The covenant - James A. Michener [244]
'Where would you get the money?'
'I'd write home ... to my mother.'
The fatuousness of this statement amused all the Van Doorns, and for the first time since the death of the Hammer they broke into laughter. 'He'll write home to his mother!' Tjaart mimicked. But he did agree to sell the slaves.
Even as the laughter echoed, the final scenes of the futile uprising were being enacted to the north, where well-trained English soldiers pinned down a ragtag commando of seventy dissident Boers, most of whom surrendered without a shot. A few of the ringleaders escaped to fight a bitter-end clash, but when it ended, Johannes Bezuidenhout, brother of Frederick, who had started the troubles, lay dead. The first abortive rebellion was ended.
It was a sound that never before had been heard in this part of the world: two slow-footed drummers marching alongside a cart in which stood six manacled men and beating out the pace of death. The two horses, groomed for the occasion, hauled the last of the Bezuidenhout rebels into a beautiful valley surrounded by comforting hills. The six men had been sentenced to death, but one had been reprieved: before his life in jail began he must stand tied by the neck to the gallows while his five companions were hanged.
The place chosen for the hanging was so appallingly named, and the events it would witness so hideous, that it would reverberate in South African history: Slagter's NekThe Neck of the Slaughterer.
The crowd of witnesses was great. All revolutionaries not condemned were required to stand in the shadow of the gallows, as were members of the men's families, and the two widows of the Bezuidenhouts already dead. Near three hundred militia were present to control passions: English troops in red, Hottentot militia in marching gear, and loyal Boers in the rough dress of the commando. And in command of all rode a most extraordinary man: the son of the mayor of Albany, New York, in the new United States of America.
Colonel Jacob Glen Cuyler, forty years old and a fine figure of a man, had been born on the eve of the American Revolution into a loyalist family. When his parents refused to support the revolution, they fled to Canada, where young Jacob joined the British army. Because of his Dutch heritage, it seemed sensible to send him to South Africa, where he landed with the second English invading force of 1806. A man of courage and intelligence, he prospered in the new colony, rising to rank of colonel and magistrate of a large district south of Graaff-Reinet.
He was a foe of revolutionaries. They had driven him from his home in America and left him with indelible memories: when he came to South Africa he brought with him two handsome portraits of his parents, completed shortly before his death by Major John Andre, who lived with the Cuylers before his execution as an English spy.
Colonel Cuyler, acting under strict orders from Cape Town, was determined that these hangings be conducted with propriety. It was he who had suggested the two drummers; it was he who had stopped at Golan Mission on the way north to tell Missionary Saltwood: 'It's always proper to have a clergyman present at a hanging. Gives religious sanction and helps control the doomed men.'
No one who attended the hangings at Slagter's Nek would ever forget them; women and men would sometimes cry in the night, not because of the hangings, which occurred often in those days, but because of the soul-wrenching thing that happened.
When the five condemned men were led to the gallows, they were forced to climb upon movable platforms and stand at attention, hands and feet tied, as the ropes were attached to their necks and knotted. Some of the men accepted blindfolds, others ignored them, and when all was in readiness Cuyler ordered the drums to roll, and the platforms were kicked away. For a long, terrible moment the doomed men struggled in the airand then the miracle happened! Four of the five ropes broke, allowing those men to fall free.
When this occurred a great shout of joy rose from everyone, even the rows of Hottentot