The covenant - James A. Michener [188]
A small hut was built, big enough for one boy. Since white clay could not be located, red had to suffice. There being no older man familiar with a sharp cutting edge, a young amateur volunteered, and with a dull assegai performed a hideous operation. Without the proper herbs to medicate it, the wound festered so badly that Sotopo almost lost his life. For a hundred days he remained in isolation, only his brother slipping in occasionally to share the experience he had had when he was inducted into manhood.
When the seclusion ended, the small hut was set aflame, as custom required, and time was at hand for him to dance. He did so alone, with no gourd, no stringed instrument; tail feathers projected from the rear as he waved his buttocks, and the shells about his ankle reverberated when he stomped. At the conclusion he delivered a speech of profound import. Looking at the adventurous little band, he said in a loud, clear voice, 'I am a man.' It was toward men like him that the trekboers were advancing.
Seena and Adriaan met Nels Linnart of Sweden in a most improbable way. In 1748 a horseman came rushing up from the south with the exciting news that a great ship had foundered off Cape Seal, with so much cargo to be salvaged that all farms in the area could replenish their stocks for a dozen years. At Van Doorn's, every able man saddled his horse to participate in the looting, and when Adriaan galloped south, Seena rode with him, her long red hair flashing in the wind.
They arrived at the wreck about two hours before sunset the next day, to find an even richer store than the messenger had indicated. Some thirty trekboers had formed a rescue line with ropes and were bringing the ship's passengers ashore, but as soon as the lives were saved, these same men rushed back through the waves to plunder the ship, and the eager Van Doorns arrived in time to reach the foodstuffs before the water damaged them. Whole barrels of flour and herring were rafted ashore. One family concentrated on every item of furniture in the captain's cabin, and when he protested, a huge trekboer glowered at him and said, 'If you'd kept your ship off the rocks, we wouldn't be plundering it.'
All that night, with the aid of a shadowy moon and rush lanterns, the avaricious trekboers ransacked the ship of its movable treasures, but at dawn a young man not over thirty came to Adriaan and said, in highly accented Dutch, 'Please, sir, you and your wife look decent. Will you help me get my books?'
'Who are you?' Adriaan asked suspiciously.
'Dr. Nels Linnart, Stockholm and Uppsala.' When Adriaan's blank face showed that he understood nothing, the young man said, 'Sweden.' Adriaan had never heard of this, either, so the man said, 'Please, I have fine books there. I must save them.'
Still Adriaan registered nothing, but Seena said impatiently, 'He needs help,' and in the doctor's wake the two Van Doorns swam out to the ship, clambered up the side and boarded the vessel that could not stay afloat much longer. To them it was a weird universe of dark passageways, pounding waves and the dank smell of steerage. The treasured books were in a cabin, forty or fifty large volumes published in diverse countries, and these Dr. Linnart proposed to move ashore, but to get them through the waves without destroying them posed a problem.
Seena devised a way. She would jump down into the waves, grasp the rope, then accept an armful of books, which she would hold aloft as Adriaan struggled beneath her, holding her above the waves as they moved slowly ashore. 'Bravo!' cried the doctor from the deck as he saw the couple deposit his books well inland and come back for another cargo.
In this manner the little library was rescued; it would form the foundation of a notable collection of books in southern Africa: Latin, Greek, German, Dutch, English, Swedish, and fourteen in French. They covered various branches of science, especially