The Covenant Part 51

As soon as Jakoba and the Nels were buried, Tjaart headed for the far end of the wagon line to ascertain what had happened to the Ryk Naudes, and as he walked, dozens of Voortrekkers halted him to ask, 'What news of Retief?' and he was afraid to tell them of Paulus' conviction that the entire party had been slain.

When he found the Naude wagon, the people of that group were engaged in burying thirteen of their dead. Among them was Ryk; that f.e.c.kless youth had refused to put his wagons into laager, had been out sporting with some new girl, and had rushed back in time to face a circle of Zulu, who hacked him to pieces.

At the end of the common grave Tjaart found Aletta, her arm in a sling, her face scarred by a long gash; as always, she stood there betraying no emotion, and even when Tjaart signaled to her across the fallen bodies, she merely nodded. Since the Voortrekkers were still without a clergyman, a layman was needed to read from the Bible, and Balthazar Bronk volunteered; he offered a fine prayer and the ma.s.s grave was closed.

Then, as if a mighty hand were pus.h.i.+ng him from the back, Tjaart stepped around the grave, walked solemnly to where Aletta stood, and addressed her before some other womanless man might lay claim: 'You can't live alone, Aletta.'

'It would be impossible,' she said.

Her husband was dead. Her wagon was burned. She had no place to sleep, no clothes other than those she wore. She had no money, no food, no relatives. She was alone on unprotected land which the Zulu might overrun at any moment, so with a last tearless look at the grave, she held out her good hand, encouraging Tjaart to take it and guide her down the long line of wagons till they reached his.

With dismay she saw that he, too, had nothing: no bed, no box of Jakoba's clothes, no wagon ready for the roadnothing but a brown-gold pot and a Bible. There was no Dutch minister to marry them, but this widow and this widower were wed of their own determination; and as they started retrieving the possessions scattered about, messengers came crying: 'Retief and all his men are slain.'

It was obvious that G.o.d had struck His chosen people with a series of punis.h.i.+ng blows. For their arrogance and their sins he had chastised them, and as they huddled in their depleted laagers, awaiting the next a.s.sault of the Zulu, they tried to unravel the mystery of their wrongdoing.

Every man who died at Dingane's Kraal had loved G.o.d and had endeavored to live according to His laws, yet all had perished. Every woman and child murdered at Blaauwkrantz had been faithful to the Bible, but they had been slaughtered. If ever an a.s.sembly of people had just cause to rebel against their deity, it was the Voortrekkers that summer of 1838, but they reacted quite differently.

Spiritually they sought within themselves the reasons for their reverses, and decided that they had been lax in their attention to wors.h.i.+p and in the keeping of the commandments. For example, Tjaart van Doorn knew in his heart that the adulteries in his family had been the cause of the savage retribution he had suffered, and yetwhy had he been saved and faultless Jakoba punished?

Aletta continued to perplex him. In the days following the ma.s.sacre, her princ.i.p.al concern had been with the cut across her cheek: 'Will it leave a scar?' Wives showed her how to sterilize the wound with cow's urine and salve it with b.u.t.ter, and when she was a.s.sured that it would heal without a major blemish, she was satisfied. In her relations with Tjaart she continued as she had always beencompletely pa.s.sive, interested in nothing, absorbed only in herself. Once when he returned to their tent exhausted from digging trenches, he wanted to discuss the problem of finding someone who might lead them against the Zulu, but she had no opinions on any of the men. In some exasperation he asked, 'How about Balthazar Bronk?' and she put her hand to her chin, studied the matter, and said, 'He might be the one,' even though she knew he had run away at Veg Kop.

In the hard task of erecting some sort of defense he noticed this peculiarity: that the boy Paulus toiled like a man while the woman Aletta behaved like a child. He could not help comparing her with Jakoba, who would have been at his side as the new barricades were being built, and he began to understand why Ryk Naude, married to this extremely beautiful girl, had nevertheless preferred Minna.

When, thanks to Tjaart's stubborn work, these Voortrekkers felt moderately safe from Zulu attack, they returned to the Book of Joshua to review the steps by which he had triumphed at Jericho over his Canaanite enemies, and now the loss of Theunis Nel was felt, for he would have been eager to explicate such matters. In his absence, Tjaart had to serve as princ.i.p.al guide, bending over the charred cover of his Bible to read the relevant verses: 'And it came to pa.s.s ... that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and a.s.s, with the edge of the sword.'

Then he swore grimly: 'That's what we'll do to Dingane's Kraal. Total destruction.' By what specific steps this would be accomplished he did not know, for he considered himself inadequate to lead. What he could do was reflect the stubborn Boer determination to see this job finished, and if any man wavered, he laid forth the d.a.m.ning statistics: 'At the kraal, one hundred and two of our men killed. Here at Blaauwkrantz, two hundred and eighty-two. Out in the countryside, at least seventy more slain in their sleep. We demand retribution.'

'How can we attain it,' Balthazar Bronk asked, 'when we are so few and they so many?'

'I don't know,' Tjaart said, 'but I'm sure G.o.d will show us a way.'

And then into camp rode the man who would achieve miracles. He was Andries Pretorius, clean-shaven, younger than the other leaders, a person of substance in Graaff-Reinet. He was extremely tall and bulky, slow to reach decisions but resolute when he had done so. Like most of the leaders, he had been married more than once, with eight children by his first wife, three by his second. A grave, thoughtful man, he had hurried north in response to a summons from the beleaguered Voortrekkers. With his gun, his pistols and a thick-bladed cutla.s.s, he strode into camp on 22 November 1838 and said simply, 'I have come to help you. Within the week we shall ride forth to destroy Dingane.'

The first thing he did was follow the cautious precept of Joshua: 'I want two men to spy out the enemy,' and he designated a curious pairTjaart van Doorn , whom he trusted because of his determined commandos against the Xhosa, and Balthazar Bronk, who had behaved so badly in previous battles. He wanted Tjaart because he knew how to fight, Bronk because he was a clever, wily man.

Together the two men left Blaauwkrantz, eased themselves cautiously northward, and returned to camp with the somber news that Dingane had begun to a.s.semble his regiments for a ma.s.sive strike: 'He will have twelve thousand men to throw against us. How many will we have?'

Pretorius, like Joshua, had gathered all available soldiers, and he told them, 'The odds against us will be thirty-to-one. But we will carry the fight to them. We will select the place of battle.'

Only five days after the arrival of this dynamic man, the commando was in motion. It consisted of four hundred and sixty-four men, with the usual complement of Coloureds and blacks. About half had fought against the Zulu in one capacity or another; half had never opposed any black regiment. With them they had sixty-four wagons, absolutely essential in the plan Pretorius had devised. In the forefront was the rebuilt TC TC-43, now a st.u.r.dy, clean war vehicle with reinforced sides and fourteen highly trained oxen who seemed to take pride in setting the pace; if another wagon threatened to a.s.sume the lead, these oxen quickened their steps to stay in front.

By this swift movement General Pretorius appropriated tactical advantage; the battle would be fought where he decided, and on terrain favorable to his design. With brilliance he selected a steeply banked corner where a deep gully joined a small river; and in this fortunate area he placed his laager beside a deep pool which recently had been used by hippopotamuses for their bathing (Seekoei Gat, the Boers called it, Sea-cow Hole). He was thus protected on the south by the deep gully, on the east by the hippo pool, and to the north and west by the chain of sixty-four wagons, which he lashed together with enormous thongs, trek chains and great acc.u.mulations of thorn bush. At points along the perimeter, and positioned so they would face the maximum number of Zulu rus.h.i.+ng to attack the laager, he placed four small cannon capable of firing an immense load of pellets, iron bits, chain links and rocks.

'We are ready,' he said at dusk on Sat.u.r.day, 15 December 1838, and that night was the longest that these embattled Boers would ever know. They were few, and on the hills surrounding them on all sides gathered the Zulu regiments, men who had fought across the face of Africa, sweeping all before them. Inside the laager the nine hundred trek oxen lowed, hundreds of horses fretted, disturbed by the fires the Zulu maintained, worried by the sounds that encroached on all sides. Pretorius, moving among his troops, told them, 'We must station our men along the entire perimeter, for if we fire only from one direction, the animals, especially our horses, will swarm away from the noise, and they might escape through upset wagons. Without horses, tomorrow we would be lost.'

When all the details were perfected, the time was ripe for the crucial moment in Boer history. With the death of Theunis Nel, the Voortrekkers had no one who even presumed to be a predikant, but they had numerous men who knew the Old Testament almost by heart, and one of these was Sarel Cilliers, an educated farmer of deep religious conviction, and upon him fell the responsibility of reminding his fellow Voortrekkers of the sacred mission upon which they were engaged, and he recited those pa.s.sages from the thundering Book of Joshua which presaged the forthcoming battle: 'And the Lord said unto Joshua, Be not afraid because of them: for tomorrow about this time will I deliver them up all slain before Israel: thou shalt hough their horses and burn their chariots with fire . . . One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the Lord your G.o.d, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you.'

Then Cilliers climbed upon the carriage on which a beloved cannon named Ou Grietjie (Old Gertie) rested, and repeated for the last time the covenant upon which the Voortrekkers had agreed: 'Almighty G.o.d, at this dark moment we stand before You, promising that if You will protect us and deliver the enemy into our hands, we shall forever after live in obedience to Your divine law. If You enable us to triumph, we shall observe this day as an anniversary in each year, a day of thanksgiving and remembrance, even for all our posterity. And if anyone sees difficulty in this, let him retire from the battlefield.'

In the darkness the Voortrekkers whispered their Amens; they were now a nation established by G.o.d, in pursuit of His objectives, and those who were able to sleep the few hours before dawn did so with easy consciences, for they knew that G.o.d Himself had brought them to this river to face odds that would have terrified ordinary men.

The Battle of Blood River, as it came understandably to be called, had no parallel in recent world history. Twelve thousand, five hundred highly trained and capable Zulu threw themselves over a period of two hours at a cleverly entrenched foe, and without modern weapons of any kind, attempted to overwhelm a group of tough, resolute men armed with rifles, pistols and cannon. It was a hideous affair. The Zulu warriors stamped their feet, shouted their war cries, and drove straight at the laager. The men inside stood firm, waited for the enemy to come within six feet of the wagons, then fired into their chests. Those warriors fell, but others replaced them, expecting their cowhide s.h.i.+elds to protect them, and they, too, marched right into the muzzles of the guns, and they, too, fell.

A thousand Zulu died in this way, then two thousand, but still they came on. Within the first hour the Zulu generals, supposing that the white men inside the laager must be depleted, decided to throw at them their two finest regiments, those ent.i.tled to wear all-white s.h.i.+elds, white armlets and knee decorations, and it was awesome to see these excellent men, all of an age and a height, march unswervingly over the bodies of their fallen comrades, straight at the laager.

Inside, General Pretorius told his men, 'This may be the flood tide. Hold your fire.' So the riflemen waited while the gunners loaded Ou Grietjie with a murderous load of sc.r.a.p and leaden slugs; and when these crack regiments had marched directly to the muzzles of these creaking guns, Pretorius gave the signal. Ou Grietjie and her three ugly sisters spewed out their lethal dose right into the faces of the Zulu, while riflemen from the flanks poured hot fire at them.

Not even the White s.h.i.+elds could absorb punishment like this, but they did not falter or run. They simply came on, and died.

Now Pretorius made an astounding decision: 'Mount your horses. We shall drive them from the field.' So about a hundred Voortrekkers leaped upon their steeds, waited till riflemen opened a gateway through the laager, and galloped out in a firing, slas.h.i.+ng foray that startled the Zulu. Down one front the Voortrekkers rode, killing at a fantastic rate; then along another, cutting and firing; then deep into the heart of the enemy concentration, galloping like wild avengers; then back and forth three times, as if they were immortal.

After slaying hundreds of the enemy, they galloped back inside the laager; the only rider in this amazing sortie to suffer a wound was General Pretorius. He had his hand cut by an a.s.segai.

Now Ou Grietjie was moved from her position along the wagon arc and dragged by hand to one of the corners, from which she could fire straight down the gully into which four hundred Zulu had crept, hoping in this way to cut in behind the wagons. Then the cannon was loaded with an a.s.sortment of nails and sc.r.a.p, and pointed directly into the gully and discharged. It was loaded again, and fired. And before the hidden Zulu could clamber out, a third salvo hit, killing the remnants.

Still the amazing Zulu pressed on; the ground was littered with broken bodies, but on they marched, throwing themselves against the wagons, trying in vain to move close enough to use their stabbing a.s.segais, and falling back only when they were dead.

At the end of two hours the black generals sought to rally their regiments by gathering in one spot all White s.h.i.+eld survivors and giving them the simple command: 'Break through and slay the wizards.' Without hesitation these splendid warriors adjusted the s.h.i.+elds, borrowed extra a.s.segais, and began a stately march right at the spot from which Ou Grietjie had been removed. They came in panoply, they fought in glory. Wave after wave marched almost to the wagons and fell to the blazing guns. Yet on they came, men trained all their lives to obey, but when the final ranks. .h.i.t the wagons, they accomplished nothing. Silently the generals signaled retreat and the punished regiments withdrew, defeated but still obedient to command. A new power had replaced them in Zululand, and it had come to stay.

Before dusk the Voortrekkers came out of their laager to inspect the battlefield, on which they counted over three thousand dead. Another seven hundred died of wounds at a distance and could not be verified. Still others would die later.

What can be said of a battle in which the casualties were over four thousand dead on one side, a cut hand on the other? Not one man in the Voortrekker laager was killed; not one was seriously injured; counting even the scratches, only three were touched in this incredible battle. Four thousand-to-nothing, what kind of warfare is that? The answer would come years later from a troubled Dutch Reformed minister: 'It was not a battle. It was an execution.'

But Blood River, terrible though it was, must not be considered by itself; it was merely the culminating battle in the campaign that included the ma.s.sacres at Dingane's Kraal and Blaauwkrantz. If those unwarranted deaths are counted, plus the many casualties at unprotected farms, the real nature of this continuing battle can be apprehended: at first, overwhelming Zulu victories; at the end, a Voortrekker triumph so one-sided as to be grotesque; but on balance, a ferocious battle with many casualties on each side.

The real victor at Blood River was not the Voortrekker commando, but the spirit of the covenant that a.s.sured their triumph. As Tjaart said when he led prayers after the battle: 'Almighty G.o.d, only You enabled us to win. We were faithful to You, and You fought at our side. In obedience to the covenant You offered us and which You honored, we shall henceforth abide as Your people in the land You have given us.'

What the Voortrekkers failed to realize in their moment of victory was that they had offered the covenant to G.o.d, not He to them. Any group of people anywhere in the world was free to propose a covenant on whatever terms they pleased, but this did not obligate G.o.d to accept that covenant, and especially not if their unilateral terms contravened His basic teachings to the detriment of another race whom He loved equally. Nevertheless, in obedience to the covenant as they understood it, they had won a signal victory, which confirmed their belief that He had accepted their offer and had personally intervened on their behalf. No matter what happened henceforth, men like Tjaart van Doorn were convinced that whatever they did was done in consonance with His wishes. The Boer nation had become a theocracy, and would so remain.

General Pretorius knew he must not allow King Dingane a chance to regroup his regiments; he realized that Zulu learned quickly and that in the next great battle they would present him with difficult tactics, so he scoured the landscape, seeking the devious ruler who had committed the murders. He did not catch him. Before fleeing, Dingane set fire to his famous kraal, destroying the treasures acc.u.mulated since the reign of Shaka. Among the items found by the Boers in the kraal were two cannon, a gift from a treaty-seeker. They had been allowed to rust, unused; had they been operating at Blood River, they might have offset Ou Grietjie and her three sisters.

Dingane fled far to the north, where he established a new kraal and waited in fright for the Boers to come seeking retribution. A younger brother, Mpande, seized the chance to ally himself with the Boers and suggested a joint expedition against his brother's battered regiments. But before this campaign could be launched, Dingane sent his chief councillor, Dambuza, and a subordinate to the Voortrekkers, offering them two hundred of his finest cattle.

'Dingane seeks peace,' Dambuza entreated. 'The lands Retief sought are yours.'

Mpande, who attended this meeting, always seeking an opportunity to increase his standing with the whites, screamed at Dambuza, 'You lie! There will be no peace if Dingane lives. Who are you to speak, Dambuza? Were you not at his side when he killed Retief and his men? Were you not shouting, "They are wizards"? '

So ferocious was Mpande's indictment that Pretorius ordered the envoys stripped naked and cast into chains. Shortly, both were on trial before a military court, where the chief witness was Mpande. On his testimony, both envoys were sentenced to death, even though they were diplomats visiting a host country, as it were.

Dambuza did not beg, but he did plead for his subordinate: 'Spare him. He's a young man with no guilt.'

There was no mercy. Tjaart van Doorn , present throughout the hearing, saw Balthazar Bronk, eager to serve on the firing squad, prepare his rifle. The two condemned blacks were dragged into the open, and Bronk's marksmen lined up.

'Wait!' Pretorius cried. Striding swiftly toward the envoys, he said, 'Dambuza, you must ask forgiveness from G.o.d. Tell Him you're sorry, and He'll listen.'

The tall, powerful black said slowly, 'I know not your G.o.d, Boer. King Dingane is my chief. I did what he ordered. But I do plead for my aide. Release him.'

'Shoot them,' Pretorius barked, turning away from the scene of execution.

Bronk and his men a.s.sumed position. Their gunfire splattered, and the two blacks fell. Then the miracle happened. Councillor Dambuza, only slightly wounded, rose to his feet.

'He is spared,' someone shouted. 'G.o.d has saved him for his courage.'

'Reload,' Bronk shouted.

Tjaart van Doorn said not a word as Dambuza faced the firing squad for a second time, but he did think of a grim day long ago at a place called Slagter's Nek, and in his mind he saw a scrawny English missionary, brother to his friend in Grahamstown, pleading for mercy for men whom G.o.d had reprieved when the ropes at their necks broke.

'Fire!' Bronk shouted, and this time the aim of the executioners was sure.

Within months Dingane himself was dead, a.s.sa.s.sinated perhaps at the instigation of his brother Mpande, who ascended the throne with the help of his Boer allies. It had been Dingane's fate to wrest the kingdom from his half brother Shaka at the time in history when confrontation with a new and powerful force was inescapable, and he had never had a glimmer as to how adjustments should be made. He was an evil, pitiful man; he was also a powerful, wise and cunning manipulator; and the best that can be said of him is that his errors did not destroy the Zulu people. On the ashes of Dingane's Kraal a mighty nation would arise, powerful enough within a few decades to challenge the British Empire, and within a century to contest with the Boer nation for the leaders.h.i.+p of southern Africa.

When victory was complete, Tjaart studied the situation carefully; desperately he wished that Lukas de Groot were still alive so that he might compare a.s.sessments with that sage farmer, for he needed help. He also missed Jakoba, whose stubborn advice had always been so sensible; she would have been a good one to talk with, but her successor, Aletta, was quite hopeless. Whatever Tjaart elected to do suited her; her princ.i.p.al concern was finding enough cloth and stiffeners to make a sunbonnet large enough to keep the sun's rays from her face, which she hoped to keep as fair as possible.

Once, in dismay, Tjaart said, 'Aletta, I think we ought to go back over the mountains to land we know. I don't like it here. Sooner or later the English are going to come at us . . .'

'That's a good idea,' Aletta agreed, but when he took the first steps to effectuate the plan, she whimpered, 'I wouldn't want to carry our wagon back up those cliffs.' He did not remind her that she had carried precious little down, but he was confused by her vacillations, and one day he asked, 'Aletta, where would you like to spend the rest of your life?'

The bluntness of this question startled her, for she had not reached the age when the phrase 'the rest of your life' had any meaning; it was then that she awakened fully to the fact that she was married to a man over fifty years old and that he had only a limited number of years remaining. But where would she like to live? 'Cape Town,' she said honestly, whereupon he ended the discussion.

He had about decided to stay in Natal with General Pretorius, whom he admired immensely, when two trivial things intervened: an English merchant came up from Port Natal with news that an English force would soon be arriving to take the port under their command; and young Paulus, now a tall and vigorous lad, said casually, 'I would like to go hunting lions.' And the vision of an untrammeled veld came back to haunt Tjaart. He appreciated Natal, especially these good fields along the Tugela River, but like many Voortrekkers, once he had seen the vast open sweep of the Transvaal, all other land seemed puny. He, too, longed to see lions and rhinoceroses and perhaps the sable antelope. He was homesick for loneliness, and the presence of so many Boers erecting villages and towns oppressed him.

Even so, Aletta's obvious preference for the maturing life of Natal might have kept him there had not a ridiculous situation developed: one morning he was awakened by a clatter outside his tent, and there was Balthazar Bronk, a man he despised. 'Van Doorn ,' he said as soon as Tjaart wiped the sleeping-sand out of his eyes, 'what they say is true. "Wherever a s.h.i.+p can sail, an Englishman will come." I think we ought to get out of here.'

'To where?'

'Back up on the plateau.' From the tent, young Paulus cried, 'Hooray! We'll go back and hunt lions.'

The more Balthazar talked, the more sense he made, and by the time Aletta got out of bed, the two men had convinced themselves that they must start quickly toward the mountains; Natal was not for them. But when Aletta heard the decision she began to pout and said that she did not intend to help carry this wagon back up those hills. 'No necessity,' Bronk a.s.sured her. There's a good trail now. General Pretorius crossed the peaks in three days.'

'Why didn't we use it?' she said. 'It wasn't known then.'

For a three-day period it looked as if Aletta might leave Tjaart; she was not legally married to him yet, and there were other men in the new settlements who needed wives. It was her strong desire to remain here with the other women and not climb back to the highveld where her life would be lonely and short. But then an American missionarya gawky young Baptist from Indianawandered into the settlements, and the hunger of the Voortrekkers for a predikant manifested itself. Tjaart joined a committee of five which interrogated the young man to see if he might be willing to perfect his Dutch and transfer his allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church.

'I am not too good at languages,' he said in English.

'Did you attend seminary?' Tjaart asked in Dutch. 'Yes.'

'And were you approved?'

'Yes.'

'Then you can learn.'

'But you ought to have a Dutch minister.'

'That's right,' Tjaart said, 'but the Dutch ministers have outlawed us,' and he showed the young man the latest copy of the Cape Town newspaper, The South African Commercial Advertiser, The South African Commercial Advertiser, in which spokesmen for the church reiterated the charge that the Voortrekkers were fugitives acting in disobedience to organized society, that they were no doubt spiritual degenerates and should be shunned by all good people. in which spokesmen for the church reiterated the charge that the Voortrekkers were fugitives acting in disobedience to organized society, that they were no doubt spiritual degenerates and should be shunned by all good people.

'Of course it would be better if we had Dutch predikants,' Tjaart summarized, 'but what we want to know is can you accept our doctrines?'

'Well,' the young fellow said brightly, 'seems to me that the Dutch Reformed Church is pretty much what we in America call Lutherans.'

'Nothing of the kind!' Tjaart roared. 'That's Martin Luther. We're John Calvin.'

'Aren't they the same?'

'Good G.o.d!' Tjaart grumbled, and he took no further part in the interrogation, but when the other four had completed their questioning, it became apparent that here was a true man of G.o.d, called to the frontier from a vast distance, one who would grace any community. Without consulting Tjaart, they made him a definite offer, and he finally accepted.

But it was Tjaart who gave him his first two commissions: 'Will you perform a marriage?'

'I would be proud to do so, Mr. van Doorn.'

'I'm never a mister,' Tjaart growled, whereupon the young minister said, 'But you are a man of strong calling, and that I like.'

The two men walked to Tjaart's wagon, where Aletta was summoned, and when she heard that this strange fellow was a minister she turned pale, for during the past several nights she had been secretly meeting a young man whose love-making she fancied, and she had been about to inform Tjaart of her new preference. He, seeing her paleness, surmised what the situation might be, for he had met with her when she was married to another and he knew her irresponsibility; but he also knew that moving to the north without a wife would be impossible, and he was still captivated by her beauty. So he reached out, grasped her harshly by the wrist, and pulled her before the new predikant.

'Marry us,' he said, and there in the Natal sunlight the new clergyman performed his first ritual, knowing well that it was somehow faulty and that this was not a good union.

His second rite was a strange one. Tjaart, with the approval of some of his neighbors, asked the missionary, 'Sir, can you honor us by ordaining a dead man?'

'Quite unheard of.' But when Van Doorn led the party to a narrow grave marked by a few stones and explained to the new predikant who Theunis Nel had been, and how he had died, and why he had always wanted to be an ordained clergyman, the young fellow said, 'He won his ordination of G.o.d. It would ill behoove me to deprive him of it.'

So at the graveside he prayed for the soul of... 'What's the name again?' 'Theunis Nel,' Tjaart whispered.'... The soul of Thy servant Theunis Nel. I became a minister by studying at seminary in Pennsylvania. Theunis became one by sacrificing his life for others.'

'Can you pray in Dutch?' Tjaart asked.

'I'm learning.'

'Well, say a few words. Theunis spoke Dutch.'

In halting phrases the young predikant asked for the blessing of all upon this man who had served so faithfully, the true minister of the faith, after which Tjaart said defiantly, 'Now he's a predikant,' but Balthazar Bronk, following this nonsense from a distance, whispered to his cronies, 'He was Tjaart's son-in-law. That explains it.'

Nevertheless, when Tjaart and his legal wife inspanned their oxen and set their rebuilt wagon on the journey west, Bronk was with them, and six other families. With the English once more breathing down their necks, this time in Natal, they knew they had yet to find the promised land they sought.

On 26 March 1841 they reached the foothills of the Drakensberg, where they rested for three weeks prior to the a.s.sault. Bronk had been correct in stating that a new pa.s.s had been found over the peaks, but even so, it required almost a month for the wagons slowly to retrace their way to Thaba Nchu, where hundreds of Voortrekkers had a.s.sembled. Here, too, they rested through the cold months of June and July, acquiring goods, listening to tales about the land across the Vaal River.

Two of their families defected, but four new ones joined, and it was in a party of ten wagons that they started their serious penetration of the veld. Vast areas depopulated by Mzilikazi's early depredations had slowly started their recovery, but the journey in late winter of that year was still appalling: they came upon the roots of villages which had been totally destroyed. Not a hut remained, not an animal, only bleached bones. Tjaart said, 'It's as if a Biblical plague had wasted the land and its people.'

One morning as the wagons moved across the empty veld with Tjaart and Paulus in the lead, Aletta broke into laughter, and when others asked the reason, she pointed at the two figures and said, 'They look like two flat-topped hills moving across the landscape,' and when the others studied them, they did indeed resemble walking mounds: heavy shoes, thick ragged trousers, bulking shoulders and flat hats with enormous brimsTjaart ponderous and heavy, Paulus a true child of the veld. They were the walking mountains on whom a new society would be built.

In October they reached as far north as the Pienaars River, where Paulus shot a large hippopotamus, providing meat for two weeks of their stay in that congenial place. They had now been in uncharted territory for three months, with no idea at all of where they would settle, but no one complained. This was so much better than the early days of the Mzilikazi terror, or those later days in Natal when ma.s.sacres were frequent; here there was only loneliness and swift death if illness attacked; there was also food, and safety at night, and the incredible beauty of the veld.

On 17 November 1841 Tjaart reached a major decision: 'We're going up to the Limpopo. I've always been told it's the best part of Africa.' Such a journey might require six months, eight months. But there was nothing else to do, so the ten wagons slowly pressed northward, into the land of the baobabs, the land of enormous antelope herds. On the southern sh.o.r.e of the river Paulus de Groot shot his lion. Of course, Tjaart and Balthazar stood behind him and shot at the same instant so as to avoid leaving a cripple to ravage the area, but they did not tell Paulus of this and all agreed that he had brought down the beast.

These Voortrekkers spent from January 1842 to September exploring north of the Limpopo, moving out cautiously to ascertain whether or not the land which looked so peaceful contained enemy tribes, and at the conclusion of the fourth such probe, Tjaart said, The Kaffirs we've met all speak of a great city to the north. Zimbabwe. I think we should go see.'

The other families, including Aletta, counseled against this, saying, 'Mzilikazi lies in wait up there.' But to Tjaart's surprise he was supported by Balthazar Bronk, who had heard rumors that Zimbabwe was paved with gold: 'I've asked the Kaffirs. They say Mzilikazi moved far west.' So Tjaart, Balthazar, Paulus and two blacks set forth with six horses to reach Zimbabwe, and as they traveled through low scrub, decorated with euphorbias that looked like Christmas trees with a thousand upright candles, they caught something of the grandeur of this region; it was quite unlike land to the south of the Limpopo, but they noticed also that their horses were weakening, as if some new disease were striking them, and they began to hurry, eager to see Zimbabwe with its golden streets.

At last they could view on the far horizon the vast hills of granite with their exfoliated layers of smooth stone, and they guessed that they were in the general region of the city, but when their horses faltered, they felt that they must turn back, and a serious conclave was held, with Balthazar wanting to return and Tjaart wis.h.i.+ng to forge ahead just a little farther. Paulus, too, wanted to try, and his vote decided; Bronk would stay with the sick horses while the two others walked for three days: 'If you see nothing by then, you must come back.'