As frustrating as the delay was, Lewrie found that camping out on the bluffs could be enjoyable… so long as precautions were made against snakes, spiders, scorpions, and other nasty native buggers. Simon's Bay and False Bay were wide and yawningly empty and the surf was calm on all but the worst days. A firm, stiff wind swirled in, cooling even the hottest part of the day, and, all-in-all, Lewrie found the climate near the 40th Latitude so mild and invigourating, the sound of the surf raling on the beach so pacific, and the dawns so cool and bracing, that Lewrie began to think of the Cape as a prickly sort of Paradise.
Late each afternoon, after the Javanese divers were exhausted, and the sunlight on the waters slanted at too great an angle for them to see what they were doing, all work ceased but for camp chores, and experiments by sailors off Proteus at fishing, halving off in watch-versus-watch to stage a football match on the hard-packed lower beach, or lounging about like the aforesaid 'Lotus Eaters' after a refreshing dip in the surf, themselves… careful to keep an eye out for sharks, which were reputed to teem in southern African waters, and were of an especially vicious, man-eating nature… or snoozing in the shade of a tent fly 'til mess chores summoned them.
Lewrie had his horse, and had fetched along his lighter fusil musket. For a 'piddling fee,' Andries de Witt offered him the loan of a young Boer by name of Piet duToit as a hunting guide, and Lewrie got into the habit of riding out into the countryside each afternoon with the lanky thatch-haired Boer, in search of game.
Settled as the lower Cape below the Cederburgs and Drakensburgs were, as neatly Dutch-orderly as the farmland appeared, game was still plentiful, and with the larger predators driven out by years of 'pest' or trophy hunting, decent-sized herds of ungulants had prospered with the lions' absence, and every day ended with something for the pot.
Piet duToit wasn't the most talkative fellow, but he did enjoy pointing out a few cautions on their rides: how to spot puff adders or black mambas; how to scan trees very warily for the slim, green, tree-dwelling boomslang that was so poisonous; both versions of cobras to avoid, the Cape cobra that bit and chewed its venom into a wound, and the rinkhals that could spit death into one's eyes a goodly distance.
They ran across a bewildering array of beasts, such as rhebok, reedbok, red hartebeest, steenbok, and klipspringer, wee duikers, and grysbok, larger elands, and impalas, and God only knew what-all. Piet duToit boasted that this was nothing, for north beyond the Cederburg Range, out in the Great Karoo savannahs and vlies, there were bigger creatures: kudu and wildebeest, Cape buffalo, giraffes, hippos, and rhinoceros, warthogs, zebras, and elephants, and, the kings of all, the lions! DuToit would go there, he swore, once he found a properly sweet wife, and amassed enough money for waggons, oxen, horses, guns, and kaffir slaves. He'd find a well-watered spot, break ground with the plough, and start raising his herds and flocks, and if that land played out, or he got bored, there'd always be something even grander to see, a week's trek farther along. Town life was so boresome, and confining! No place to raise a brood of a dozen children.
The bird life was equally fascinating to Lewrie, both the ones worth shooting and those too grand to eat, for the countryside teemed with them, too. Ostriches and tall, dignified secretary birds, Kori bustards that looked too big to fly, but did, cattle egrets, and red oxpeckers, hornbills, storks, ibises, a dozen varieties of eagles, hawks and owls, kites, buzzards, falcons, kestrels, and goshawks.
On the gentler side, there were hoopoes and louries, the lilac-breasted rollers, bee eaters, glossy and plum- coloured starlings, the waxbills that came in either yellow, blue, or violet, red bishops and jewel-like sunbirds, and the maricos that came in their own palette of vivid colours.
For shooting, there were red-eyed doves, laughing doves, ring-necked Cape turtledoves, and Namaqua doves; helmeted guinea fowl, crested francolins, and sandgrouse, moorhens, Egyptian geese, yellow-bill or white-faced ducks, Cape teals, even flamingos (which only the richest ancient Romans had eaten) that ended on Lewrie's plate, though young duToit was the better shot with a double-barreled fowling gun, nailing three for each one that Lewrie brought down.
There were anteaters and honey badgers, or ratels as the Boers called them, mongooses, and four kinds of smaller hunting cats: civets and genets, which were closer to mongooses than true cats; servals, and caracals… and jackals and Cape foxes, and bat-eared foxes, and if Lewrie ever wished to take a real hunting trip, he could bring back pelts and masks from leopards, cheetahs, and lions… for a reasonable fee, of course. Piet duToit swore he could outfit him with anything he wished… tentage, bearers and cooks, body-servants, waggons, spirits, and gunpowder. Even a string quartet, if he wished!
'Some people I know have hired a guide, and gone on an inland hunt,' Lewrie remarked one afternoon as they watered their horses by a small stream. 'Those circus folk, who staged those shows.'
'Those stupid rooineks?' duToit harshly laughed, between bites off a strip of biltong, a sun-dried meat of unknown source. 'The gut God help them, myhneer, for they go vit' Jan van der Merwe.'
'B'lieve that was the name they mentioned, aye,' Lewrie slowly allowed, his curiosity up and stirring. 'Why? What's wrong with this… van der Merwe?'
'Machtig, myhneer… what is right?' duToit scoffed back with sour mirth.
'A sham, is he? A 'Captain Sharp'?' Lewrie asked further.
'Don't know this Kaptein Sharp kerel you speak of, myhneer, A sham? Oh, ja. Jan van der Merwe is, what you call, 2. joke} He could get lost in a field of mealies… cannot trail smoke back to a campfire! Once, he think he tame hyenas, thinking they are just another kind of big puppy-dog, haw haw! Those circus people mean to hunt out in the vlies, they have no need of guide to find game. Just ride far enough, they will see thousands of beasts an hour Only need kaffirs to butcher and skin, drove oxen to bring back pelt and ivory, set up the camps, and cook, you see? Any fool can boss camp kaffirs… know just enough Bantu to tell them what to do. Ha! Van der Merwe cannot speak proper Dutch, much less…'
'They were, ah… more of a mind to capture animals than hunt for trophies,' Lewrie explained. 'To add to their menagerie and such? Real zebras, stead o' tarted-up donkeys, elephants to ride and train to do tricks, lion cubs to raise…'
'African elephant?' duToit gasped in true shock, raising his voice higher than his usual cautious field-mutter. 'African elephant is not like the Indian, myhneer Try to train them, they stomp you in ground, then mash you to soup! Bad- tempered beasts, good only for the shooting, and ivory. And, anyone think to steal cubs from a pride of lions, they end up eaten to the bone, and their bones cracked^. Bones end as play-things for those cubs!'
'Thought it sounded a touch daft,' Lewrie replied.
'Machtig God,' duToit exclaimed, 'those people tell that fool van der Merwe that is what they plan? They pay him good money for him as guide? You never see them again, Kaptein Lewrie. Rooinek idiots… even so, I feel sorry for them.'
'What is a rooinek, Mister duToit?' Lewrie felt pressed to ask, though the picture of Arslan Durschenko being gnawed down to splinters was intriguing.
'Ah… rooineck in Cape Dutch means 'red neck,' Kaptein' his guide matter-of-factly decyphered, well, perhaps with a tiny touch of arch amusement in his eyes. 'Your British soldiers come here, we see their tight red collars… the colour they turn in the sun, too, you see? What we say, instead of British. More biltong}'
'No thankee, I've eat sufficient,' Lewrie replied, thinking it odd that he wasn't offended. 'Uhm, what is biltong made of, then? It puts me in mind of venison or beef 'jerky,' as the American Indians I met called it, but…'
'Ja, it is any kind of game meat,' duToit told him, though he seemed suddenly
