



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




A Vendetta of the Desert
By William Charles Scully
Published by Methuen and Co, London.
This edition dated 1898.
A Vendetta of the Desert, by William Charles Scully.

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A VENDETTA OF THE DESERT, BY WILLIAM CHARLES SCULLY.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE POWER OF THE DOG.

Old Tyardt van der Walt, head of the family of that name, came of good
Netherlands stock.  His grandfather had emigrated from Holland with his
family in the middle of the Eighteenth Century and settled at the Cape.
He bought a farm in the Stellenbosch district and there commenced life
anew as a wine farmer.  The family consisted of his wife, a son and
several daughters--all of whom married early.  At his death the farm
descended to his son Cornelius from whom, in course of time, another
Tyardt inherited it.

The last-mentioned Tyardt forsook the settled and fertile environs of
Stellenbosch and trekked forward to seek his fortune in the unknown and
perilous wilderness.  A story is told as to the reason for this
migration which, though it has no direct bearing on the story which is
to be recorded in this volume, is interesting enough in itself to merit
relation.

There was, it is said, a gruesome legend connected with the van der
Walts.  It dated from the times of William the Silent and was to the
following effect:--The head of the van der Walt family of that period
lived in the town of Maestricht.  He was a man of solitary habits.  In
his youth his wife had deserted him for another.  He had been
passionately attached to her, and he never recovered from the blow, but
lived the rest of his days in solitude.

Years afterwards, when he was quite an old man, a son of the man who had
wronged him--a young and zealous Lutheran preacher, came to live in his
vicinity.  This preacher was in the habit of visiting in disguise
families of his co-religionists in the Provinces where the Spaniards
held complete dominion.  He had a dog that had been trained to convey
cypher messages from place to place.  Van der Walt betrayed this
preacher to the authorities, with the result that he was captured and
sentenced to be burnt alive.  The betrayer was among those who crowded
round the stake to gloat over the agonies of the victim.  The dog had
followed its master and, seeing his evil case, set up a piteous howling.
The Spaniards, judging the heretic to be a wizard, and the dog his
familiar spirit, caught the unhappy animal and bound it among the
<DW19>s at its master's feet.  Just as the pile was lit the preacher
lifted up his voice and cried aloud:--

"Gerrit van der Walt,--for thy black treachery to a servant of the Lord,
thou shalt die in misery within a year and a day.  Thy soul shall wander
homeless for ever and shall howl like a dog as the harbinger of
misfortune whenever it is about to fall upon one of thy blood."

It has been declared on respectable authority that from and after the
death of Gerrit, which took place under miserable circumstances within
the period named by his victim, a dog which was never seen would howl
around the dwelling of any van der Walt about to die, for the three
nights previous to the passing of his soul.  Thus a new terror was added
to the death-bed of any member of the family.

The following account of the last occasion when this warning howl was
heard is firmly believed by the few surviving descendants in the direct
line.  It is taken from an old manuscript which purports to date from
the year in which the incidents related are alleged to have taken place.

Towards the end of the last century, Tyardt's father, Cornelius van der
Walt, lay ill in bed, but no one imagined that his illness was likely to
be fatal, until one night after supper the dreaded howl was heard under
his window.  The sick man, filled with terror, arose to a sitting
posture in his bed, and called Tyardt, who was his eldest son, before
him.

"If that dog be not shot by you before the day after to-morrow," he
said, "I will make my will anew and dispossess you of everything that
the law will allow me to leave to others."

Next day Tyardt brooded long and deeply over the occurrence.  He did not
love his father, so the old man's death would have caused him no regret,
but he knew that the threat would be carried out.

There was an old and tattered family Bible on the loft, with a strong
and heavy metal clasp.  This clasp Tyardt broke into fragments