Read Online Prester John by John Buchan - Free Book Online

edge, and it was all that ten men could do to get it back again.
    After that the road was easier, winding down the side of a slow opening glen. I rode beside the wagons, and so heavenly was the weather that I was content with my own thoughts. The sky was clear blue, the air warm, yet with the wintry tonic in it, and a thousand aromatic scents came out of the thickets. The pied birds called ‘Kaffir queens’ fluttered across the path. Below, the Klein Labongo churned and foamed in a hundred cascades. Its waters were no more the clear grey of the ‘Blue Wildebeeste’s Spring’, but were growing muddy with its approach to the richer soil of the plains.
    Oxen travel slow, and we outspanned that night half a day’s march short of Umvelos’. I spent the hour before sunset lounging and smoking with the Dutch farmers. At first they had been silent and suspicious of a newcomer, but by this time I talked their
taal
fluently, and we were soon on good terms. I recall a discussion arising about a black thing in a tree about five hundred yards away. I thought it was an aasvogel, but another thought it was a baboon. Whereupon the oldest of the party, a farmer called Coetzee, whipped up his rifle and, apparently without sighting, fired. A dark object fell out of the branch, andwhen we reached it we found it a
baviaan
* sure enough, shot through the head. ‘Which side are you on in the next war?’ the old man asked me, and, laughing, I told him ‘Yours.’
    After supper, the ingedients of which came largely from my
naachtmaal
, we sat smoking and talking round the fire, the women and children being snug in the covered wagons. The Boers were honest, companionable fellows, and when I had made a bowl of toddy in the Scotch fashion to keep out the evening chill, we all became excellent friends. They asked me how I got on with Japp. Old Coetzee saved me the trouble of answering, for he broke in with
Skellum! Skellum!
† I asked him his objection to the storekeeper, but he would say nothing beyond that he was too thick with the natives. I fancy at some time Mr Japp had sold him a bad plough.
    We spoke of hunting, and I heard long tales of exploits – away on the Limpopo, in Mashonaland, on the Sabi, and in the Lebombo. Then we verged on politics, and I listened to violent denunciations of the new land tax. These were old residenters, I reflected, and I might learn perhaps something of value. So very carefully I repeated a tale I said I had heard at Durban of a great wizard somewhere in the Berg, and asked if any one knew of it. They shook their heads. The natives had given up witchcraft and big medicine, they said, and were more afraid of a parson or a policeman than any witch-doctor. Then they were starting on reminiscences, when old Coetzee, who was deaf, broke in and asked to have my question repeated.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. It is in the Rooirand. There is a devil dwells there.’
    I could get no more out of him beyond the fact that there was certainly a great devil there. His grandfather and father had seen it, and he himself had heard it roaring when he had gone there as a boy to hunt. He would explain no further, and went to bed.
    Next morning, close to Sikitola’s kraal, I bade the farmers good-bye, after telling them that there would be a store in my wagon for three weeks at Umvelos’ if they wanted supplies. We then struck more to the north towards our destination. As soon as they had gone I had out my map and searched it for the name old Coetzee had mentioned It was a very bad map, for there had been no surveying east of the Berg, and most of the names were mere guesses. But I found the word ‘Rooirand’ marking an eastern continuation of the northern wall, and probably set down from some hunter’s report. I had better explain here the chief features of the country, for they bulk largely in my story. The Berg runs north and south, and from it run