Many years ago, when the first Dutchmen came to the Cape, Devil's Peak was still called the Windberg and Table Mountain had no white cloth.
In those days, on the slopes of the mountain, lived a man called Van Hunks. His little house was the haunt of rough sailors, women and children were afraid of him and the law-abiding burghers of Cape Town eyed him with suspicion. So when one day Van Hunks sailed out of Cape Town harbour and vanished across the sea, no-one missed him very much. For years and years he was gone and his little house stood empty while the weeds grew between the flagstones.
Then, one day, Van Hunks came home again, but the man who swaggered up the Heerengracht was a very different man from the Van Hunks who had sailed away all those years ago. He was booted and spurred, his buttons, which were blood-red rubies, winked in the sun and he glittered all over with silver and gold. There were pistols tucked into his belt and a sword swung at his side. After him staggered slaves carrying sea-chests bound in iron and heavy with pirate's loot. For that is how Van Hunks had grown rich. Many was the ship that he and his ruffians had sent to the bottom of the sea, many the throat they'd cut, to fill those chests with treasure.
So he came back to live in the little house on the mountainside with his ill-gotten wealth. But he found life lonely. The people of Cape Town were afraid of his daggers and guns, the were afraid of the old pirate whose riches had cost the lives of men. And when ships anchored in the Bay he dared not go down and enjoy the bustle. Instead he would climb the slopes of the Windberg to a cave where he sat and smoked in peace.
When ships hove into sight, their
sails fat-bellied with wind, Van
Hunks would take out his telescope and watch them by the hour.
And all the time he puffed at his pipe while the grey smoke
billowed out from the cave. And if there were no ships in sight
he kept an eye on the slaves tilling his lands. In the evening he
sat alone, smoking his calabash pipe and fingering his pistols as
he remembered the sea-fights of days gone by.
One day as he sat smoking in the cave on the Windberg, a tall man dressed in black broadcloth came up the path. He was a dark, strange-looking man with a long chimney-pot hat.
His boots didn't seem to fit his feet, for he walked stiffly, as if he were lame. In his right hand he carried a long-stemmed pipe.
"Good day, mijnheer," said the stranger, for in those days they still spoke Dutch at the Cape. Then he sat down, uninvited, on a rock beside the old pirate. "May I ask your name?"
"Everyone knows my name," said Van Hunks gruffly. "Where have you been, that you don't know me, Van Hunks of Table Bay?"
The stranger laughed. "I asked merely by way of courtesy. I've heard of you."
For some reason Van Hunks felt himself shiver. "Then tell me who you are, or I'll be off," he said. "I don't like name-guessing."
"Oh, don't worry about me," said the dark man soothingly. "All I meant was that we are both great pipe-smokers, you and I. I see you have a fine calabash pipe and a large bag of tobacco. Now where I come from, there's nothing we like more than a really good smoke!"
"Is that so?" Van Hunks picked up his ears. "Let me tell you something. I've sailed the seven seas and I could tell you tales that would turn your hair white, but nowhere in the world have I met the man who could out-smoke Van Hunks!"
And so he divided the tobacco into two big piles. They filled their pipes, Van Hunks struck a spark from his tinder-box, fired the wick and lit the pipes and the two of them began to puff while the smoke drifted in clouds from the cave and away on the wind.
As they sat, the stranger regarded
Van Hunks keenly from under his great black hat and complimented
him on his excellent tobacco. And then they swapped yards. And
what yarns! Stories of sea-battles and fearful murders, of
sinners and their wicked deeds, each one more terrible than the
last. And all the while those two calabash pipes poured forth
smoke till it billowed from the cave and spread over the
mountainside like a thick grey shawl. The birds few away,
steenbuck sought shelter in the thickets, the silver trees sighed
and shuddered in the misty wind and the burghers of Cape Town
stared up and wondered what was happening on their mountain.
So horrible were the stories that Van Hunks told that at last the stranger could only listen in silence. As he listened, he smoked, and as Van Hunks talked he smoked too. For days and nights they sat there, till all the world was drowned in the smoke from their pipes. At last the stranger could smoke no more. He was green in the face and sick from that terrible shag of Van Hunks's.
"Enough!" he cried. "No more! You have beaten me, Van Hunks! You smoke your black tobacco like a madman."
"What did I tell you!" crowed Van Hunks. "Now you have to admit that Van Hunks of Table Bay is the greatest smoker of them all. Why I'll wager I could outsmoke Old Nick himself."
As the said that the stranger began to laugh and he laughed so much that the chimney-pot hat fell off and, lo and behold, on the crown of his head were two horns. Van Hunks stared in terror, for he realised that the Devil himself had come to fetch him. In his fear he offered him his finest brandy if he would only go away and leave him yet a while.
"No," said the Devil. "You have outsmoked me, it is true, Van Hunks. You have won the first round, but I shall win the second, for now it is time for you to join me in my land of fire and brimstone where, I am sure, you will feel quite at home."
But I have to tell you that it took some persuading before Van Hunks would go along with the devil, and they had quite a fight up there on the Windberg.
Lightning snapped and thunder rumbled among the crags and a wind from hell - the blackest south-easter you ever heard - howled over the saddle and blew down the white smoke that blotted out the mountain.
When day dawned again and the wind had died and all the cloud was blown clean away, there was no sign of the Devil or the old pirate. What became of Van Hunks's treasure and slaves no-one ever knew.
But one thing is certain: even the Devil finds it hard to get along with Van hunks sometimes. Now and then the two old scoundrels fall out and challenge one another to smoke in the cave on what we now call Devil's Peak. The angrier they get the harder the south-easter blows. And if they're furious, it howls over the saddle and then it tosses high, high into the sky and the great white shawls of smoke that lie over Table Mountain. Smoke from the pipes of Van Hunks and the Devil.
Story Time � 1984-1989 by Rubicon Press CC