The covenant - James A. Michener [368]
'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 God. 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 assault. Bronk had been correct in stating that a new pass 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 assembled. 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 massacres 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 shore 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