The covenant - James A. Michener [97]
Through the mysterious system of communication that always existed in a frontier area like the Cape, the Hottentots learned that an Honorable Commissioner had arrived to adjudicate matters, and that he was older brother to the man who tended the vineyard. The news was of little significance to most of the brown men, but to Jack it was momentous, for it meant that he could pursue his major objective with someone capable of accepting it. Accordingly, he took his sailor's clothes from the bark-box in which he kept them, dusted off the heavy shoes he had made from cowhide, put on his wide-brimmed hat, and with a heavy stave cut from a stinkwood tree came westward to the fort.
On the parapet a lookout turned at intervals, scanning the land for signs of any trouble from the Hottentots, and the sea for the English or Portuguese ships that might some day attempt to capture the little Dutch settlement. Since the fort itself now contained only ninety-five men of fighting age, plus nine women and eleven children and the slaves, it was unlikely that any enemy from Europe could be repelled by them and the fifty-one free burghers, but a lookout was maintained nevertheless, and now he spotted Jack coming through the dust.
'Hottentot!'
Commander van Riebeeck ran to the wall and quickly saw that it was his old nemesis Jack, shuffling in with some new chicanery. 'Call the commissioner,' he instructed his orderly, and when Karel was rowed ashore and saw the newcomer, he cried, to Van Riebeeck's irritation, 'That's Jack!'
'How do you know him?'
'We were together in Java.' And he hurried out to meet the little fellow.
They did not embrace, Karel was too studious of his position for that, but they did greet each other with unmistakable warmth. 'I'm to be in charge at Java,' Karel said.
'Cinnamon, nutmeg, tin, cloves,' Jack recited, evoking the days when he had known the Van Doorn brothers at the Compagnie warehouses.
'All that and more,' Karel said proudly.
Blowing out his breath, Jack asked, 'You got any cloves?'
'No,' Karel said with a thin laugh. Together they walked to the fort, where Jack asked, 'Willem, he here too?' When the younger Van Doorn was sent for, with Van Riebeeck in attendance, Jack repeated the proposal he had made many years before.
'Time that you men, Hottentots work together.'
'Fine,' Karel said, sitting stiffly in his big chair. 'If you trade us cattle, we'll'
'Not that,' Jack said. 'We need our cattle.' He was speaking English with a heavy Portuguese overlay and occasional Dutch words acquired latelythat grand melange which was on its way to becoming a unique languagebut everyone in the room understood him and was able to respond in the same vernacular.
'What, then?' Karel asked.
'I mean, we come here. Live with you. Have pasture here, huts, run your cattle, our cattle.'
Willem broke in: 'Nobody tends cattle better than a Hottentot.'
With considerable disdain Karel stared at his brother. 'Live here? You mean . . . Hottentots living in this fort?'
'They learn trades very rapidly, Karel. Those who become carpenters might live in the fort, or bakers, or shoemakers. Look, he made his own shoes.'
With disdain Karel looked at the shoes, big, misshapen affairs, and they epitomized his view of the Hottentot: capable of mimicking a few outward traces of civilization, but worthy of no serious consideration. He was dismayed at the way the meeting had turned, and without ever addressing himself seriously to Jack's proposal, he returned to the problem of the runaway slaves.
'What you can do for us is organize your people for tracking down our runaways. We'll give you weights of metal for every slave you bring back.'
Jack thought, but did not say: When we hunt, we hunt animals, not men. We're shepherds and cattlemen, and