed to epitomise the results of a criminal ancestry extending through many generations.

      Tommy, surnamed Winwood, was very different. He was a blonde, blue-eyed, yellow-haired lad of eight years of age, somewhat slight and undersized, but agile and capable of endurance when under the stimulus of excitement. Five children had nested in the Winwood nursery, but only Tommy survived. The others had all succumbed to congenital delicacy before reaching the age of seven. With Tommy the Winwoods had come to South Africa in the early eighties, and had taken a farm near the coast in one of the eastern districts of the Cape Colony. Mr. Winwood was a nervous, retiring man of literary tastes. Having enough money to live upon, his farming was hardly a serious pursuit. In fact he left the management of the place almost solely in the hands of a somewhat dour but conscientious Boer, who managed to run the concern at a profit.

      Mrs. Winwood suffered from extreme delicacy. She was an accomplished musician, but the climate had sapped her energy to such an extent that when the weather was warm she hardly ever touched the piano. When the days were cool, she often played for six or seven hours a day, and thus seriously overtaxed her strength. Both she and her husband were moody and morbid. Although much attached to each other, their life was a series of misunderstandings.

      It may be imagined what a lonely life poor Tommy led. He received three hours’ instruction every day—two from his father and one from his mother. His nursery was full of toys, but the very number and variety of these had rendered them valueless as a resource. The homestead stood on the steep south slope of a valley through which a stream ran between fringes of timber rooted in rich, fern-bearing soil, and commanded a grand view of interspersed forest and grassy slopes. But, unfortunately, snakes abounded, so poor Tommy was restricted to the cleared area immediately surrounding the house. So his face took on that expression of pathos which haunts the looks of children debarred from the companionship of their kind.

      When the tempter appeared Tommy fell an easy prey. Danster was a calf-herd. He, too, felt lonely. His avocations kept him in the vicinity of the homestead, so he soon found an opportunity of making friends with the lonely child. The intimacy grew, unnoticed by Tommy’s parents, and was for some time tacitly acquiesced in. However, one day Mrs. Winwood came upon the two sitting behind the big water-tank, and found Danster engaged in extracting the eyes of a living bird with a mimosa thorn, while Tommy looked on, fascinated. Danster was thereupon severely flogged by the overseer, under Mr. Winwood’s supervision, and earnestly warned never to show his ill-favoured face near the homestead again.

      Tommy was a thoroughly truthful child. When questioned he freely admitted that the removal of the bird’s eyes was the last of a long series of hideous vivisectional experiments at which he had assisted, and which had been organised for his delectation. Like most highly-strung people, Mr. and Mrs. Winwood were morbidly sensitive to physical suffering, either in themselves or in other sentient beings. The keenness of their distress may therefore be imagined. Horrible though the thing was, they took far too serious a view of it. In fact, they imagined that their child’s character had been irreparably ruined.

      Tommy had not realised how attached he was to the disreputable Danster until after the separation. One night, about a week after the dreadful discovery, Tommy confessed to his mother that he loved Danster very much indeed. Soon he began to mope visibly. His father and mother were horribly annoyed at the turn things had taken. They always referred to Danster as their son’s evil genius.

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