Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland

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Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland

by

Olive Schreiner

Author of "Dreams," "Dream Life and Real Life," "The Story of an African
Farm," etc.

Colonial Edition

(A photographic plate at the front of the book shows three people hanging
from a tree by their necks. Around them stand eight men, looking not at
all troubled by their participation in the scene. Of this event all the
survivors appear to be white, the victims black. The plate is titled "From
a Photograph taken in Matabeleland." S.A.)

To a Great Good Man, Sir George Grey,

Once Governor of the Cape Colony, who, during his rule in South Africa,
bound to himself the Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Natives he governed, by an
uncorruptible justice and a broad humanity; and who is remembered among us
today as representing the noblest attributes of an Imperial Rule.

"Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning."

Olive Schreiner.

19, Russell Road,
Kensington, W.,
February, 1897.

Aardvark - The great anteater.
Cape Smoke - A very inferior brandy made in Cape Colony.
Kopje - Little hillock.
Kraal - A Kaffir encampment.
Mealies - Maize (corn).
Riem - A thong of undressed leather universally used in South Africa.
Vatje of Old Dop - A little cask of Cape brandy.
Veld - Open Country.

Chapter I.

It was a dark night; a chill breath was coming from the east; not enough to
disturb the blaze of Trooper Peter Halket's fire, yet enough to make it
quiver. He sat alone beside it on the top of a kopje.

All about was an impenetrable darkness; not a star was visible in the black
curve over his head.

He had been travelling with a dozen men who were taking provisions of
mealies and rice to the next camp. He had been sent out to act as scout
along a low range of hills, and had lost his way. Since eight in the
morning he had wandered among long grasses, and ironstone kopjes, and
stunted bush, and had come upon no sign of human habitation, but the
remains of a burnt kraal, and a down-trampled and now uncultivated mealie
field, where a month before the Chartered Company's forces had destroyed a
native settlement.

Three times in the day it had appeared to him that he had returned to the
very spot from which he had started; nor was it his wish to travel very
far, for he knew his comrades would come back to look for him, to the
neighbourhood where he had last been seen, when it was found at the evening
camping ground that he did not appear.

Trooper Peter Halket was very weary. He had eaten nothing all day; and had
touched little of the contents of a small flask of Cape brandy he carried
in his breast pocket, not knowing when it would again be replenished.

As night drew near he determined to make his resting place on the top of
one of the kopjes, which stood somewhat alone and apart from the others.
He could not easily be approached there, without his knowing it. He had
not much fear of the natives; their kraals had been destroyed and their
granaries burnt for thirty miles round, and they themselves had fled: but
he feared, somewhat, the lions, which he had never seen, but of which he
had heard, and which might be cowering in the long grasses and brushwood at
the kopje's foot:--and he feared, vaguely, he hardly knew what, when he
looked forward to his first long night alone in the veld.

By the time the sun had set he had gathered a little pile of stumps and
branches on the top of the kopje. He intended to keep a fire burning all
night; and as the darkness began to settle down he lit it. It might be his
friends would see it from far, and come for him early in the morning; and
wild beasts would hardly approach him while he knelt beside it; and of the
natives he felt there was little fear.

He built up the fire; and determined if it were possible to keep awake the
whole night beside it.

He was a slight man of middle height, with a sloping forehead and pale blue
eyes: but the jaws were hard set, and the thin lips of the large mouth
were those of a man who could strongly desire the material good of life,
and enjoy it when it came his way. Over the lower half of the face were
scattered a few soft white hairs, the growth of early manhood.

From time to time he listened intently for possible sounds from the
distance where his friends might be encamped, and might fire off their guns
at seeing his light; or he listened yet more intently for sounds nearer at
hand: but all was still, except for the occasional cracking of the wood in
his own fire, and the slight whistle of the breeze as it crept past the
stones on the kopje. He doubled up his great hat and put it in the pocket
of his overcoat, and put on a little two-pointed cap his mother had made
for him, which fitted so close that only one lock of white hair hung out
over his forehead. He turned up the collar of his coat to shield his neck
and ears, and threw it open in front that the blaze of the fire might warm
him. He had known many nights colder than this when he had sat around the
camp fire with his comrades, talking of the niggers they had shot or the
kraals they had destroyed, or grumbling over their rations; but tonight the
chill seemed to creep into his very bones.

The darkness of the night above him, and the silence of the veld about him,
oppressed him. At times he even wished he might hear the cry of a jackal
or of some larger beast of prey in the distance; and he wished that the
wind would blow a little louder, instead of making that little wheezing
sound as it passed the corners of the stones. He looked down at his gun,
which lay cocked ready on the ground at his right side; and from time to
time he raised his hand automatically and fingered the cartridges in his
belt. Then he stretched out his small wiry hands to the fire and warmed
them. It was only half past ten, and it seemed to him he had been sitting
here ten hours at the least.

After a while he threw two more large logs on the fire, and took the flask
out of his pocket. He examined it carefully by the firelight to see how
much it held: then he took a small draught, and examined it again to see
how much it had fallen; and put it back in his breast pocket.

Then Trooper Peter Halket fell to thinking.

It was not often that he thought. On patrol and sitting round camp fires
with the other men about him there was no time for it; and Peter Halket had
never been given to much thinking. He had been a careless boy at the
village school; and though, when he left, his mother paid the village
apothecary to read learned books with him at night on history and science,
he had not retained much of them. As a rule he lived in the world
immediately about him, and let the things of the moment impinge on him, and
fall off again as they would, without much reflection. But tonight on the
kopje he fell to thinking, and his thoughts shaped themselves into
connected chains.

He wondered first whether his mother would ever get the letter he had
posted the week before, and whether it would be brought to her cottage or
she would go to the post office to fetch it. And then, he fell to thinking
of the little English village where he had been born, and where he had
grown up. He saw his mother's fat white ducklings creep in and out under
the gate, and waddle down to the little pond at the back of the yard; he
saw the school house that he had hated so much as a boy, and from which he
had so often run away to go a-fishing, or a-bird's-nesting. He saw the
prints on the school house wall on which the afternoon sun used to shine
when he was kept in; Jesus of Judea blessing the children, and one picture
just over the door where he hung with his arms stretched out and the blood
dropping from his feet. Then Peter Halket thought of the tower at the
ruins which he had climbed so often for birds' eggs; and he saw his mother
standing at her cottage gate when he came home in the evening, and he felt
her arms round his neck as she kissed him; but he felt her tears on his
cheek, because he had run away from school all day; and he seemed to be
making apologies to her, and promising he never would do it again if only
she would not cry. He had often thought of her since he left her, on board
ship, and when he was working with the prospectors, and since he had joined
the troop; but it had been in a vague way; he had not distinctly seen and
felt her. But tonight he wished for her as he used to when he was a small
boy and lay in his bed in the next room, and saw her shadow through the
door as she bent over her wash-tub earning the money which was to feed and
clothe him. He remembered how he called her and she came and tucked him in
and called him "Little Simon," which was his second name and had been his
father's, and which she only called him when he was in bed at night, or
when he was hurt.

He sat there staring into the blaze. He resolved he would make a great
deal of money, and she should live with him. He would build a large house
in the West End of London, the biggest that had ever been seen, and another
in the country, and they should never work any more.

Peter Halket sat as one turned into stone, staring into the fire.

All men made money when they came to South Africa,--Barney Barnato, Rhodes-
-they all made money out of the country, eight millions, twelve millions,
twenty-six millions, forty millions; why should not he!

Peter Halket started suddenly and listened. But it was only the wind
coming up the kopje like a great wheezy beast creeping upwards; and he
looked back into the fire.

He considered his business prospects. When he had served his time as
volunteer he would have a large piece of land given him, and the Mashonas
and Matabeles would have all their land taken away from them in time, and
the Chartered Company would pass a law that they had to work for the white
men; and he, Peter Halket, would make them work for him. He would make
money.

Then he reflected on what he should do with the land if it were no good and
he could not make anything out of it. Then, he should have to start a
syndicate; called the Peter Halket Gold, or the Peter Halket Iron-mining,
or some such name, Syndicate. Peter Halket was not very clear as to how it
ought to be started; but he felt certain that he and some other men would
have to take shares. They would not have to pay for them. And then they
would get some big man in London to take shares. He need not pay for them;
they would give them to him; and then the company would be floated. No one
would have to pay anything; it was just the name--"The Peter Halket Gold
Mining Company, Limited." It would float in London; and people there who
didn't know the country would buy the shares; THEY would have to give ready
money for them, of course; perhaps fifteen pounds a share when they were
up!--Peter Halket's eyes blinked as he looked into the fire.--And then,
when the market was up, he, Peter Halket, would sell out all his shares.
If he gave himself only six thousand and sold them each for ten pounds,
then he, Peter Halket, would have sixty thousand pounds! And then he would
start another company, and another.

Peter Halket struck his knee softly with his hand.

That was the great thing--"Always sell out at the right time." That point
Peter Halket was very clear on. He had heard it so often discussed. Give
some shares to men with big names, and sell out: they can sell out too at
the right time.

Peter Halket stroked his knee thoughtfully.

And then the other people, that bought the shares for cash! Well, they
could sell out too; they could all sell out!

Then Peter Halket's mind got a little hazy. The matter was getting too
difficult for him, like a rule of three sum at school when he could not see
the relation between the two first terms and the third. Well, if they
didn't like to sell out at the right time, it was their own faults. Why
didn't they? He, Peter Halket, did not feel responsible for them.
Everyone knew that you had to sell out at the right time. If they didn't
choose to sell out at the right time, well, they didn't. "It's the shares
that you sell, not the shares you keep, that make the money."

But if they couldn't sell them?

Here Peter Halket hesitated.--Well, the British Government would have to
buy them, if they were so bad no one else would; and then no one would
lose. "The British Government can't let British share-holders suffer."
He'd heard that often enough. The British taxpayer would have to pay for
the Chartered Company, for the soldiers, and all the other things, if IT
couldn't, and take over the shares if it went smash, because there were
lords and dukes and princes connected with it. And why shouldn't they pay
for his company? He would have a lord in it too!

Peter Halket looked into the fire completely absorbed in his calculations.-
-Peter Halket, Esq., Director of the Peter Halket Gold Mining Company,
Limited. Then, when he had got thousands, Peter Halket, Esq., M.P. Then,
when he had millions, Sir Peter Halket, Privy Councillor!

He reflected deeply, looking into the blaze. If you had five or six
millions you could go where you liked and do what you liked. You could go
to Sandringham. You could marry anyone. No one would ask what your mother
had been; it wouldn't matter.

A curious dull sinking sensation came over Peter Halket; and he drew in his
broad leathern belt two holes tighter.

Even if you had only two millions you could have a cook and a valet, to go
with you when you went into the veld or to the wars; and you could have as
much champagne and other things as you liked. At that moment that seemed
to Peter more important than going to Sandringham.

He took out his flask of Cape Smoke, and drew a tiny draught from it.

Other men had come to South Africa with nothing, and had made everything!
Why should not he?

He stuck small branches under the two great logs, and a glorious flame
burst out. Then he listened again intently. The wind was falling and the
night was becoming very still. It was a quarter to twelve now. His back
ached, and he would have liked to lie down; but he dared not, for fear he
should drop asleep. He leaned forward with his hands between his crossed
knees, and watched the blaze he had made.

Then, after a while, Peter Halket's thoughts became less clear: they
became at last, rather, a chain of disconnected pictures, painting
themselves in irrelevant order on his brain, than a line of connected
ideas. Now, as he looked into the crackling blaze, it seemed to be one of
the fires they had make to burn the natives' grain by, and they were
throwing in all they could not carry away: then, he seemed to see his
mother's fat ducks waddling down the little path with the green grass on
each side. Then, he seemed to see his huts where he lived with the
prospectors, and the native women who used to live with him; and he
wondered where the women were. Then--he saw the skull of an old Mashona
blown off at the top, the hands still moving. He heard the loud cry of the
native women and children as they turned the maxims on to the kraal; and
then he heard the dynamite explode that blew up a cave. Then again he was
working a maxim gun, but it seemed to him it was more like the reaping
machine he used to work in England, and that what was going down before it
was not yellow corn, but black men's heads; and he thought when he looked
back they lay behind him in rows, like the corn in sheaves.

The logs sent up a flame clear and high, and, where they split, showed a
burning core inside: the cracking and spluttering sounded in his brain
like the discharge of a battery of artillery. Then he thought suddenly of
a black woman he and another man caught alone in the bush, her baby on her
back, but young and pretty. Well, they didn't shoot her!--and a black
woman wasn't white! His mother didn't understand these things; it was all
so different in England from South Africa. You couldn't be expected to do
the same sort of things here as there. He had an unpleasant feeling that
he was justifying himself to his mother, and that he didn't know how to.

He leaned further and further forward: so far at last, that the little
white lock of his hair which hung out under his cap was almost singed by
the fire. His eyes were still open, but the lids drooped over them, and
his hands hung lower and lower between his knees. There was no picture
left on his brain now, but simply an impress of the blazing logs before
him.

Then, Trooper Peter Halket started. He sat up and listened. The wind had
gone; there was not a sound: but he listened intently. The fire burnt up
into the still air, two clear red tongues of flame.

Then, on the other side of the kopje he heard the sound of footsteps
ascending; the slow even tread of bare feet coming up.

The hair on Trooper Peter Halket's forehead slowly stiffened itself. He
had no thought of escaping; he was paralyzed with dread. He took up his
gun. A deadly coldness crept from his feet to his head. He had worked a
maxim gun in a fight when some hundred natives fell and only one white man
had been wounded; and he had never known fear; but tonight his fingers were
stiff on the lock of his gun. He knelt low, tending a little to one side
of the fire, with his gun ready. A stone half sheltered him from anyone
coming up from the other side of the kopje, and the instant the figure
appeared over the edge he intended to fire.

Then, the thought flashed on him; what, and if it were one of his own
comrades come in search of him, and no bare-footed enemy! The anguish of
suspense wrung his heart; for an instant he hesitated. Then, in a cold
agony of terror, he cried out, "Who is there?"

And a voice replied in clear, slow English, "A friend."

Peter Halket almost let his gun drop, in the revulsion of feeling. The
cold sweat which anguish had restrained burst out in large drops on his
forehead; but he still knelt holding his gun.

"What do you want?" he cried out quiveringly.

From the darkness at the edge of the kopje a figure stepped out into the
full blaze of the firelight.

Trooper Peter Halket looked up at it.

It was the tall figure of a man, clad in one loose linen garment, reaching
lower than his knees, and which clung close about him. His head, arms, and
feet were bare. He carried no weapon of any kind; and on his shoulders
hung heavy locks of dark hair.

Peter Halket looked up at him with astonishment. "Are you alone?" he
asked.

"Yes, I am alone."

Peter Halket lowered his gun and knelt up.

"Lost your way, I suppose?" he said, still holding his weapon loosely.

"No; I have come to ask whether I may sit beside your fire for a while."

"Certainly, certainly!" said Peter, eyeing the stranger's dress carefully,
still holding his gun, but with the hand off the lock. "I'm confoundedly
glad of any company. It's a beastly night for anyone to be out alone.
Wonder you find your way. Sit down! sit down!" Peter looked intently at
the stranger; then he put his gun down at his side.

The stranger sat down on the opposite side of the fire. His complexion was
dark; his arms and feet were bronzed; but his aquiline features, and the
domed forehead, were not of any South African race.

"One of the Soudanese Rhodes brought with him from the north, I suppose?"
said Peter, still eyeing him curiously.

No; Cecil Rhodes has had nothing to do with my coming here," said the
stranger.

"Oh--" said Peter. "You didn't perhaps happen to come across a company of
men today, twelve white men and seven coloured, with three cart loads of
provisions? We were taking them to the big camp, and I got parted from my
troop this morning. I've not been able to find them, though I've been
seeking for them ever since."

The stranger warmed his hands slowly at the fire; then he raised his head:-
-"They are camped at the foot of those hills tonight," he said, pointing
with his hand into the darkness at the left. "Tomorrow early they will be
here, before the sun has risen."

"Oh, you've met them, have you!" said Peter joyfully; "that's why you
weren't surprised at finding me here. Take a drop!" He took the small
flask from his pocket and held it out. "I'm sorry there's so little, but a
drop will keep the cold out."

The stranger bowed his head; but thanked and declined.

Peter raised the flask to his lips and took a small draught; then returned
it to his pocket. The stranger folded his arms about his knees, and looked
into the fire.

"Are you a Jew?" asked Peter, suddenly; as the firelight fell full on the
stranger's face.

"Yes; I am a Jew."

"Ah," said Peter, "that's why I wasn't able to make out at first what
nation you could be of; your dress, you know--" Then he stopped, and said,
"Trading here, I suppose? Which country do you come from; are you a
Spanish Jew?"

"I am a Jew of Palestine."

"Ah!" said Peter; "I haven't seen many from that part yet. I came out with
a lot on board ship; and I've seen Barnato and Beit; but they're not very
much like you. I suppose it's coming from Palestine makes the difference."

All fear of the stranger had now left Peter Halket. "Come a little nearer
the fire," he said, "you must be cold, you haven't too much wraps. I'm
chill in this big coat." Peter Halket pushed his gun a little further away
from him; and threw another large log on the fire. "I'm sorry I haven't
anything to eat to offer you; but I haven't had anything myself since last
night. It's beastly sickening, being out like this with nothing to eat.
Wouldn't have thought a fellow'd feel so bad after only a day of it. Have
you ever been out without grub?" said Peter cheerfully, warming his hands
at the blaze.

"Forty days and nights," said the stranger.

"Forty days! Ph--e--ew!" said Peter. "You must have have had a lot to
drink, or you wouldn't have stood it. I was feeling blue enough when you
turned up, but I'm better now, warmer."

Peter Halket re-arranged the logs on the fire.

"In the employ of the Chartered Company, I suppose?" said Peter, looking
into the fire he had made.

"No," said the stranger; "I have nothing to do with the Chartered Company."

"Oh," said Peter, "I don't wonder, then, that things aren't looking very
smart with you! There's not too much cakes and ale up here for those that
do belong to it, if they're not big-wigs, and none at all for those who
don't. I tried it when I first came up here. I was with a prospector who
was hooked on to the Company somehow, but I worked on my own account for
the prospector by the day. I tell you what, it's not the men who work up
here who make the money; it's the big-wigs who get the concessions!"

Peter felt exhilarated by the presence of the stranger. That one unarmed
man had robbed him of all fear.

Seeing that the stranger did not take up the thread of conversation, he
went on after a time: "It wasn't such a bad life, though. I only wish I
was back there again. I had two huts to myself, and a couple of nigger
girls. It's better fun," said Peter, after a while, "having these black
women than whites. The whites you've got to support, but the niggers
support you! And when you've done with them you can just get rid of them.
I'm all for the nigger gals." Peter laughed. But the stranger sat
motionless with his arms about his knees.

"You got any girls?" said Peter. "Care for niggers?"

"I love all women," said the stranger, refolding his arms about his knees.

"Oh, you do, do you?" said Peter. "Well, I'm pretty sick of them. I had
bother enough with mine," he said genially, warming his hands by the fire,
and then interlocking the fingers and turning the palms towards the blaze
as one who prepares to enjoy a good talk. "One girl was only fifteen; I
got her cheap from a policeman who was living with her, and she wasn't
much. But the other, by Gad! I never saw another nigger like her; well
set up, I tell you, and as straight as that--" said Peter, holding up his
finger in the firelight. "She was thirty if she was a day. Fellows don't
generally fancy women that age; they like slips of girls. But I set my
heart on her the day I saw her. She belonged to the chap I was with. He
got her up north. There was a devil of a row about his getting her, too;
she'd got a nigger husband and two children; didn't want to leave them, or
some nonsense of that sort: you know what these niggers are? Well, I tried
to get the other fellow to let me have her, but the devil a bit he would.
I'd only got the other girl, and I didn't much fancy her; she was only a
child. Well, I went down Umtali way and got a lot of liquor and stuff, and
when I got back to camp I found them clean dried out. They hadn't had a
drop of liquor in camp for ten days, and the rainy season coming on and no
knowing when they'd get any. Well, I'd a vatje of Old Dop as high as that-
-," indicating with his hand an object about two feet high, "and the other
fellow wanted to buy it from me. I knew two of that. I said I wanted it
for myself. He offered me this, and he offered me that. At last I said,
'Well, just to oblige you, I give you the vatje and you give me the girl!'
And so he did. Most people wouldn't have fancied a nigger girl who'd had
two nigger children, but I didn't mind; it's all the same to me. And I
tell you she worked. She made a garden, and she and the other girl worked
in it; I tell you I didn't need to buy a sixpence of food for them in six
months, and I used to sell green mealies and pumpkins to all the fellows
about. There weren't many flies on her, I tell you. She picked up English
quicker than I picked up her lingo, and took to wearing a dress and shawl."

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