Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 20)( Page 4 ) Jantje

One day I was watching the ants as they travelled along their route-- sometimes stopping to hobnob with those they met, sometimes hurrying past, and sometimes turning as though  sent back on a message or reminded of something forgotten--when a little dry brown bean lying in a spot of sunlight gave a jump of an inch or two.  At first it seemed that I must have unknowingly moved some twig or grass stem that flicked it; but as I watched it there was another vigorous jump.  I took it up and examined it but there was nothing unusual about it, it was just a common light brown bean with no peculiarities or marks; it was a real puzzle, a most surprising and ridiculous one.  I found half a dozen more in the same place; but it was some days before we discovered the secret.  Domiciled in each of them was a very small but very energetic worm, with a trap-door or stopper on his one end, so artfully contrived that it was almost impossible with the naked eye to locate the spot where the hole was.  The worm objected to too much heat and if the beans were placed in the sun or near the fire the weird astonishing jumping would commence. The beans were good for jumping for several months, and once in Delagoa, one of our party put some on a plate in the sun beside a fellow who had been doing himself too well for some time previously: he had become a perfect nuisance to us and we could not get rid of him.  He had a mouth full of bread, and a mug of coffee on the way to help it down, when the first bean jumped.  He gave a sort of peck, blinked several times to clear his eyes, and then with his left hand pulled slightly at his collar, as though to ease it.  Then came another jump, and his mouth opened slowly and his eyes got big.  The plate being hollow and glazed was not a fair field for the jumpers--they could not escape; and in about half a minute eight or ten beans were having a rough and tumble. With a white scared face our guest slowly lowered his mug, screened his eyes with the other hand, and after fighting down the mouthful of bread, got up and walked off without a word. We tried to smother our laughter, but some one's choking made him look back and he saw the whole lot of us in various stages of convulsions. He made one rude remark, and went on; but every one he met that day made some allusion to beans, and he took the Durban steamer next morning. The insect life was prodigious in its numbers and variety; and the birds, the beasts, and the reptiles were all interesting.  There is a goodness-knows-what-will-turn-up-next atmosphere about the Bushveld which is, I fancy, unique.  The story of the curate, armed with a butterfly net, coming face to face with a black-maned lion may or may not be true--in fact; but it is true enough as an illustration; and it is no more absurd or unlikely than the meeting at five yards of a lioness and a fever-stricken lad carrying a white green-lined umbrella-- which is true!  The boy stood and looked: the lioness did the same. "She seemed to think I was not worth eating, so she walked off," he used to say--and he was Trooper 242 of the Imperial Light Horse who went back under fire for wounded comrades and was killed as he brought the last one out. I had an old cross-bred Hottentot-Bushman boy once--one could not tell which lot he favoured--who was full of the folklore stories and superstitions of his strange and dying race, which he half humorously and half seriously blended with his own knowledge and hunting experiences.  Jantje had the ugly wrinkled dry-leather face of his breed, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones, and little pinched eyes, so small and so deeply set that no one ever saw the colour of them; the peppe  corns of tight wiry wool that did duty for hair were sparsely scattered over his head like the stunted bushes in the desert; and his face and head were seamed with scars too numerous to count, the souvenirs of his drunken brawls.  He resembled a tame monkey rather than ahuman creature, being, like so many of his kind without the moral side or qualities of human nature which go to mark the distinction between man and monkey.  He was normally most cheery and obliging; but it meant nothing, for in a moment the monkey would peep out, vicious, treacherous and unrestrained.  Honesty, sobriety, gratitude, truth, fidelity, and humanity were impossible to him: it seemed as if even the germs were not there to cultivate, and the material with which to work did not exist. He had certain make-believe substitutes, which had in a sense been grafted on to his nature, and appeared to work, while there was no real use for them; they made a show, until they were tested; one took them for granted, as long as they were not disproved: it was a skin graft only, and there seemed to be no real `union' possible between them and the tough alien stock.  He differed in character and nature from the Zulu as much as he did from the white man; he was as void of principle as- well, as his next of kin, the monkey; yet, while without either shame of, or contempt for, cowardice; he was wholly without fear of physical danger, having a sort of fatalist's indifference to it; and that was something to set off against his moral deficit.  I put Jantje on to wash clothes the day he turned up at the waggons to look for work, and as he knelt on the  ocks stripped to the waist I noticed a very curious knotted line running up his right side from the lowest rib into the armpit.  The line was whiter than his yellow skin; over each rib there was a knot or widening in the line; and under the arm there was a big splotchy star--all markings of some curious wound.