IN the days when everybody started
fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called
the High Veldt. ’Member it wasn’t
the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt,
but the ’sclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt,
where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and ’sclusively
tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe and
the Zebra and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest
lived there; and they were ’sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish
all over; but the Leopard, he was the ’sclusivest
sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all a
greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and
he matched the ’sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish
colour of the High Veldt to one hair. This was
very bad for the Giraffe and the Zebra and the rest
of them; for he would lie down by a ’sclusively
yellowish-greyish-brownish stone or clump of grass,
and when the Giraffe or the Zebra or the Eland or the
Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the Bonte-Buck came by he
would surprise them out of their jumpsome lives.
He would indeed! And, also, there was an Ethiopian
with bows and arrows (a ’sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish
man he was then), who lived on the High Veldt with
the Leopard; and the two used to hunt together the
Ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and the Leopard
’sclusively with his teeth and claws till
the Giraffe and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Quagga
and all the rest of them didn’t know which way
to jump, Best Beloved. They didn’t indeed!
After a long time things
lived for ever so long in those days they
learned to avoid anything that looked like a Leopard
or an Ethiopian; and bit by bit the Giraffe
began it, because his legs were the longest they
went away from the High Veldt. They scuttled for
days and days and days till they came to a great forest,
’sclusively full of trees and bushes and stripy,
speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows, and there they hid:
and after another long time, what with standing half
in the shade and half out of it, and what with the
slippery-slidy shadows of the trees falling on them,
the Giraffe grew blotchy, and the Zebra grew stripy,
and the Eland and the Koodoo grew darker, with little
wavy grey lines on their backs like bark on a tree
trunk; and so, though you could hear them and smell
them, you could very seldom see them, and then only
when you knew precisely where to look. They had
a beautiful time in the ’sclusively speckly-spickly
shadows of the forest, while the Leopard and the Ethiopian
ran about over the ’sclusively greyish-yellowish-reddish
High Veldt outside, wondering where all their breakfasts
and their dinners and their teas had gone. At
last they were so hungry that they ate rats and beetles
and rock-rabbits, the Leopard and the Ethiopian, and
then they had the Big Tummy-ache, both together; and
then they met Baviaan the dog-headed, barking
Baboon, who is Quite the Wisest Animal in All South
Africa.
Said Leopard to Baviaan (and it was
a very hot day), ’Where has all the game gone?’
And Baviaan winked. He knew.
Said the Ethiopian to Baviaan, ’Can
you tell me the present habitat of the aboriginal
Fauna?’ (That meant just the same thing, but
the Ethiopian always used long words. He was
a grown-up.)
And Baviaan winked. He knew.
Then said Baviaan, ’The game
has gone into other spots; and my advice to you, Leopard,
is to go into other spots as soon as you can.’
And the Ethiopian said, ’That
is all very fine, but I wish to know whither the aboriginal
Fauna has migrated.’
Then said Baviaan, ’The aboriginal
Fauna has joined the aboriginal Flora because it was
high time for a change; and my advice to you, Ethiopian,
is to change as soon as you can.’
That puzzled the Leopard and the Ethiopian,
but they set off to look for the aboriginal Flora,
and presently, after ever so many days, they saw a
great, high, tall forest full of tree trunks all ’sclusively
speckled and sprottled and spottled, dotted and splashed
and slashed and hatched and cross-hatched with shadows.
(Say that quickly aloud, and you will see how very
shadowy the forest must have been.)
‘What is this,’ said the
Leopard, ’that is so ’sclusively dark,
and yet so full of little pieces of light?’
’I don’t know, said the
Ethiopian, ’but it ought to be the aboriginal
Flora. I can smell Giraffe, and I can hear Giraffe,
but I can’t see Giraffe.’
‘That’s curious,’
said the Leopard. ’I suppose it is because
we have just come in out of the sunshine. I can
smell Zebra, and I can hear Zebra, but I can’t
see Zebra.’
’Wait a bit, said the Ethiopian.
’It’s a long time since we’ve hunted
‘em. Perhaps we’ve forgotten what
they were like.’
‘Fiddle!’ said the Leopard.
’I remember them perfectly on the High Veldt,
especially their marrow-bones. Giraffe is about
seventeen feet high, of a ’sclusively fulvous
golden-yellow from head to heel; and Zebra is about
four and a half feet high, of a’sclusively grey-fawn
colour from head to heel.’
’Umm, said the Ethiopian, looking
into the speckly-spickly shadows of the aboriginal
Flora-forest. ’Then they ought to show up
in this dark place like ripe bananas in a smokehouse.’
But they didn’t. The Leopard
and the Ethiopian hunted all day; and though they
could smell them and hear them, they never saw one
of them.
‘For goodness’ sake,’
said the Leopard at tea-time, ’let us wait till
it gets dark. This daylight hunting is a perfect
scandal.’
So they waited till dark, and then
the Leopard heard something breathing sniffily in
the starlight that fell all stripy through the branches,
and he jumped at the noise, and it smelt like Zebra,
and it felt like Zebra, and when he knocked it down
it kicked like Zebra, but he couldn’t see it.
So he said, ’Be quiet, O you person without any
form. I am going to sit on your head till morning,
because there is something about you that I don’t
understand.’
Presently he heard a grunt and a crash
and a scramble, and the Ethiopian called out, ’I’ve
caught a thing that I can’t see. It smells
like Giraffe, and it kicks like Giraffe, but it hasn’t
any form.’
‘Don’t you trust it,’
said the Leopard. ’Sit on its head till
the morning same as me. They haven’t
any form any of ’em.’
So they sat down on them hard till
bright morning-time, and then Leopard said, ‘What
have you at your end of the table, Brother?’
The Ethiopian scratched his head and
said, ’It ought to be ’sclusively a rich
fulvous orange-tawny from head to heel, and it ought
to be Giraffe; but it is covered all over with chestnut
blotches. What have you at your end of the table,
Brother?’
And the Leopard scratched his head
and said, ’It ought to be ’sclusively
a delicate greyish-fawn, and it ought to be Zebra;
but it is covered all over with black and purple stripes.
What in the world have you been doing to yourself,
Zebra? Don’t you know that if you were on
the High Veldt I could see you ten miles off?
You haven’t any form.’
‘Yes,’ said the Zebra,
‘but this isn’t the High Veldt. Can’t
you see?’
‘I can now,’ said the
Leopard. ’But I couldn’t all yesterday.
How is it done?’
‘Let us up,’ said the Zebra, ’and
we will show you.
They let the Zebra and the Giraffe
get up; and Zebra moved away to some little thorn-bushes
where the sunlight fell all stripy, and Giraffe moved
off to some tallish trees where the shadows fell all
blotchy.
‘Now watch,’ said the
Zebra and the Giraffe. ’This is the way
it’s done. One two three!
And where’s your breakfast?’
Leopard stared, and Ethiopian stared,
but all they could see were stripy shadows and blotched
shadows in the forest, but never a sign of Zebra and
Giraffe. They had just walked off and hidden themselves
in the shadowy forest.
‘Hi! Hi!’ said the
Ethiopian. ’That’s a trick worth learning.
Take a lesson by it, Leopard. You show up in
this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal-scuttle.’
‘Ho! Ho!’ said the
Leopard. ’Would it surprise you very much
to know that you show up in this dark place like a
mustard-plaster on a sack of coals?’
’Well, calling names won’t
catch dinner, said the Ethiopian. ’The long
and the little of it is that we don’t match our
backgrounds. I’m going to take Baviaan’s
advice. He told me I ought to change; and as I’ve
nothing to change except my skin I’m going to
change that.’
‘What to?’ said the Leopard, tremendously
excited.
’To a nice working blackish-brownish
colour, with a little purple in it, and touches of
slaty-blue. It will be the very thing for hiding
in hollows and behind trees.’
So he changed his skin then and there,
and the Leopard was more excited than ever; he had
never seen a man change his skin before.
‘But what about me?’ he
said, when the Ethiopian had worked his last little
finger into his fine new black skin.
‘You take Baviaan’s advice
too. He told you to go into spots.’
‘So I did,’ said the Leopard.
I went into other spots as fast as I could. I
went into this spot with you, and a lot of good it
has done me.’
‘Oh,’ said the Ethiopian,
’Baviaan didn’t mean spots in South Africa.
He meant spots on your skin.’
‘What’s the use of that?’ said the
Leopard.
‘Think of Giraffe,’ said
the Ethiopian. ’Or if you prefer stripes,
think of Zebra. They find their spots and stripes
give them per-feet satisfaction.’
‘Umm,’ said the Leopard.
‘I wouldn’t look like Zebra not
for ever so.’
‘Well, make up your mind,’
said the Ethiopian, ’because I’d hate to
go hunting without you, but I must if you insist on
looking like a sun-flower against a tarred fence.’
‘I’ll take spots, then,’
said the Leopard; ’but don’t make ’em
too vulgar-big. I wouldn’t look like Giraffe not
for ever so.’
’I’ll make ’em with
the tips of my fingers,’ said the Ethiopian.
‘There’s plenty of black left on my skin
still. Stand over!’
Then the Ethiopian put his five fingers
close together (there was plenty of black left on
his new skin still) and pressed them all over the
Leopard, and wherever the five fingers touched they
left five little black marks, all close together.
You can see them on any Leopard’s skin you like,
Best Beloved. Sometimes the fingers slipped and
the marks got a little blurred; but if you look closely
at any Leopard now you will see that there are always
five spots off five fat black finger-tips.
‘Now you are a beauty!’
said the Ethiopian. ’You can lie out on
the bare ground and look like a heap of pebbles.
You can lie out on the naked rocks and look like a
piece of pudding-stone. You can lie out on a leafy
branch and look like sunshine sifting through the leaves;
and you can lie right across the centre of a path
and look like nothing in particular. Think of
that and purr!’
‘But if I’m all this,’
said the Leopard, ‘why didn’t you go spotty
too?’
‘Oh, plain black’s best
for a nigger,’ said the Ethiopian. ’Now
come along and we’ll see if we can’t get
even with Mr. One-Two-Three Where’s your Breakfast!’
So they went away and lived happily
ever afterward, Best Beloved. That is all.
Oh, now and then you will hear grown-ups
say, ’Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the
Leopard his spots?’ I don’t think even
grown-ups would keep on saying such a silly thing
if the Leopard and the Ethiopian hadn’t done
it once do you? But they will never
do it again, Best Beloved. They are quite contented
as they are.
I AM the Most Wise Baviaan, saying
in most wise tones,
‘Let us melt into the landscape just
us two by our lones.’
People have come in a
carriage calling. But Mummy is there....
Yes, I can go if you take me Nurse
says she don’t care.
Let’s go up to the pig-sties
and sit on the farmyard rails!
Let’s say things to the bunnies,
and watch ’em skitter their tails!
Let’s oh, anything,
daddy, so long as it’s you and me,
And going truly exploring, and not
being in till tea!
Here’s your boots (I’ve
brought ’em), and here’s your cap and stick,
And here’s your pipe and tobacco.
Oh, come along out of it quick.