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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales from the Veld, by Ernest Glanville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tales from the Veld
+
+Author: Ernest Glanville
+
+Illustrator: M. Nisbet
+
+Release Date: July 3, 2011 [EBook #36602]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES FROM THE VELD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+Tales from the Veld
+By Ernest Glanville
+Illustrations by M. Nisbet
+Published by Chatto & Windus, London.
+This edition dated 1897.
+Tales from the Veld, by Ernest Glanville.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+TALES FROM THE VELD, BY ERNEST GLANVILLE.
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+The tales here set forth are, subject to a generous allowance for Uncle
+Abe's gift of imagination, true to the animal life and the scenery of a
+district in the Cape occupied by the British Settlers of 1820--a tract
+rich in incidents of border warfare, hallowed by the struggles of that
+early band of colonists, saturated with the superstitions and folk lore
+of the Kaffirs, and thoroughly familiar to the author--who passed his
+boyhood there.
+
+E. Glanville.
+
+Streatham: September 1897.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+ABE PIKE'S POISON BARK.
+
+Abe Pike--Old Abe Pike, or Uncle Abe as he was variously called--lived
+in a one-horse shanty in the division of Albany, Cape Colony.  I won't
+locate his farm, for various reasons, beyond saying that there is a
+solitary blue-gum on the south side of the house and the rudiments of a
+cowshed on the north.  Uncle Abe was not ambitious; he was slow, but he
+was sure.  So he said.  One blue-gum satisfied him, and as for the
+cowshed he meant to complete it during the century.  I don't introduce
+him as a tree planter, but as a narrator of most extraordinary yarns.
+He called them facts--but of the truth of this the reader may judge.
+
+Riding over one warm afternoon, I found him leaning over a water-butt
+examining the little lively and red worms therein, which would soon
+hatch out into livelier mosquitoes.
+
+"Well, Uncle, how d'ye fare?"
+
+"Porly, lad, porly; pumpkins is scarce."
+
+Uncle Abe took a very old pipe from his pocket, and showed the emptiness
+of it by placing a very gnarled little finger into the black bowl.
+
+I held out my pouch.
+
+"I'll jest take a little dry to put on the top," he said, as he
+deliberately filled the pipe.  "We want a little `dry on the top' to
+start us, but if there's nothin' deown below, why, it's a puff and out
+it goes.  Yo'll never get a crop from that bottom land o' yours until
+you put some dry on the top in the shape of manure.  See!"
+
+Now, of all the laziest, shiftless beings there was no one who could
+start level with old Abe Pike, and this advice from him was rasping, but
+still he had his points.
+
+"I've heard say there's a powerful heap o' money in portents," he
+ventured presently.
+
+"It depends on how you interpret them."
+
+"Well, that's so.  I've got a portent here in this very coat; that's
+some small pumpkins, I tell you.  It'll kill any sort o' vermin, rats,
+skeeters, wild-cats, jackals, quicker'n winkin'.  See!  I found it out
+myself come next Friday fortnight."
+
+"You mean you interpreted the portent."
+
+"Well, now, is that so?  I tole you I got it in my pocket, and ef I
+didn't find it, how did it get there?  That's what I want to know."
+
+"All right, Uncle, what is it?"
+
+"That's my portent.  I diskivered it, and I'm gwine to work it under my
+name--Abe Pike's Sure Killer."
+
+"Is it a patent medicine you're talking of?"
+
+"Of course; that's what I said.  There it is," and out of his pocket he
+produced a strip of bark.
+
+"Sneeze-wood bark, isn't it?"
+
+"Looks like it, don't it?  But there's bark and there's bark.  This is
+Abe Pike's Bark, possessing properties which will alleviate the
+sufferings of the human race by putting a lightning end to the enemies
+of the human kind.  That's what I've studied out to put in the papers in
+big letters.  There's money in it, now; ain't there?"
+
+"I don't see it, Uncle."
+
+"Ah! the limitations of knowledge, my boy, is accountable for a pot of
+ignorance.  You think that's plain ordinary bark, but that's where your
+limitations run dry.  I'll jes' tell you how I diskivered this great and
+marvellous killer of the centry.  Come Friday fortnight I sot out with
+the axe to chop out a pole for the cowshed--t'other on' been eaten thro'
+by those plaguy ants.  Well, I knew of a tree way down in the kloof that
+had been growin' for that shed o' mine ever since the seed dropped on
+the 'xact spot where nature had provided a bed for it.  When you come to
+think of it, everything has got its purpose all smoothed out from the
+start, and that little seed spread itself out from the beginnin' to
+build up a pole for ole Abe Pike's cowshed.  I sot down on a fallen tree
+and thought that all out, while the trees round about made a whisperin'
+with their leaves over the head o' that there sneeze 'ood that was
+doomed so to speak, by reason o' my cows, and the necessity of keepin'
+'em out o' the rain in the winter.  Well, I sot there thinking all these
+thoughts until it was too dark, and I went away home 'thout having cut
+the tree.  Next mornin' I took up my axe and went down into the kloof
+and took off my coat.  I gave two blows and stopped."
+
+"Too much work?"
+
+"Jes' you wait.  I tole you there was a fallen tree; well, in that tree
+was a snake.  The first blow of the axe woke him, and he popped his head
+out.  The second blow sent a chip that hit him square between the eyes.
+Out he came biling with rage, and hissin' like a kettle o' water, and I
+just had time to dodge behind the tree when he let out.  His fangs stuck
+right in the wood, and with a clip I cut his head off.  I stood away
+back looking at his writhing body and at his wicked head sticking there
+in the tree jes' where I had made the wedge.  As I looked in, there came
+to pass a remarkable circumstance."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Yes; that tree began to lose colour.  It was a healthy tree, sound as a
+bell, with a heart o' iron and a crown o' green leaves; but as I stood
+there in the space o' maybe one minit, or a minit and a half, it begun
+to turn pale and sickly."
+
+"Turn pale!"
+
+"Yes, sir, that's what I said.  First the leaves shuddered and rustled,
+and grew moist; then they slowly turned yeller, curling up as if they'd
+been frost-bitten, only sadder.  It s'prised me, that did, for there was
+somethin' in the way the leaves went that struck a shudder through me,
+'twas so human like in the manner o' it.  But that was nothing--the bark
+suddenly cracked and peeled off--then the white trunk itself standin'
+there, exposed in its nakedness began to swell--until it split with a
+groan--ay, a groan, a moaning shivery gasp o' pain.  'Twas so like life,
+I turned and ran, thinkin' that dead snakes was after me--so that as I
+ran the fear grew upon me till I came out inter the open.  After looking
+around keerfully I sat on a stone an' steadied my thinking machine.
+When I got the fear out o' me I went back and there was that tree dead
+as tho' it had been struck by lightnin' and bleached by the rain an'
+sun."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That tree was pisened!  It died o' snakebite--its system chock full o'
+pisen.  I cut it down and took it home, where I planted it under the
+shed."
+
+"And your portent?"
+
+"I'm comin' to that, if you'll give me time.  That night I couldn't
+sleep for a procession of ants.  They came out of a hole in the floor,
+crept over my bed--which you may know is on the floor for convenience--
+and marched out thro' the crack under the door.  All the ants in the
+country were there--red ants, black ants, working ants, soldier ants,
+and the soldier ants nipped me whenever I moved.  In the morning, when
+they had passed away, I went outside, and in the shed there was
+thousands an' thousands o' dead ants, not to speak o' flies."
+
+"All dead?"
+
+"They had been nipping that pisened pole, and those that didn't bite got
+the news and moved off for other scenes.  I tell you, you may speak o'
+telegraph wires, but lor' bless you, news travels faster among the
+creatures.  Why I've knowed--"
+
+"Yes; but you've not told me about your discovery."
+
+"Well, now, the limitations of your knowledge is great.  I've told you
+enough to put two and two together.  If not, I'll just make the plain
+plainer.  Seeing what the tree had done, I though o' the bark an' the
+leaves left there behind in the kloof, and went for 'em.  It was jus' as
+I thought.  They was deadly pisen, and when I laid some leaves about the
+house they killed all the flies, and a piece o' bark laid in a rat-hole
+brought all the rats out corpses.
+
+"Yes sir, that's ole Abe Pike's Vermin Destroyer, and if you're setting
+pills for jackals, why, don't you forget to come to my shop."
+
+"Are you opening a shop?"
+
+"That's what I said.  Abe Pike's vermin pisen poles, warrented to stand
+the ravages o' time an' insects, and Pike's bark; no other genuine.  So
+long!"
+
+"Well, so long!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+UNCLE ABE'S BIG SHOOT.
+
+I had ridden out one day to the outpost, where a troop of young cattle
+were running, when the horse rode into a covey of red-wing partridges, a
+brace of which I accounted for by a right and left.  Picking up the
+birds, and feeling rather proud of the shot, I continued on to Uncle
+Pike's to crow over the matter.
+
+The old man was seated outside the door `braiding' a thong of forslag or
+whip-lash.
+
+"Hitch the reins over the pole.  Ef the shed was ready I'd ask yer to
+stable the hoss, but there's a powerful heap o' work yet to finish it
+off nice an' shipshape--me being one o' those who like to see a job well
+done.  None o' yer rough and ready sheds for me, with a hole in the roof
+after the fust rain.  A plump brace o' birds--you got 'em up by the
+Round Kopje."
+
+"Yes, Uncle; a right and left from the saddle.  Good shooting, eh!"
+
+"Fair to middling, sonny--fair to middling--but with a handful o' shot
+an' a light gun what can yer expect but to hit.  Now, ef you'd bagged
+'em with one ball outer an ole muzzle-loader, why I'd up an' admit it
+was praisable."
+
+"Why Uncle, where's the man who would knock over two birds with a ball?
+It couldn't be done."
+
+"Is that so?  Well, now yer s'prise me."
+
+"You're not going to tell me you have seen that done!"
+
+"Something better.  That's small potatoes."
+
+He rose up, went indoors, and returned with an ancient single
+muzzle-loader, the stock bound round with snake skin.  "Jes' yer handle
+that wepin."
+
+I handled it, and returned it without a word.  It was ill-balanced, and
+came up awkwardly to the shoulder.
+
+"That wepin saved my life."
+
+"In the war?"
+
+"In the big drought.  You remember the time.  The country was that dry,
+you could hear the grass crackle like tinder when the wind moved, an'
+every breath stirred up columns of sand which went cavorting over the
+veld round and round, their tops bending over to each other an' the
+bottoms stirring up everything movable, and the whole length of the
+funells dotted about with snakes, an' lizards, an' bits of wood.  Why, I
+see one o' em whip up a dead sheep, an' shed the wool off o' the carcase
+as it went twisting round an' round."
+
+"And the gun?"
+
+"The gun was on the wall over my bed.  Don't you mind the gun.  Well, it
+was that dry the pumpkins withered up where they lay on the hard
+ground--an' one day there was nought in the larder, not so much as a
+smell.  There was no breakfast for ole Abe Pike, nor dinner nor yet tea,
+an' the next morning 'twas the same story o' emptiness.  I took down the
+old gun from the wall an' cleaned her up.  There was one full charge o'
+powder in the horn, an' one bullet in the bag.  All that morning I
+considered whether 'twould be wiser to divide that charge inter three,
+or to pour the whole lot of it in't once.  When dinner-time came an'
+there was no dinner, I solumnly poured the whole bang of it inter the
+barrel, an' listened to the music of the black grains as they rattled on
+their way down to their last dooty.  I cut a good thick wad from a
+buck-hide and rammed it down, `Plunk, plenk, plank, plonk, ploonk,'
+until the rod jumped clean out o' the muzzle.  Then I polished up that
+lone bullet, wrapped him round in a piece o' oil rag, an' sent him down
+gently.  `Squish, squish, squash, squoosh.'  I put the cap on the
+nipple, an' sent him home with the pressure o' the hammer.  Then I took
+a look over the country to 'cide on a plan o' campaign.  What I wanted
+was a big ram with meat on him ter last for a month, if 'twas made inter
+biltong.  There was one down by the hoek, but it warnt full grown.  He
+was nearest, but there was one I'd seen over yonder off by the river,
+beyond the kloof, an' I reckoned 'twas worth while going a couple o'
+mile extra to get him."
+
+"You were sure of him?"
+
+"He was as good as dead when I shouldered the gun an' stepped off out on
+that wilderness o' burnt land.  The wind came like a breath from a
+furnace, an' the hair on my head split an' curled up under the heat.
+Whenever I came across a rock with a breadth of shade I sot there to
+cool off, panting like a fowl, an' also to cool off the gun for fear
+'twould explode.  By reason o' this resting the dark came down when I
+reached the ridge above the river, an' I jest camped where it found me,
+after digging up some _insange_ root to chew.  The fast had been with me
+for two days, an' the gnawing pain inside was terrible, so that I kept
+awake looking up at the stars an' listening to the plovers."
+
+"It must have been lonesome!"
+
+"'Twas not the lonesomeness so much as the emptiness that troubled me.
+Before the morning came, lighting up the valley, I was going down to the
+river on the last hunt.  'Twas do or die that trip--an' it seemed to me
+I could see the gleam o' my bones away down there through the mist that
+hung over the sick river.  I made straight for the river, knowing there
+was a comfort an' fellowship in the water which would draw game there,
+an' the big black ram, too, 'fore he marched off inter the thick o' the
+kloof for his sleep.  By-and-by, as I went down among the rocks an'
+trees, I pitched head first--ker smash--in a sudden fit o' dizziness,
+but the shock did me good.  It rattled up my brain--an' instead o' jest
+plunging ahead I went slow--slow an' soft as a cat on the trail--pushing
+aside a branch here, shoving away a dry twig there, an' glaring around
+with hungry eyes.  I spotted him!"
+
+"The ram?"
+
+"Ay, the ram.  The very buck I'd had in my mind when I loaded the old
+gun.  He stood away off the other side o' the river, moving his ears,
+but still as a rock, and black as the bowl of this pipe, except where
+the white showed along his side.  He seemed to be looking straight at
+me--an' I sank by inches to the ground with my legs all o' a shake.
+Then, on my falling, he stepped down to the water, and stood there
+admiring hisself--his sharp horns an' fine legs--an' on my belly, all
+empty as 'twas, I crawled, an' crawled, an' crawled.  There was a bush
+this side the river, an' I got it in line.  At last I reached it, the
+sweat pouring off me, an' slowly I rose up.  The water was dripping from
+his muzzle as he threw his head up, an' he turned to spring back, when,
+half-kneeling, I fired, an' the next moment the old gun kicked me flat
+as a pancake."
+
+"And you missed him?"
+
+"Never!  I got him.  I said I would, an' I did.  I got him, an' a 9
+pound barbel."
+
+"Uncle Abe!"
+
+"I say a 9 pound barbel, tho' he might a been 8 and a half pound, an' a
+brace of pheasants."
+
+"Uncle Abe!"
+
+"I zed so--an' a hare an', an'," he went on quickly, "a porkipine."
+
+"Uncle Abe!"
+
+"Well--what are you Abeing me for?"
+
+"You got all those with one shot.  Never!"
+
+"I was there--you weren't.  'Tis easy accounted for.  When I pulled the
+trigger the fish leapt from the water in the line, and the bullet passed
+through him inter the buck.  I tole you the gun kicked.  Well, it flew
+out o' my hands, an' hit the hare square on the nose.  To recover
+myself, I threw up my hands, an' caught hold o' the two pheasants jest
+startled outer the bush."
+
+"And the porcupine?"
+
+"I sot down on the porkipine, an' if you'd like to 'xamine my pants
+you'll find where his quills went in.  I was mighty sore, an' I could
+ha' spared him well from the bag.  But 'twas a wonderful good shot.
+You're not going?"
+
+"Yes, I am.  I'm afraid to stay with you."
+
+"Well, so long!  I cut this yere forslag from the skin o' that same
+buck."
+
+"Let me see--it's nine years to the big drought."
+
+"That's it."
+
+"That skin has kept well."
+
+"Oh, yes; 'twas a mighty tough skin."
+
+"Not so tough as your yarn, Uncle.  So long!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+UNCLE ABE, THE BABOON, AND THE TIGER.
+
+Abe Pike was one of those men who would walk ten miles to set a trap
+without a murmur, while he thought himself badly used if he were called
+upon to hoe a row in the mealie field.  So when, for the third time
+within one week, a calf was killed by a tiger, and our attempts to
+shoot, poison, or trap the thief had failed, I rode over to Uncle Abe's
+to secure his aid.
+
+"I can't do it," he said, when I had stated my business.
+
+"Too busy?"
+
+"No; 'taint that, sonny, 'taint that--tho' there's a powerful heap o'
+work to do on that shed."
+
+"I'll put in a couple of days and help you finish it right off, as soon
+as the tiger is laid by the heels."
+
+"Thank ye kindly; but I've got to finish that there shed offun my own
+bat.  It's a job that wants doin' keerfly."
+
+"Well, Uncle, I'll plough up your old land by the hoek, and put in two
+muids of corn.  How will that do?"
+
+"'Twont do, my lad; that land's full o' charlock."
+
+"Then, Uncle, the day you show me the dead body of that tiger, the red
+heifer with the white patch on the hump is yours."
+
+He heaved a sigh, and knocked the bowl of his pipe on his thumb, but he
+did not accept the offer, though I knew he admired that heifer.
+
+"Why, Uncle, what is the matter?  You're not ill?"
+
+"'Tain't that, either--not 'xactly--tho' there's such a thing as illness
+o' the mind."
+
+"I'm very sorry," as I unhitched the bridle and prepared to mount, "for
+I'll have to go to Long Sam, and from the hairs I've seen I shouldn't be
+surprised if this is a black tiger."
+
+This was the last shot--Abe Pike had not yet trapped a black tiger, and
+Long Sam was his rival in bush lore.
+
+"That settles it," he said, with a groan.
+
+"Come along then," I said, with a smile at my success in breaking
+through his obstinacy.
+
+Abe rose up and laid his gnarled hand on the mane of the horse.  "'Tis
+the same one," he muttered, "the same one, sure."
+
+"Why, of course; you know the old horse, Black Dick."
+
+"Black Nick," he said slowly, and, drawing his hand across his forehead;
+"my boy, you'll never trap that animile; he's a witch tiger."
+
+"A witch tiger?"
+
+"That's so: he's given a lodging to some ole Kaffir.  Abe Pike ain't
+going arter any black tigers, not he."
+
+"What are you driving at now, you old buffer?"
+
+"Buffer, is it; well--well--buffer--oh, yes, of course; an' me that has
+passed through sich a three weeks as ud have scared many another into
+his grave."
+
+I felt remorse at the thought that for three weeks I had not called on
+the lonely old man, and concluded that he was paying me out for this
+neglect.
+
+"I am very sorry," I said eagerly, "I have not been over; but the truth
+is the work has been very heavy.  It must have been very lonely."
+
+"I've had kempany."
+
+"Oh, I see; and perhaps they've engaged your services?"
+
+"That's it.  On 'count o' 'em that's been callin' here I can't go
+catching any black tigers."
+
+"I should like to know who it is has set you against doing a service for
+a neighbour?"
+
+"There's kempany an' kempany.  This yer kempany ud turn your hair
+white."
+
+"Ah!"  I said, sniffing a story.
+
+"Yes, 'twould that.  There were some baboons away over by the big kloof.
+A family party--ole man, wives, middle-aged, an' pickaninnies.  They
+came there for the Kaffir plum crop, an' were mighty lively, not to say
+noisy, three weeks ago, when they began to drop.  I yeared 'em dropping
+off."
+
+"Off the trees?"
+
+"No; offun this mortal spear.  As they dropped off in the dark, the
+others howled an' whooped like mad.  It was a tiger that did the
+droppin'."
+
+"A tiger?"
+
+"You hold on to him.  At last the ole man were left alone, an' he had a
+mighty anxious time looking all around at onct, while he hunted for
+grubs for fear the enemy 'ud spring on him.  He used to come over yonder
+in the lands for kempany.  I've sot here on the door-step an' he sot
+over there, glaring at me from his little grey eyes.  Arter a time we
+got to know each other, an' I found out he went to sleep on the roof
+alongside the chimney."
+
+"He was the company?"
+
+"One on 'em.  An' seein' him about reminded me o' the Kaffir plums, so
+one mornin' I took up the can an' went away off to the big kloof where
+the plums are red an' juicy.  Well--my boy--that ole man baboon, he up
+an' come along with me, an' when he found I were goin' to the kloof he
+jabbered most like a human.  I could see he were excited--anybody could
+a seen that--an' I sot down on a rock to argy the point with him.  He
+wouldn't argy, but he started back for the house.  Well, you know me,
+when Abe Pike sots out to do a thing he does it, an' arter I had smoked
+two pipes, I resoomed my way, jest as unconcarned as you are, for all
+the plain meanin' o' the baboon that I should go away home.  When he saw
+that I were sot on it he came along at a canter, with his hind-quarters
+slewed round an' the hair all standing up on his neck.  He looked ugly,
+but 'xcept he lifted his eyebrows very quick, he said nothin', and went
+along very quiet, with the same anxious look on his face I had noticed
+prev'ous.  As I went into the kloof he swung into the trees, an' kept
+along overhead.  When we came to the thick o' the wood, he going along
+all the time scarcely moving a leaf, he made a soft noise, an' looking
+up I saw him bobbing his head up an' down to make you giddy.  I know by
+that he saw somethin', an' I jes' slipped behind a tree to take stock.
+I yeerd a yawn, an' what d'ye think I see thro' the leaves stretched out
+on a rock, not twenty foot away?"
+
+"A black fellow?"
+
+"Yes; a black feller, with four legs an' a tail, an' a red mouth all
+agape, wide enough to take in my head, hat an' all."
+
+"A black tiger?"
+
+"Yes; an' me with only a tin can.  I jes' sank down inter my boots.  All
+o' a sudden his jaws come to with a snap.  Then he riz his head and
+stired straight fer me, his eyes gitting flamier as he looked, an' his
+tail all on the jerk.  He moved his round head about, then shot out his
+neck an' growled in his stummik as he peered under the leaves.  Just
+then that baboon let out a `baugh--baugh--bok-hem,' an' dropped down
+beyond the tiger.  There were a roar, a leap, a scramble, an' Abe Pike
+were shooting on his tracks for the open veld.  He didn't stop running
+till he got home--he didn't--not me."
+
+"And the baboon?  He wasn't killed, was he?"
+
+"You wait--jes' you wait.  Before you get the end o' the journey you've
+got to pass the half-way house.  This is a solitary place--this
+mansion--and beyond the ole Gaika-Bolo I have no visitors--an' he only
+when he's doctorin' the Kaffirs down these parts.  So that night, when
+there were a tap at the door, I were skeered a little from the shake I
+got when I saw that black critter staring at me with them wicked eyes of
+hisn.  `Come in!'  I sed, an' the tap came agin, soft an' gentle, like
+as if a child or a woman were standin' there--timid--tho' it's many a
+year since a female brushed the door-post with her dress--a many years,
+my lad."
+
+"Yes, Uncle; who was it?"
+
+"`Come in!'  I sed, laying hold o' a piece of wood.  `Jes' pull the
+string,' I sed.  Believe me, the string were pulled--the upper half o'
+the door swung open, an' he stepped in."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The old man baboon!  He pulled the string, the door swung open, an' he
+hopped in."
+
+"Good gracious, Uncle!"
+
+"Yer s'prised.  Well, jes' think how it took me--an' on top o' what I
+saw that day.  I jes' sot there an' looked, an' when he turned an' shut
+that door, an' moved the wooden button to secure it, I were fairly
+paralysed.  `Ho-hoo,' he sed, an' blinked his eyes.  He jes' sed
+`ho-hoo' in a friendly way, an' planked hisself down before the fire,
+with the black palms o' his hands to the coals, his head turned over his
+shoulder, an' his little grey eyes takin' stock o' everythin' in the
+room."
+
+"He must have escaped from captivity."
+
+"That's the first thought that struck me when I steadied my brain pan.
+Thinks I, he b'longed to some man, an' I looked at his waist for signs
+of the chain, but there were no sign.  I noticed he looked empty, an',
+remembering how he'd saved me by leading the tiger off another way, I
+got out a mealie cob.  He snatched it quick, raised his eyebrows at me,
+then begun to eat as ef he'd been hungry for a week.  There we sot--he
+one side, eating, me t'other, smoking.  All o' a sudden he quit eating:
+then he stood up on his hind legs an' looked outer the winder.  `Wot's
+up now?' sezs I to myself.  There he stood looking outer that window;
+then he gave a jump into the rafters, crowding hisself under the slope.
+It gave me a sort o' creepy crawl to see him do that, an' I took down
+the ole gun.  Bymby I yeard a sniff under the crack of the door as if a
+dog were taking a smell.  Then there were a space o' stillness that was
+terrible trying.  I stood there looking at the door, 'xpecting to see it
+fly open, when I chanced to give a glance at the winder, and my blood
+froze."
+
+"What did you see?"
+
+"What did I see?  A pair o' green eyes fixed on me.  Then the gleam o'
+white teeth an' a sort o' dim outline o' a big round head.  I let out a
+yell, an' fired.  If you look you'll see where the winder's smashed."
+
+"The tiger had tracked the baboon?"
+
+"Very like 'twas jes' that."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then I jes' jumped inter the pantry an shut myself in till daybreak."
+
+"Yes, Uncle Abe; and what happened then?"
+
+"I jes' opened the door gently, an' looked out."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well!  The door were open.  I yeerd the cracking o' the fire an' the
+humming o' the kettle."
+
+"Someone had called?"
+
+"Perhaps so; perhaps not.  'Tany rate the fire were lit.  And when I
+looked out the front door there were the old man baboon plucking the
+feathers from the grey hen."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Yes.  An' when he done plucking he popped the old fowl inter the pot."
+
+"Ha!  I suppose the tiger was lying dead?"
+
+"Who--the tiger?  Not he.  The darned critter pulled the plug outer the
+water barrel, then turned the barrel over an' let all the water out.
+Arter that he pulled the roof offun my shed."
+
+"I don't see the baboon around."
+
+"He ain't around.  Arter breakfast he went.  When I come to think o' it,
+he took the road to your place, an' it's my b'lief, sonny, he's on the
+spoor o' the same tiger."
+
+"And you won't come over, then?"
+
+"I'm waitin' for that ole man baboon to come back.  If he comes back an'
+finds me gone I reckon he'd be disappointed.  I tell yer I'd be mighty
+keerful how you treat that tiger."
+
+"Everything happened as you have related, Uncle Abe?"
+
+"That's so, sonny."
+
+"How did the baboon light the fire?"
+
+"He jes' used the bellers, I 'xpect, used the beller, an' puffed the
+embers.  Tell me how yer get on.  Sorry I can't go; but I dasn't.  So
+long!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+ABE PIKE AND THE WHIP.
+
+I don't know what degree of truth there was in old Abe's account of his
+adventure with the black tiger, but I certainly learnt to my cost that
+whether the brute had or had not given a domicile to a witch-doctor, it
+was too cunning for any efforts on my part to get even with it for the
+heavy toll it levied on the young cattle.  I was driven once more to
+seek out his assistance, but I thought I would get him over to the
+homestead on some other pretext, being firmly persuaded that once he was
+there his hunting instincts would lead him on the tiger's spoor.  One
+afternoon, therefore, I drove over in the "spider," and found him busily
+engaged waxing a stout fishing line for "kabblejauw," a very large, but
+coarse sea fish, which loved to venture up the Fish River with the tide.
+
+"Holloa, sonny!" he cried; "climb out an' make yerself at home.  Got any
+baccy?"
+
+I stepped out, and handed him a cake of golden leaf, which he just
+smelt, then turned over and over.
+
+"Sugar stuff," he growled, with a queer look of disgust, wrinkling up
+his nose.
+
+"Good American leaf, Uncle."
+
+"Well, well; what's the race comin' to?  Sugar--all sugar.  Sugar with
+tea, sugar with coffee, so that the spoon stands up; sugar with pumkins,
+sugar with grog, sugar with baccy, until the stummick which nature gives
+us revolts an' cries out for salt an' the bitterness o' wholesome
+plants.  Bitterness 'ardens, my boy--bitterness in food, bitterness in
+life--an' sugar softens.  Jes' you hole on to that as you plough the
+furrer thro' the ups an' downs o' your caryeer."  He cut a slice from
+the cake and stowed it away in his cheek.  "Well! ha' yer cotched that
+tiger yet?"
+
+"He's prowling around yet, Uncle."
+
+"Soh!  An' you want ole Abe Pike to settle 'im, eh!--but 'taint no use."
+
+"I want you to `ride' a load of wood to the house.  The `boys' have gone
+off to a beer dance, and I'm short-handed.  The wood is cut and shaped."
+
+"But I'm goin' a fishin'.  Lemme see.  It's full moon next week.  Well
+I'll come along."
+
+He coiled up his line, stowed it away in his skin bag, locked his door,
+and climbed in.  Next morning the old chap went off with the wagon for
+the wood, and returned late at night.  He had a peculiar way of humming
+to himself whenever he was pleased, and I caught the sound as he came in
+through the kitchen to the dining-room, where the evening meal was on
+the table.  With a nod to me, he sat down to a hearty meal, then,
+filling his pipe, he leant back and laughed silently.
+
+"Seen anything, Uncle?"
+
+"I don't know that I have seed anythin' outer the common, but I've
+learnt somethin' that's given me a better understandin' o' the spread o'
+kindness overlaying things."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"You know where the wood were stacked?"
+
+I knew the place very well, for that brute of a tiger had killed a foal
+there only two days before, and I had directed Abe there in the hope
+that he would drop across its tracks.
+
+The old man, still chuckling, went out of the room and returned with a
+long bamboo whip-stick, deprived, however, of the twenty-foot thong made
+from buffalo hide.
+
+"What's become of the thong?"  I cried.
+
+"That's it.  It's on account of the missin' thong that I'm telling you
+o' this remarkable cirkumst'nce.  There's a clump o' trees 'long side
+the path 'way over yonder, where the wood were stacked, an' the thong
+flew off in the dusk o' the evening thereabouts.  You see there were a
+stick fas', and when I lammed into the oxen that ere thong flew off--
+whizz!--whang!--into the dark o' the trees.  I lay the stick down an'
+searched fer it up an' down, in an' out--the oxen standin' there
+knockin' their horns, an' the stars poppin' out.  Well, I guv it up, an'
+picked up the stick, an' the thong came through my fingers."
+
+"You said the thong flew off."
+
+"So it did; but there it were fast on the stick--long, smooth, round,
+an' taperin' off inter a fine lash, as thick about the middle as my
+little finger, an' as tough as steel."
+
+"I know it.  You couldn't match that thong in the Colony.  But where is
+it?"
+
+"That's what I'm tellin' yer about.  The thong flew off--whizz!--
+whang!--but when I picked the stick up, there it were.  I jes' stood
+there ponderin' over the strangeness o' this, when a breath o' wind come
+up the valley with a sigh on it--one o' those quiverin', mysterious,
+solumnelly sounds that makes you look over yer shoulder an' start at a
+shadder.  `Hambaka--trek,' I cried, an' whirling the whip around,
+touched up the fore-leaders, then brought the forslag down on the achter
+ox.  I told you them oxen had stuck fas'.  Well! at the touch o' the
+whip they jes' laid their shoulders agin the yokes, an', with a low
+groan, they yanked the wagon up that stiff bit--up an' up, without a
+pause, to the level veld.  I tell you, sonny, I never seed oxen lay
+themselves down like that span."
+
+"Where does the kindness come in?"
+
+"Hole on.  The tortoise gets to the end o' his journey same as the hare,
+only samer.  On the level I called to the oxen to whoa!--whoa!--whoa!--
+and, arter a time they whoa'd, tho' somehow 'twas ag'inst their will.
+They were that active they could have trotted home--they could so.  I
+lay down that whip an' filled my pipe."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Then I took the stick up, an' the thong were gone agin."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Clean gone, sonny!  Clean gone!"
+
+"Did it fly off?"
+
+"No, sonny; it crawled off."
+
+"Crawled off?"
+
+"That there thong were a whip-snake.  It jes' gripped on ter the bamboo
+with its jaws to help me outer that stick fas', an' when we got to the
+level it unhitched.  It knew as well as I did the oxen didn't want any
+more whip when the flat were reached, and it unhitched."
+
+"Uncle Abe Pike!  Do you expect me to believe that?"
+
+"I have my hopes, my lad.  But when yer gets older you'll get more
+faith.  Why, man, an' I yeared that snake move off.  It give a sort o'
+friendly hiss as it slid away thro' the grass, an' it cracked its tail
+in sport like a whip.  The oxen yeared it, too, and they moved off
+'thout waitin' for my call.  I tell you there's a heap o' goodness among
+animiles an' reptiles, tho' this is the fust time I 'xperienced the
+thoughtfulness o' a snake.  It jes' snapped its tail--ker--rack--as it
+moved off."
+
+When the old man prepared himself for sleep I saw the lash off my whip
+projecting from the mouth of his skin bag.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+THE SPOOK OF THE HARE.
+
+The next day was hot and drowsy, and old man Pike simply lazed around,
+with his smasher hat tilted over his eyes and his hands in his pockets.
+He could not, however, be tempted to roam any distance from the house,
+and he showed not the slightest curiosity about that fiend of a black
+tiger, which in the night had killed a goat belonging to one of the
+"boys."  The kill was made out of sheer lust of blood, for he had eaten
+nothing, the body being untouched, except for the festering marks about
+the throat I had the carcase brought up for Abe's inspection, since he
+would not walk down to the kraal, and he held an inquest upon it,
+sitting on an upturned "vatje," or small water barrel.
+
+"That goat," he drawled, "were killed!"
+
+"There seems proof of it," I said mildly.
+
+"Yes, killed by a ole tiger."
+
+"Why old?"
+
+"Well, you see, this yer goat died o' a broken shoulder an' shock--
+mostly shock.  The tiger just patted the shoulder in his spring with the
+open paw.  I see there are four scratches, an' the hook of the dew claw
+over here, a span away from the fore claws.  The middle an' end scratch
+is shaller.  Why?  Cas the claws a been worn down.  Now take these yer
+wounds in the throat.  These two deep holes here's where his fangs went
+in, but on the top side there's jest the marks o' his small teeth.  The
+upper fangs is missing or worn down.  Consekently, 'tis a ole tiger."
+
+"And you will catch the old tiger?"
+
+"Not me!  Bein' ole, he's cunnin', an' bein' black, he's naturelly
+fierce; and bein' ole an' black he's more'n a match fer me.  See that
+big blue fly?  I swear there warn't a blue fly around here ten minutes
+ago, an' now there's a whole cloud o' 'em followin' the track, an'
+buzzin' like a telegraph wire!  Little things is like big 'uns.  That
+there fly is like the first aasvogel sailin' away from the limits o' the
+sky on the taint of a dead ox, an' behind him a whole string o'
+vultures, with their wings outstretched like the sails of a ship, an'
+ther bald heads bent down to spot the dead heap of corruption miles away
+below."
+
+I bade the Kaffir take away the dead goat which formed the principal
+dish at the feast that night and, getting my double-barrelled gun,
+whistled up the dogs, and went off on the spoor of the tiger, leaving
+Abe listlessly whittling at a stick.
+
+The scent was good, and the dogs went on it still-mouthed, except for an
+occasional growl, and they led me through the large ostrich camp, over a
+ridge, across an open strip of veld, to a deep and dark kloof, where the
+trees grew so thick that underneath it was twilight in the glare of
+mid-day.  The dogs went on, with bristling hair, into the heart of the
+kloof, when a singular thing happened.  The shrill, piercing cry of a
+"dassie," or rock coney, arose from out the deep silence, and the dogs
+stopping, howled dismally, then suddenly turned and slipped away,
+disappearing like shadows among the trees.  The noise I knew must have
+aroused the tiger, but I pushed on cautiously, hoping to get a shot at
+him as he slunk off.  I reached the krantz which rimmed in the kloof
+without sight of him, and, hunting around, found his lair, still warm in
+a small cave.  Retracing my steps, I had almost reached the edge of the
+trees, when in the way lay the body of one of the dogs, an old and
+favourite buffalo dog of the mastiff breed, his throat torn, and the
+mark of claws on his shoulder and flank.
+
+"It's lucky for you," said Abe when I reached home, "that it were the
+dog he took."
+
+"How do you know he got the dog?"
+
+"You went out with five, an' you come home with four, an' a look on your
+face 's if you'd seen a ghost.  I'm gwine back in the mornin'."
+
+"You're no friend of mine, Abe Pike, if you don't help destroy that
+brute!"
+
+"I seed the ole man baboon makin' tracks for my place this arternoon--
+an' mebbe that ther' tiger would be quittin' too."
+
+"Hang you and your baboon!"
+
+"All serene, sonny--all serene.  I'd rayther be hanged than 'ave my
+wizened open'd out by a blood-sucking four-footed witch.  What happened
+in your hunt?"  I told him curtly enough.  "My gum!  You believe me:
+that dassie cried out to warn the tiger.  He were put there to watch
+while his master slep'."
+
+"Nonsense!  His cry was an accident."
+
+"Soh!  Then tell me why the dogs scooted.  You don't know!  O' course
+you don't know.  But I know.  I've had 'xperience o' the same thing.
+Animiles have got a sense which is missin' from folk, or maybe lost for
+want of use, I don't know which, tho' myself I think it's lost.  What we
+call a presentment is the remains o' that missin' sense, an' animiles is
+got the full sense.  Those dogs knew the meanin' o' that dassie's yell--
+that's so."
+
+"And what was your experience?"
+
+"It were all along o' a spring hare hopping along in the night--without
+enough solid body to put a shot in.  It were away back in the sixties,
+when I were younger nor I am now, an' a sailor chap, knockin' around
+doin' odd jobs, happened across my house.  He were a good-hearted
+critter, tho' terrible lazy, 'xcept it were shootin' spring hares at
+night by lamp-light, which came 'xpensive by reason of his usin' up the
+oil an' powder.  Well, one night the wind came off the seas, bringing up
+a great stack of clouds, makin' it that dark you couldn't tell which
+were solid yearth an' which were sky; but this sailor chap he would go
+out, an' I had to go along to hold the lamp, he not bein' keerful enough
+to carry it in the strap of his hat.  Well, soon's I got outer the door
+I knew there were somethin' wrong.  The black night were full o' the
+roar o' the surf breakin' six miles away, an' yet there were the same
+sort of shivery stillness you find in a great cave while the echoes are
+tossin' about the sound of a dying shout.  In the stillness behind the
+holler growl o' the sea I could tell there were somethin' watchful an'
+bad.  I wanted to turn back, but he yelled out he yeard the spring hare
+gruntin', an' I were obliged to foller him inter the black, with a
+sickly sort o' fan-shaped light streaming from the lamp.  `Hist!' says
+he.  I histed, an' peering ahead seed a big bright eye glancing out o'
+the dark, not mor'n twenty paces off--fer the lantern couldn't throw a
+reflection farther than that.  `Take him an inch below the eye,' says I,
+an' he let rip.  We went forrard to pick the hare up, but he warn't
+there--not a hair o' him.  The grunt o' him come jest ahead agin--an'
+steadyin' the lamp, we caught his eye full an' bright.  `I'll blow his
+head off,' said the sailor chap, and taking a long aim, he banged off.
+There warn't no dead spring hare.  No, sonny; but while we gazed around
+his grunt come to us onct more.  I took the ole gun an' loaded her up.
+`You take the lantern,' says I, `an' lets stop this 'ere foolishness.'
+A step or two we took, an' sure enough that eye blazed out onct more.  I
+jes' knelt down under his arms, an' taking full aim at the eye, was dead
+sure I had the long-tailed crittur, fer he sat still as a rock, an' as
+onsuspicious as a tree trunk.  An' I missed him.  His body warn't there,
+but his grunt came jest as lively as ever.  The sailor chap were
+laughing at me fer missin', but Abe Pike warn't doing no giggling.  He
+smelt somethin' onnatural."
+
+"You had been taking grog, perhaps, that evening?"
+
+"Not a sup nor a sip.  We stood there, he laughin' and me listenin' to
+the moan in the air, an' lookin' roun' at the black wall o' night `Blow
+me!' says the sailor chap, `if the swab ain't come back,' an' with that
+he took out his jack knife an' flung it at the flamin' eye, which had
+moved back inter the light from the lantern.  That eye never winked, an'
+it made me shiver.  `Come on,' says the sailor, `I'll foller him to the
+devil,' says he.  `Foller him,' says I, `but I'm goin' back;' and back I
+went; and he, not havin' the lantern, had to come along too, which he
+did cheekin' me the ole time.  Well, before we'd gone a hundred paces,
+ther' were that eye ahead, an' he says, `Let us get nearer.'  We went
+closer, when all on a sudden that eye went out like a burnt match.  Jes'
+then I yeard a rustlin' noise behind, an' whipping roun', saw there were
+a pair o' sparkles shining green.  He seed 'em too.  `Don't shoot,' says
+I, `it's a shadder.'  `Shadder be blowed,' says he, `yer a ole fool.'
+He were gettin' ready to fire, when I gripped him by the arm, while the
+hair riz on my head, for I saw what was behind those green eyes.  `Let
+me go,' he says, hissin' through his teeth.  `If you fire,' I says
+speakin' solumn, `yere a dead man.'  `You're silly,' he says, pulling
+hard.  `How can a little hare hurt me?'
+
+"`That hare,' says I, `is a tiger.'"
+
+"Was it?"
+
+"You wait.  You know's well as I do a hare, by reason of his eyes bein'
+wide apart, only shows one eye to the light, an', moreover, he sits with
+his head sideways.  Well, these two eyes, when I looked ag'in, were
+close together, an' they gave a green light.  `A tiger,' says I, an'
+with my hand on his arm we went back to the house.  As I shut the door I
+yeared that grunt ag'in--an' ag'in as we sat down listenin'.  Well, that
+sailor chap, he warn't satisfied.  He must open the door an' look out.
+`Come here,' he says, an' looking out over his shoulder there I seed
+that hare sitting up, an' the light shining thro' his body, `'Tis a
+white hare,' he says.  `It's a sperrit,' says I.  `Sperrit or no
+sperrit,' he says, snatchin' the gun, `I lay him out!'  With that he
+stepped out into the darkness, an' the lantern went out.  Then it
+happened."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"Something 'twixt the sailor lad and the tiger.  As I searched aroun'
+fer a match I yeard the gun, there were a roar and a shriek, an' when I
+got the light started an' went out there were only his old hat an' the
+gun.  I'm not fooling with any o' yer tigers that's got sperrits
+watchin' over 'em.  I'm going home in the mornin'."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+THE BABOON AND THE TORTOISE.
+
+I have referred to Bolo, an old Kaffir medicine man, who, on his
+professional tour round the country, always remained a day or two with
+Abe Pike, in his way, a great doctor with a valuable fund of information
+about the medicinal properties of plants and roots.  Bolo turned up in
+the evening, fresh from a beer dance, and the manner of his coming was
+that of a ravenous lion.  He charged down upon the house in the dusk,
+with his necklet bones rattling, the horsehair mane flying, and the
+bellow of his deep voice setting the dogs off into a fury of barking, up
+he came--leaping, bounding, hurling himself forward with in-creditable
+swiftness, whirling his knobbed kerrie, his eyes glaring and his
+features twitching, the dogs snapping around him--right up to the door,
+as if he meant to burst in and brain everyone he met.  Then he stopped,
+smiled in a wide vacuous way, took snuff, and squatted down, while the
+dogs as suddenly ceased their clamour and walked sheepishly away.
+
+"Well, you clatterin' ole heathen," said Abe, seating himself on the
+door-step, and shaving slices of tobacco against the ball of his thumb;
+"what mischief have you been up to?"
+
+"Yoh," said Bolo, resting his long arms on his knees; "I have heard
+tales of the black tiger and the white man's fear.  But my medicine has
+sent the black evil away back again to the big kloof."
+
+"To the kloof on my farm?"
+
+"Eweh!  Why not?  The white man is a great medicine man.  Has he not a
+familiar in the old baboon--who is the most cunning of familiars?"
+
+"That's so," said Abe gravely; "the baboon is cunnin', but he don't know
+everything.  Did I ever tell you the yarn o' the baboon an' the
+tortoise?"
+
+"No.  Fire away, Uncle."  He hitched himself up against the door-post
+and related his story in Kaffir for Bolo's benefit, though I prefer to
+render it in English.
+
+"The ole skelpot, one day hunting aroun' nosed out a store o' yearth
+nuts.  He raked the yearth over an' flatten' it down, an' he jes' crawl
+aroun' till the dry weather sot in, when he took'd up his quarters near
+the hidden store.  One day he meet ole man baboon searching fer grubs.
+`Things is mighty dry,' says the baboon.  `Might be drier,' says the
+skelpot.  `Food is skerce,' says the baboon.  `Might be skercer,' says
+the skelpot.  `Ho! ho!' says the baboon, mighty sharp, `you don't seem
+to be troubled in your shell.  There's a shine on your shell, ole man
+skelpot,' he says.  `Shell shine when the stummick don't pine,' says the
+skelpot."
+
+"Er-umh!" grunted Bolo.
+
+"`Shell shine when the stummick don't pine,' said the skelpot.  `Baugh,'
+says the baboon, `p'raps you got some food, skelpot,' says the baboon.
+`I'm gwine to sleep,' says the skelpot, an' he drew his head into his
+house, so the baboon couldn't ask him any more questions."
+
+"Er-umh!" said Bolo, politely signifying his sustained interest.
+
+"The ole man baboon he make sure the skelpot's got some store o' food,
+so he hid hisself in a tree an' kep' watch.  There ain't no hurry about
+a skelpot, an' this yer skelpot he kep' on sleepin' all through the day,
+an' the baboon got that hungry he were obliged ter gnaw the bark from
+the tree.  But he jes' kep' on watchin', an' in the dusk he seed the
+skelpot pop out his head."
+
+"Er-umh!" said Bolo.
+
+"Then the baboon climbed down softly, an' when the skelpot move off, he
+follow'd.  Arter a time the skelpot begin to scrape up the yearth, an'
+the baboon look over his shoulder.  He can't see nothing, but he smelt
+the yearth nuts, an' he makes a grab.  `So! so!' he says chuckling, `you
+got a fine pantry these dry times.  Now you'll have to go shares, or
+I'll give the news out.'  Well, the skelpot he sees he were fairly
+caught, an' so he take ole man baboon inter partnership, an' the baboon
+show him where he's 'ole is, though it were empty now."
+
+"Er-umh!" grunted Bolo.
+
+"Well, the baboon got a bigger stummick than the skelpot, an it were not
+long afore he took two nuts to one; then he began ter take some away to
+his private 'ole in a Kaffir plum tree; then he break the agreement by
+taking three meals a day to the skelpot's one."
+
+"Er-umh!" said Bolo.
+
+"Well, about this time the skelpot smell'd out the baboon."
+
+"Eh-umh!" said Bolo.
+
+"So he made a plan.  He roll hisself in the mud, an' crawl up near the
+store, where he draw his head in.  Bymby ole man baboon come up, an
+arter takin' some nuts, he sot down on ole skelpot to make his feast.
+`Poor ole skelpot,' says the baboon, `three meals to his one, an' a heap
+o' nuts in my store 'ole by the ole ant-hill.'  `Too-loo-loo!' says the
+skelpot.  `What's that noise?' said the baboon.  `Too-loo-loo!' says the
+skelpot.  `Hist!' says the baboon, knockin' his stummick.
+`Too-loo-loo!' says the skelpot; then drawin' in his breath he let it
+out ag'in, `Hiss! puff!' like a great big snake.  O' coorse the baboon's
+dead scared o' snakes, an' droppin' the nuts he jest scooted fer the
+woods."
+
+"Er-umph!" said Bolo.
+
+"He jest up an' scooted fer the woods, an' the skelpot arter eatin' the
+nuts, he went back to the 'ole, scooped the yearth away, an' crawled in.
+The baboon were very scared, but when the hunger come back he went for
+some more nuts.  No sooner did he pop his hand in than the skelpot grab
+him by the little finger and hold on."
+
+"Eh! eh!" said Bolo.
+
+"Grabbed him by ther little finger.  The baboon nearly jumped outer his
+skin.  `Who's got hold o' me?' he yelled, but the skelpot he can't talk,
+fer his mouth's full.  `Let me go!' howled the baboon, an' he pull and
+he pull, and bymby he draw the skelpot's head outer the 'ole.  Well, the
+skelpot he's got a head like a puff-adder when yer don't see his shell,
+an' when the baboon see'd that yellow head glued onter his finger, he
+jest went green, and turned over in a fit.  Bymby the baboon shivers,
+then he sot up.  `Hiss! poof!' says the skelpot, an' the baboon lit out
+with a shriek, never to come back to that part ag'in.  `Hiss! poof!'
+says the skelpot, an' the baboon lit out fer the nex' country."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+THE JACKAL AND THE WREN.
+
+"Now, Bolo! let us hear something from you."
+
+The old Kaffir took a pinch of snuff, and began about the jackal and the
+netikee, the smallest of all South African birds, and a member of the
+wren family.
+
+"The jackal one day was boasting.  Said he, `When we go on the hunt all
+the animals are still.  We--the lion and I--we rule the forest.  When we
+growl the trees shiver, when we roar the earth shakes, when we strike
+the biggest goes down before us.  Even the elephant turns out of our
+path.'  So he shook his tail and loped off to tell the lion that a fat
+eland was drinking at the vlei.  Then up stood the lion, and crawled on
+his stomach to the shelter of a rock, while the jackal went round
+beyond.  `Look out, eland,' said the jackal; `here comes the lion.'  So
+the eland ran, and he ran straight for the lion, who rose through the
+air and broke the eland's neck.  The lion ate, and the jackal sat on his
+tail, licking his chops and whimpering.  But the lion ate, and ate--
+first the hind legs, then the stomach, and the jackal ran up to take a
+bite.  `Wait,' grunted the lion, and the jackal sat on his tail and
+howled.  Bymby the lion went off to the vlei to drink, and the jackal
+snap at the carcase, but before he gets a mouthful down swoop the ring
+crows and the aasvogels.  `Away,' said the jackal, `away--this food is
+mine and the lion's.'
+
+"`Tell the lion we are obliged to him for giving us a meal,' said the
+chief aasvogel, and with his big wing he hit the jackal, ker-bluff--long
+side the head, and the black crow dig him in the back.  So the jackal
+run away, and jump, and howl."
+
+"`Why don't you roar?' said the netikee.
+
+"The jackal looked up, and there he sees the netikee on a thorn tree.
+
+"`Growl,' says the netikee; `growl, and the tree will shake me off,' and
+he laughed.
+
+"`What are you laughing at?'
+
+"`At you.'
+
+"`Why,' said the jackal, looking back over his shoulder at the bag of
+bones that the birds had cleaned.
+
+"`'Cos you're afraid of the birds, though the elephant gets out of your
+way and you can strike down the biggest,' and the netikee laughs again.
+
+"`Who's afraid?' said the jackal.
+
+"`You are.'
+
+"`What! me!'
+
+"`Yes, you!  I make my nest from your fur.'
+
+"The jackal he bite, and snap, and howl, and then he say he'd only
+wished he had a chance of a fight with the birds.
+
+"`What's that spot I see in the sky?' said the netikee, looking up.
+
+"The jackal look up and see the eagle swooping down, and he bolt into
+the earth.  Bymby he poke his head out.  `Is he gone?' he said.  `You
+see, me and the eagle had a dispute over a lamb which I took away from
+him, and I thought he would feel uncomfortable if he saw me.  What did
+he say?'
+
+"`The eagle said he willing to fight if the lion leads the animals; but
+he's not going to demean himself against any jackal trash.'
+
+"The jackal grinned.  `Well,' said he, `the lion won't fight, he's just
+been feeding, and the eagle needn't trouble about it.  You get all the
+partridges, the pheasants, ducks, knorhaan, guinea fowl--the more the
+merrier, and I'll bring the red cats, the muishonden, the wild dogs, the
+tiger-cat, and we'll meet here to-morrow.'
+
+"The netikee flip his tail about, and say, `Yes, he's willing to have a
+battle,' and the jackal with a grin he run off to call all his friends
+to a big feast off the birds.  The netikee just bunch up his feathers,
+tuck his head under his wing, and go to sleep.  Next morning before
+sunrise he fly to the bush, and he hear the jackal making a plan.
+
+"`You keep your eye on my tail,' said the jackal.  `Watch my tail,' said
+the jackal, `I will hold it up straight like a banner, and you must
+follow it into the thick of the fight.'
+
+"The netikee flew away off to a honey-tree, and he had a word with the
+bees: then he fly back to the thorn bush with a clump of bees with him.
+
+"Bymby here comes the jackal with his bushy tail held up straight like a
+banner, and behind him come a green-eyed, silent, swift, cruel pack of
+wild-cats, red cats, grey cats, and wild dogs.
+
+"`There they come,' said the nekitee; `see the jackal, with his tail up.
+Stick his tail, creep into his hair, and make him yell.'  So the
+netikee left his perch and flew to meet the animals all by himself, for
+they could not see the bees; but the bees they swarmed into the big
+bushy tail, and the next minute there was the jackal scooting off across
+the veld with his tail between his legs.  Next thing you know the
+animals is all scuttling home.
+
+"That's why the netikee is so perky."
+
+"Jes' like little men," says Abe Pike.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+ABE PIKE AND THE HONEY-BIRD.
+
+In the night we heard the loud barking of a baboon, and next morning
+Uncle Abe, accompanied by the witch-doctor, Bolo, started back for his
+solitary homestead, saying that he had received a call from his
+familiar.  This I regarded as an excuse, and judged that the two old men
+were bent, like boys, on some fishing excursion.  Strangely enough,
+however, the black tiger disappeared at the same time, leaving the live
+stock free from his ravages--though human thieves as mischievous were
+afoot, and during the week paid a visit in the night to the cattle
+kraal, "lifting" a fine cow with a young heifer calf.
+
+The spoor led away towards the dense bush of the Fish River to the east,
+and setting a knowing old dog upon the scent, I followed on horseback.
+The thief I judged had probably five hours' start, and allowing for the
+feeble strength of the calf, I reckoned he was from six to ten miles
+ahead, when, if surprised by day-light at any distance from the cover of
+the bush, he would probably turn into a kloof.  At intervals of about a
+mile I came on spots which, from the numerous hoof marks, indicated that
+the thief had stopped to let the calf rest and take milk, then, after
+the third such resting, he went right ahead at a sharp pace directly
+towards the big kloof on Abe Pike's farm.  If the beasts had been driven
+in there I made sure of recovering them, but I presently noticed that
+the spoor led away along a ridge to the left, skirting the kloof, and
+descending to a wide wooded valley which ran into the bush.  I followed
+without much hope into the valley, to find the spoor obliterated by the
+tracks of a troop of cattle which had been on the move since sunrise.
+After questioning the native herd without success, I turned back towards
+Pike's house, reaching it just as he came out from his breakfast.  He
+took a long glance at me and my horse.
+
+"Soh," he said, "been spooring a stock thief, eh?  You've got to get up
+early to catch that sort--earlier than bedtime.  I seed you go over the
+brow of that rand yonder with a dog nosing on in front, and I said to
+myself, `Abe Pike, there's the young baas with the hope springing up in
+him that he's got the glory of catching a cattle thief.'  The young has
+got all the hope and the old all the experience, and I'd swaap a whole
+lot of experience for a glimmer of hope."
+
+All this time he had been attending to the horse, rubbing its back and
+legs with a wisp of straw.
+
+"Who said I had been after a cattle thief?
+
+"What are words, sonny; words is nothing--nothing but a slower way of
+saying a thing you have already made plain enough by your actions.  Says
+I, `Abe Pike, the young baas has lost a beast, maybe a cow and calf, and
+bymby he'll be looking as black as thunder and as hungry as a mule.'"
+
+"Uncle Abe, you know something about this robbery.  It is true I have
+lost a cow and calf.  Have you seen them?"
+
+"What! me?  Where is they?  You know well if Abe Pike had seen them
+they'd a been right here waiting for you.  No, lad; but I saw you
+follering straight on the spoor, and if there'd been several beasts some
+on 'em would have broke from the track, making the spooring bend and
+twist.  So I reckoned there were only one beast, maybe a cow and calf.
+There's a dough cookie under the coals and some good honey, with a
+couple of fresh aigs and a roast mealie, not to say a cup of as good
+coffee as you can get.  Help yourself, lad; help yourself."
+
+I sat down to this simple fare--after raking the "cookie" from the
+fire-place, whence it came baking hot with wood cinders embedded in its
+steaming crust; while Abe leant against the door-post, pulling
+reflectively at his pipe.
+
+"What has become of Bolo?"  I asked.
+
+"He quitted last night.  No, he ain't gone off with your cow.  He was
+skeered."
+
+I nodded an inquiry, being engaged with the mealie cob, the eating of
+which occupies the mouth too fully for speech.
+
+"Old Bolo were skeered.  Try some of that honey--it's real good.  None
+of your euphorbia juice in it to burn your mouth out, but just ripe
+sweetness from the hill flowers and sugar bushes."
+
+The old man held his pipe away, and his lips were drawn in as I placed a
+piece of gleaming yellow comb on my plate.
+
+"Yes," he chuckled, "old Bolo were skeered, and he lit out for home.
+You see, him and me were sitting away yonder, under the tree in the
+shade, talking about things, when up comes a honey-bird.
+`Chet-chet-chet-chee!' he said, sitting up there in the branches, with
+his head on one side and then the other as he fussed about with his
+news.  `Chet-chet-chet-chee!' he said--which is his way of saying as how
+he'd found a honey-tree and wanted someone to go shares with him.
+
+"`Shall we foller him!' says I.
+
+"Bolo he grunted.  For a heathen he's spry, but it was his lazy time,
+and for another thing he was in the middle of a long-winded story, which
+he was bound to finish, being a born talker, and very strong ag'inst
+being interrupted.
+
+"`Chet-chet-chet-chee!' said the honey-bird, jumping from one branch to
+another all in a quiver of impatience.
+
+"`Come on,' says I, `let's see what sort of a nest he's got.'
+
+"`That bird is a mischief bird,' said Bolo; `he will lead us to a snake
+or a tiger.  Eweh! to the black tiger.'
+
+"`How?' says I.
+
+"`Why,' says he, `if he were a good bird he would sit away over there on
+that thorn bush and wait till we have finished our talk.  This bird is
+too anxious.'
+
+"Just then that bird flew away, off to the thorn tree, and there he sat
+dumb.
+
+"`By Jimminy,' says I, `that's funny.'
+
+"Bolo he took a pinch of snuff, and he drove on with his story, with his
+`congella wetu,' and his `ke-ke-lo-ko-ke,' jes' 's if nothing had
+happened, while I sat with my eyes fixed on that there bird.
+
+"Well, the longest river reaches the sea some time, and at last Bolo
+finished that yarn, and what it was about I couldn't tell you, sonny.
+`Now,' says I, `let us investigate this matter,' and hang me ef at that
+precise moment of the ending of that yarn, the bird didn't come back,
+all agog with his news.
+
+"Bolo he shook his head.  `That bird is no bird,' he says, `it's a
+familiar.'
+
+"`Whose familiar?' says I.
+
+"`It belongs to that dog of a Fingo,' naming a rival medicine man, `or
+else 'tis a slave of the black tiger sent to lead us into a trap.'
+
+"`Well,' says I, `honey is sweet, though it gives a man a bad _pense_,
+as the Royal motter says, and I'm for follering him.'  So up I got, and
+that bird he jes' flew off, lighting here an' lighting there, so as I
+could keep up, and after a mile he sot still as death on a thorn bush.
+
+"`Is this the place?' says I.
+
+"The honey-bird kep' quiet, but he jes' turn his eye on me all of a
+sparkle.
+
+"Well, I jes' sniffed aroun' and squinted aroun', and in a brace of
+shakes I spotted the honey nest in a hollow ant-hill.  Well, I scooted
+back to the house for a bucket, and after smokin' the bees, got out
+fifty pound weight of the finest sealed honey, not forgetting to set a
+piece of comb with young bees in it for the bird.
+
+"Well, Bolo was pretty sick when he saw me come in with that bucket
+full, and he was standing there saying he knew all along that bird was a
+good bird, but he didn't want to find the honey seeing as it was on my
+farm, and he'd be sure to find it first, whereby he could claim half,
+which was against hospitality.  Right there, sonny, that there bird come
+and perched on the roof.  `Chet-chet-chee!' says he, as excited as if he
+hadn't had a meal for a month.  I see it was the same bird, for there
+was a stickiness about his head.
+
+"`Oh, aie;' says Bolo, then he shouted from his chest.  `My little
+friend in the grey suit, lead on!'
+
+"Well, the bird flew off, and Bolo, he went after, whistling and calling
+it good names.  I jest pottered about by the house into the afternoon,
+looking out every now and ag'in to see if Bolo were coming back, when of
+a sudden I see him tearing acrost the veld.  He shot by me into the
+house, and hang me if he didn't bang the door in my face, and at the
+same time that honey-bird lighted on the roof.  You never see sich a
+sight as that bird.  He opened his mouth, spread his wings, rolled about
+and laughed fit to bust himself.  Bymby he flew away with a final
+screech, and Bolo opened the door, his natrally black face being green,
+his lips curled back from his teeth, and his eyes rolling.  I up with a
+beaker of water and threw it in his face to cool him off--and he came
+round.
+
+"`Did you find the honey-tree?' says I.
+
+"`Honey-tree!' says he, and his eyes began to roll ag'in, as though he
+were trying to look inside his head.  `There were no honey-tree.  It was
+a bad bird I knew it, I told you, and you would not believe the words of
+the wise man.  I am going--where are my kerries?'
+
+"`What happened?'
+
+"`This.  Listen.  I followed the evil thing.  It led me across the veld
+and a thorn caught me by the leg.  It was a warning, but I did not heed,
+I went on across the ridge to the kloof, and into the kloof to a hollow
+tree.  I heard the owl cry, the night-bird calling in the day, giving
+another warning, but I was deaf.  I smelt honey, and there were no bees
+flying in the hole; but the smell of honey was strong.  Into the hole I
+was about to thrust my arm when I saw on the bark long scratches.  I
+looked up through the plume on my head, so, without turning my face, and
+up above on a branch I saw a black form stretching out and yellow eyes
+fixed on me; at the same time out of the hollow of the tree there came a
+low laugh, strange, fearful, not of man, and with a spring backwards and
+a bound sideways, I was off like the deer, with the roar of the black
+tiger in my ears.'
+
+"So said Bolo, and without further words he took his kerries and his
+bag, and he went away over the hill to the north, running.  Yes, lad, he
+quit at a gallop."
+
+"And what do you think of this story, Uncle Abe?"
+
+"I've done a lot of thinking about it.  I thunked that there wooden
+shetter for the window as a protection."
+
+"Surely you don't believe that Bolo was led deliberately by the
+honey-bird to the tiger?"
+
+"Maybe I do.  Maybe the bird led him to a sure enough bee-tree.  Maybe
+Bolo happened on the black critter.  Maybe he were skeered at a shadder.
+I dunno; but I tell you I see the bird laf fit to bust, and there's
+more in the ways of these animiles than we can catch hold of--a jolly
+sight more."
+
+"Well, then, bring your gun along and we'll put the dog on the tiger's
+spoor."
+
+"Not this child!  No, no, sonny!  You leave me to get the blind side of
+that tiger; but I've got my own plan, and it's not tracking him I am
+when he's on the watch.  Not me."
+
+"What plan, Uncle?"
+
+"There's a powerful thinking machine in a honey-bird," said the old man
+slowly, so dismissing his plan from the talk; "and when you come to
+think of it, the first bird that led a man to a nest must ha' been a
+great diskiverer--a greater diskiverer in his way than was that Columbus
+chap who smashed the egg.  That bird must a reckoned the whole thing
+out, an' if he could a reckoned way back in the years, why, it stands to
+reason his children, after all the experience they've larnt, must reckon
+a lot more.  One day one of these birds called me, and I picked up a
+bucket and a chopper, and followed after him at a run, for he was in a
+mighty hurry, being, as I thought, hungry.  It warn't that, sonny.  He
+was jes' mean, and he knew it, for the bee-tree he were leading me to
+belonged to another bird.  I found that out when that bird come along.
+The two of them had a argument--the new one expostulatin', the other one
+jes' ansering in a don't-care way.  The second one he flew off--yelling
+threats, and the other one, after bunching himself up, suddenly lit out
+ag'in with me after him.  I found the tree, took out the honey, and gave
+the bird a piece of comb.  Then, as I was sittin' down with the pipe, up
+came a hull lot of birds, with a black-headed, white-throated fiscal--
+the chap with a hooked beak who sticks the grasshoppers on thorns out of
+sheer devilment.  Well, sonny, believe me, those birds they jes' up and
+tried that honey-bird, the other chap giving evidence.  The jury, which
+were composed of a yellow oriole, a blue spreuw, and a mouse-bird, they
+found my bird guilty, and a old white ringed crow, who was the jedge,
+pronounced sentence of death.  My bird didn't say nothing.  He jes' sot
+there with a piece of honey in his mouth, and a set, gloomy look in his
+eye.  After the verdict that fiscal he swooped down, fixed his claws in
+the prisoner's breast, and yanked his head off his neck with a twist.
+It was summery justice on that bird for taking possession of the other
+bird's honey-tree.  Yes, the fiscal he just yanked the prisoner's head
+off, and the body fell to the ground.  Then the jedge he buried the
+bird."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"He jes' ate it.  He jes' flopped down, give a caw, and swallowed the
+corpse.  I went home then, thinking as how they might try me for aiding
+and abetting a crime."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+UNCLE ABE AND THE WILD DOGS.
+
+There can be no denying that we were reaping a plentiful crop of
+misfortunes, to which farmers in South Africa are especially exposed.
+The cattle thieves had mysteriously come and swiftly gone, taking with
+them a few head of stock into the dense cover of the Fish River Bush,
+thence to slip them at favourable opportunities into Kaffraria.  Then,
+one morning the news was brought in that a pack of wild dogs, issuing
+from the Kowie Bush on the west, had sallied out on a rush over the
+intervening belt of well-stocked cattle country into the Fish River
+Valley, and there were few farms on the route that had not suffered.  At
+one place a heifer had been pulled down and eaten; at another, a cow had
+been attacked and so mauled that death from a rifle-ball was a happy
+release; and on my place the pack had stampeded a mob of young cattle,
+ran down and killed a steer, besides leaving their marks on many others.
+In one night they had covered fifteen miles from one wooded fastness to
+the other, killing as they went, and when in the morning the angry
+farmers fingered their guns the brutes were resting secure in the
+distant woods.  The wild dogs hunt in packs when after game, and
+according to a well arranged plan.  Thus, one part of the pack will head
+the quarry in a certain direction where other members are lying in wait,
+but when on a wild rush across the veld they keep together, and on
+coming across cattle or sheep they bite or kill out of sheer lust of
+blood, seldom stopping to eat.  Their jaws are enormously powerful, and
+with a snap and a wrench they tear away mouthfuls of flesh--so that if a
+pack gets among a flock of sheep they do a vast deal of mischief, and
+though they cannot pull down an ox, they will cause the death of a cow
+by tearing at her udder and belly.  Fortunately their raids into the
+comparatively open veld are not frequent, and they prefer to keep in the
+shelter of wide stretches of bush until game becoming scarce they shift
+quarters, when they may sometimes be caught in an isolated kloof and
+shot or poisoned.
+
+Uncle Abe had something to say when I met him next at the monthly
+meeting of our Farmers' Association--an organisation of six paying
+members and fifteen members who never had enough cash to pay, but who
+regularly attended on the chance of getting a square meal from any one
+of the five whose turn it was to give up his largest room to the
+meeting.  Uncle Abe did most of the orating, and it frequently happened
+indeed that the formal business would be forgotten, while Abe from his
+usual seat on the door-step held forth on the peculiar gifts of
+"animiles."  His idea was that all branches of animal life acted under a
+stringent code of laws and regulations.
+
+"Take these yer wild dogs," he said, pointing the stem of his
+well-chewed pipe at the President, who sat at the end of the dining-room
+table waiting patiently for a nervous young farmer to read his painfully
+prepared paper on the vexed question of "Inoculation as a Cure for
+Lung-sickness."
+
+"Take these yer wild dogs.  Haven't they got a leader?  They have.  Of
+course they have, and wha' jer think they've got a leader for if it
+isn't to follow him or her--for more often than not the leader's a she;
+and wha' jer think they foller him or her if it ain't because they've
+got rules and regulations which are be-known to that leader?"
+
+"Don't they follow the leader because he happens to be the strongest in
+the pack?" asked the nervous member anxiously, bent on shirking his
+task.
+
+"We ain't going to follow your lead this afternoon on that score," said
+Abe caustically.  "No sir, they follow the leader not because he is the
+strongest, but for the reason that he knows the rules and regilations."
+
+"Have you seen a printed copy, Abe?" asked one member shyly.
+
+"No, sir.  It's only human beings that ain't got sense enough to know
+what they are setting out to do unless they put everything in print.  A
+human being wants to know everything, and he don't know nothing; but a
+animile he calkalates to know what's necessary for him, and when he
+learns his lesson he don't want any noospaper to tell him about it--you
+jes' put that in your pipe.  Now take your case--"
+
+"Have some baccy, Uncle," said the interrupting member eagerly.
+
+"Don't mind if I do.  Lemme see.  I were jes' going to tell ye a yarn
+about some wild dogs, but I see the President's waiting for our young
+friend to 'lighten us about 'noculation, which is good on his part,
+considerin' there's some here as were curing lung-sick cattle before he
+were born."
+
+"My paper can wait," said the young farmer, hastily stuffing his notes
+into his pocket.  "Let us have your story."
+
+"Drive ahead, ole man."
+
+"Well, if it's the wish of the meeting, I'm at your service.  If I
+remember, 'twere away back in the sixties, when game were pretty thick
+in these parts, and a pack took up lodgings in the big kloof over
+yonder.  I was mor'n ordinarily busy building my shed, and hadn't much
+time to give any heed to them, though I yeard em often giving tongue as
+they went after buck, and saw one of 'em sneaking along right up to the
+old tree afore my door in the mealie garden.  The brute were on the
+spoor of a big black ram, which had taken that track from the big kloof
+to a smaller shelter for a constitutional.  I yapped at him, and after
+looking at me with his big ears cocked and the round muzzle of his dirty
+head held up, the yellow critter turned and went nosing back.  Two days
+after I seed three of 'em stealing up across the veld, and blow me if
+they didn't come right up to the mealie patch.  One of 'em lay down at
+the bottom, the other come up to the top corner, and the third, a big
+chap with a round belly, he stood back of the tree squinting round the
+trunk.  Thinks I, what's up? and lighting the pipe, I jes' plumped down
+behind a bush, with the ole gun over my knee.  The air was still, with
+the drone of the sea, coming like the hum of a big bluebottle, and
+bymby, through the stillness I yeard the sudden excited yapping of the
+pack, followed after a spell by a loud bark, I looked at the three dogs,
+and they was all looking across the veld with the water running from
+their mouths.  Casting my eye acrost the veld, there I seed a black spot
+in the distance.  It was the ram, sure enough, who had been put up in
+the kloof and were now making for his second hiding-place.  He were
+taking it easy, though the wind was coming straight to him from the pack
+behind.  He came right on, with his head up, then he slowed down to a
+walk, and looked back over his shoulder.  Away back there were something
+moving, a dark in-and-out patch, the pack on the spoor, and I seed the
+ram shake his head and stamp with his hoof.  Then he gave a short bark,
+sort of defiant, and on he trotted again; but this time he turned away
+to the left, as if he'd got a sudden fancy for the scattered bush clumps
+about a mile over the ridge that way.  Well, sir, he hadn't covered
+more'n fifty yards when a yeller dog rose up and yapped at him.  The
+ram, he stood still, with his head up, looking at this oudacious
+critter, when the pack behind gave tongue altogether, and the sound of
+it made him skeered, for he wheeled round and came at a smart pace right
+for the big tree and the mealie garden.  I turned my head, biting
+through my pipe, I was that excited, and I seed those two corner dogs
+creeping nearer to the big one, who was standing back of the tree, with
+his teeth showing and his tail twitching.  Then I yeard the steps of the
+ram, and there he were sailing along over the bushes, and the ant-hills,
+his eyes full and bright with the light o' courage in 'em--for you know,
+gentlemen, that the bush-buck carries a stout and gallant heart in his
+great chest."
+
+"Ay, ay, Uncle; so he does."
+
+"There he came, his sharp hoofs pricking into the ground, his legs
+slender and shapely, his great haunches gathering up as he cleared
+everything in his way, and the points of his short, strong horns
+catching the sparkle of the sun.  Right for the tree he went, then on a
+sudden he stopped and looked full ahead, his ears turned backward, but
+his gaze fixed on a pair of gleaming eyes that glared at him.  As he
+stood there, as big as a year-old calf, with his side to me, I could ha'
+driven a ball through his heart; but I didn't as much as go beyon'
+closin' my grasp on the rifle.  I wouldn't a shot him--no, not in them
+cirkumstances.  There were a duel of staring between those two for a
+full half-minute, and in that time those other two yellow critturs were
+slinking through the long grass bordering the mealies.  Nex' thing
+they'd a been on him from each side, with that other cur comin' up from
+behind, not to speak of the pack hurrying up and of the big chap behind
+the tree, when I gave a shout: `Look out!' say I, jes' as if he were a
+human.  `Look out!' says I, and the chap that was nearest me he rose up
+outer the grass and jumped for the ram.  You never seed sich a thing.
+For all the ram had got his eyes on the big chap, he slewed his head
+round quicker'n lightning, his horns went down, and the next thing that
+yeller critter was lying on his back yelping, with a hole in his neck.
+
+"The ram shook his head, and a tiny red mark went winding down the
+furrows of his horn nearest me.  Eh! you should a seen him and I jes'
+held my breath, while my legs shook so I was obliged to stand up.  Back
+of him came the pack--silent now, and the speediest of 'em slipping
+along like shadders, while two of the critters stood each side of the
+ram watching him, and the big one standing clear of the tree, staring at
+the great blazing eyes with his mean little yeller peepers.  Suddenly
+the big chap gave a few orders, sharp and snapping, and four leaders
+from the pack shot out, two going one side and two the other.  They were
+surrounding the ram, and he knew it.  He made a bound forward, and the
+same minute the two dogs nearest him sprang open-mouthed, one of 'em
+taking a clear mouthful outer the haunch.  The ram swerved, and the big
+chap waiting for him went for his belly, but the ram bounded into the
+air, and when he came down he wheeled round with his back to the tree.
+The dogs they jes' drew off and sat in a ring staring at him, one and
+another opening his big jaws and bringing the white teeth together with
+a snap, but the sight of that circle didn't shake the nerve of the buck,
+for he shook his head at 'em and stamped his hoofs.  One of the young
+critters growing impatient ran in, but got a stroke from the pointed
+hoof for his pains.  Well, I were that 'xcited I moved towards the tree,
+the pack jes' giving me one look, then closed in a step or two.  Three
+times the circle were drawn closer, and the sight of those staring eyes
+from outer those ugly round heads fairly made me shudder.  I up with the
+gun and let 'em have a charge of slugs.  In the confusion the ram went
+off full slick this time, and the dogs, with a whimper, scattered after
+him; but 'twas no use, he give 'em leg bail, and believe me them
+critters come sneakin' back and s'rounded me.  They did that."
+
+"Did they think you were good to eat?"
+
+"'Pears so, for they sat on their tails regarding me with loving looks.
+I shoo'd to them, but they didn't shoo a inch.  I went for 'em with the
+gun clubbed, but while those in front give way, those ahind came
+perilously near my legs.  I heerd the snap of their steel jaws, but when
+I turned there they were sitting down with their heads on one side.
+Each time I tried that it were the same; and when I give up, there they
+sat in a ring round me.  Then I jes' swung up into the tree and snapped
+my fingers at em.
+
+"If I were to tell you what them ere wild dogs did, you 'ud up and say
+the old man were a liar."
+
+"You hurt our feelings, Uncle."
+
+"Well, that big leader he up and made a speech--not a oration like our
+gifted young friend here can make, but a few yaps and growls.  After he
+had finished they give him a cheer, and fell to scooping a big trench
+round the tree.  Then they gnawed the roots through.  Then they boosted
+the tree down.  Yes, gentlemen, them wild dogs which you would call
+unthinking critters, deliberately dug up that big tree with their teeth,
+so's to get hold o' me."
+
+"Hum!  Did they eat you, Uncle?"
+
+"They boosted the tree down; but while they stood away off, I lit on my
+feet and were inside the house 'fore you could say Jack Robinson.  Yes,
+that's so."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+THE BLACK MAMBA.
+
+We were talking about snakes at the little roadside _winkle_--a
+composite shop, where you could buy moist black sugar, tinned butter,
+imported; tinned milk, also imported; cotton, prints, boots, "square
+face," tobacco, dates, nails, gunpowder, cans, ribbons, tallow candles,
+and the "Family Herald."  We always did talk about snakes when other
+topics failed, and no one had been fishing for some time, and the big
+pumpkin season had passed.
+
+"Man," said Lanky John, the ostrich farmer, "I killed a snake, a
+_ringhals_, yesterday morning back of the kraal, and in the evening when
+I went by there was a live _ringhals_ coiled round the dead one."
+
+"There's a lot of love among snakes," said Abe Pike, who had swapped a
+bush-buck hide for a pound of coffee and a roll of tobacco.  "They don't
+talk much, but they think a lot, and you can't plumb the feelings of
+silent folk; they're that deep."
+
+"Ever been in love, Uncle?" asked Lanky John, popping a big lump of
+black sugar into his mouth.
+
+"I guess it won't take more'n a foot measure to get to the bottom of
+your feelings, tho' you are long enough to be a telegraft pole," snorted
+Uncle Abe.
+
+"Snakes haven't got any brain," said Lanky John, after an awkward pause.
+
+"No more has a whip-stick," said the old man, with a contemptuous glance
+at Lanky's long, thin limbs.
+
+"That's true," replied John, with a wink at us; "though I've heard of a
+snake that glued on to a whip-stick all for love of you, Uncle."
+
+"Snakes," said Abe, "knows when to speak and when to keep shut, which is
+more than some folk can do.  If you come unexpected on a snake in a
+path, and he sees your foot coming down on him, he lets you know he's
+about, and that foot of yours is jest fixed in the air.  Well, suppose
+that snake is not in the path, but jest stretched out 'longside, he
+don't call out.  For why?  'Cos he knows it's safer for him and for you
+that he should keep quiet.  I tell you there's not a man here who hasn't
+time and again passed in the dark within a few inches of a snake."
+
+A listener, who was seated in a dark corner, moved out into the
+sunshine.
+
+"Did I ever tell you that yarn about the black mamba?"
+
+"You never did, old man, so shove along."
+
+"You may thank your stars there's no mambas down in this country, for of
+all critturs that crawl, or fly, or walk, there's not one for nateral
+cussedness and steady hate to come up to a black mamba.  Why! thunder!
+if there was a mamba in these parts, and he'd a grudge against me, I'd
+move off a hundred miles to where my sister 'Liza lives."
+
+"A hundred miles!  That's a good step."
+
+"Maybe it wouldn't be fur enough neither.  You wait!  Ten years ago I
+was riding goods to the Diamond Fields, and after one trip I was
+starting back with the empty wagon, there being no produce to load up
+with, when a chap came up and offered three guineas for his passage.
+Well, a man's wagon is his home, and you don't want to give a fellow the
+run of your tent for a month without knowing something about him.  So I
+jes' looked him all over--saw that his boots were worn out, and that he
+kep' looking over his shoulder, when he climbed into the wagon and drew
+the blanket over him--though the sun was fierce enough to light your
+pipe.  He gave me sich a look when he went in that I had not the heart
+to drag him out, and off I trekked.  He didn't join me at the fire that
+night, and when I climbed in, thinking he was asleep, he was shiverin'
+as though he had the ague.  Well, I gave him a glass of Cango and went
+to sleep.  At sunrise I trekked again, and bymby I see him draw the
+canvas aside and look back over the veld, which was as flat as the palm
+of my hand.  Thinks I, he's expecting the police, but I let him be, and
+at dinner he came out, looking as skeered as a monkey with a candle.
+First he took a walk round the wagon, then he shaded his eyes as he
+glanced over the veld, then he took a bite and a look, then a sip and a
+look.
+
+"`What are you looking for?' says I.
+
+"He let the beaker fall out of his hands and turned white.
+
+"`Have you seen it?' he whispered, with a sort of choke.
+
+"`Seen what?'  I said.
+
+"`I don't feel well,' he answered, with a twitch for a smile, and
+climbed back into the wagon.
+
+"I tell you his looks made me feel queer, and I slept that night under
+the wagon.  Well, I made a long skoff the next day, crossed the Modder
+River, and no sooner'd we get across than the river came down with a
+rush, brimming full with a boiling yeller flood right up to the lip of
+the steep banks.  That coon spent the whole day on the bank watching the
+other side, and fixing his eyes on every tree and branch that went
+sailing down.
+
+"`It's a grand flood,' he said, rubbing his hands together; `'twould
+sweep a whale away like a piece of straw.'
+
+"`Yes, and a policeman too, eh?' said I, looking at him hard.
+
+"He noticed the meaning in my words, and a human smile broke over his
+face, chasing away the worried look that seemed carved into it.
+`Policeman,' he said.  `I've no cause to fear a policeman, or any man.
+Good God!' he cried, catching me by the arm, `what's that?'
+
+"`Where?' said I, fit to jump out of my skin for the terror in his face.
+
+"He stood there with his eyes glaring at the water, and a shaking finger
+pointing into the very heart of the yeller flood.  There stood out the
+root of a tree, and clinging to the root the coils of a snake, with his
+gleaming head moving like a branch.  Jest a moment it showed, then the
+water swirled over it again.
+
+"`Let go of my arm,' I said, for his fingers were biting into me, and
+the look of him made me afeard, so that I talked gruffly.
+
+"`Did you see it?' he said, and then he jest collapsed like a bundle of
+clothes.  I had a good mind to leave him there, but, instead, I histed
+him on to my shoulders, and poured enough Cango into him to make him
+forget his name.  He wasn't fit to stand until a couple of days after,
+and then wha' jer think he did?  Cut up his clothes into shreds and
+laughed fit to kill himself when I found him at it.  Of course, I
+thought he was clean daft, but he weren't, and for the first time, with
+my old corduroys on him, he sat by the camp fire, sipping his coffee,
+and talking--talking mainly about snakes and bloodhounds, and things
+that made my backbone whang like a broken fiddle-string.  He frightened
+himself, too, so that when he saw the long _achter-oss_ sjambok
+quivering on the ground where the driver had thrown it, his jaw got
+rigid, and moved up and down without any words coming from his mouth.
+Then, with a sort of sob, he snatched up the axe, and I'm blowed if he
+didn't cut that sjambok into a thousand bits.  It was a good sjambok,
+too, made of rhinoceros hide, as thick as your wrist at the butt and
+going off to a point, and when I told the idiot what he'd done, he jes'
+went off into another unnateral fit of wild laughter, after which he
+paid me a guinea and went to bed.  Putting this, that, and the other
+together, with the Cango brandy, I guessed my man had got snakes in his
+head, and I kept the demijohn under lock.  That calmed him down, and he
+was all right until we came to the Orange River, where we had to camp
+while the water went down.  About fifty wagons were there waiting to
+cross, and there was quite a stir with all the fellows moving about
+visiting.  When we had outspanned, I joined a group to hear about the
+state of the roads, the condition of the veld for grazing, and all them
+things that transport riders talk about, when one chap asked if I had
+heard the news.  `What news?' says I.  `About that snake,' says he; `he
+was seen at the Riet River drift last week.'  `Yes,' says another, `and
+two days before he was at Aliwal North.'  `I heard from the mail coach
+driver,' says a third, `that the snake overtook his coach, stopped the
+horses, and took a steady look at all the passengers, after which he
+went across the veld, leaving 'em all frozen with terror.  It was twenty
+feet long, and its eyes were like black diamonds.'
+
+"Of course, I wasn't swallering that, but when I told my traveller the
+sweat gathered in big drops on his forehead, and the old hunted look
+came into his face.  `You don't believe this silly yarn?' says I,
+placing my hand on his shoulder.  `Believe it, man!' he said.  `Good
+heavens! that snake is after me.'  `After you,' says I.  `Yes,' says he,
+making an effort to swallow something.  `It has chased me up and down
+over a thousand miles for two months.'  `Nonsense!'  I said; `you're
+nervous and fanciful.'  `Listen,' he said.  `Two months ago I was
+hunting in the Zulu country, and one day, ten miles away from my camp, I
+shot a mamba.  I took the body back with me to skin it; but when the two
+blacks I had with me saw it, they cried out to me to take it away, or
+the mamba's mate would come in the night.  I left them sleeping by the
+fire, and the next morning they were still sleeping--ay, they were
+sleeping the last sleep, for the mamba had been in the night.'
+
+"As I looked at them, with the blood in me like water, I heard a heavy
+breathing, and saw my horse on the ground, his eyes glazed and his
+nostrils fighting for breath, while, resting on his body, was the awful
+head of a mamba, his eyes fixed on mine, and his forked tongue darting
+in and out.  I fired at him with the rifle barrel, but clean missed in
+my flurry; then I ran until my courage came back.  I found that I had
+left the powder behind, and slowly turned back.  I had not gone a
+hundred paces when I met him on my track, slipping like a black streak
+through the grass, and I thought of nothing then but escape.  After a
+time I met a party of Zulus, but when I asked for their assistance, they
+fled with loud cries of alarm, and at a Zulu kraal, where I stopped to
+ask for thick milk, they drove me out when they learnt why it was I
+fled.  That night as I slept that snake coiled by my side.
+
+"`What!'
+
+"`Yes; he could have struck me then, but he preferred to have full
+vengeance.  I woke at the flicker of his tongue on my cheek, thinking it
+was a fly--a fly! good Lord! and my hand fell upon his cold, sinewy
+folds, and his head was resting on my shoulder.  Ever since he has been
+after me, with a deadly hate that is slowly driving me mad.  Sometimes
+he disappears, but I never escape from the glint of his unwinking eyes,
+and one day he will strike, unless--unless--'
+
+"`Well?' said I, looking at his drawn face.
+
+"`Unless,' he said, `I forestall him.'
+
+"`No my lad,' said I, `for that would be a sin, and when you are
+stronger this dream of yours will go.'
+
+"He looked so fallen in, so weak, all of a sudden, that I took him for a
+walk to the river, and the rush of the waters seemed to comfort him.  He
+sat on a big boulder looking across, and the whiteness presently went
+from his cheeks.
+
+"`I've got an idea,' he said, `if I could reach the other side I'd be
+all right again.'
+
+"We sat there in a sort of a dream for an hour or two, when I happened
+to look round, and right there on the flat of the ground was stretched
+out the biggest and the ugliest snake I ever saw, black as night, with a
+great vicious diamond-shaped head, and a pair of eyes that glowed all
+colours.  He looked as if he'd travelled; his scales, instead of being
+glossy, were dull with scratches here and there, and his skin had a sort
+of bagginess as if he hadn't eaten for weeks.  As soon as he saw me turn
+he raised his head about five feet from the ground, and from his eyes
+there shot a look that jest kept me fixed like a stone.  Then that poor
+young feller on the stone began to speak again, in a soft way, of the
+river and its journey to the sea.
+
+"`I wish,' he said, `I could look on the sea again.'  Then I heard him
+move, and I knew he was looking into the eyes of his enemy, for that
+snake began to sway his head to and fro, to and fro, while his tail went
+twisting in and out, sending his body nearer and nearer.  Suddenly there
+was a shriek, and a splash, and the snake went by me--streamed over the
+rock into the water, and when I leapt to my feet with a yell that
+startled the whole camp, I saw an arm thrust above the yeller flood, and
+above the arm the bend of that black snake, his head turned down looking
+into the water, and a coil of his body round the elbow.  Ole Abe Pike
+has swound away once, and that was the time.  Yes; there was his black
+body gleaming with the water on it, and his head turned towards the face
+of the enemy--that poor young chap he had follered over three countries
+for one thousand miles--one thousand English miles."
+
+"That a true story, Uncle Abe?"
+
+"Ain't I told it?  That's why I gave up transport riding.  I darsn't go
+near that Orange River again."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+HOW THE MELONS DISAPPEARED.
+
+I think I have said that Uncle Abe knew everything there was to be known
+about farming, but he was content with his knowledge and never put it to
+practical use, unless it was in the growing of water-melons.  His melons
+were the biggest and the sweetest, with the reddest hearts and the
+smoothest rinds in the district.  His patch was on the sunny side of the
+slope, and when the big glistening globes were coming to fruition, the
+old chap would sit on the worn sod bank above them and watch them
+"drinking in the sunshine," as he said.  I went over one morning to
+collect six melons, previously selected, in exchange for a sack of meal,
+and found him seated on a bank, the picture of misery.
+
+"What's the matter, Uncle?"
+
+"A go-hoppin' ghost's been around here eating my melons."
+
+"A what?"
+
+"A spook, and he's walked off with the very six melons you set your mark
+against."
+
+I dismounted, and walked into the melon patch, the old man silently
+pointing out to me, with the stem of his pipe, the severed stems of my
+melons.
+
+"They're gone--you see."
+
+"Yes," I answered dryly, "and the man who gathered them used a very
+clean-cutting knife."
+
+"What man?"
+
+"Come, Uncle, you have parted with my melons to someone else, and I
+consider you have behaved shabbily."
+
+"That's it--go on.  It isn't enough that my hair should turn white in
+the loneliness of the dark at the dog-hopping terror that came out of
+the deep pool down below there, 'midst a fearful groaning in the air and
+a splashing in the water, but you must turn on me."
+
+"What became of those melons, you old shuffler?"
+
+"I ain't had a smoke for six days, and, on top of that, each morning I
+woke up with an empty pipe to find a melon missing."
+
+I handed him my pouch, and waited for explanations.
+
+"Yes," he said, ramming the tobacco down with his little finger; "six
+days ago when I came over here to watch them melons mopping in the
+sunshine I saw at once one was gone--and gone, too, without so much as
+leaving any sign but a straight cut through the stem to show how it
+went, not a footprint, nor a bruised leaf, nor anything.  Yes, that was
+the smallest of the six; and next morning another was gone, the next
+biggest, and there was no mark on the ground.  I tell you that want of
+sign made me queer, and when that night I yeard a splashing down there
+in the pool--and there's no sound, mind you, that comes so mysterious as
+the sudden splash of water out of the night--I wondered if the Kaffir's
+devil was climbing out of the pool, or if the little brown man, the
+Tikoloshe, was up to his mischief.  There was that splash, loud and
+sudden, as if the big tail of a monstrous snake had come down smack on
+the water; then there was a humming all around me in the air.  Have you
+got a match?"
+
+He struck the match on his corduroys, lifting his knee to stretch the
+breeches taut, and his hollow cheeks nearly met inside as he puffed,
+then he held the glow of the expiring match before me.
+
+"There was a humming in the air all around me, and my skin tingled all
+over jes'sif the wind were whipping the sand against my wet body when
+coming from a sea bathe, and in the centre of that melon patch I seed a
+spark of fire like that dying match, jes' one dull spark of fire without
+any ray from it.  That was all.  Next morning the third melon was gone--
+clean gone."
+
+"Yes; and you ate it."
+
+"I grow melons--I don't eat 'em.  The next day I set a spring-gun with
+the string from the fourth melon to the trigger, and in the middle of
+the night I woke up with a start to the report of the gun and to a long
+terrible wail, that seemed to come out of the depth of the sky and from
+the heart of the earth.  It just went soughing and sighing and wailing
+through the house, and round it and over it, so that your eyes would
+follow it up and down and round, as though there was some living person
+there screeching.  I tell you an ole rooster that was perched on the
+foot of my bedstead fell down in a dead faint, so that I had to pour a
+teaspoonful of brandy down his throat."
+
+"The melon must have given you indigestion."
+
+"Look here, sonny; if you play any longer on that string you'll wear it
+out.  In the morning there was one melon left, the spring-gun having
+blown the fourth one to smithereens--pieces of it being scattered all
+over the ground--though there was not a fragment of skin or hair or
+feather to show what sort of thing it was had carried off the fifth
+melon.  There was one left.  The biggest of the lot--a great dark-green
+ball of liquid fire and honey, that would ha' fetched first prize at any
+show.  I made up my mind to save that one, so I built a kraal round it
+with stakes driven in a foot deep, and roofed in with saplins, and over
+all a fence of thorns.  And when the dark came on I sat out there with
+the gun and the bull's-eye lantern.  I tell you I've suffered a lot in
+trying to keep those six melons of yours--and that night there was a
+stillness in the air that brought out all my sufferings on the stretch
+like fiddle-strings.  It was dead quiet far into the night, with the
+stars blinking, and the voice of the sea appearing to pass overhead,
+when of a sudden there came that splash from the pool, loud and
+startlin'.  I stood up to look down into the valley, then I slipped
+inside."
+
+"What did you see?"
+
+"See! nothing; but I felt there was something crawling up that hill--and
+through the air all around there came that humming.  Yes, I slipped
+inside; but on the bank I left that lantern glaring like a great eye
+over the melon patch.  I could not sleep for a melancholy sound in the
+air, half whistle, half moan; and when I went into the middle room to
+look out of the window, I'm gummed ef that bull's-eye lantern wasn't
+standing on the table with the slide shut.  That very same lantern I'd
+left all ablaze on the bank--and in the room there was a smell of crabs,
+a damp, muddy smell, and beyond the window was a smoulderin' fire--the
+same dull spark-like point I had seen on the first night."
+
+"Your pipe is out; do you want another match?"
+
+"A match is not much good without baccy.  Thankye, sonny.  So I climbed
+into bed again, or rather--for I'm not ashamed of being afraid--under
+the bed, and there I was when I yeard the old rooster say good-morning
+to the sun.  The first thing I did was to look at the melon patch, and--
+what'jer think--"
+
+"Go on, you wretched old fabricator."
+
+"I seed that last water-melon sliding down the hill."
+
+"Sliding?  Wasn't it walking?"
+
+"Yes, sliding--not rolling, as you'd expect a round thing to do down a
+steep like that, but jes' gently sliding, as though it were resting on a
+coat.  There was nothing by it, nothing at all, and it was the most
+surprisin' sight I ever seed to watch that fine melon softly skimming
+over the grass and dodging all the stones.  I was so lost,
+flabbergasted, unbalanced by this sight that I never saw what was
+awaiting the melon, down by the pool, until the last thing, when it
+slid, all of a sudden, into a dark hole.  Into a dark hole--a sort of
+tunnel level with the take-off into the pool--and that hole, that
+tunnel, sonny, was the throat of the big devil-snake.  All in a moment I
+saw that.  The melon disappeared, the jaws of the snake came together,
+and a column of water shot into the air as he slid back into the pool."
+
+"So; and that's where the six melons went?"
+
+"Five, sonny; five--one of 'em was blown to smithereens by the gun.  The
+five of 'em were swallowed by that devil-snake."
+
+"And how did he cut the stems so clean?"
+
+"That's where the mystery comes in, sonny.  I expect you'll have to take
+six of the best that are left, sonny; and I'm going into town next week
+to get some dynamite to blow the bottom outer that pool.  That
+devil-snake might take it into his head to swallow me one of these
+fishing nights."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+ABE PIKE AND THE BIG FISH.
+
+The Fish River was "down."  It generally was down, in the sense of being
+low, but colonial rivers run by contraries--when they are down they are
+up.  There had been a heavy fall of rain "up country," and the water
+rushing off the sun-baked surface poured like a flood between the high
+banks, sweeping, as we afterwards heard, a stone bridge away, and
+catching in its career a wagon and span of eighteen oxen at a drift
+which, at the time of crossing, had scarcely water enough to wet the
+feet.  For many a mile the banks of the river are of red soil, and as
+the flood eats into the banks its waters are stained a dull brick
+colour, which hue is imparted to the Atlantic itself for miles along the
+coast as the red waters pour out into the sea, bearing with them a
+wonderful collection of flotsam in the shape of timber, dead stock, and
+live reptiles.  Of late, railway sleepers formed no small part of the
+flotsam, and if work was slack we sometimes, when the river was down,
+spent a sloppy day on the banks fishing for these floating items.  On
+hearing the news I rode off to pick up Uncle Abe, but finding him out,
+went to a spot on the bank which he particularly favoured, where a wide
+flat rock stood at the base of a krantz.  He was not there, however, and
+the rock itself was covered by the flood, which reached half-way up the
+krantz, but it was evident he had been there, for from a cave in the
+rock, just above the lap of the waters, there issued a thin line of
+smoke, and on climbing along a ledge I saw signs of his occupation in a
+skin kaross, a dark lantern, a gun, and a few well-known traps which he
+always carried with him when after _kablejauw_, the great hundred
+pounders which come up as far as this point in the spring tides.  Now
+thoroughly alarmed for his safety, I rode down towards the sea, from
+which, six miles away, there came the continuous roar and thunder of the
+surf, and, to my great relief, met him in a bush path, with a full-grown
+otter on his back, and the water oozing from his top boots and from his
+clothes, which clung to his lank body.
+
+"Halloa!  Uncle; I thought you were drowned."
+
+"That's me," he said, sweeping the water from his eyes; "I've been
+drowned twice over.  Got a pipe and baccy?  I'm jest perishing for a
+smoke."
+
+I saw now that his knuckles were skinned, and that his face was pinched
+and blue.
+
+"Get up," I said dismounting.
+
+"Not me.  I'd spoil the saddle.  Lemme catch hold of the stirrup--so.
+Now get along quick, for I want to boil this yer soaking of water outer
+my bones and body."
+
+We went along, and presently I had a bright fire going in the cave, and
+the kettle singing, while Abe, stripped of his clothes, sat shivering
+still in his skin kaross, his eyes fixed on the red torrent, which
+stretched across for a mile.
+
+A tin beaker of boiling coffee soon brought back the warmth to his body,
+and when he had my pipe between his teeth he began to talk.
+
+"I believe I'm getting old, sonny; and I've lost my fishin' tackle."
+
+"Not the _kablejauw_ tackle?"
+
+"Jest that.  It's stood by me, man and boy, for twenty-five years.  I've
+waxed it and waxed it, and wired it about the shank, till it were strong
+enough to haul in a shark, and now it's gone--all along of this yer
+flood.  I don't like loosing old things, and the loss of it pains me as
+tho' you'd pulled the sinews outer me."
+
+"How did it happen?"
+
+"Yesterday I came here to fish, and in the afternoon--when the tide
+crept whispering along the rushes--I cast in from the big rock.  'Twas
+as quiet as Sunday, with a fringe of bubbles right across the river
+marking when the tide moved up.  On the mud bank, jest below where the
+big fish would soon be routing up the mud like pigs, there was a blue
+crane dozing on one leg, with his head bunched between his shoulders; on
+a dead tree above sat a big black and white kingfisher, with his red
+beak pointing up, and on the top of the krantz a white-headed eagle was
+all huddled up.  After a smoke, I built up the fire in the cave, then
+made another cast with the line, for the fish were coming up, and the
+tide had reached up so high that the crane had to quit.  I heaved the
+lead out about thirty yards, and was drawing her in when there comes a
+tug, and I was into a _steinbrasse_.  That same moment the eagle started
+into the air, sailing roun' and roun', and letting go screech after
+screech; and when I looked up at him, surprised at the racket, I yeard a
+hollow murmur, like an echo that comes from a cave.  I knew what it
+meant.
+
+"'Twas the river comin' down, and in a hurry I began hauling in that
+line, when, with a rush that parted the water, a big _kablejauw_ took
+the _steinbrasse_, and, with a swirl of his tail, made for mid-stream to
+bolt his food.  I dunno how it happened, but a coil of the line whipped
+roun' my leg, and I was yanked on to the broad of my back into the
+river, with that eagle 'twixt me and the blue sky.  That fish pulled me
+right into the middle, then he paused to take bearings, and when the
+strain slackened I took a breath, and reached along to get hold of the
+line.  But it was beyond me to slacken the knot without a knife, and I
+turned over to swim to the rock.  'Twas easy enough till I tautened the
+line, when the fish made another struggle.  'Twas pull devil, pull
+saint, and the line wouldn't break.  First he'd gain, then I'd gain; but
+most of the time we just stuck there--he facing to the sea, me to the
+rock, and that eagle ripping out up above.  And then!"
+
+"Well, Uncle?"
+
+"Lord love you, lad.  There were a roar in the air; I seed the tree tops
+above the bend swaying; then there shot into the air a great tongue of
+water, and round the corner, from side to side, there came a wall--the
+face of it curved in, the top hissing in foam, and the sides of it
+running right up the banks, so high it shut out the valley beyond.  I
+gave a yell, then turned over on my back, with my hands clasped behind
+my head to protect it from the shock, and the next minute I were
+scooting down the river for the sea, with that wall howling behind me
+like a thousand thunders."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"That _kablejauw_ did.  'Twas a race between him and the flood, and the
+way he flashed along showed he'd only been fooling with me before.  And
+the line didn't break, and overhead there sailed the eagle, with his
+black wings outspread and his white head looking down at me.  We flew so
+fast that in a few minutes I saw the white lines one above the other,
+which showed where the waves were breaking, and then with a snap like a
+pistol-shot, the line snapped.  'Twasn't my weight that broke it, but a
+snagged tree, into which, with the way on me, I went feet foremost.  No
+sooner'd I clung to a mud greasy branch than, with a roar like a fallen
+mountain in my head, the red flood tossed the big tree into the air,
+and, when we come down, we were in the thick of it--rushing on, at a
+height of twelve feet above the blue waters of the tide.  Phew! how we
+did go; and in a minute there was the mouth of the river, the big waves
+solemnly rolling in, and beyond them the heaving blue of the ocean.
+With a fierce rush, like a live crittur, the flood threw itself at the
+sea.  We just footed it over the small waves, then we cut the top off
+the first roller, throwing up columns of spray high as the church
+steeple, and then the fight began.  Behind us there was a hundred miles
+of flood; before us was the tide with the Atlantic at the back, and the
+sea after the first shock jes' gave a sort of surly roar, and away back
+of the outermost breaker I seed a dark line coming along steady and
+unbroken.  'Twas the last of the seven brothers, of the seven big waves
+that roll in with the tide at intervals, and it was bigger than all.
+Nearer it came, dark at the base, with a glistening curve, and a light
+line along the top.  We in the front had made a track for the flood
+behind.  For a little we stopped--then my tree was flung forward, and a
+red, angry column shot forth to meet the big wave.  My!  Sonny!  The
+music of that meeting!  The two waters coming together would neither
+give in, and they piled up, and up, and up, until there was built up a
+wall of water high as a hill, red on my side, blue on the other, and up
+this wall my tree was forced by the flood behind.  Up we went, until we
+were balanced on the very ridge, with a black gulf on the other side of
+smooth water.  A breath we poised there while the fresh and the salt
+were straining against each other, then a heaving mass out of the sea
+swiftly smote the great wall, and we went headlong--the tree and me--
+into the biggest toss-up you ever see.  I dunno why it was I kept
+a-hold, but I think the weight of the waters jammed me into a cleft
+branch.  Anyhow, the life kept in my body, and when I took a breath, the
+next minute it was dark, the stars were blazing, and the tree was
+a-rocking up and down away out on the ocean beyond the fighting
+whirl-about of river flood and tide.  In that one second between the
+time I went headlong from the curling top of that hill-high wall of
+water into the roarin' jumble some hours had gone--the tide had flowed
+and turned, and the old tree, with me on it, hanging like a withered
+apple, had floated miles.  I must have been drowned over and over, and
+reg'lar pickled with salt.  I tell you it was lonesome out there on the
+sea--and wet."
+
+"It was a wonderful escape, Uncle."
+
+"But it warn't over.  Bymby the tide turned again, and the tree made
+again for the shore, where the fighting was going on jes' the same from
+the roar, and when the sun broke I saw we would strike the mouth of the
+river again.  I dunno, sonny, how it is, but it seemed to me the ole sea
+was entering into the fight, for there was a sort of rush in the great
+heaving masses that began to pile in out of the blue, and when I came
+near the beat of the surf where the sea was all red, the breaker that
+carried the tree on his round back rose higher and higher, as he swept
+on until he reached the flood water, when he let the head of him curl
+and plunge with a force that swept everything away, and in the wall of
+his foam we were shot right into the river.  That's when I was drowned
+again; and when I came to I found we were settled in the still centre of
+a great circle of waters under the left bank, outer the main current.
+Everything that came into that circle went roun' and roun' till it came
+gently into the centre, to drift up against the big tree.  Already there
+were three goats against the tree, legs up, an' a sheep were drifting
+up, while in the circle sailin' roun' was a straw hat and a pair of
+trousers.  On the tree there was fifteen snakes--all alive, but
+sluggish, mostly puff-adders, with some long yeller boomslangs, and
+three or four ugly looking black snakes that must er come way down 200
+miles from the karoo veld.  While I was looking at these ugly lodgers
+coiled round the branch, there was a swirl in the water, and the sheep
+that were drifting along suddenly went under.  'Twas a shark took him.
+That made things lively, but when three more sharks come up, and after
+eating the goats, the straw hat, and the trousers began butting at the
+tree with their shovel noses, I felt there was a lot of excitement in
+this world if you only look for it patiently.  The rolling of the tree
+stirred the snakes, and the whole fifteen of them began crawling up.  If
+there'd been two I'd kicked 'em off, but being so many I sot and took
+'em.  When they had settled down again there was one round my neck, a
+yeller boomslang, making a very fine collar, there were a pair of black
+snakes on each of my arms, a brown boomslang round my waist, and no
+less'n six big puff-adders coiled about my legs.  I tell you I kept my
+mouth shut less one should crawl in by mistake, an' if my hair hadn't
+been so scant and wet it would ha' stood up straight."
+
+"That was a tight fix, Uncle."
+
+"Tight!  By gum!  The pressure of that six foot o' collar on my neck
+tilted my chin up in the air, while the chap above my waist nearly broke
+my ribs.  The worst of it wer' I was freezing."
+
+"Freezing! and the sun at 108."
+
+"That's so; but fright turns a chap cold, and them snakes were drawing
+all the remainin' warmth outer me.  And ther' were those sharks
+promenadin' roun' and roun' the tree, every now and again givin' it a
+lazy shove.  Jes' then the tide turned, and the tree began to move on
+another cruise.  This time I knew it would be all up with me.  I
+couldn't live through another fight with the surf, and if I moved there
+was the snakes and the sharks.  Soon as the tree moved those snakes woke
+up and began hissing an' puffing an' swaying their heads about, while
+their eyes got bright and brighter.  Suddenly the collar chap crept up
+over my face and took a twist round my head with the end of his tail in
+my ear; then one by one the other snakes crawled up over my face, each
+one of 'em giving me such a look as threatened my life in case I moved.
+I wondered what they were about, for I couldn't see, but the pressure on
+my neck was terrible, when, after the last one had gone, I heard a hiss,
+a whizz, and a thud.  What jer think?"
+
+"I suppose they flew away."
+
+"They jest piled on top of each other, tail round the other's neck, till
+they made a column that would reach the bank; then the topmost one bent
+forward, and there was a line of snakes from the tree to the bank.  A
+big puff-adder was at the far end, and he hitched his fangs over a tree
+stump.  Right there I spotted my chance.  I softly hauled on the line,
+and drew the tree ashore, when I jumped to the ground and cut."
+
+"And where did you find the otter?"
+
+"Picked him up, sonny.  And to think that I lost my line."
+
+"That's a wonderful story, Uncle."
+
+"Eh! but it's so.  You can see yourself I'm soaked through and through,
+and if you look out, there's the river in flood plain enough, and here's
+the otter which will make a good weskitt."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+THE BLACK TIGER AGAIN.
+
+Abe suffered for several days from an attack of rheumatism in his
+shoulder, brought on by his immersion in the flood waters, and he
+applied himself steadily to the manufacture of a wonderful lotion, in
+which camphorated oil was the main stock, with a dash of turpentine, a
+strong trace of eucalyptus, and a few drops of the powerful euphorbia
+juice, together with extracts from sundry potent herbs.  When I visited
+him this concoction was brewing in a pot, the steam from which filled
+the house with an extremely pungent smell.
+
+"There," said he, holding up a wooden ladle full of the mixture, "jes'
+take a sniff of that.  That's the sort to sift right through you, and
+yank out rheumatics from the knuckle joints."
+
+"It certainly is strong."
+
+"Yes, sonny; but it lacks one thing."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Jes' a lump, as big as your fist, of fat from a tiger's inside."
+
+"Is that so?"
+
+"'Tw'd give substance to it; bind all these yer scents together, and
+make 'em settle down to their work instead of fighting against each
+other.  This euphorby juice is mighty cantankerous, and is given to
+blisterin' unless it's toned down by tiger fat."
+
+"Well, Uncle, that black tiger is still alive."
+
+"Hum!  I don't know that the black tiger is good for this purpose.  What
+do you say?"
+
+"I know nothing about it; but, if any tiger is good, I should say a
+black tiger, by reason of his greater strength, should suit best, and,
+if you remember, you said you had a plan for trapping him.  I believe
+he's still in the big kloof."
+
+"Yes, he's there.  That ole man baboon's been aroun' here, and maybe
+he's got some notion of showing me where the black fellow takes his
+snooze.  I'll jes' think over it."
+
+"If you want any help I can bring along some dogs and a couple of guns?"
+
+"Dogs, eh!  Seems to me that tiger's too smart for dogs.  He chawed up
+one of yours.  I don't want no dogs, sonny, and if this tiger is to be
+downed, he's got to be downed by cunning.  You leave him to me."
+
+After the lapse of a week I rode over to see how the old man had
+succeeded, and found him peacefully employed boiling down wax berries
+for the manufacture of candles for his own lighting--the rheumatism,
+apparently, having been vanquished.
+
+"Hallo!  Abe," I said, taking a look round the room, "where's the tiger
+skin?"
+
+"I speck it's on the tiger."
+
+"So your plan didn't succeed?"  Abe solemnly skimmed a ladle full of
+melted wax from the water, and poured it into a bamboo mould.
+
+"Berries is terrible skerce this season.  Time was when a body could
+gather a bagful in a day from the bushes above the beach; but now--lor',
+everything's different now.  This very earth's agoing downhill--it's
+getting played out."
+
+"Are you mixing any tiger fat with that wax, Uncle, to bind it?"
+
+"Maybe goose fat would be better, sonny; have you got any to spare?"
+
+"That tiger must be a cunning beast if he's got the better of you,
+Uncle!"
+
+He shook his head gravely.  "He's no tiger.  He's jes' a ole witch
+prowling aroun', that's what he is."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Yes.  You believe me, that's what ole Black Sam is.  I worked out a
+plan to catch him, supposin' I could find where he put up in the
+daytime, and what path he took on setting out in the night, for you know
+these critturs in the woods don't go along anyhow, but follow paths jes'
+as you or me would, and some of these paths they're more fond of than
+others.  Well, I kep' watch on that ole man baboon, and when I see him
+strolling along outside the kloof I up and follered him.  He knew, bless
+you, what I was after, and the way he led me into the dark of that kloof
+was a caution; so silent he went, and so careful to take the proper
+track.  Bymby he stopped and pointed--yes, pointed with his finger at
+the ground--then he jumped for a bough, and there he sat grinning an'
+working his eyebrows.  Well, blow me, ef there wer'n't a spoor of the
+tiger where he pointed, and squinting along through the underbush I see
+a clean walk which the tiger had made--the sides of the trees worn
+smooth and the ground jes' trodden down.  That was enough.  So I went
+home and made a pill of meat, with enough poison in it to kill a museum
+full of stuffed critturs.  Nex' morning I went down, and if that baboon
+hadn't a almost stopped me by force I'd a run bang into that tiger."
+
+"Was he dead?"
+
+"Dead!  Thunderation! he was jes' lying full-stretched for a spring from
+a tree branch jes' above where I laid that pill, awaiting for me to come
+along.  The baboon jes' invited me to climb a tree, and looking through
+the leaves, I spotted that black devil, with his tail a-switching and
+a-jerking.  I jes' climbed down, and slipped off like a shadder, with my
+heart in my boots.  Well, I did some thinking.  You know cats is fond of
+certain smells, so is dogs--only dogs is not so dainty as cats.  It's
+jes' the same with a tiger, and he's got a nose for a partickler herb
+which he rubs his head into.  I dug up one of these year herbs, and I
+fixed it up fine, jes' over the spring of a big man trap.  Then, it
+being near dusk, I climbed into a yeller wood, and waited for Black Sam
+to walk up and put his foot into the jaws of that trap; but the dark
+came before he did, and then I wasn't going to trust myself in the
+wood--so there I stuck, with the stiffness in all my bones, till the
+morning.  By gum! it were skeery work, sittin' up there with the wind
+moaning over the tree, and sounds of creeping things all aroun'.  Then,
+blame me! the first thing I clapped eyes on in the morning was that
+black crittur standing there in the path, staring at that scent bush
+'sif it were somethin' to be suspicious about instead of a nice smellin'
+bottle.  There he stood like a dark shadder, working his nose for maybe
+half an hour, when he walked all around, finally sitting down on his
+tail with a pucker between his eyes jes'sif he were thinking.  Yes, he
+sat there working his brain; then up he stood, looked about for a
+spell--then, I'm hanged, if he didn't pick up a dry stick in his mouth
+and poke it at that bush."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  He jes' sprung the trap.  Of course, soon's he poked the
+bush the spring give, and the jaws flew together with a snap that bit
+clean through the stick.  Then that there witch reached for the bush
+with his claw, and fetched a grin that spread all over his face like a
+gash in a water-melon.  Then he smelt that trap all over and began to
+switch his tail, and with a growl in his stummick off he went slinking
+on my trail, taking long strides with his ears flattened.  Luckily he
+went on the long trail leading from the house, and soon's he'd gone I
+lit out for the top of the krantz, where I could see the veld right up
+to my door."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, after a time, I saw him crossing the veld, making himself small
+when he was on the level, and running when he got in a holler.  Right up
+near the house he went and hid himself in a clump of wild cotton,
+waiting and watching for me to come out o' the door.  I tell you he
+stopped there till the sun was right over head, then suddenly he ran
+right up to the house and looked in at the winder.  I never was so glad
+at being not at home to a visitor.  He walked all round the house and
+got on the roof; then he came back, full lick, having made up his mind I
+was in the kloof.  Yes, then I made a bee line for home, and shut myself
+in."
+
+"And that ends it?"
+
+"No, sonny, it's the beginning of the chapter.  He's jes' scheming to
+get me; but the ole baboon's on the watch and maybe I'll have the black
+skin yet."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+BUFFALO BULL AND THE SHORTHORN.
+
+In one of the kloofs near the Fish River, an old buffalo bull had taken
+up his quarters, and, like all solitary males, he was suspicious and
+savage.
+
+"And I don't wonder at it," said Abe Pike, when discussing the bull's
+points.  "Trouble sours the best of us, and he's had his share of
+trouble--what with his struggles as a youngster to get a footing in the
+herd, and his struggles, when he became leader, to guard his position
+against enemies without in the shape of tigers and hunters, an' against
+enemies within in the shape of younger bulls, not to speak of the
+jealousy of his wives; and then on top of all this, the trouble of being
+driven from the family when his powers were failing, maybe by a own son
+of his.  Yes, sir, that lonely animile, for all he's so savage, an'
+a'most knocked the life outer me, has my sympathy in his proud old age.
+Proud he is, you believe me.  He might a stayed with the herd ef so be
+he choose to behave himself and foller with the calves, but once a king
+always a king.  Ef he can't rule in the herd, he'll rule all alone in
+that kloof--nursing his pride and his memories--and going scatter--
+dash--on sight for any critters mad enough to enter his domain."
+
+"Did you run against him, Uncle?"
+
+"Well--I'd put it the other way--that he run against me.  I tole you
+often how he fit and killed my _rooi bonte_ bull, Red Prince, that old
+red and white chap with a cross of shorthorn that was so masterful you
+couldn't keep him in any kraal if he wanted to move out I've seen him
+fix his horns under a heavy pole that took two men to place across the
+gate, and jest hoist it as tho' it were a straw, and if he set out to go
+into the mealie patch why he'd go in, an' there was an end of it,
+bellowing all the time fit to drown the roar of the sea."
+
+"Did the old solitary kill your bull?"
+
+"You know that, sonny, for you saw his body with the rip that went to
+his heart.  I yeared ole Prince bellow one morning, and, lookin' over
+the veld, I saw him away off yonder on the ridge slowly moving, with his
+big head swaying from side to side, and as I watched him he would, every
+now and again, stop to paw the ground and toss his horns.  I thought,
+maybe, there was some stray cattle beyond, and I set off after him with
+the sjambok.  After he topped the ridge I could still hear the rumble of
+his challenge, and when I reached the divide there he was down below
+raking up the earth with his hoof, but there was no sign of a horn or
+hide beside him.  I ran down to him, and at the sound of my running he
+turned his head, showing the red of his eyes.  He blew through his
+nostrils at me, and he looked that wicked that I dodged away behind a
+big rock, and soon's I peeped out I saw he was looking at the kloof with
+his ears pricked forward.  So I scanned the edge of the wood, which was
+about fifty paces off, and there, poking out of the shadows, was the
+head of that buffel, his black muzzle held high, and the sharp curved
+tips of his horns showing above the great mass of bone on his forehead.
+The foam was dripping from his muzzle.  I saw, then, that red crittur of
+mine had got the scent of the buffel, and here he had come to do battle
+out of the love of a fight.  I called to the old fool to come back, but,
+with another dig of his hoof and a shake of his head, he went forward
+with that slow, steady stride of a crittur that knows no fear.  From the
+wood there came a menacing growl, and at the hoarse rumble of it the red
+bull sunk his crest and let out a beller that went rolling over the
+kloof.  Then the old solitary stepped out, big and black, with white
+scars showing on his shoulders and his head held high and threatenin'.
+There the two of them stood face to face with twenty yards between,
+their ears twitching and the tails jerking against their sides, Red
+Prince looking heavier with a mightier neck, the crest arching like the
+neck of a horse, and the dewlap hanging down between his wide knees.
+Bigger and stronger he looked than the buffel, but my heart went weak
+within me for him when I saw the wild gleam of the buffel eyes, and
+dwelt on the pile of rugged bone that spanned his forehead.  Slowly they
+walked up to each other, muttering deep threats, then their horns
+clashed, and their foreheads were pressed closer and closer to the
+strain of heaving quarters.  A minute they stood so, the breathing
+coming heavily, so that the dust below was blown about--then my old red
+chap turned the buffalo right round, and with a snort and a sidelong
+blow, he ripped a long red streak in the black thigh.  The buffel sprang
+a step aside, then his tail went up over his back, and he rushed
+forward.  Right round on his pins as nimble as a yearling the old red
+went, and catching the buffel between the forelegs, he heaved him up and
+sent him with a thud on to his side.  If he had only known, poor old
+chap, he would never have let his enemy reach his feet again, but he
+curled his nose up and jest stood there watching the black devil gather
+himself together.  The buffel was up--phew--and then, with a savage
+roar, his eyes gleaming like a tiger's, he jest leapt at the big red
+body standing there so proud, and the next moment--'twas done so quick--
+I saw the blood running from his side.  I wept, lad, at the sight.
+There stood the buffel, with his muzzle up--and the foam dripping from
+it--watching the red bull, whose legs were planted wide apart to steady
+himself.  While the life was flowing from that terrible wound in his
+side the old chap shook his head again.  So they stood silent, eyeing
+one another, then Prince lurched forward--dead--and the buffel went up
+and smelt him, with his back toward me.  I had moved round the rock to
+watch the fight, and as I stood there tremblin' from the excitement,
+that old black devil suddenly whipped round, and with a most hair-rising
+roar, came straight at me.  The outer curve of his horn caught me on the
+shoulder, and sent me spinning till I tripped over a rock, and when he
+turned I squeezed tight against the shelter of the stone.  Then that ole
+brute came and stood by with his nose a few inches off, and his
+bloodshot eyes glaring at me, and every minute or so he'd try to chop me
+with a hoof, or hook me out with his horns.  And three times he trotted
+off to smell the red bull--the which times I'd try to squeeze closer to
+the rock, and then at the third time he cleared off to the left at a
+gallop."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+THE END OF THE TIGER.
+
+I had been busy all day `branding' the young cattle, and returning hot,
+dusty, and tired to the house, found Abe Pike comfortably seated in the
+cane chair, with the veldschoens of his outspread feet resting on the
+top bar of the verandah rail, and his lined face looking up at the
+thatched roof, whence came the loud zing of a bluebottle fly caught in
+the meshes of a spider web.  A jar of my Transvaal tobacco was on the
+ground by his side, and a large jug of buttermilk near it.
+
+"Don't disturb yourself, Uncle!"
+
+"I'm not agoing to.  Mind how you step, else you'll obset that
+buttermilk--not that it would matter much, for it ain't been rightly
+made.  Should ha' been kep' in a calabash with a drop of old milk in the
+bottom, to flavour it with a taste of biled leather and smoke that
+belongs to the proper article.  But all the old arts is dying out, and
+insects and beasts is the only critturs that keep up the old customs.
+Conservatism is a law of nature--among men who have broken away from
+nature it's a blind, unreasonin' protest against change.  Conservatism
+is the preserving wisdom of the aged, the salt of experience, and change
+is born of the rashness of youth.  I'm a Conservative--I'm old.  I
+should be presarved for the edification and guidance of the young.  Give
+me the buttermilk."
+
+As he would not move, I tilted his chair over by kicking the legs away,
+and passed over his recumbent body to the bedroom.  After a wash down I
+found him still outspread on the ground, his long legs hooked over the
+chair, and his head resting on his arm, while the glow of his pipe
+showed that he was still calmly smoking.
+
+"What's brought you over here, Uncle?"
+
+"Well, I 'spect I walked.  Have you ever observed, sonny, that the human
+body is so built that it will fit itself to any position?  This is
+comfortable and the tobacco is fair to middlin', fair to middlin', with
+a touch of sulphur in it."
+
+I sat down on the stone steps to listen to the most delightful of all
+sounds--those made by the domestic animals and birds settling to rest;
+while from the deep black of the sky the stars shot out with a sudden
+blaze, and the cool night wind came softly whispering through the
+acacias.
+
+Uncle Abe gathered himself up, and bunched upon the rail, his back bent
+like a sickle to keep his balance.  "What's acrost over yonder?" he
+said.
+
+"My boundary ridge."
+
+"Your boundary ridge!  An' a euphorby tree, and a sprinkling of white
+thorn acacias, with the gum drops glistenin' on the rough bark, and a
+few grey stones all covered with moss and a stretch of grey veld.  Go
+'long; there's more than that under the curtain of the dark, for if
+there weren't why would you an' me sit here and look away off, an' look
+an' look, as ef behind the curtain was all the mysteries of the unknown
+world.  The dark makes a wonderful difference."
+
+"So it does--when you're five miles from home and hear the `gurr' of a
+tiger."
+
+"Sonny, I've downed that black tiger."
+
+"You have!"
+
+"That's so.  Ole Abe Pike has come out on top--and soon's I skinned him
+I lit out to tell you the news.  You see it was my wits against his.
+Traps was no good, so I determined to set my skin against his and trust
+to the ole gun.  I calculated to tackle him right close up to his lair."
+
+"In the kloof?"
+
+"Eweh! in the dark of the big kloof, where it's that still you can hear
+the sap moving in the trees.  You see that crittur was more'n ordinary
+cunning, and he'd seen how he was feared, so he'd settle it down to a
+certainty that no man would ever dare tempt death near his sleepin'
+place.  Therefore, though deadly risky, the best plan would be to go to
+that very spot.  Next thing was to give him a good feed far away--and
+yet not too far.  Ef the kill was too far he wouldn't come back to his
+roost, and ef it was too near he wouldn't eat before returning.  So I
+built a little bush kraal near the kloof an got a brandzickt goat from
+Ned Amos to turn in."
+
+"Why not have tied the goat up in the kloof?"
+
+"No good, sonny, with an 'xper'enced tiger.  He'd a suspected a plant,
+'cos his understanding 'ud tell him that goats don't grow in kloofs.
+The kraal he would take as a piece of man's foolishness.  Before this I
+filed down a whole sixpence, and the filings I melted into a good round
+bullet, with some clean lead.  Two charges I put in behind that bullet,
+and seed that the powder was well up in the nipple with the shiniest cap
+well pressed down.  Then I killed a stink-cat--I'll tell you why
+afterwards.  I got the goat down to the kraal an hour before sun-down,
+and then I slipped into the kloof, treading like a shadder, with the
+bleat of the old billy buck calling loud.  I pulled up, an' waited till
+that ole man baboon, who had watched all proceedings, gave me the sign
+that the Black Sam was on the move.  I felt my way on up to his lair
+under a shelving rock at the foot of the precipice that hems in the
+kloof on the top side.  It was that dark I couldn't see my hand, and I
+knew at once my plan would land me with a split throttle if I waited for
+his coming back.  I was that skeered, too, with the whisperin' in the
+trees, that I was just making ready to run when I see a firefly dodging
+around."
+
+"And you thought it was the tiger's eye?"
+
+"You wait.  I seed a firefly making circles of flame against the
+blackness--and I cotched him gently--so's not to spoil his lantern.  I
+fixed him in the bark of a tree that stood near the den--and two others
+I fixed in line--one above, one below.  The top was three feet above the
+ground, the middle was two and a half, and the bottom one a foot high.
+Next thing I threw that stink-cat in the den, and the smell of him came
+out thick, covering up all taint of a man.  Then I settled down opposite
+the tree with the gun fixed on the little spark where I'd fixed the
+middle fly.  I reckoned when the ole chap came home and smelt that cat
+he'd stand in disgust--and as the smell would strike him just by the
+tree his body would blot out the flies and give me a mark."
+
+"And he didn't come back that way?"
+
+"He did that, as it was the easiest way; but before he came the feeling
+grew in me that he was just behind watching me where I lay.  I tell you,
+sonny, that long watch in the stillness of the dark, with a drop of
+water minute by minute falling into a little pool, and a sort of queer
+stirring noise among the trees, gave me the ague.  But he came at last.
+It may have been three, or two o'clock; but without a sound he was there
+before me.  My eyes had grown tired of watching those three dots of
+fire, and I'd been shutting them tight for a spell every now and again,
+and when I opened them the last time I saw the light was there, but
+altered.  I looked away a second, then back, and there was three lights;
+but two of 'em were close together, and bigger.  Jimminy! it was the ole
+man himself looking at me.  I pulled the trigger, and the gun flew outer
+my hands.  Then I rolled over and over, with a roaring, scuffling, and
+screaming in my ears as ef the gun had woke a whole crowd of devils and
+brought them howling outer the rocks.  I rolled against a tree, and I
+was up it before I knew where I was, an' all the time there was that
+scuffling an' growlin' and awful screamin' going on down below.  Bymby
+it got weaker and weaker, until it died off in gurglings and deep
+breathing, and by the grey light of the morning there was the two of 'em
+dead, the black tiger and the ole man baboon.  The baboon had got his
+two long teeth in the big throat, and there he had held while the tiger
+with his hind claws raked the stomach clean out of him."
+
+"And where did your bullet strike?"
+
+"It struck the tree, and smashed the top firefly to smithereens.  The
+other two had dropped off."
+
+"Then you didn't kill the tiger?"
+
+"I reckon I did; at any rate, I've got his skin and the skull of the ole
+baboon.  He was the biggest tiger you ever see, and old as the hills,
+with his teeth worn down.  I'm sorry for the baboon, but I'm glad he was
+there."
+
+I have reason to believe that Uncle Abe maligned himself for the sake of
+the yarn.  On examining the tiger's skin subsequently, I found no traces
+of the baboon's teeth, but exactly between the eyes was a bullet-hole.
+The old man had held his gun straight in the dark kloof.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+WHERE THE QUAILS CAME FROM.
+
+In the spring the quails come in from the west, and one September
+morning I went out into the standing oat-crops with two other guns, each
+one of us attended by a little Kaffir lad to retrieve the birds.  By
+noon we had traversed and re-traversed in line the upper lands and low
+lands, bagging 98 brace, and then in the glare of the mid-day we took
+shelter in the shade of a yellow-wood tree.  There we argued the
+ever-recurring theme of the coming of the quail.
+
+In August there is not a quail to all seeming in the land, but suddenly,
+as the spring advances, there comes from every thicket of grass and
+square of growing corn on the coast the whistling call of the male
+bird--`phee--phe--yew' calling in bird language, `where are you?--where
+are you?' and the answering cry of the modest mate--`phee--
+phee'--"here--here."  Whence do they come--these thousands of birds that
+throng along the coast?  On that point regularly as September came
+round, as the 12-bore gun was taken down, and the cartridges filled with
+Number 6, we talked greatly, setting forth many theories.  Silas Topper
+was of opinion that the quails spent their time in travelling round the
+continent of Africa in four huge armies, covering 500 miles from front
+to rear, and that while one was passing along the southern coast, the
+second army would be going north somewhere above the Zambesi, while the
+third would be traversing the shores of the Mediterranean, and the
+fourth skirting of Gold Coast.  We all agreed that was a very good
+theory, and one deserving more credence than the crude, but positive,
+assertion of Amos Topper that the quail was originally a frog.
+
+"It stands to reason," Amos would say, "that a quail is developed from a
+frog.  If 'tain't so, what becomes of all the frogs?--tell me that.
+Take a caterpillar.  A caterpillar comes from an egg, and a cocoon comes
+from a caterpillar, and a butterfly from a cocoon."
+
+"But a quail isn't a butterfly."
+
+"Chuts!  A tadpole comes from an egg, doesn't it?  Well, a frog comes
+from a tadpole, and a quail comes from a frog.  That's clear enough,
+ain't it?"
+
+Then, of course, the argument would start, and this particular September
+morning we had got well into the frog theory when old Abe Pike came
+along.
+
+"I don't mind if I do," he said, as he sat down and selected a plump
+bird that Amos had carefully prepared for his own eating.  He had opened
+it out by a cut down the breast bone, laid the broad bare back on the
+wood coals, and in the cup-like cavities of the breast had placed a pat
+of butter, with pepper and salt.  The juices of the bird had gathered in
+these cavities, and Amos had just cut off a slice of bread to serve as a
+plate when old Pike forestalled him.
+
+"That's my bird," said Topper, fiercely.
+
+"Just yeard you say 'twas a frog," grunted Abe, as he dug his knife into
+the earth to clean it.
+
+"I said it was a frog, but it's a sure enough bird now--blow you!"
+
+"Go slow, sonny, go slow," said Abe, between the mouthfuls.  "Stick to
+one thing at a time.  Once a frog always a frog."
+
+"Humph," said Amos, as he picked out another bird from the heap.  "I
+s'pose you never heard frogs whistling of a night?"
+
+"Well, of course."
+
+"What do they whistle for, eh, if they're not fitting themselves for the
+bird life--tell me that?"  And Amos looked at us triumphantly.
+
+"They whistle for the rain, you donderkop."
+
+"P'raps, then, you can tell us where these birds come from, as you're so
+mighty clever."
+
+"To be sure, sonny, to be sure; they come from the clouds."
+
+"Oh, thunder!"
+
+"Yes; from the clouds, or maybe higher.  I s'pose you yeard of the
+people of Israel and how they were fed in the wilderness with manna and
+quail.  Where d'you expect those birds came from?  Frogs!  No; they just
+dropped from the sky, and they've kep' on droppin' ever since in the
+spring."
+
+"Go along!  There's no people wandering in the wilderness in these
+days."
+
+"I seed 'em."
+
+"The Israelites?"
+
+"No; the quail a-falling out the roof of the world.  I'll tell you how
+it came about that I diskivered this secret that's been kep' locked up
+all these hundreds of years.  I'd been a-fishin' off the great rock that
+stands out of the breakers over there yonder by the Kasouga, an' the
+spring tide, rolling in with a great heave, made a boilin' foam 'twixt
+me an' the beach.  I were fixed there for the night, sure enough; an' I
+tell you what, sonny, when a man is brought face to face in the black of
+the night with the leaping sea, he don't forget the time.  Noise! by
+gum!  You know what it is to be waked all of a sudden out of a sleep a
+full mile from the sea by the smacking crash of a great wave, and there
+I was in the very thick of the thunderation, with the big black breakers
+swishing out of the dark like a movin' wall, and jus' leapin' agin the
+rock as though they were bent on sweeping it away.  The white foam went
+flying above, drenching me through and through--and it grew so slippery
+up above on that table size top, that I was obliged to lay full
+stretched on my back with my heels agin a crack, and my arms
+outstretched--and my eyes fixed on the stars above whenever I could see
+them through the flying scud.  Even a spring tide turns--and in the
+darkness before the early morning I could feel the rock under me growing
+firmer.  I was just thinking o' getting to the shore to dry myself in
+the white sand when I yeard a queer sound from the sky.  There's just
+one thing wanting to this yer quail."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Just a dash of Dop brandy."
+
+I passed him over the stone demijohn, and we listened to the cluck of
+the liquor as it poured into the tin komeky.
+
+"Yes; out of the black of the sky there came a sort of sound that goes
+before a storm; and, boys, it licks me how such a shadder of a noise can
+come on in advance."
+
+"It's the way with shadows," said Amos, drily.
+
+"Soh! but it's a queer thing to hear the hum of a wind-storm before the
+wind comes along; jes' 'sif th're messages going ahead to warn critturs
+and trees to stand firm.  Well, I squinted around, and bymby, as the
+light grew, far above I seed a something movin', and the noise of its
+coming grew.  'Twas no bigger'n a umbrella when I fixed it; but it soon
+spread out, wider and wider, and what was the curiosest, it lengthened
+out behind like my old concertina.  I tell you, I begun to get skeered,
+for I thought maybe 'twas one o' them water-spouts.  Then the light grew
+stronger and there was a twinkling from the growing column jes' if
+thousands and thousands o' poplar leaves was stirred by the wind.  `'Tis
+alive,' I said, jumping to my feet, and I scaled down that rock and
+scooted through the pools, and up over the sand hills to the shelter of
+the woods.  I thought it was one o' them here sea-serpents."
+
+"But it was not?"
+
+"No sonny; it was a heaven-high column of quail.  That's what it were."
+
+"Falling from the moon, eh?"
+
+"When the head of the column reached the ground, which it did, on the
+beach the whole length just collapsd like a falling tree, and the whole
+lot were just scattered along the coast in a twinkling."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+ABE PIKE AND THE GHON-YA.
+
+Old Abe had strolled over to my place to see a new Harvester tried on a
+good crop of wheat.  In the previous reaping season I had been left
+suddenly in the lurch by my Kaffirs, who had silently vanished in the
+night for other scenes without a word of explanation, or a single regret
+for the loss they would put me to, and I determined to be prepared in
+future for such another vagary.  Hence the Harvester, which reaped the
+corn and bound up the sheaves, aided only by one man and a boy.  We were
+just sweeping clear the last square in the small field when Abe came up
+and hung himself on the fence, with his back bent like a bow, and his
+toes hitched under the lower wire.  There, all bunched up, he eyed the
+machine in silence.
+
+"Well, Uncle, what do you think of it?"  I said, with some pride, as the
+last sheaf was tossed on one side by the human-like grippers.
+
+He looked at me vacantly, then climbed slowly down, examined the sheaf
+and the tie, and then took a look all round the country.
+
+"Things is changing," he said.
+
+"Yes; this is the age of progress and electricity."
+
+"And snorting steam engines and that there man machine--that thing
+without a heart, or a stomach, or eyes to see.  Where's the good?"
+
+"It is a labour-saving machine, and enables me to produce more."
+
+"'Tis all vanity, an' foolishness, an laziness--that's what.  Laziness
+and pride," and the old sinner, who never did a fair day's work in a
+month, wore an air of virtuous indignation as he resumed his seat on the
+fence.
+
+"Things is changing--that's so; and mankind's on the down track.  Time
+was when a reaper would take his sickle and harken to the rustlin' of
+the yaller corn as he cut his way along, with the smell o' the yearth in
+his nostrils, and the sight of all manner o' living insects below him.
+And bymby he would straighten his back and look away over the land, or
+at the shining layers behind, and then he would stoop to it again with
+the thoughts busy in his mind as bees about a comb concerning the going
+out of the wheat in waggons an' trains, an' ships across the sea to the
+feeding of the nations.  An' look at this yer cast-iron reaper; what's
+it good for but to work for a cast-iron man?  That's what's the world's
+comin' to, with all the people cast in a mould.  I'm gwine home!"
+
+"Nonsense; come back with me and try the new lot of rolled tabak from
+the Transvaal."
+
+For all his disgust with the Harvester, Uncle Abe did not mind "riding,"
+to the house on the driver's seat; neither was he cast down after supper
+when he sat out on the stoep.  The day's work was done for man and beast
+and the great quiet of the evening brooded over the place.  There we sat
+and smoked in silence, until the glow died out of the sky, when the
+night creatures began to stir, sending forth inquiring notes as if to
+assure themselves that the time was really at hand for the starting of
+the wonderful orchestra of the insect band.  And, as we listened, there
+rang out above the shrill drummings and chirpings and whistling, the
+weird, mournful cry of the "ghon-ya," calling "ghon-ya!" "ghon-ya!" at
+regular intervals, until the melancholy of its far-reaching cry stilled
+the other noisy voices.
+
+Abe stirred uneasily.  "There's the lost sperrit," he muttered.
+
+"Why, that's the night locust!"
+
+"Soh; jes' a locust."
+
+"Yes, with a transparent drum in place of a body which he blows out when
+he wishes to make that noise, and rubs his legs upon the drum."
+
+"How big is this yer drum?"
+
+"About as large as a hen's egg."
+
+"So; and with such a small thunder-bag he can send out a noise that
+booms further than the greatest drum in the British army.  Don't tell
+me.  That's no insect; it's a cry that comes from beyond."
+
+"Beyond where?"
+
+"Beyond the dark.  I tell you, sonny, when the ghon-ya cries he ain't
+bothering himself about any glass-eyed beetle-hunter who's just
+hankering to label all the critturs in this yearth; he's not thinkin'
+about you nor me, but he's jes' wailing in that shudderous voice to the
+shadders that pass by in the night; whether it's to comfort 'em, or to
+put 'em on the right track, or to warn 'em of danger, I can't say.  One
+night I had taken the short cut past the big krantz, being late from the
+shop where I'd been for a tin of o' black sugar, and thinkin' of nothin'
+at all when I yeard the ghon-ya's cry passin' overhead.  There was
+nothin' more'n ordinary solemn in the wail of it, but when I came to the
+thick of the wood it seemed to me there was a queer whisperin' going on
+among the trees.  Have you ever marked a bee against the shadder?  Of
+course you have, and you'll know how he moves like a drop o' light as
+the sun strikes on his wings against the dark of the hill behind.  Well,
+I happened to look back over my shoulder to the other side of the valley
+where 'twas as black as black, and in the glance of my eyes, with the
+blue and red light snapping from 'em as it does sometimes when you
+blink, in that very moment of turning, I seed a passing of a many
+shadders."
+
+"Tree shadows?"
+
+"Shadders of dreams, sonny, I tell you.  Jes' in a flash I seed 'em
+moving up, and then all was black groups of trees; but I knowed where
+that whisperin' come from.  Yes, a many shadders hurryin' on up that
+valley with the cry of the `ghon-ya' pealin' out ahead.  Well, I got
+outer that valley pretty quick, and were hurryin' by the top of the
+krantz overlooking the big kloof when the `ghon-ya' cried jes' ahead o'
+me.  A locust!  Lor', sonny, right afore me there was a something
+shaddery--a darker patch on the blackness, standing on the brink of the
+krantz overlooking the deep kloof that lay below stretching towards the
+sea, and the `ghon-ya,' loud, long, mournful as the solitary toll of the
+death-bell, went out on the air, an' I jes' went to the ground as if the
+bones had all been drawed out.  Looking along the top, with my eyes to
+the light that was in the sky over the sea, I seed them shadders from
+the valley file down into the kloof.  A many shadders, sonny, come out
+of the valley--passed by that dark patch, and jes' floated down into the
+kloof--whispering as they went.  What sort o' shadders they were I
+couldn't tell you, my lad; but they belong, sure enough, to the other
+world beyond the dark.  Many a time I yeard them same things in the
+kloof, when the dead quiet has been broken by a movement in the air, and
+a sort o' creepin' sound 'sif somethin' were peepin' at you from behind
+a tree.  You've felt it, too, of course.  The dogs they know, 'cos
+they're not so cock-sure as we are about knowin' everything jes' bekose
+we can make a cast-iron reaper."
+
+The ghon-ya from the darkness called again, as if the sorrows of the
+world were in the cry.
+
+"A locust!" cried Abe scornfully; "that's no locust.  It's calling the
+sperits of the woods together, and the ghostses of animiles--that's
+what; and that's why all the other noises is hushed."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+ABE PIKE AND THE KAFFIR WAR.
+
+"Were you ever in the wars, Abe?"  I asked the old chap on one of my
+off-days, when I had called on him to go out after rhea-buck.
+
+"Were I ever in the wars?  Did I ever grow pumpkins?  There's some
+fellows go through life asking questions about things that's as plain as
+plain--why, blow me, I've known 'em ask ef 'twdn't be a fine day when
+there's bin no rain for a month and not a stir o' wind."
+
+"So you have been in the wars?"
+
+Grunt.
+
+"I suppose," said I, unmoved by Abe's indignation, "you never got into a
+fix--always kept with the rear column?"
+
+"What, me!  Jes' you look here," and cocking up his chin, he showed a
+long scar under his beard.  "Assegai!" he said.
+
+"Must have been a close shave!"
+
+"'Twarnt no barber held that wepin I tell you, sonny.  No, sir!  I jes'
+seed the whites of his eyes and the gleam of his teeth, and whizz!--
+whough!--the assegai darted like a serpent's tongue.  He was painted
+red, he were!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The Kaffir, you blind eyed calabash.  It was in Blaauw krantz in '45.
+You don't remember those days, 'cos you weren't born, but Blaauw krantz
+were jes' where it is now, and the red Kaffirs had suddenly got back
+their old idea they could drive us into the sea.  Wonderful how sot they
+are on getting us into the salt water; and that time they was partikler
+keen on making us take to the sea without so much as a plank.  Of course
+we knew there was something in the wind.  When Kaffirs mean to fight
+they don't fire off blank cartridges in the papers; they jes' keep dark,
+uncommon dark an' sulky, but for all that they can't keep down the human
+nature that's in 'em, and they have a way of giving you the shoulder
+when you order them about that means mischief.  When a Kaffir clicks at
+you with his tongue you don't want him to tell you in plain words that
+he's _quaai_ and would like to belt you over the head.  Well, I tell
+you, you dursen't order a boy to step a yard but he'd click, an' some of
+the chaps with families took the hint and shifted into Grahamstown; but,
+lor' bless yer, the Government didn't take any notice.  Oh no; the
+Government knew the Kaffirs and it knew the whites, and it believed in
+the Kaffirs.  Look here, sonny, Government's a ass--alus was a ass, and
+alus will be a ass.  Alus so darned cock-sure, and so blamed ignorant
+that any Kaffir chief could best it every time.  You know, sonny, the
+chief he would jes' come along--simple an' humble--and pitch in a yarn
+about how he loved the `great white ox,' how he wished to herd his
+cattle in peace, and how thankful he'd be if the great white chief would
+send him a little white chief to keep the wicked white men from his
+kraals.  All he wanted was peace--since he had listened to the words of
+wisdom from the Government.  Then the chief would say: `That is my
+speech,' and the Government would up and pat him on the back; an' when
+the farmers said the Kaffirs meant to fight, Government would tell 'em
+they was a passel of fools.  Oh, I tell you, Government is vain as a boy
+in a new weskit, an' as easily humbugged.  Well, about 1845 Government
+was laced up and smoothed down by the chiefs, with their tongues in
+their cheeks, and on a sudden the war smoke rose on the frontier."
+
+"The war smoke!"
+
+"Ay, bossie; the heaven-high columns of smoke going up blue and round in
+the still air, as a sign to the Kaffirs waiting silently in the bush and
+the kloofs.  At the sign out they came, slipping from the bush paths
+stealthy as leopards on the trail, and one morning the hill-sides yonder
+were red, as though the aloes had blossomed."
+
+"What--with fire?"
+
+"Neh! karel with red clay smeared thick over the black faces, and with
+the red blankets carried by the bearers.  Then there was in-spanning of
+horses, hurrying of women after their children, and the trail of dust
+about each flying cart.  The red Kaffirs!  Ay, lad! many a mother an'
+wife has gone white at times of peace at the sight of a Kaffir in his
+paint--squatting, maybe, like a tame dog at the back door, waiting for
+his women-folk in the kitchen to hand him out a bone--for in the
+smouldering eyes of him she can see the leaping flames of a burning
+homestead and assegais runnin' red, and if it's so in peace what must
+she feel when her roving eye, searching the veld for the little ones to
+bid them to breakfast, lights on the far-off streak on the border hills,
+and when her ear catches a murmur that is not from the sea--the murmur
+of fighting-men singing of death?  The sun was level when it shone upon
+the red Kaffirs, and when the shadder was close up to my heels in the
+mid-day the country was empty of whites, except maybe a solitary cuss
+like me, hating to leave his home, and lurking in the bush close to his
+belongings."
+
+"And the cattle?"
+
+"It's the horned beasts that you think of--well, why not? they're meat
+and drink and a roof over your head.  A few there were who saved their
+herds, but the bulk were swept in the net of the robbers.  There was not
+a many human fish caught in that net that time, 'cept old Dave Harkins,
+an' his five sons who fell all in one spot by Palmiet Fontein fighting
+to the last grain o' powder, and ole Sam Parkes.  Poor ole Sam.  He
+found religion, did ole Sam, and many the day I've a-harkened to him
+holdin' forth on his stoep, where he would sit for the rheumatism kep'
+him from moving.  Well, ole Sam, when they told him that he must fly, he
+said, `Lift my chair to the stoep.  The Kaffirs will not harm me.'  They
+placed him there with his face to the east, and there the Kaffirs found
+him.  I passed the house the next day, and he was leanin' back lookin'
+so peaceful that I hailed him.  But he were dead, sonny, with a gash in
+his heart.  Ay, they struck him as he sat, but they left the house
+standing and when I peeped in at the window there was the table set with
+all the chiney in the house.  The Kaffirs did that One on 'em had been
+about a white man's house, and he showed his friends how the white man
+prepared his table.  A little one's vanity and the blood dropping from
+the assegai."
+
+"What were you doing all this time, Uncle Abe?"
+
+"Shiverin' and hidin', sonny; for a party on 'em swooped down on my
+place led by a thunderin' ole thief I had once lammed with a sjambok for
+stealin' my sugar.  There was a fine bedstead in the house and a whole
+shelf o' crockery, for I had some idees then of marryin', and, blow me,
+if they didn't smash the lot, besides breaking all the winders and
+burning the thatched roof.  Then they killed an ox, a fine _rooi bonte_,
+roasted him whole, and ate him--by gosh.  After that they slept with
+their bellies full!  Yes, they did that; slep' with me a watching 'em
+from an ant bear hole.  I nearly spiflicated 'em, but somehow I didn't.
+Then they moved off all but three, including that ole thief, which
+gathered my cows an heifers an' calves an' oxen together, and druv 'em
+off.  'Twas like partin' with my heart strings, and I followed 'em up.
+That evenin' I druv the lot inter the big kloof."
+
+"You recaptured them?"
+
+"I s'pose so, sonny!"
+
+"And the three Kaffirs?"
+
+"I speck they ate too much beef, sonny, I speck they did.  Any way they
+died.  They did so--and after I had druv the cattle into the kloof I sot
+off for Grahamstown, passing ole Sam Parkes on the way.  I came pretty
+nigh close to parties o' Kaffirs, but 'twas when I came to Blaauw krantz
+that I got the shivers.  I were goin' along mighty keerful, I tell you
+jes' 'sif I were `still huntin'' but ne'r a sound o' a Kaffir I could
+hear.  Well you know one side the road there's a yellow bank with a bush
+on the top.  I had turned a corner on the listen, with my eyes every
+way, when I caught the move of a insect, or something like that, on the
+left.  Blow me, sonny, there was a big Kaffir standing agin' the bank,
+all naked, but red with clay.  What caught my eye was the roll of his
+eyes, for he were jes' like a part of the wall.  He'd been walking down
+the road when he must a' yeard me comin' for all I went so soft.  My!  I
+jes' give a jerk o' my head as he launched out with his assegai.  Then I
+gave him a charge o' buck-shot in the stummick and jumped back inter the
+bush on the lower side.  I yeard a shout from other Kaffirs, and, you
+b'lieve me, I dodged through the bush like a blue-bok until I got right
+under the big krantz, where I crep' inter a cave.  I seed then the blood
+running down, and like a streak I were out o' that cave inter a pool o'
+water until I got under a thick `dry-my-throat' bush where I hid.  The
+Kaffirs they followed on the blood-spoor right up to the cave, but they
+missed me where I lay in the dark o' the pool, an' next evenin' I were
+in Grahamstown, where the doctor stitched up the wound."
+
+"A very close call, Uncle."
+
+"Oh, I've been in many tight places, sonny--a many, an' maybe I'll tell
+you about 'em."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN.
+
+A BLACK CHRISTMAS.
+
+"How is it you never married?"  I asked of Abe on an evening after the
+mealie cobs had been shelled, and we were too dead tired to brush the
+husks from our hair.
+
+"Me!  Well, you see this yer cob.  It's worth nothin', 'cos all the
+mealies been shelled off.  That's me--I'm a shelled cob, and wimmen folk
+isn't got any use for that sort of bargain."
+
+"But you told me the other day that you were thinking of marriage once.
+That time, you know, when the Kaffirs smashed your furniture."
+
+"Jes' so--the critturs.  They broke a fine four-posted bed and a hull
+lot o' chiney."
+
+"And the lady."
+
+"You see, bossie, she was gone on that four-poster and the chiney.
+'Twasn't me she was thinkin' of nohow."
+
+"Nonsense, Abe; you're too modest."
+
+"Well, she forgot me, an' took up with a armchair an' a copper kettle
+which belonged to young Buck Wittal, son to ole Bob.  A armchair an' a
+shiney kettle, that's what cut me out, sonny; but Buck went up the gum
+'cos she would have a swing lookin'-glass.  That's so!  Wimmen is mighty
+keen on the look o' things, an' that kettle fetched her.  Them was
+times!"
+
+"Courting times?"
+
+"Fighting times, sonny; all up an' down the country, in an' out the
+kloofs, an' over the mountains, by gum.  I tole you about that chief--
+how I spoored him a full forty mile from the Chumie after Black 'Xmas?"
+
+"Black 'Xmas!"
+
+"You mean by that raising o' the voice you never yeard o' Black Xmas!
+Well, well, the ignorance an' the vanity o' learnin' which takes no
+account of the great happenings in your own country, and you come
+swaggerin' about with your Greek turnips."
+
+"I assure you I never heard of Black 'Xmas."
+
+"Never yeard of the soldier settlers away up by the Chumie--them as were
+planted there by Sir Harry Smith--of their wives and children, making
+merry on Christmas Day, 1850--making merry with the old custom, and the
+sounds of the laughing going out into the dark kloof, where the Kaffirs
+crouched, eyeing them as they fingered their assegais.  Lor' love you,
+lad: when the poor little children were running at their games, and the
+women were talking over their washing up, and the men at their pipes in
+the quiet of the afternoon, the war shout broke suddenly from the wood.
+There was stabbing, and a blaze, a great gasp, and the life went out of
+them all that Christmas Day.  That was Black Xmas--men, and women, and
+children, and dogs, and every crawlin' crittur given to the assegai.  I
+were on my way there after stray cattle, and I yeard the cry of a little
+child, sonny, and the sand went out o' young Abe Pike that day.  I seed
+it all--yes--lad, and I see it now in the nights, the stabbing of the
+women and little ones."
+
+"And what did you do, old man?"
+
+"What did I do?  I dunno, sonny--I dunno!  I must a walked an' walked
+all through the night, for the nex' morning I were away beyond the
+Chumie in a deep kloof, without knowing how I came there.  Then the cry
+of the little one went out o' my ears and out of my eyes with the sight
+of them leapin' devils about the burnin' houses, an' I saw the rifle in
+my hand--for ther' came boomin' through the trees the sound of a Kaffir
+singing from his chest.  I found him in a clearin', stampin' with his
+feet and swingin' his kerrie before the chief and his headmen seated all
+aroun' against the trees, with their long pipes all agoin'.  The blood
+was still caked on his arms, an' I plunked him in the breast."
+
+"You shot him?  Good old Abe!"
+
+"It were a ole muzzle-loader--one smooth, one rifle--and I shifted, but
+it weren't long afor' they picked up my spoor, and in the fust rush I
+could hear the rattle of assegais as they follered.  Then it was quiet
+in the kloof, an' I knew what a animile must feel when the hunter's
+after him, or the tiger's tracking him down.  Bymby I yeard the call of
+the bush-dove every side, and I gave the call too at a venture, keepin'
+my eye on a dark spot where the last cry came from.  Sure enough I seed
+the leaves tremble, and there was a show of red paint where the Kaffir
+stood.  That were the bush-dove, and he called again; then he came
+steppin' along to the fern chump where I were hid, movin' like a shadder
+with the whites of his eyes showin' as he glanced around.  By gum, lad,
+I thought it was all over, but another dove called an' he moved off.  I
+yeard the calls growin' softer an' softer, and I made a move to slip
+away; but there's no gettin' to the bottom of a red Kaffir's cuteness."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Why, sonny; that chap never went off when he made as if he would.  He
+jes' slipped behind a tree, and when I ris my head out of them ferns he
+druv his assegai at me, and it clean pinned my left arm to my side.
+See, here's the scar;" and the old man rolled back the sleeve of his
+worn shirt until a white scar was revealed on the fleshy part of the
+upper arm.
+
+"I fetched a groan, and he sprang out to belt me over the head, but I
+kep' my senses, an' knocked the wind clear outer him with a straight
+thrust of the muzzle.  As he stood gasping, I give him back his own
+assegai."
+
+"You killed him?"
+
+"Maybe he died; but Kaffirs is tough, and at the thrust he gave his cry,
+standin' there with his legs wide apart, afore he sank among the ferns.
+I turned an' ran, keeping down the little stream till I come to a
+krantz, with the water slidin' down, an' I swung over, holdin' fast to a
+monkey tow.  I slid down fifty feet, and then let go, holdin' the rifle
+high over head, and fell feet first inter a little round pool at the
+bottom.  It was a chance, sonny, but I kep' my bones sound and the
+powder dry.  I did that.  I tell you young Abe Pike was some pumpkins.
+Then I pushed on an' on till I went over a ridge into another kloof, an'
+through that to another kop, standing up above the wood in a mass of
+stone.  I sat down in a cleft, and the weakness came on me from the loss
+of blood and the want of food.  Well, I tell you, sonny, I fit ag'inst
+the weakness, an' with a spread of shirt, holdin' one end in my teeth, I
+bound up the wound after plugging it with dirt.  Right away I looked
+over the country, an' I see'd to the right the smoke rising and across a
+stretch of veld I seed a black patch movin'.  'Twere Kaffirs on the
+march, an' following the directshun they were taking, I seed a white
+speck to the left; a farmhouse, sonny, with a thin trail of smoke going
+up from the one chimney."
+
+"The Kaffirs were on their way to sack the place."
+
+"They were that, and I set off to beat 'em.  But look here, I said when
+I started talking, I was going to tell you how I trekked the Kosa chief,
+and here I been a' spinnin' on about another thing."
+
+"Did you get to the house first?"
+
+"What--me!  I did that, sonny.  I got there fust, an' there was nobody
+in--not a one though the pot was on the fire.  I went off with the pot
+into a patch of mealies, and when the Kaffirs came up an' smashed things
+I were eatin' pap outer the pot, yes, that's so."
+
+"And did they find you?"  I ventured after a long pause.
+
+"That pap were good, but it wanted salt--it did that.  So long, sonny,
+so long," and the old man moved off to bed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY.
+
+TRACKING THE KOSA CHIEF.
+
+"I tole you all about it, and, what's more, I ain't got no time to jaw
+along when that shed o' mine wants mendin'," and Abe resolutely
+re-filled his pipe, unheeding my request for the completion of his last
+yarn.
+
+"Leave the shed alone.  It will keep--besides, this is resting weather."
+
+"Sonny, listen to me.  Restin' weather's been the ruin of this yer
+country.  That so.  When a man should span in and plough, when he should
+take the hoe and skoffel the lands, what does he do?  Why up and say at
+the first touch of the warm wind, that it's restin' weather.  I can't
+stand such laziness, and I ast you, sonny, where'd I been to-day, if I'd
+taken notice of the weather?"
+
+I glanced round at the neglected lands, at the solitary gum tree, at the
+old water barrel on its tree sledge, at the tumble-down shed, and shook
+my head, for there really was nothing to say.
+
+Old Abe followed my look, and then shoved himself back with his heels
+into a breadth of shade.
+
+"That's it, my lad," he said with a queer smile, "cast your eyes round
+and see what can be done by one man if his heart's in his work.  Forty
+years agone this yer land were wilderness, and now look at it, with that
+there shed, them pumpkin lands, and this yer tree standin' up like the
+steeple of a church as a token of honest labour."
+
+"Wonderful!"  I said.
+
+"That it are.  I watched that old gum grow since it were no higher than
+my knee.  I watered it an' tended it, an' measured it by the buttons on
+my shirt till it topped my head, and now, blow me, you could send a hull
+regiment with the band in the shadder of it."
+
+"I suppose you have seen regiments on the march?"
+
+"What, me?  Well, now, I was tellin' you of that time I give the slip to
+the Kaffirs beyond Chumie and took hiding in the mealie field.  Well,
+that time I came on a regiment in Pluto's Vale, when a Kaffir poked his
+assegai in the big drum, and the Colonel he give me a big knife for what
+I did."
+
+I said nothing about the shed or the resting weather, and Uncle Abe,
+sprawling in the shade, went on with his story.
+
+"Yes, sonny, there I were in the mealies, and there were the Kaffirs
+about the house banging at the windows because there was nobody at home
+for 'em to kill.  They were mostly young bucks, and they all jawed
+together, 'cept two or three who started singin' about what big potatoes
+they was.  Well, after knocking around an' smashin' things, they set off
+in a cluster anyhow, on the back trail.  And as I watched 'em go, blow
+me ef one of them in the rear didn't drop his assegai on puppose.  On
+they went out o' sight behind the bush, but Abe Pike he jest kep' where
+he were.  I tell you, Kaffirs is mighty stuck on their assegais, and
+bymby, sure enough, back came that chap lopin' along.  When he reached
+the house he shouted out to his friends that it was all right and he'd
+foller.  Well, they gave him the answer back, saying they would go on.
+He were a young chief this, with an ivory ring round his wrist, and a
+feather sticking out behind his ear, and as springy on his feet as a
+young ram.  I spotted him well, for I were wondering what his game were,
+and marked the look in his eyes, and the smooth sweep of his jaws.  He
+picked up his wepin and then he giv' a sharp look all roun', and nex' he
+went steppin' roun' the house with his head bent.  I saw it then, sonny.
+He were lookin' for spoor, and, by gum, he found it sooner you could
+snap your fingers.  I yeard him give a grunt, and nex' thing I see him
+sailin' along over the veld with his head down on a trail quite away
+from that taken by his friends."
+
+"He was spooring the people who had escaped from the house?"
+
+"Don't jump over a gate when you can open it, bossie.  I crep' out of
+the mealies and cast round the house; but for all I'd seen where that
+young Kaffir went it were many minutes afore I saw the spoor--then it
+were as slight as a brush of a hare's tail.  But there it were--the
+spoor of a man in _veldschoens_.  You know, there's no heel to a
+_veldschoen_, and it leaves little sign; but this yer chap had a habit
+of stickin' his toes into the ground, and here and there he had kicked
+up a tuft o' grass.  Well, I laid down to that spoor, marking the
+direction the Kaffir had taken, and went at a trot, thinking all the
+time it were mighty queer for one Kaffir to leave his friends.  When I
+reached the wood it was easier going, for in the bush path the naked
+spoor of the chief was plain enough in the dust.  The spoor led deeper
+into the wood, crossed a stream where the white man had drunk, for there
+was the print of his corduroys where he had knelt, and then climbed a
+hill, when I went slow.  The darkness was coming on, and I reckoned that
+the chief couldn't be but a mile ahead.  Neither he nor me could spoor
+in the dark, so I guessed he would pull up, an' I didn't want to run in
+on his assegai.  Turnin' away from the trail I pegged out under a rock
+until the spreuws whistled before sun-up, when I crept once more on the
+trail.  'Twere very faint now, but bymby I come on fresh spoor--so fresh
+I jest squatted behind a tree.  Then, after a time, I marked where this
+new sign entered the path, and follering it back came on the spot where
+the chief had slept.  The beggar had turned back on his trail a matter
+o' fifty paces, and if so be I'd follered him in the evening he'd a' had
+me sure."
+
+"He was up to his work!"
+
+"Him--I guess so, lad.  He were a caution for cunnin' and bush learnin',
+were the chief."
+
+"What chief was he?"
+
+"This ain't the place to bring in his name, for I didn't know him then.
+I tell you it was smart work tracking him through the woods, over the
+hills, inter the kloofs, but Abe Pike did it sure enough, and he tracked
+the white man, though he were half starved and lamed in the arm, by
+gosh.  Many a time that day, when my back ached from the bending of it,
+and my stummick was jammed together for want of something to eat, many a
+time I thought of the three of us strung out in the dark woods like
+tigers on the scent.  Hungry, by gum!  I jest chewed leaves as I went
+along; and sore--thunder--I kin feel now the throbbing of the wound in
+my arm.  But I kep' on.  I tell you, young Abe Pike was tough as
+_foreslag_, and he wern't going to cave in while that red Kaffir boy was
+keepin' up.  The chap in the lead, the man in _veldschoens_ who was
+escaping, must a been made o' iron too, I reckon, for he only stopped
+once the second day, when he ate some bread.  There was some crumbs on
+the yearth among the grass, with the ants over 'em where he'd sat and
+ate, and the dry skin from a piece o' _biltong_.  I took a chew o'
+elephant leaves, and bymby in the afternoon I seed little balls of pith,
+which showed the Kaffir had cut off a _insengi_ root to chew.  The white
+man kep' on for twenty miles, keeping to the woods all the time where he
+could, and the Kaffir kep' on arter him, and Abe Pike he kep' on arter
+the Kaffir.  If it hadn't a been for that _insengi_ root I'd a lost the
+spoor clean, for there were a big stretch of rock veld where they passed
+over, and all I could follow was white balls of chewed root.  I dunno
+how the Kaffir picked up the trail on that stretch.  He must ha' smelt
+it.  There were a bit o' hill to climb, and when I reached the top my
+head swam, an' I pitched down like a log.  When I opened my eyes it were
+dark, and my bad arm was doubled up."
+
+"You gave up?"
+
+"Sonny; you didn't know young Abe--no, you didn't.  But I did.  And I
+tell you, for all his emptiness, he jes' kep' on.  Yes, sir--he did that
+I said the darkness were down, but when I looked aroun' I seed the
+glimmer o' a spark down below, an' I kep' my eyes on it whiles I crawled
+down the steep of the hill to the kloof below.  Things happen sometimes,
+sonny, in a way that makes you very quiet an' thoughtful.  A bird flew
+up--a grey-wing partridge, I guess, from the whirr--and, searchin'
+around, I found its eggs.  They put life into me, and I steadied up--but
+what's all this I'm telling you about?  There's work to be done, and if
+you don't stir 'twill be sun-down and too dark.  As for me, I'm going to
+boil the kettle."
+
+"But you've not finished telling about the spooring."
+
+"Ah, well, it can wait, sonny; but it's time the kettle were put on and
+the mealies roasted."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
+
+THE BOOM OF THE DRUM.
+
+"Oh, ghoisters!" said Abe, "there's the blamed bung come outer the
+_vaitje_ and not a drop of Dop left, and all the _buchu_ collected for
+the soaking."
+
+"Do you soak the _buchu_ in brandy?"
+
+"The brandy brings out the goodness from the yerb, and I tell you a dose
+of it gets home every time.  But what's the good--the brandy's gone,
+there's not a tickey in the stocking, and not a man in the country would
+offer ole Abe Pike so much as half-a-pint--not a one.  The old people's
+gone and the new ones, blow me--the new ones drink cold tea."
+
+"What about the Kaffir chief you were following Abe?"
+
+"I ain't follering no Kaffir chief, not me--and look here sonny, you get
+along home, see, 'fore it gets dark."
+
+"I think I could spare a gallon of brown Cango, Abe, if you come over in
+the morning."
+
+"Cango, eh!  Stay right here, sonny--I've marked down a fine porkipine--
+and we'll hunt him to-night.  In the morning I'll go over with you,
+arter showing you something as'll surprise you, I bet."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"A horn-bill sitting on her nest in a hollow tree, and the entrance
+built up with mud, so she can't get out, and the cats can't git in, by
+gum, an' the ole chap a feeding her.  Lor' love yer, there's no matchin'
+animiles an' birds for cunnin'."
+
+"Yet I remember you saying that young chief was very cunning."
+
+"So he were; lad, he were born smart; an' them gleamin' eyes of his'n
+could read the writin' on the ground, the signs of weather, and the ways
+of fightin' men better'n you could read a big print book.  That's so.  I
+tole you how I follered him, and how he follered a chap in _veldschoens_
+all the way from the Chumie.  Well, in the dark of the second evenin' I
+seed a red light, and were blunderin' on towards it, being pretty well
+dazed from the hunger and weakness and pain o' my bad arm, when
+somethin' in the steady glow of it brought me up with a jerk.  Says I,
+that fire's been long lit, there's nothin' but coals blazing, and
+whoever lit it must feel safe.  Says I, who can feel safe in this yer
+place?  Why, a Kaffir.  So I slowed down to a crawl, and blow me, when I
+got within hearin' distance, I seed a man by the fire.  Sonny, he were
+the man in _veldschoens_."
+
+"The white man the chief was after."
+
+"'Twas a blanged half-caste, lad, that's what he were.  I saw that in
+the fust look by the red _dook_ he wore roun' his greasy head, and by
+the spread of his flat nose, and the sight of him kept me still, I tell
+you.  Half-castes is mean.  And to think I'd been goin' hungry to save a
+thing like that, and him a sitting there with his mouth all smeared with
+black coal from the bried meat he were eatin'.  The smell of it came to
+me where I lay in the shadder, an' I tell you it made me sick with
+longing for a bite, but I jes' kept there sniffin' till the faintness
+left me.  Well, all ov a sudden I seed his jaws stop, and his eyes had
+that sort o' fixed look which they has when a man's listenin'.  Then,
+without movin' his body, he reached out for his gun.  Yes, sonny, he
+reached out for his gun with his eyes starin' straight for me, and I
+kivered him.  While I was gettin' ready to shoot, outer the darkness
+behin' him there come a voice callin' in greetin', `Gumela vietu!'  I
+giv' a start, but that ere half-caste he never stirred.  The hand that
+was reachin' out for his gun stopped, his jaws began to move, but his
+voice were a bit shaky when he said `Gumela inkose!' and there was a
+sort o' hunchin' of his shoulders as tho' he felt the assegai going in.
+For a spell there was silence, then from the wall o' blackness there
+stepped to the fire the young chief hisself.  I see the gleam o' his
+ivory bracelet.  With his toe he moved the gun away.  Then he reached
+down, took up a length of roasting flesh, caught hold of a mouthful and
+saw off the chunk with the blade of his assegai 'twixt his hand and his
+lips.  He jes' ate and ate, an' the smell o' the meat made my stummick
+heave an' grumble most horrible."
+
+"They were friends, then, after all?"
+
+"You wait, sonny--jes' keep still an' wait.  Arter a time they began to
+talk.  Then it came out that the half-caste was on some mission from the
+head chief, and the young chap was mighty curious to know all about it;
+but the half-caste he were too slim.  They jes' paced roun' each other
+like a couple o' strange dogs.  At the end the chief he up and say, `I
+know where you're going.'  `Soh?' said the half-caste.  `Yes,' said the
+chief, `you're going to the white man's camp to give the white chief
+news of our coming.'  Well, the half-caste he spat in the fire.  `You
+are a boy,' he said; `your place is at home with the women.'  `My place
+is with you,' said the young chief, speaking soft, so that the other
+laughed in his throat, and called the chief _quedin_--`boy'--again,
+which you know is the easiest word to rile a Kaffir.  `I know, in your
+heart,' said the boy, `you will sell us for the white man's money.'  The
+half-caste spat again.  `Oh, yes,' he said, `the white men are in terror
+of you--a warrior like you would be worth a whole goat to them.'  `I am
+Sandili,' said the lad, `son of the head chief, and one day the Amakosa
+will do my bidding.'  The half-caste giv' a start; then he grew soft all
+of a sudden.  `I was but trying you,' he said.  `Oh, chief, forget my
+words, and take the path with me in the morning.  We will find out where
+the red-coats are, how many of them, and what road they take, so that we
+can report to your father, and plans can be made to trap them.'  I could
+hear the hiss of a snake in the man's speech, sonny; and it struck me
+then he had, in his heart, determined to take the young chief Sandili to
+the English colonel."
+
+"It was really Sandili?"
+
+"It were, an' no mistake.  I could a' shot him then, an' put a stop to
+two wars; but a good many things could be done, sonny, if only we could
+see ahead.  Well, for all they'd made friends, those two didn't trust
+one another--not a bit, not they--they jes' sat there glancing acrost
+the coals, nodding, an' wakin' up with a start, and when one on 'em
+moved t'other would have his eyes wide open.  Long before sun-up they
+moved off, an' I crep' outer my hidin' place to the fire, where I found
+jes' a coal-blackened strip o' meat that jes' made me hungrier than
+afore.  Lor' love you, a human is a helpless crittur.  There was
+animiles about an' birds, but as I darn't use my gun I couldn't get one.
+I cotched a salamander and ate him, an' a land crab by the stream, an'
+ate him--an' I ate some berries, an' a clutch o' young birds from the
+nest, and I had a bathe--and took up the spoor of the two of 'em.  'Twas
+easier spoorin' now, for they was going slow, and at mid-day I had 'em
+in sight, and so kep' 'em till the last.  In the afternoon we were
+climbing a ridge among the bushes, when boomin' along there came the
+sound of music that brought the three of us to a dead stop.  Never had
+young Abe yeard any sound like that afore or since 'cept once--it went
+through my worn-out body until I trembled like a leaf--yes, sonny--and
+the wet ran down my cheeks.  'Twas the soun' of a big drum."
+
+"There's not much music in that, Abe."
+
+"Isn't there, sonny?  Not when you've been three days in the woods,
+skeered of every shadder; not when you've yeard the war-cry of the red
+Kaffir; not when the cries of the little ones waitin' for the assegai
+are ringin' in yer head.  Only the soun' of a drum.  One, big boomin'
+note, rolling clear an' far with a message of help.  The tiredness an'
+the sickness fell from me, sonny, an' I could a' run up that hill.  The
+other two they crept up presently, and bymby I follered and hid behind
+'em.  They was crouchin' by a rock, lookin' down, and I forgot 'em in
+lookin' at the picture.  Far below in the valley was the white tents,
+an' the cattle, an' a line of red where the soldiers were drawn up,
+bayonets flashing.  Then a troop of men on horseback rode down the line,
+and again the drums beat and the bugles rang out.  It was a picture,
+sonny, that I could a' looked at all day, but I were jes' jerked out o'
+my spell o' dreamin' by the chief talkin'."
+
+"`Yoh,' he said, `they are few, but what noise is that?'
+
+"`Tis their witch-music,' said the half-caste; `'tis kep' in a big box,
+and when the man hits the top of it with a stick the witch cries out
+what they should do.'  `Yoh!' said the chief, `I will kill the box!
+They are great warriors, these, but they are foolish to wear a red so
+bright, that no man of them can hide.'  `They do not hide,' said the
+half-caste, and he shifted his gun as he looked at the chief from the
+corner of his eyes.  `Let us go.'  `Nay,' said the chief, `it is a good
+sight this--stay a little while.  Why do they move about so?'  `It's
+their war-dance, and he on the white horse is the chief.  At his words
+they turn and stop, break up, and come together.'  The young chief
+watched like a dog straining at the leash--and, by gum, he yeard the
+colonel's commands, though never a sound reached me.  A smart Kaffir can
+smell, and see, and hear like a animile.  `Yoh!' he said; `listen to his
+words!'--and in his excitement he raised his head, and the half-caste he
+stood back and lifted his gun.  But he measured his distance to the
+camp, and he said, `Let us get nearer'--for why, the cuss wanted to be
+near help when he went for the chief.  The chief looked round, and,
+ghoisters! he seed my face stickin' outer a bush.  He jumped to his feet
+and drew back his arm to fly the assegai, but the half-caste, after one
+glance at me, dropped his gun, seized the haft of the assegai with one
+hand and hooked his other arm round the chief's neck.  `It was a good
+word you spoke, _quedin_,' he said, hissing as he struggled with the
+boy.  `I will sell you to the white man.'  Seein' how it was, I stepped
+out, and as I went up I seed the chief's eyes rollin', while his
+nostrils were blowed out like a horse.  `I am a boy,' he said; `I give
+in.'  The half-caste he laughed, turnin' to me whiles he called out in
+Dutch that it was he who took the _quedin_ prisoner, but he'd give me
+somethin' if I helped him--the skunk, the blanged, mangy, yeller dog.
+Well, sonny, that Kaffir were shamming.  Soon's he give in, the
+half-caste he loosed his hold, when, with a grunt, the Kaffir yanked his
+assegai away, and with a wriggle o' his naked body he got a length and
+struck the half-caste under the armpit.  `Dog,' he said, and druv' his
+assegai in over the blade.  The half-caste he jes' went green.  `_Ek 'es
+dood_,' he said, lookin' at me; then he sat down all of a heap.  The
+young chief he stood there eyein' me like a tiger, with his lips curled
+back and his chest heavin'.  It was the first man he'd killed, I guess.
+Well, I lifted the gun, but the left hand gave out and the barrel
+wobbled--then, I dunno why, but I begin to laugh in a foolish way, an' I
+kep' on laughin' whiles the Kaffir came crouchin' up with his assegai
+held back.  Nex' thing I seed the half-caste roll over, and then sit up
+and point his gun at the boy's back.  `Pass op,' I said 'mid the
+laughin', while the sweat was drippin' off my nose; and the chief he
+jumped aside as tho' there was a snake in his way, and the bullet
+whizzed by him.  The half-caste gave a groan and rolled over dead, out
+of hate and disappointment, 'cause he'd missed.  That's so.  The chief
+he looked at me, an' he looked at the soldiers who were hurrying up from
+down below, then he jes' turned and walked away; yes, he jes' walked
+away with his head up, and I could a' shot him--for the laughin' fit had
+passed away.  But before he could ha' killed me easy as sticking a pig,
+so I watched him go; an' when he reached the bush he said, lookin' over
+his shoulder, `Grow fat, man who laughs, an' you will be food for my
+assegai.'  The cheek of these young bucks; but I reckon, sonny, if he'd
+a' known I'd killed two of his men in the Chumie he wouldn't a' waited,
+for all I was like a shadder."
+
+"Is that all?"  I said, when the old man paused.
+
+"Well, it were enuff, wern't it?"
+
+"What did the Colonel say?"
+
+"Oh, the Colonel!  He said, `Who the devil are you, an' where the blazes
+you come from?'  That's what _he_ said, that time; but 'twern't long
+afore he changed the tune of his remarks.  `Who the devil are you, and
+where the blazes you come from?' he sed, sittin' in his tent with his
+officers by him; an' I jes' reached over to a black square bottle that
+was ahind him and put the neck to my mouth."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
+
+THE RED DIAMOND.
+
+Our big Christmas hunt was in full swing.  In a smooth, well-carpeted
+glade, surrounded by forest trees and bush, the three tent wagons of the
+party were outspanned, drawn up in a hollow square which formed a
+capacious outside room, roofed in by a wide stretch of canvas.  From the
+spreading branches of a yellow-wood hung the last day's `bag,'
+consisting of seven bushbucks, two duikers, three blaauwboks, one
+jackal, and a wild dog.  Beyond the wagons was the servants' fire, and
+the `boys' themselves were `brying' meat and talking, as only Kaffirs
+can talk when the day's work is over and food is plentiful.  In our
+`scherm' one lantern swung from the centre pole, its light just
+sufficient to mark out the position of the brown demijohn on the box
+that served as a table; while across the breadth of darkness, where the
+`scherm' opened to the wood, fireflies crossed and circled.  The quiet
+of the night was over the bush, intensified by the deep undertone from
+the sea, and the brooding spirit in time reduced us to silence, even
+stilling Long Jim's concertina, whose lugubrious notes had in the early
+hours of the evening wailed complainingly over "The Old Camp Ground,"
+"Poor Old Joe," and other old favourites.
+
+"I envy you fellows," said Mr Strong, a crack shot from the town; "we
+don't get such nights as this."
+
+"The boot's on the other foot," said Long Jim, making his instrument
+moan.  "We've got poverty and pumpkins.  You've got comfort and a
+pianny."  And he pumped out "Hard times come again no more" till a dog
+pointed its nose to the sky and howled in sympathy.
+
+"There's no chance of making a pile in the country," said Amos Topper,
+who raised ten acres of "forage" regularly every season, and "rode"
+firewood for a living in the balance of the year.  "'Tis all hard work
+and disappointment--ticks in the cattle and rust in the corn."
+
+"Soh!" said Abe Pike.
+
+"Well; so it is!"
+
+"Yet," said Abe, "there's chances."
+
+"Meanin' pine-apples and bananas, which Dick Purdy made a fortune out of
+through growing them on the slope of a valley."
+
+"No; meanin' diamonds."
+
+"There's no diamonds down here."
+
+"Is that so?  Well, I seed one right here, as big as a plum an' as red
+as the eye of a coal gleamin' outer the dark.  Yes, sir."
+
+"Of course.  It belonged to some digger from the field.  For the matter
+of that, I've seen a whole bucketful of them, but then they was white,
+and the sight of 'em never made me any the richer."
+
+"Your head was allus too big for your hat, Amos.  I expect that's why
+there's a hole in the crown of it for your hair to grow through--but it
+so happens this yer diamon' I'm speakin' of could ha' been gathered by
+anyone who had the pluck to grab it."
+
+"Fire ahead, old man," I said, seeing that Abe was preparing the way for
+a yarn.
+
+"You've hit it, sonny," said Abe solemnly; "it was fire-ahead, and no
+mistake.  Lemme see; you know ole Harkins, the mad trader?"
+
+"I remember him," said Mr Strong, "a fine hunter in his youth, who
+returned from his last trip into the interior broken by the Zambesi
+fever.  He had a suspicion that everyone was watching him, and I believe
+he died in the bush after leading the life of a hermit."
+
+"That's him," said Abe, pulling at his pipe until the glow lit up his
+lined face.  "Yes, he went into the bush--and for three years he hunted
+for that same red diamond.  Some people thought he was crazy--so he were
+crazy after a fortune, but lor' bless yer, he'd got all his wits about
+him, and the fortune was big enough to buy up the whole side of this
+district--houses, land and stock--which is a big enough haul to turn the
+minds of most of us.  One night, many years ago, I was still-huntin'
+buffel by the Kowie bush, when from the thick of the wood I yeard a
+noise that sent me up a tree in a jif--a shrill sort o' scream that I
+couldn't fix--an' whiles I was up the tree I seed ole Harkins slippin'
+along through the moon light.  He stood under the tree listenin', and
+then he began talkin' to hisself in jerks.  `That's him, I swear!' he
+said, `and by God I'll have him or die!'
+
+"I jes' kep' quiet, for I tell you I didn't like the look o' him, with
+his long hair, and his lean fingers, and burnin' eyes, but when he
+slipped along inter the wood like a shadder--for there the no boots on
+his feet--I skimmed down and let out after him with my heart in my
+mouth.  I guess I hadn't got much sense, and when I'd gone no more'n
+fifty paces inter the dark of the trees he grabbed me by the throat--
+afore I knew where he were.  Oh, lor'!  He jes' grabbed me by the throat
+and shook me.  `You're follerin' me!' he hissed.
+
+"Of course, I couldn't speak, but I kicked and spluttered, and he
+loosened his hold.  `You're follerin' me!' he said, stickin' his face
+close up.  `I ain't,' I said; `I'm after buffel.'  `You yeard it,' he
+hissed; `and you meant to rob me.'  Well, I laughed.  The idea of
+robbing a scarecrow like him was too much, and I couldn't help laughing,
+not though he looked as savage as a starved tiger.  All the property he
+carried were a big-bore elephant gun, and I noticed the trigger were
+cocked.  `Clear out,' he said; `and if I see you after me I'll kill
+you.'  By gum, he meant it, and I cleared out smart with him after me
+over the ridge, when once ag'in there came that strange cry from the
+woods, so near this time that I jumped inter a bush.  Well, there were a
+smashin' o' trees, and afore I knew what was up a bit of the country
+rose up and came rolling down through the moonlight.  Man alive--it were
+a thunderation bull elephant, and I slipped outer the bush and bolted
+for hum with Harkins's yell a-ringing in my ears.  Well, sir, whiles I
+was sittin' in the room gettin' back my wind, up along, in a flurry,
+came Sam Dale.  `It's true,' said he, with a gasp, as he flung open the
+door.  `What's true?'  `Yes,' he said, `I seed it.  I were crossing the
+drift in Euphorby Valley when I yeard a splash in the pool, and out of
+the dark end beneath the krantz I seed a glow of red.  First I thought
+it were a eye, but then I noted how it sparkled, and all in a breath it
+struck me it were ole Harkins's diamond.  Then there was a splash in the
+water, and I ran on here to ask you to help me kill the crittur.'  `Hol'
+on,' I said; `what the blazes are you talking about?  I never yeard of
+any diamond, and I'm not killing any crittur to-night,' I said.  Well,
+Sam Dale he up and tole me how Harkins had courted his sister years
+before, and how his sister had told him, unbeknown to Harkins, how she
+had seen the big red diamond he kep' in his pocket, which he had bought
+from a Kaffir chief.  And Sam, he told me a most surprisin' story, how
+Harkins being one night cornered by a animile in the wood had loaded his
+big rifle with that same diamond instead of a bullet--and how he had
+fired it into that animile--and how he went crazy in consequence.
+That's what Sam tole me that very night arter I had met Harkins hisself,
+and it wern't more'n a minute afore I seed that if there was any truth
+in that yarn the red diamon' was in that bull elephant.  Sam and me we
+talked and talked, until in the early morning we fixed up a company."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"We made a company--that's what--the Dale-Pike Diamon' Mining Company,
+but lor' bless yer, in the morning the whole thing seemed so blamed
+ridiklus that we guv up the idea.  All the same, Sam he went down to
+Euphorby Drift, and I smoused over to the old spot where I seed the
+elephant, and blow me--there was ole Harkins flattened out Yes, sir.  He
+were."
+
+"What ailed him?"
+
+"He were dead--that's all.  That bull elephant must have charged him
+down soon's I cleared off.  We reckoned, Sam and me, that as Harkins
+were dead that diamon' mine b'longed to us, and we started that company
+over again.  It was quite reg'lar.  Sam he studied up a prospectus, and
+fixed up a capital, he subscribin' two trek oxen, an' me a cow, a bull
+calf, and a pair o' gobblers.  The hull lot came to 16 pounds, and with
+that we laid in a stock o' powder, lead, blankets, boots, coffee, sugar,
+tabak, an' a demijohn o' Cango.  Then we shut up our homes, both on us
+being bachelors, and started after that ere blasted bull elephant."
+
+"I thought you were after a diamond?"
+
+"You ain't got any more thinking machine than a biled rabbit, Sam
+Topper.  That bull elephant were the diamon' mine, in course."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Ain't I tole you?  Why, when Harkins made that mistake and fired off
+that diamon' it went plump into the ole bull.  I seed that as soon's Sam
+Dale told me the yarn, and we started after that property of ourn.  That
+was forty-five year ago, and I guess from the size of his right tusk,
+the left been broken off, he were then about one hundred years old.  I
+tell you what, chaps, that diamon's still knocking aroun' in the Addo
+bush."
+
+"The company didn't come into possession, then?" said Mr Strong.
+
+"Well, do I look as if I had a fortune of one hundred and fifty thousand
+golding sovereigns, which we reckoned was the value of that stone?  Not
+much!  No, sir."
+
+"Well, did you ever see the diamond?"
+
+"I'll tell you.  Sam and me we struck the spoor at Euphorby, follered it
+fifteen miles in an' out of the Kowie bush, away over to the Kasouga,
+and ten miles to the Kareiga--in an' out of the thickest bush--sleepin'
+out o' nights.  Back ag'in to the Kowie bush, over into the Fish River,
+without settin' eyes once on the blanged thing.  One month we were on
+the spoor, and the food run out, so's we'd got to raise more capital,
+which we riz by selling Sam's plough and my harrow--the two of 'em
+bringing in twenty-five shillings.  Then we ran ag'inst the mine after
+Sam had taken a horn o' Cango--and his ribs were broken in.  Yes, the
+fust thing we knowed one night thet bull charged us out of a patch of
+bush in the open.  Well, I took Sam to a farmhouse, and picked up the
+spoor, and two nights after came on the bull standin' in a vley on the
+flats over yonder.  My!  He were jes' standing there shooting the water
+over his mountain-high body, with his big ears flapping, when he turned
+his head, and I seed that diamon' shinin' in his forehead like a
+blood-red star.  I tell you that mine lit out a yell and came arter me
+like a rock hurled from the hilltop.  The land was as flat as the palm
+of your hand, and the only thing was ter double.  Well, I did that, and
+slipped into the vley, and the ole bull, arter ramping around, stood
+there on the brink listenin', while his trunk went twistin' about to
+catch my wind.  He kep' me there till the cold got into my bones, and
+then, when the dawn was breaking, off he made for the Kareiga again.
+Arter that Sam and me we called in fresh capital, an' Jerry Wittal
+joined us with a piebald mare and twenty-five sheep.  Part o' the money
+was paid to mend Sam's ribs, and then we went arter the ole bull ag'in.
+This time he went west, through the Addo and on to the Knysna.  Six
+months we kep' on arter him, sometimes he came arter us; and at last he
+smashed up the company one morning by takin' us as we slep'.  Yes, sir.
+That crittur, he waited till the cold of the mornin', when we couldn't
+see for the sleep, and he pounded Jerry into the groun'.  He did that,
+and ef he hadn't a screamed in his joy he might a done for us; but Sam
+and me, we dodged roun' a tree an' blazed inter him.  Sam right there
+said the company must go inter liquidation, an' he worked his way back
+home as a handy-man from farm to farm.  Poor Sam!  His nerves went, and
+in less than a year he was dead, sure enuf.  Of course all this huntin'
+got about, and a chap from Port Elizabeth said he would help me refloat
+the company; but when I giv' him all the facts blow me if he didn't try
+to `jump' the claim."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Why, he went off on the hunt with a couple o' niggers, and afore I
+knowed about it he'd been out three days in the bush.  It makes me laugh
+now.  Wha' yer think?  I came across him without his gun, or his hat, or
+his kit, making tracks for home.  He found the bull sure enough, but the
+bull chased him up a yellow-wood tree and kep' him there one day and a
+night."
+
+"Did he see the diamond?"
+
+"Oh, yes; he seed too much of it; but he didn't want any more of that
+sort o' minin'--and 'tweren't long afore I chucked the job, too."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Well, you wouldn't believe me if I tole you.  At any rate it's bedtime;
+and if you young ones don't roost now you'll never hold your guns
+straight in the mornin'.  So long!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
+
+ABE'S DIAMOND MINE.
+
+We were still at the camp near the bush by the sea, and the week's hunt
+was ended.  The "boys" had gone off to a neighbouring kraal to dance and
+eat and drink throughout the night, and we were left in the great quiet
+of a South African evening.  As usual, Long Jim had squeezed from his
+concertina all the melancholy airs he knew, and Amos Topper had trotted
+out all his well-worn arguments against the _Ukolobola_--the Kaffir
+system of selling girls into wedlock in exchange for cattle; a system
+which he warmly contended was the root of all the stock-thieving.
+
+"A darned good system," said Abe; "one that's based on reason and
+justice; that's so."
+
+"Hear the old boomer!" said Amos scornfully; "anyone would think he'd
+got a parcel o' daughters to marry off fer cattle."
+
+"Go slow, Amos Topper, and maybe you won't stumble.  A good system, says
+I; and why? 'cos it's lasted all these centuries--since and before Jacob
+he collected a heap o' goats for his wife.  See yer, when a white man
+marries a girl he don't give nothin' for her, but he asks her father how
+much he's going to give the girl.  That's what a white man does, and
+lor' lov' yer, more often than not he swallows up all her money, and
+then beats her, the skunk.  Now a black man is different.  When he goes
+courtin' he don't ask the father how much the girl's goin' to bring to
+the hut--not he.  What he does is to ask the father how much he wants
+for the girl.  `Five cows,' says the father `for the girl is nice an'
+fat.'  Well, the young buck he's got to get them five cows, and if he
+takes one outer a white man's kraal that's due to his impatience--it
+don't prove the system is wrong.  Well, the five cows is paid over, an'
+the girl goes to the young buck.  As usual, the pair has children--and
+the cows has calves.  Maybe the husband beats his wife.  What then; why,
+sir, the wife takes her children and goes back to her father.  `I've
+come back,' she says, `and I'm going to live on them cows and calves.'
+The father he can't say nothin'; 'cos why, 'cos he took those same cows
+in trust for his daughter 'gainst she should come, back to him on
+account of her husband's bad treatment.  That's so.  The _Ukolobola_ is
+better'n a magistrate for keeping the peace 'twixt husband and wife.
+That's why I say 'tis a good system, an' a just system."
+
+"'Tis well known," said Amos, "that Abe Pike's got no cause to kick
+against Kaffir customs, because he keeps no cattle worth havin'--nor
+nothin' else, for that matter."
+
+"By the way, Uncle Abe," I said quickly, to prevent the coming storm;
+"you promised to tell us how it was you gave over searching for that
+diamond mine."
+
+"Meaning that bull elephant," said Amos Topper, still aggressively; "and
+I do say this, of all the yarns I heard there's none to beat that for
+downright contrariness to what is reasonable.  Who ever heard of a bull
+elephant rampaging round with a red diamond stuck in his forehead?"
+
+"Humph!" grunted Abe.  "If we was to believe nothin' you never yeard on
+we'd be a pack o' blamed jackasses, and no mistake.  Now, I tell you
+that same elephant is a-tramping around now over yonder in the Addo
+bush, with that same red diamond a-gleamin' in his forehead, if so be
+the hide ain't growed over it."
+
+"Why don't you get a permit from Government and shoot him, then!"
+
+"Not me: not Abe Pike.  Oh, no!  I tole you how he flattened out ole
+Harkins, an' stove in my partner's ribs, an' laid out another chap what
+j'ined the company with a yeller horse, an' skeered off that Port
+Elizabeth fellow what tried to `jump' my claim.  Well, that showed this
+yer walkin' diamond mine were dangerous, but, lor' bless yer, the
+_schreik_ he gave me was somethin' that sent the everlastin' shivers up
+an' down my backbone.  I'll tell you how 'twas.  When the company was
+busted up I was the only chap what held shares, an' as there was no
+market for 'em I calkerlated to do the prospectin' myself.  So I went on
+a reg'lar expedition into the bush with a new castin' o' bullets, a horn
+o' powder, a tin box o' caps--them being muzzle-loading days--an' a kit
+o' one sheepskin kaross, with a roll o' tobacco, five pounds o' coffee,
+an' sugar, an' as much Boer meal as I could buy, with a pot an'
+_cometje_.  I reckoned to shoot my own meat an' pick up berries, besides
+gettin' a square meal at a farmhouse now an' ag'in.  So I sot out into
+the Addo, an' gettin' to the middle of it, planted my kit in a holler
+tree.  That was a Sunday.  Then I scouted aroun'.  Monday I seed
+nothin'.  Tuesday I came on a family party o' two tigers an' their cubs.
+The ole woman, steppin' on her toes, marched me off the premises, an' I
+darsn't shoot for fear o' skeerin' the elephant.  I had to march
+back'ards, an' the thorns they jest had a picnic with my shirt, I tell
+you; an' I got sich a cramp in my stummick that I couldn't hunt any more
+that day.  Wednesday I came on elephant spoor--fresh spoor--and follered
+it for four hours without ever seein' a patch o' the animile.  Thursday
+I came on spoor ag'in within twenty yards o' where I camped.  Yes,
+sirree; that crittur had come up as near as that, and he'd stood there
+for a long time, maybe watchin' me.  Well, I lit out on the tracks and
+follered 'em in an' out an' roun' about all through the mornin' into the
+afternoon, the tracks keeping so fresh that I kep' on with the trigger
+at full cock.  In the evenin' the spoor led me right back to my holler
+tree, and blow me if that crittur hadn't been overhauling my goods.
+Yes, that's so.  The kettle it were hung twenty feet from the ground.
+The kaross it were peppered all over with holes, where he'd drove his
+tusk through.  The Boer meal were all eaten up, except for a sprinkle
+here and there; and the tobacco were chewed up and spat out.  I dried it
+and smoked it, and it had a flavour of boots most terrible.  Well, I
+tell you, this made me _quei_, but when I seed, arter looking more
+carefully, that this yer fool elephant were my diamon' mine itself I
+jes' picked up.  'Cos, what's the loss of a few shillin's worth of
+things when that diamon' 'ud bring in enough to buy up a whole street
+full o' grocers' shops."
+
+"How did you know it was the elephant you wanted?"
+
+"How did I know!  'Cos I seed, that's how, by the size of his hoofs and
+the plain writin' that he'd only one tusk, same as my bull.  That's how!
+Friday I up and follered ag'in afore sunrise, and I tell yer I hadn't
+gone mor'n half-an-hour before I diskivered that he were follerin' me.
+Yes.  I were standin' to listen, and I yeard the rumbling of his
+stummick.  I yeard it plain--and jes' crawled along so's not to crush so
+much as a dry leaf.  I yeard that rumble ag'in--but blow me if I could
+see him, an' I crawled an' crawled, poking the big gun afore till the
+sweat it run down my back.  There was the spoor and there was the
+rumble, but--there was no elephant.  I began to feel shivery, and looked
+over my shoulder like a man does in the dark, and--by gosh!--I seed that
+red diamon' gleamin' out of the leaves behind me.  An' jes' below it and
+on each side were two other gleamin' objects--the eyes of the bull
+hisself.  Well, he giv' a scream, I rolled over--an' the next I yeard he
+were thundering by, smashing down the trees and yelling out most
+horrible.  Abe Pike didn't stop there, I tell you.  He jest sneaked off,
+and when he yeard the bull stand--which was plain to hear from the
+stillness--Abe he stopped to.  I did that."
+
+"Why didn't you go back and shoot him?"
+
+"Sonny, you never had a railway engine runnin' arter you, did you?
+Well, you try, and then settle with yourself whether your nerves would
+be worth much for a spell.  No, sir; I didn't go back to shoot him, but
+I found the biggest yellow-wood and I climbed up.  That's what I did,
+and that bull he found out.  Yes, sir, he picked up my scent and he
+tree'd me.  But, by gum, d'ye think he'd show hisself?  No, gentlemen,
+he jes' kep' away in the thick o' the bush, goin' roun' and roun' an'
+stopping sometimes for a blow.  Once I saw the sparkle of the diamon',
+when he was doin' a spell o' listenin' and watchin', and I pulled
+straight at it.  I hit him hard, the ole cuss, an' he fetched a yell an'
+went smashin' off.  The sound o' him runnin' away did me good.  I loaded
+up and picked up the blood-trail, and was goin' so hot on that that I'm
+blowed if I didn't a'most run inter him.  I were slippin' along, and
+from the corner of my eye I saw the point of his tusk on my left.  The
+ole chap had turned on his spoor; but his tusk saved me, for I dodged
+roun' a big tree and brought the gun up.  D'ye think he'd charge?  He
+jes' slipped back by inches and stole away as silent as a hare, whiles I
+had my eyes gummed on the thick cover where he'd stood.  He jes' slipped
+away and made a circle to come on me from the rear.  He did that, and if
+I hadn't edged away to see better inter the cover he'd a nabbed me--for
+bymby I saw he'd gone, and on follering on the spoor I seed where he'd
+turned back.  I tell you that gave me the creeps, and I made off for a
+small krantz near by where there's a stream.  I crawled inter a cave
+there and went off ter sleep, because of the tiredness in my bones; and
+Saturday mornin' I woke up hungry an' stiff in the j'ints, and I laid
+off for the camp.  Blow me, if that blamed bull hadn't been there ag'in.
+The kettle were clean gone this time, and all the other things was
+smashed to nothing--so there wasn't a smell, let 'lone a mouthful.  I
+were that savage I jes' went hot-foot on the old boomer's spoor ag'in,
+an' this time he were travellin'.  He went straight on for fifteen
+miles, over the ridge, inter a deep kloof--where he laid in grub--and
+then set off, nose on, for another five mile towards Alicedale, where he
+had a bathe in a pool.  All this time I hadn't seen even the flap of his
+ears, and I were still on his spoor, when I just flung myself inter a
+hump o' grass and chawed on to a stick o' _biltong_.  Then I went to
+sleep, 'cos I couldn't keep my eyes skinned, but the morning cold woke
+me in the small hours, and the fust thing I seed were a blazing eye
+looking at me outer the dark.  It sparkled and flickered and blinked,
+with the red heart of it contractin' an' expandin'.  In the drowsiness I
+lay there, thinkin' 'twas the mornin' star, when I yeard the rumble of a
+elephant's inside, an' I knew that ole bull were a standing over me;
+maybe had been standin' there for hours waitin' for me to wake so's he
+could enjoy seein' me shake.
+
+"Afraid!  Well, I think so.  And the shakes went scooting up an' down my
+backbone, an' my heart nearly stopped and I could skasely breathe.  Then
+I felt about for my gun with one hand, then with the other, and then
+with each foot; but, by gosh! the wepin weren't there, an' the cole
+chills were chasing each other up an' down my bones, an' the ole bull
+laafed in his stummick, while that busted red diamond glowered at me.  I
+thought o' poor ole Harkins flattened out, an' I jest pulled the plug
+outer the powder-horn, then I got out the flint an' steel, an' lay there
+watching the outline of the ole cuss come clearer an' clearer out of the
+darkness an' saw the shine of his wicked little eyes.  He laafed in his
+stummick ag'in, and the coil of his trunk came out.  I got the flint
+ready over the powder, and the stir of my body made him suspicious.  His
+big ears went out like sails, and he made a step forrard.  Then I struck
+with the steel, an' turned over on my back.  He brought his trunk down
+`ker--whack,' on my sitting place, rolling me over an' over--and when I
+rubbed the dust outer my eyes I yeard him smashin' through the trees.
+The puff and flame of the powder must ha' skeered him bad, but I didn't
+wait beyond a second to search for my gun, and I seed the stock one side
+of a tree and the barrel bent up a yard away.  He had moved it away, and
+were waitin' for me to wake.  Then I lit out for the water an' hid away.
+That was Saturday.  On Sunday I took the back tracks, without a wepin
+or anythin', and blow me ef that bull didn't reg'lar hunt me.  He did
+that, an' in the afternoon he caught me up and druv me inter a big tree.
+I jes' managed to reach the first bough when, ker-blunk, he came up
+ag'inst it an' nearly shook me off.  By gum! the way that bull went on
+was a caution.  He let off steam through his nose, stamped his feet, dug
+his tusk in the ground, twisted his little tail, and butted that tree
+till its roots heaved up the ground.  In his walk he wore down a circle
+as big as a cattle kraal, smashin' all the trees down, and trampling the
+leaves and branches and trunks inter a mass.  And every now and then
+he'd wheel round and come smash ag'inst my tree till he started the
+wound in his forehead where my bullet struck, an' the blood poured down
+his face.  I never seed such wickedness an' temper, never, and I crawled
+up to the top branch, for the sight of him made me queer.  All through
+that Sunday afternoon he kep' up that smash-jamble, an' in the night he
+fetched up some water outer his stummick an' washed his face; then, with
+that diamon' shinin' red outer the dark, he stood there, still as a
+rock, keeping guard.  That night I went empty in my head, an' got back
+my senses in starts when I were slippin'.  In the mornin' I jest gave
+him my trousers.
+
+"It was a inspiration, that's what.  A flash came inter my brain from
+the blue sky, an' I gave him my trousers.  Lor', the scream he gave when
+he fell on 'em, trampled 'em, knelt on 'em, jabbed his tusk inter 'em,
+and then danced 'em outer sight through the mass o' leaves into the
+yearth beneath.  Then he kep' on going away and comin' back with a rush,
+till I got giddy, and fin'ly jest slithered to the ground.  That time he
+didn't come back, and I krept away outer the Addo bush, living on roots
+and leaves like a animile.  That's so.  I got on a Wednesday to a Kaffir
+clearing, most like a wild beast, all kivered with ticks and sores."
+
+"And what became of the diamond?"
+
+"Well, the Abe Pike Diamon' Mining Company went to smash.  That
+diamond's still in the Addo bush, and if any o' you would like to float
+the company I'm not sure but I wouldn't jine you again.  I guess that
+ole bull's a hundred an' fifty years old, an' maybe he's not so blamed
+active.  So long!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
+
+HOW ABE LOST HIS WATER BARREL.
+
+Abe Pike was laying a new floor to his shed.  He had at last, after many
+years, brought that wonderful structure to some semblance of a covered
+shelter, and now he was stamping down the red earth taken from
+ant-hills.  This earth makes a firm floor, as it binds well and grows
+harder from use.
+
+"Yes, sonny," said the old man, "when animiles or insecks take a work in
+hand they do it better'n men.  See this yer earth.  Well, every grain of
+it's been worked up by the jaws of a ant, and covered with a nateral
+mortar.  It's been all milled month in and month out, mostly after a
+fall o' rain, each tiny pellet mined out o' the smoking ground and
+carried by the little chaps way up the tunnels out inter the sunlight
+and glued to its place on the risin' mound.  An' in the buildin' of the
+dome them critturs don't forget the chopped straw, and when they've
+carried their temple high above the groun' they don't forget, too, to
+narrow the circle till they come to the finishin' peak.  Yes, sir, I
+tell you, there's more wonder in one of em ord'nary ant-hills than there
+is in the biggest cathedral ever built, an' yet here I be spreading the
+remains of such works over the floor of this yer shed."
+
+"But ants always keep to the same designs, Abe."
+
+"Not they.  In diffrent countries they have diffrent kinds o' hills; but
+when they find the sort that's best fitted for the climate they sticks
+to it, which is morn men do.  No, sonny; the animiles an' the insecks
+know what they start out to learn without goin' to school for sixteen
+years, same as some young ones do that I know of, and then can't tell a
+field of wheat from a barley crop.  As for me, I've had no schooling;
+but I know how to do what I want to do."
+
+"How long have you been over this shed, Abe?"
+
+"Lemme see.  I laid the fust pole at the time of the big drought, maybe
+thirty years ago."
+
+"And when it's finished?"
+
+"Finished!"  Abe left off stamping the red earth, and looked around with
+a strange expression.  "I ain't goin' to finish it, sonny; no, what's
+the use?  When I begun that shed Abe Pike were a young man, and I seed
+under the roof of it when the work were done sacks o' yellow wheat,
+piled up.  The lands were young, I had a team o' young oxen, there were
+young cows in the kraal, a good flock o' sheep, an' a crop of hopes in
+my head.  That were thirty years ago, sonny, an' the shed ain't finished
+yet, and the cows is dead, the lands are poor, and Abe Pike don't hope
+no more.  I ain't goin' to finish this yer shed, not me; it's all that
+holds me together.  There's a man buried in this yer shed."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Yes, lad, that's so.  Young Abe is here--in the four corners, and under
+the ground, an' in the roof, and the sides.  Yes, young Abe hisself, an'
+his sorrows, an' his hopes, an' his pride and laziness.  I've worked him
+in these thirty years in loneliness, with the sound of the sea groanin'
+in the air, an' the hills lookin' on, and the sky stretched abuv,
+workin' him in slowly with nery an eye to watch, and what's lef of him
+is this yer sun-dried karkus that's standing afore you.  That's all."
+
+Abe Pike straightened himself and looked round at the drab veld, the
+grey hills, and the dark of the kloof where the forest trees were
+massed.  Then he rested his hands on the handle of his stamper, and, so
+standing, gazed with a vacant expression before him, and watching him I
+seemed to see a long line of shadowy reflections of him, standing so
+with the same fixed look fastened on the empty veld.  The hollow booming
+of the great waves solemnly breaking in endless succession alone broke
+the heavy silence.
+
+"Did ever anything come out of the sea, Abe?"  I asked, idly, as I
+gazed, like him, in a sort of spell, scarcely knowing what I meant.
+
+"A many things," said he, without moving.  "Yes, sonny," he continued,
+after a long pause; "a many, many things.  When the evenin' wind comes
+off the sea, and I been a-sittin' outside the door, listenin' to the
+waves and the different voices of 'em all blendin', with now and ag'in a
+mighty bass note from the biggest of the seven brothers, as he rolled
+his shining crest--I've seed things come over the randt yonder, seed 'em
+come an' melt away, often an' often."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"All manner o' things, sonny; but I allow you won't see 'em, as you
+ain't had the trainin'.  Night after night, year in year out, you must
+sit alone listenin' in the stillness, and maybe you'll year the voices I
+year an' see what I see.  But you couldn't go through it--no, sonny!  I
+bin frightened many a time so that I've got up and fetched the gun to
+make a noise--yes, that's so; for there's some things you can't see,
+only feel, an' they hard to bear.  I seed a little boy once.  Maybe he
+was young Abe Pike afore I knew him.  A little chap with brown legs an'
+curly hair an' big eyes.  He came drifting over the randt outer the sea,
+when its waves was jes' murmuring sof and low, and I yeard him laugh as
+I watched him come, thinking he were a wild fowl.  He lighted over there
+where that railed-in moss is a-growin'--see how green it is in the dry
+of the yearth.  That's where his little naked feet touched the ground,
+and where he stood eyeing me with his big eyes and a sort o' dew on his
+forehead where the curls came down.  Then he laughed, and with his head
+on one side he came up to my knee an' looked up at me.  Yes, a little
+chap; an' he came outer the sea to ole Abe Pike, sitting lonely out
+there on the door-step.  Maybe if I'd a married I might a' had a son
+like that, for he seemed to b'long to me, as he eyed me with a smile.
+Only onct he came, only onct; but, sonny, I feel the touch of his hands
+now, an' by that touch I know I will meet him ag'in.  He may a bin young
+Abe afore I knew him come back to see what I'd made o' him, an' but for
+the smile on his face I'd think he were grieved to see what a blamed
+failure I'd made outer him.  Many a time I watched for him.  Yes, sonny;
+I've sat in the quiet of the afternoon, listenin' to the sea, and when I
+year the murmuring same as then I look for that little chap to come
+floatin' up over the randt, an' I keep the moss there wet when I have to
+go without water to drink in the drought.  You ain't laughing?"
+
+"No, Abe, no.  One of these wretched flies has got into my eye."
+
+"I made a boat for the little chap, 'gainst he came again, and a fishin'
+line, and a reed pipe.  We could 'a played many games together, him and
+me, but he only came onct."  Abe turned his face to the sea and stared
+wistfully.  He was not yarning now, and I wondered at him.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I could a showed him many a bird's nest if he'd a come,
+but maybe the white woman has kep' him away.  She's bin here off an' on
+for maybe six years.  She came outer the sea, too, footin' her way
+through the air--comin' like a cloud or one o' these big sea-birds that
+sails on the wind without a flap of his long, narrer wings.  White, my
+sonny!--I never seed anythin' so white, not even the sails o' a ship
+with the sun on, or the inside o' one o' them shells folk use for tooth
+powder.  She comes on me all o' a sudden, and all I see is the gleam o'
+her eyes--then she's gone, leavin' me here with my heart beatin'.  Maybe
+she looks after the little ones, for when she comes there's a queer
+noise in the waves over yonder 's if a heap o' girls were at play.  Oh,
+yes; many things come outer the sea besides fish an' otter an' sich
+like--many things, sonny; an' when I'm buildin' this yer shed I stop
+workin' to look for their comin'.  Of late I bin expectin' somethin'
+mor'n ord'nary, but it ain't come.  Yes, I bin waitin' for that little
+chap to take me by the hand.  Got any tabak?"
+
+I handed over the pouch, and saw that Abe had come out of the spell that
+had been on him.
+
+"That water bar'l o' mine's all broken up."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"I'll tell you how it happened.  The dry weather druv the field-rats to
+the bar'l for water, which they fetched out by dipping their tails in.
+Many a time I seed 'em at it, an' it weren't long before a _ringhals_
+spotted the performance; so what's he do but get inter the water, tail
+fust, through the bung, and watch for the rats to come an' drink.  My!
+He guv me a _schreik_ when I went for a drink an' saw his eyes gleamin'
+up outer the green bough I poked in the hole to cool the water an'
+prevent it shakin' out.  I lef him there, for I couldn't see how to
+fetch him out; but, whiles I were sittin' quiet in the evenin', waitin'
+for him to crawl out, up came along a percession of rats, with a ole
+grey-whiskered chap leading.  He took a look at me, movin' his nose, but
+I kep' still, and he reared hisself against the bar'l.  Next rat he run
+up, and the next over the two of 'em, till the third got over the swell
+of the bar'l and scooted to the bung-hole, backed round and popped in
+his tail, unsuspicious of that vicious crittur inside.  Nex' minit that
+rat were hollering out blue murder, for the snake grabbed him by the
+tail, and the other rats, they jes' lit out for hum.  Well, that snake
+he let go, but the rat he jes' curled up and fell down in a kickin' fit.
+Then the _ringhals_ crawled out--the ugly five feet length o' livin'
+death--and there and then gorged the rat.  Well, I let him be.  Snakes
+is bad, and rats is bad.  I let him be, and three days arter there were
+the blamed _ringhals_ in my bar'l again.  Blow me, if the same
+performance didn't happen over ag'in, and some days arter I seed that
+partickler tribe o' rats was gettin' smaller, and, believe me, sonny,
+that _ringhals_ had guv the news to another snake, for one evenin' I
+seed two o' their wicked-lookin' heads jes' inside the bung on the
+twigs.  I were watchin' for the tragedy--same as us'al--when--same as
+us'al--up come that ole grey chap on his own hook.  He came to the
+bar'l, and sat up on his behind legs like a hare, twiddling his
+moustaches and twisting his nose.  Then he backed off, and give a
+whopping spring, which landed him on a swell of the bar'l.  Well, he
+weren't takin' any water, he weren't; oh, no!  He jes' walked on his
+hind legs and took a peep inter the bung-hole.  I guess he seed
+something, for he turned a back sumersault, jes' as a vicious head came
+with a hiss at him.  Well, I tell you that ole chap he scooted off,
+squeaking like a forty-shillin' kettle.  I sat there laughin' at the
+skeer of that 'ere rat, but, by gum!  I soon dropped grinnin', for up
+along came the ole feller ag'in with a 'ole lot o' rats behind him.
+When they drew near he gave them the word to stop, whiles he examined
+the bar'l all round.  Then he spoke a few words, and the entire gang
+they went to the lower side of the bar'l and began to scratch away the
+yearth.  Yes, sir, that's what they done.  They scratched away the
+yearth.  Then the ole chap guv another word, an' they got roun' on the
+top side o' the bar'l.  Then they begun to shuv."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"I tell you; them rats they jist put their backs ag'in the bar'l and
+shuved for all they were worth; but 'twarn't no go.  They was too light.
+D'ye think they guv up the job--not they!  The ole chap led 'em roun'
+the bottom side, and they set to scraping more yearth away till the
+bar'l were almost undermined.  Then roun' they came ag'in, all
+squeaking, and one of the snakes popped his head out ter see what the
+noise were about.  Nex' minute he'd a' bin among 'em, but the 'ole
+parcel o' rats, maybe one hundred, guv another mighty shuv, and 'fore I
+could start up to prevent it that bar'l gave a list over, and then
+started.  Once it started it jes' flew down the slope, and went to
+pieces at the bottom with a smash.  The snake that were hangin' out were
+flattened dead, and the way them rats fell on his body were a caution.
+They were tearin' it to pieces when, bilin' with rage an' hissin' most
+furious, up came the other riptile.  The rats then scooted--that's so!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
+
+ABE PIKE SCOUTING.
+
+"Yes!" said Abe, one afternoon, after he had been helping threshin'
+wheat; "these newfangled machines bin smashing up all the good old
+customs that were the salt of country life.  This yer thresher of yours
+may get through the sheaves with a lot of dust an' rattle an' smoke, but
+give me the old floor, an' the oxen tramping out the ear, an' the
+neighbours coming to the supper.  Oh, yes! the old customs they brought
+the people together and made 'em soshiable and talk.  Lor' bless you,
+there ain't no talking nowadays--only grunting."
+
+"Is that so?" said I, as I brushed the dust from my eyes.
+
+"It are.  No one talks now, 'cos of these yer machines, which does
+everything.  Why, blow me! you can shoot a man with these new guns
+without ever seeing him."
+
+"I don't know that it is any more satisfaction for the man shot to die
+with the knowledge that he knows who shot him."
+
+"Well, I do know.  Take these yer talking machines I year on.  What's
+the good squeaking through a machine to a man, or maybe a girl, in the
+nex' street when you can't see the eyes of her, or the shape of her
+lips, or the expression, without which talking's no account.  Look here,
+sonny, you listen to what I tell you; these yer machines goin' to turn
+out people same as pins, all o' one pattern."
+
+"You're a great talker yourself, Abe?"
+
+"I'm not talking when I ain't got nothin' to say.  When I seed the
+Colonel of the 94th up by Pluto's Vale--`Who the blazes are you,' he
+said, `and where the devil you come from?'--I weren't saying much, but I
+took a pull at his black bottle.  He were one of the ole sort were the
+Colonel--grey an' peppery, an' stiff in the upper lip 's if his face bin
+fixed in a iron mask.  That's the sort of man he were.  `The Kaffirs is
+laying a trap for you,' I said to him.  `They darn't do it,' he said.
+`Lay a trap for the 94th!  I never yeard o' sich blamed impertinence,'
+he said, twisting his grey moustaches, an' glaring at me's if I'd
+insulted him.  `All right,' I said, `if yure too proud to take advice,
+go an' walk inter the trap like a blunderin' porkipine, an' you'll get
+stuck full o' assegais,' I said.  `You're too free with your tongue,' he
+said, gettin' red in the face; so I walked out, but bymby he came over
+to where I sot by the fire, an' he sot down 'longside o' me.  He talked
+an' I ate, but at last he up an' came to the point.  `Can you scout?' he
+said.  `Mejum,' says I.  `Oh,' he said, `I've got a mejum scout with me.
+What I want is a fust-class scout.'  Well, sonny, I jes' lit my pipe
+and took a puff.  He looked at me under his eyebrows.  `My scout tells
+me the Kaffirs have retreated,' he said.  `Soh!' says I, and went on
+smoking.  `Yes,' says he, gettin' angry aller a sudden, `and you've been
+giving me false news for the sake of getting a reward.'  Well, I jes'
+pulled up my sleeve and showed him where I'd been stabbed.  `I beg your
+pardon,' he said, and riz up to go back to his tent.  `Colonel,' says I,
+laying hold of his sash, `if you want me to scout I'll scout, and you
+can send a man along with me.'  `Leave to-morrer,' he said, `if you feel
+well enough;' and he marched off jes' as stiff an' unconcerned 's if
+he'd asked me to supper.  Soon after a young chap came up to my fire.
+`I've received orders to go on scout duty with you,' he said, eyeing me
+up an' down 's if I'd been some kur'ous kind o' inseck.  `When do we
+start?' says I.  `Oh, furst thing in the morning, if you're awake.'
+`Oh!' says I, `so's the Kaffirs can see us?'  `There ain't no Kaffirs,'
+says he; `'t any rate I ain't seen any.'  `I'm startin' at midnight,' I
+says, and with that turned over to sleep.  Well, at midnight I woke up
+and prepared to leave, thinking that young fellow wouldn't be about.
+But, blow me, there he were, sitting by the fire watching me.  `I'm
+ready,' he said, standin' up.  `What for?'  `Why, to scout, of course'
+`Orright,' says I; `take off that sword then, and that white hat, and
+that red coat.  You ain't anxious for the Kaffirs to see us furst, are
+you?'  He jes' opened his mouth to cheek me; then he ran off, and bymby
+he came back without them things, with a grey shirt and soft hat.  `Is
+that right?' he said, fetching a grin.  I jes' nodded, an' off we
+stepped inter the dark of the night.  Slipping by the sentries without
+givin' 'em good evenin', we marched along outer the side of the valley
+where the camp were pitched to where it narrowed into a poort, between
+big krantzes, with a kloof running down on the left side.  By sunrise we
+were on the divide between the poort and the nex' valley, jest about
+where the road led over the neck ahead of the troops.  We took cover and
+looked around.  `There's a Kaffir,' said I, `over yonder on that rock
+above the far krantz, watching the camp.'  The young chap fetched a
+laugh.  `That Kaffir,' said he, `is a vidette, and there's a whole
+string of 'em on the heights.  None of the enemy can get inter the poort
+without being seen.'  Well, this was up against me, an' I kep' quiet,
+looking away down inter the next valley where the road track twisted
+along the steep aside of the thick bush.  `That's the place for an
+ambush,' said the young chap, `down in that ravine.  If there are any
+Kaffirs about they will be there.  Let us go down.'  I jes' sot there
+watchin', an' bymby he began to fidget; then he up an' tole me that if I
+would not scout, he would.  `There's no Kaffirs in the far valley,' I
+said.  `I'm tired of you,' he said, in one o' them sort o' drawn tones
+that always reminds me o' a sword glinting out o' the scabbard; `I came
+out to scout, not to lie in cover; you may stay here by yourself; I'm
+going inter the valley below.'  I nearly got angry, but then I thought
+what's the use, so I jest explained matters.  `There's no Kaffirs down
+there,' says I, `but there is Kaffirs down here in the poort in that big
+kloof, an', what's more, them pickets o' yours will be assegaied before
+long.  I'll tell you why.  See them birds flying over that kloof?
+They've been startled, an', what's more, when they settled jest now they
+started off ag'in on a new flight, an', what's more, I seed a jackal an'
+a ram slip away over the rise.  That's good enough for me, an' when it's
+dark I'll slip back to the camp to tell the Colonel.'  `Are you sure?'
+he said, lookin' at me hard.  `Certain,' I said.  `Then,' said he, `we
+must go back to the Colonel at once.'
+
+"`You might start to go back,' I said, `but you'd never reach half way.
+Where's the picket?'  I said.  He took a look at the krantz where we'd
+seen the figgur of a man, and he seed the poor beggar was gone.  `Yes,'
+I said, `he's been assegaied!'
+
+"`My God!' he said, `can't we do anything to save the others?'
+
+"`It's no go,' said I, pulling out my pipe.  `Haven't you got any
+heart?' he said, fiercely, then he began to move off.  Well, that
+wouldn't do, so I pulled him back.  `Keep still,' says I; `the pickets
+must look after themselves; we've got to save the camp.'  Well, blow me,
+that made him worse, and he struggled to get free, saying the 94th
+didn't want to be saved from any Kaffirs, and all that--but I jes' hung
+onter him, an' while we were struggling in a holler behind a rock, up
+there came the sound of a bugle.  `Hark!' he said, lettin' go his hold;
+`the regiment has struck camp--that's the order to advance.'  `The
+blamed fool,' I said, `he'll march straight inter the trap.'  `Soh,'
+says he, then he made a bolt, saying as he ran, `I must warn them.'  I
+seed it were no use, an' I let him go.  By gosh! he jes' bounded down
+from rock to rock, without taking any cover, straight for the track that
+ran down the poort past the kloof to the regiment.  At the same time I
+seed a black figure running down the slope from where the picket had
+been, then another an' another, all of 'em crouchin'.  Of course, there
+were Kaffirs there, an' in course they seed him, an' they were runnin'
+down to stop him."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"What did I do?  Well I jes' sat an' looked, an' bymby I edged away over
+the randt away from the Kaffirs.  Then I sot off at a run round to get
+to the back of the krantze where the picket had been killed."
+
+"You didn't know he had been killed."
+
+"Well, according to all that was goin' on he oughter bin killed, and 't
+any rate I made round that way--but if you're going to talk to me like
+that I'll jes' shut up.  I'm gwine to supper now."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
+
+END OF THE SCOUTING.
+
+The next morning Abe was stamping mealies with a wooden pestle in a
+wooden mortar made from a tree trunk.  It was a piece of unusual labour
+on his part, and I complimented him on his early industry.
+
+"Industry be blowed--it's my teeth!  They're worn down, and not equal to
+chewing hard mealies.  You take pattern by me, sonny, and keep your
+teeth.  Lor' love yer, when I sees young boys and gals with half their
+teeth missin', I'm jest thinkin' that there's no ignorance like that of
+the civilised man.  Take me, or take an ord'nary raw Kaffir turned
+sixty, and look at his mouth.  Teeth as white and soun' as a
+animile's--'cos why?--'cos he ain't loadin' his inside with all sorts o'
+hots an' colds, an' sweets, and thingammies painted yeller an' red--an'
+'cos he polishes up his grinders with a bit o' wood and heaps o' water.
+Toothache--man wasn't born to have toothache--o' course not; nor to have
+his jawbone broken with steel pincers; but there, he ain't got sense to
+know when he's well off, and so he starts undermining his teeth from the
+day he's old enough to chew toffee."
+
+"I've known a Kaffir to have toothache."
+
+"And I've known a Kaffir to drink off a bottle of Worcester sauce.  But
+why?  'Cos some blamed white man invented the sauce to help out his
+finicking appetite, and if the Kaffir's fool enough to drink white man's
+mixtures, why there's an end to him.  When you start to civilise a
+Kaffir you give him toothache, and fill him as full o' wickedness an'
+sickness as a white man.  That's so!"
+
+"I didn't know you were such an admirer of Kaffirs."
+
+"Ghoisters!  You're like a ramrod; you can't see your way unless it's
+straight.  I'm not in love with the black because his teeth is good."
+
+Abe scooped up the broken maize, and proceeded to make his morning pap,
+after which he lit his pipe and was at peace.
+
+"What was the end of your scouting, Abe?"
+
+"I ain't scouting."
+
+"I mean at Pluto's Vale, when the young officer left you."
+
+"Is that so!  Lemme see.  I left him running like a blind hoss at a
+precipice, straight for the path by the kloof which I reckoned were full
+o' Kaffirs, and with three chaps runnin' down to cut him off.  That
+weren't me.  No!  I jest skipped round back o' the krantz opposite the
+kloof, an' crawled up to where I'd seen the vidette.  It were as I
+thought Stone dead he were, with his face to the sky and his arms
+stretched out, assegaied through the back and then turned over by them
+as stabbed him--and who who was sneaking down the hill to do the same
+for my partner.  I jest peeped over the rock--and far down the valley to
+the lef I see the regiment on the march, with the waggons in the centre
+and the Colonel riding ahead's if he were going on parade.  Sonny, them
+_rooibaaitjes_ can fight, but they're foolish.  They're too stiff in the
+lip to ask questions, and too proud to learn.  That's so!  There were
+the Colonel marching his men straight into the tightest kind o' fix
+without waiting for me to report the lay o' the land.  I looked down
+below, and there were that young chap booming along like a rock rolled
+from the top, leaping like a buck, an' jes' ahead o' him, in a turn in
+the road, crouchin' behin' bushes, was them three red Kaffirs waitin' to
+stab him.  A hundred paces he had to cover afore he came up to the fust
+of 'em, and I seed in a flash he were a gone coon, unless somethin'
+happened.  I tell you, sonny, I did some quick thinking while he were
+running them hundred paces.  S'pose I fired!  The report would jes' boom
+from side to side o' that valley and wake up every darned Kaffir in the
+kloof--s'posing Kaffirs was there.  The Kaffirs would be on the watch,
+the Colonel would hear, an' rush up his men, leaving his waggons
+unprotected.  Then there'd be a awful kind of a mess--s'posing the
+Kaffirs was in that kloof.  I thunked all that, and that young chap had
+gone half-way.  If I fired he couldn't a pulled up in time, so I jest
+fetched a yell in Kaffir.  From the bottom o' my throat I fetched up one
+of them deep Kaffir shouts.  `Look out!'  I yelled; `the soldiers--run!'
+The words fell on them Kaffirs like the lash of a whip.  The three of
+them jumped to their feet, run across the road, an' slipped inter the
+kloof.  The young chap seed 'em cross his track, and pulled up, then I'm
+darned if he didn't keep on again.  Well, I give him another chance.  I
+cried to him in English to keep to his left, but he jes' lifted his hand
+and kep' on.  Nex' moment he were running along the fringe of the kloof
+where the dark wood came down to the road, and then he gave a lurch, and
+rolled over an' over, his gun flying from his hand.  I could hear the
+tinkle of the metal against the stones.  The roll carried him to a rock,
+and over that he went with a splash inter a pool o' water, and as he
+went in a Kaffir darted from the kloof with his shield and assegai.  I
+knew then the kloof were full of Kaffirs, for none of the other three
+carried a shield.  All this yer happened in a breath almost, and then I
+ran along the krantz to where a corner of it stood out bold, an'
+standing there I shouted to the regiment, which lay outstretched down
+below, the head of it no further than 300 paces from the beginning of
+the kloof on that side.  The Colonel were riding ahead, then followed
+the pioneers, with their axes and spades sheathed in shiny black
+leather, and on their chests big black beards, behind them a company of
+the 94th with the bayonets glittering like running fire, back o' them
+the band, and ahind them the waggons in the long line, and far behind, a
+full mile from the Colonel, the balance of the regiment.  Sonny! in ten
+minutes the hull biling of 'em would 'a been in the narrer of the valley
+without room to turn, and they'd a bin assegaied to a man, I tell you!
+But Abe Pike were there; and I tell you he gave a shout that went
+ekering down that valley from side to side.  `Halt!'  I said.  The
+Colonel he pulled up.  I seed him shade his eyes with his hand as he
+took a look, and I seed some of the soldiers point up at me.  The
+Colonel he shook his reins, and rode on.  `Halt!'  I said; but he jes'
+kep' on, calm as possible.  `You blamed fool,' I shouted; `stop!
+There's Kaffirs ahead.'  He pulled up, and turned in his saddle.
+`Ninety-fourth,' he said--and his voice came up clear--`halt!'  All
+along that mile o' men and oxen the order ran down, and the moving
+column came to a stand.  `Number 1 company,' he said, `leading files
+from your left, two paces to the right.  Rear ranks, two paces to your
+front.'  The leading company jest stretched out like a concertina,
+across the road.  `Prepare to fire,' he said, and down came that shining
+stretch o' bayonets to the level.  Then I'm darned if the Colonel didn't
+walk his horse round the turn in the road till he came to the kloof, and
+seed the track wind up through the narrer poort up to the ridge beyond,
+with me on his right far above him.  He seed nothin', of course; 'cos
+why, he couldn't see through the dark o' the woods on his left; but
+there was hundreds of black eyes glaring at him through the leaves.  He
+looked up at me, as if to say, `Where are the Kaffirs?'  `They're in the
+bush,' I shouted; then I slid down the krantz by a monkey tow, and after
+making my way through the tumbled mass of boulders and thorn scrub at
+the base, started to run down, when I yeard the beat of the drum, and
+the next minute seed the pioneers come round the bend, then the first
+company, and nex' the band, with the Colonel 'twixt the pioneers and the
+company.  The old fire-eater were determined to get inter the trap after
+all, and when I reached him he were half-way by the kloof.  `For God's
+sake,' I said, putting my hand on the bridle, `stop the waggons, and get
+your men outer this.  Turn back!'  I said.  He were jest going to rap me
+over the head for mutinous conduct, or some sich nonsense, when the
+Kaffir yell rang out.  They couldn't wait any longer.  Whew!  My gum,
+sonny! talk o' yellin' an' cussin' an' gruntin'.  Them red Kaffirs were
+into us.  They jumped this way, and that, their eyes rollin' in their
+heads, their assegais whizzing and kerries flying, with a noise like a
+flight o' partridges.  Then the rifles snapped out, and the big drum
+boomed onct.  Only onct.  Then I seed the drummer throw up his sticks
+an' roll over, drum up, man up, turn an' turn.  I didn't know which way
+to turn at first; then I seed a Kaffir raising his kerrie to smash the
+Colonel, who were lying on the ground, and I shot him.  I helped the
+Colonel up, and he roared out `Bayonets.'  The soldiers were too mixed
+up to use their bayonets.  I seed five of them--one after another--
+assegaied.  The Kaffirs, they jes' grabbed the poor Johnny by the belt,
+pulled him outer the thick of the jam, and then assegaied him.  I seed
+how things would go if the soldiers couldn't get ground to fight, so I
+jumped for the drum, and, cutting it free from the poor drummer chap, I
+banged on it and marched across the stream to the far slope.  Some of
+the fellers seed me and follered.  `Steady,' says I, `take your man--
+fire.'  Well, they did jes' so, and I banged the drum.  The ole Colonel
+he got the pioneers with him--there was eight of them--and, my gum!--
+they jest swished their way through the Kaffirs with their axes.  Then
+up come some more men, follering the drum, and we peppered the Kaffirs
+till they were obliged to get back inter the wood.  Then the Colonel he
+looked for the wounded.  There were nary one, but seventeen men lay
+dead.  `There's one here,' says I, and led the place to where the young
+officer had tumbled in the water.  There he were among the rushes,
+bleeding to death from an assegai wound, and one of them pioneers, his
+arms all bloody, lifted the young chap up and carried him to the
+waggons.  I guessed it were time to go before them Kaffirs got up
+steam--so I banged the ole drum and marched back.  `Where you going?'
+says the Colonel.  `Back to the camp,' I says.  `That ain't the way,' he
+says; `we camp over the ridge to-night,' pointing the other way.  `The
+Kaffirs will never let the waggons through,' I said.  `The Kaffirs is
+beaten,' he says; and just then a young Kaffir leapt outer the bush and
+rammed his assegai into the big drum.  `I have done it,' he cried and I
+seed it were Sandili hisself.  I tole you how Sandili he said he would
+bust the drum, and by gosh! he bust it.  He was back inter the wood in a
+wink, and then he shouted how he had killed the white man's war-god, and
+from all parts of the kloof the Kaffirs they began shouting.  You could
+hear 'em comin'.  The Colonel he looked round and said `Retire!'  So he
+had to turn back after all.  He shelled the kloof all that afternoon;
+and the Kaffirs they just moved on."
+
+"And what did the Colonel say to you?"
+
+"He said he'd half a mind to tie me up for givin' orders to the
+regiment, and he went on most horrible; then when he cooled down he give
+me a huntin' knife, with five blades and a corkscrew, and said he would
+mention me in despatches.  I dunno whether he did; 't any rate I never
+were called to account again, so I guess he were only skeering me.
+Well, so long!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.
+
+ABE AND THE TIGER TRAP.
+
+I had got a new tiger trap, and was displaying its beauties to some
+members of our Cat Club--not that this was the official name, which in
+full dress proclaimed itself as the Round Hill Society for the
+Destruction of Vermin.  The mouth of the trap had a span of fifteen
+inches, and the steel spring almost required the weight of a
+twelve-stone man to flatten it down to the catch.  There was a stout
+chain to the shank end, which could be secured to a log, and the iron
+lips had no teeth.
+
+"There's a power of grip in the toothless gums of that 'ere grinning
+mouth," said old Abe Pike, who was President of the Club, by virtue of
+which office it was his right to point out the spots for the setting of
+traps.  "I don't hole with teeth nohow."
+
+"Quite so," remarked Amos Topper, sourly; "your tongue's long enough to
+get a clinch round anything.  What I say is, give me a trap with teeth a
+inch long that will drive through a tiger's shin-bone."
+
+"Yes; and maybe cut the foot of him right off, and leave ole
+dot-and-carry-three to go limpin' away growlin' vengeance.  You ain't
+got no exper'ence, Amos; and talking about tongues, if you shut your
+teeth down tight you might pass for a wise man."
+
+Amos opened his mouth wide for a retort, but nothing came out but a
+cloud of smoke and a grunt.
+
+"I shot a trapped tiger once," said Long Jim, "that was caught only by
+his toe.  Yes, sir, by his toe! and the danged crittur jes' lay there
+and took the bullet 'thout even standing up.  He jes' hissed like a room
+full o' kettles."
+
+"Ever been caught in a trap?" asked Abe quietly.
+
+"I ain't had any occasion to," said Jim severely.
+
+"Well, I have!"
+
+"Gwine after anybody's pumpkins?" asked Amos, thinking this was a good
+opportunity to work in his belated retort.
+
+"Some folk's talk," said Abe slowly, "is like burrs--never wanted and
+allus spoilin' good material, with this difference on the side of the
+burr-weed--that you can root up the weed when you find it."
+
+"It would take a better man than you to dig me up," said Amos, shaking
+himself.
+
+"We ain't discussin' weeds," said Abe, looking his lanky opponent up and
+down; "we're discussin' the points o' traps--especially teeth.  I bin
+caught, an' that's why I'm sot against teeth."
+
+"When did it happen, Abe?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you.  You know ole Hill's garden, which held more
+different kinds o' fruit-trees than I have seed in the whole country.
+There were a thick quince hedge down one side, and the wild pigs had
+made a path through it big enough to let a stoopin' man through.  Well,
+I were going short cut to the house one night, and I remembered this yer
+pig-track."
+
+"You always had a weakness for fruit, Abe!" remarked Amos.
+
+"I remembered this yer track, and, follering the hedge down, I felt
+where the path had been worn, and, parting the quince _luikeys_ with my
+hand, made a stoop forrard.  My gum!--there were a click, and a yell
+which I ripped out, and nex' thing I knowed somethin' got me sore fast
+by the right leg in the thin of the ankle.  It were a tiger trap--that's
+what, and sot with teeth.  Lor' love yer!  I can feel the pain of it in
+my leg now when I think of it, though it were over twenty-seven year
+ago.  One iron fang scramped my shin-bone, and the back one druv clean
+through the flesh, while the sides of the mouth pressed in so that the
+blood were stopped, and the foot seemed to belong to someone else.  I
+tell you all the blood in my body jes' run down to the tight place to
+find out what the trouble was, and came rushing back with the news up to
+my head with a touch of fire all along.  Then that held-fast leg began
+to throb and throb, and a hundred thousand little hammers began
+a-hammering all up my backbone, while cold spasms went quivering through
+me and outer the top of my head.  I jes' let go yell on yell, until a
+faintness came over me, and the sound leg which had been all on a
+tremble gave way, and I sot down.  The wrench were terrible, and I jes'
+grit my teeth, and held on till the weakness went off, when I shifted
+the trap a bit."
+
+"Why didn't you ease the spring?"
+
+"Why don't a bird fly when its wing's broken?  Ease the spring!  Jes'
+you put your foot in this yer trap, and see if you can get the spring
+down with thirty pound o' iron at the end of your foot and your muscles
+all turned to water--to liquid fire--with the pain of the hold.  All I
+could do was to rub my knee and yell and bite at the quince leaves, and
+dig my fingers inter the flesh.  After a time I found my voice ain't got
+no carrying power; it came out in a hoarse whisper, and I seed if the
+people at the house hadn't yeard my first call they wouldn't catch any
+cry for help I could give now; so I jes' groaned for comfort, same's if
+I were a trapped tiger growling through the night.  My head were tossing
+about from side to side like the pendulum of a clock, and one of these
+side swings I noticed the glare of something bright close by.  I jes'
+noticed it as if 'twere something of no account; for, if all the stars
+in heaven had taken to swinging at the ends of golden threads it
+wouldn't have mattered to me as much as the flame of a tallow candle
+sputtering in a horn lantern.  Well, each time I swung my head I seed
+these yer bright spots without seeing them--if you know what I mean?--
+when I were held still for a moment by a sound.  I looked, and I saw
+then that they were eyes staring at me, which blinked as I stared, and
+turned away, then sought my face ag'in, and, narrering to a thin green
+slit, so looked at me.  What do ye think it were?"
+
+"A pig, of course, waiting for you to move," said Topper.
+
+"You can tell a pig by his grunt," said Abe, pointedly.  "Who ever seed
+a pig with green eyes flaming through half-closed lids?  It were a
+tiger," and Abe took his pipe out and impressively spat at a
+black-beetle that was fussily moving on a ball of earth with its
+hindlegs.
+
+"A tiger?"
+
+"Yes, sirrees!  It were that--sitting down on his hams like a big dog
+within two yards of me.  No, I were not skeered, for the burning pain in
+my head and the throbbing in my shin-bone didn't give room for fear of
+that kind--and the tiger, he seemed to know what were up, for after a
+while he stretched himself out on his stummick, and yawned till I could
+see the gleam of his teeth.  Well, I went on groanin' and tossin' my
+head, and rubbin' my knee-cap, and chewin' up the quince leaves, every
+now and then taking a look at the big crittur lying stretched in the
+dark with his eyes opening and shutting like's if you moved the slide
+over a bull's-eye lantern when he rolled over on his back and reached
+out a claw for me, like a kitten playing with a leaf.  He hooked a claw
+inter the trousers of my well leg, and the jerk on it gave him a
+_schreik_, for he let out a growl and jumped away, looking back at me
+over his shoulder.  Then he slunk away, but bymby when I looked ag'in he
+were standing up against the fence with his nose jes' peeping round, and
+his near eye squintin' at me through a hole in the leaves.  That give me
+a queer feeling--for the beggar'd come up so sly, and I lit out a yell
+this time which stuck in my throat.  The pain made me feel faint inside,
+an' I jes' closed my eyes.  Soon's the tiger saw I wern't looking he
+jes' poked his nose up ag'in the trap, and I yeard him licking the iron
+where the blood had run.  Then I felt on my sound leg the pressure of
+his body, and yeard the snarly purr of him.  Then he began licking at my
+trousers where the trap held fast, and I opened my eyes.  The weight of
+his body held my leg down, and one of his paws were right into my
+weskit; and, blow me, if he didn't begin shovin' it inter my body, and
+opening and shutting his claws like a pleased cat, while the jar of his
+purring ran up through my bones, and his big tongue were rasping at my
+trousers.  A sort o' stupor, don't-care-what-he-does feeling come over
+me, and with it the burning in the pain left my brain, and the hammering
+at my bones dropped away inter jes' a sort of tired feeling.  Nex'
+minute I felt his tongue on my flesh--for he'd worn a hole right through
+them cord tweeds I were wearin'.  At the taste of the blood then he
+purred louder than ever, and shuved his paw quicker and harder into my
+stummick, until I gasped for breath.  Then he drew fresh blood, and his
+purr went inter a savage growl, while, the weight of his body lightened
+on my leg.  I tell you, that growl brought back my luv for life in a
+moment.  I saw that crittur would in his eagerness take a bite at my
+leg--then the game would be up.  What d'ye think I did?"
+
+"Began to jaw," said Topper; "and he bolted with his tail down."
+
+"Jobbed him with a knife back of the head," suggested Long Jim.
+
+"No; what I did was a cirkimstance which only one man would think of,
+and that's ole Abe Pike.  I jes' took out my ole pipe, wriggled a length
+of straw down the stem till it were black with nicotine, then laid it
+across his tongue.  My!  You should 'a seen him.  He shook his head,
+tried to wipe his tongue with his paws, then give a roar, and make
+lightning tracks for the nearest water.  His growl set the dogs going
+tremenjus, then I yeard ole man Hill whistlin' 'em, and I fetched a yell
+that brung him up at the double.  By gum!  In being saved I were nearly
+killed!"
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Why, them dogs took me for the tiger, and they tore the coat offin me,
+beside some skin, 'fore ole Bill see who were in the trap and took me
+out.  That's why I say I'm dead sot against traps with teeth."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
+
+ABE AND THE EAGLES.
+
+I had not seen old Abe Pike for some weeks, having been on rinderpest
+guard on the Orange River, but on my return to the coast I rode over to
+Gum Tree Farm, where the lone blue-gum threw its pillar of cloud, in the
+blazing afternoon, across the doorway.  Uncle Abe was lounging, as
+usual, by the doorway, looking listlessly at the sea.
+
+"Well, oud baas!  How goes it?"
+
+"Is there no more cattle to kill?" he said, straightening his back and
+propping himself against the wall.  "Think you'd be ashamed to look a
+beefsteak in the face after the way you been shooting them pore
+animiles!"
+
+"The plague must be stamped out, Abe."
+
+"Oh, yes!  I yeard that story before!  It's a good way to save a
+crittur's life by shooting him!  What beats me is why you don't up and
+shoot all children sick with tyfust and grown people ailing with
+influenza!  My gum!  I'm ashamed of you!"
+
+"Well, so long!"
+
+"You ain't goin'?"
+
+"I think so; the work of shooting cattle is not pleasant, but it is less
+pleasant to be reminded of it."
+
+"Oh, go along!  Put your horse in the shed and come right in.  The place
+ain't been the same since you've been away, sonny; 'sides, there's been
+no one along for weeks, and I'm jes' bu'sting with talk.  You wouldn't
+like to see old Abe die of untold yarns."
+
+So I off-saddled and knee-haltered the horse, for there was no oat-hay
+in the shed for him, and he had to get what picking he could from the
+old lands, yellow with charlock.
+
+Abe made up the fire, and put on the kettle to boil, while from the
+larder he produced a slab of pork and a half-loaf--very black on the
+outside and very soft within.
+
+"The last batch of baking," he said, "was not up to the mark.  The yeast
+gave out, and I were obliged to get a rise out of a handful of rub-rub
+berries.  As for the pork, that came from a pig that was catched."
+
+"What sort of pig?"
+
+"Well, sonny, it was this way.  You know the eagles' nest on the old
+yellow-wood in the big kloof?  I got the pig out of there."
+
+"Oh, you did, did you?  As far as I remember, the tree is a hundred feet
+high, and the nest quite sixty feet up.  The pig climbed up, I presume?"
+
+"You presoom morn's good for you, sonny.  Don't suppose 'cos you bin to
+the Orange River you know everything.  The pig didn't climb up; he jes'
+dropped in on passin'; paid a sort of flying visit.  That nest's as big
+as a cart wheel, and if you stand below and look up the trunk it shuts
+out the sky, while down below there's bones enough, and of sorts, to
+build up the skelingtons of a entire museum.  That pair of eagles used
+that nest going on for fifteen years, and each year when the young hatch
+out they kill off more dassies and cats and blue-boks than you could eat
+in a year."
+
+"You are welcome to the cats, Abe."
+
+"Yes, sir.  Them eagles have buried, I reckon, as many as two thousand
+animiles in that leaf-mould cemingtary below the big tree.  Well!  Grub
+being skerce, I had a fancy to bury them young squabs of eagles, by way
+of satisfying my own yearning for food, and giving the ole hook-beaked
+pirates a hint that they hadn't the sole right over the earth and air.
+Sonny, that's a big tree, and it took me a fortnight to climb up."
+
+"That was quick!"
+
+"I've seen quicker climbin', but taking the size of the tree and the
+height of it--maybe, five hundred feet!"
+
+"I thought the height to the nest was about sixty feet?"
+
+"Have you clomb that tree?"
+
+"No, Abe."
+
+"Well, I have; and if it's not a mile high, it's high enuf when you're
+up aloft, with nothing to keep you from adding your bones to the pile
+below but an iron spike no bigger'n a nail.  I camped out one day at the
+bottom of the tree, and it was mighty lonesome, when the wind came
+whisperin' round the trees, and dark shadows peeped from behin' the
+rocks, while up above the she-eagle would hiss at her mate.  For about
+two days they took no heed of me, but the fifth day, when I was
+sprawling half-way up, with a looped _rheim_ round the tree, the ole
+she-bird took a squint at me over the nest, and flopped down to the
+lowest bough, where she watched me under her brows drive in a three-inch
+nail.  Two inches I druv it in, and when I lowered myself for another,
+she jes' dropped down, clawing to the tree with her long hooked toes,
+and yanked that nail out."
+
+"Abe Pike!"
+
+"Yes, sir; she jes' grabbed hole of it, give it a wrench, and out it
+come.  Then she fetched a yell loud enough almost to split the tree, and
+went off.  Nex' mornin', believe me, there was that nail, and five
+others, outside the door!  Them eagles had fetched them up to give
+notice it was no good.  They're mighty strong in the beak, is eagles,"
+said Abe, pouring out the coffee.
+
+"But truth is stronger, eh?"
+
+"That's so, sonny; you take hole o' that, and it'll do you a heap of
+good.  That day I druv in them nails deeper, and they held good, by
+reason that the ole she-bird had got lockjaw, and sot up there nursin'
+her beak, with her red eyes glowing like coals.  About the fifth day I
+were near up, when the ole man dropped a coney's head, and by luck it
+took me over the head.  Well, you'd hardly believe me when I tell you,
+that no sooner the ole girl seen this than she gave a hiss, and began
+scraping out of the nest all the rubbish, bones, and skin, and feathers,
+and sich.  Whew!  I tell you I had to scuttle and leave off.  Well, next
+day she were looking out for me, and soon's I got up dropped a
+full-grown blue-bok--ker-blung--and if I had not been prepared, would
+ha' sent me tumbling.  I climbed down, an' roasted that there bit of
+venison while the two of them watched.  Of course, after that meal I
+went home, and next mornin', when I opened the door, blow me! if there
+weren't a rock rabbit, fat as butter, jes' outside.  I ate him and
+stopped at home.  Next mornin' there was a brace of partridges, so I ate
+'em, and stayed quiet.  Next morning a big hare, an' I ate him and
+stayed at home.  So on till the eleventh mornin', when there was only a
+black cat, with the musk of him smellin' most awful.  Of course, I
+wasn't eating any such vermin, but I thought the eagles meant well, and
+I wasn't blaming them.  I buried that crittur two feet deep, and went
+hungry to bed.  Next mornin' I was outer the door before I was awake,
+expecting to fin' a plump lamb, or maybe a kid or a turkey, but there
+was nothing, sir, but the smell of that stink eat hanging around most
+dreadful.  Sonny, the feelings of them two eagles had been hurt.  They
+took it as a slight that I hadn't eaten that skunk, so I sot off to the
+kloof to explain matters.  When I got there the ole he was sailing above
+the tree, with his claws tucked up, and his head on one side.  When he
+seed me he jes' fetched a screech like a railway engine divin' into a
+tunnel, and then he settled on the tree, where, bymby, he were joined by
+the ole she.  They jest sot there and looked, making no sign to drop
+anything, so I begun to climb; but they took no notice, and bymby I come
+to the end of the nails, and the nearest bough was six feet away.  I had
+to give it up that day, leaving them two birds all ruffled up and mighty
+cold and standoffish.  It was hard next mornin' to find nothing outside
+the door, and I seed there was nothing left but to finish the job, and
+catch them young squabs.  I went off to the kloof, bitter against the
+ingratitood of them stingy birds, which were ready to let a human bein'
+starve when they had a larder jes' stuffed with hares and things--and my
+hares, too!  Them birds was waiting for me--throwing their beaks back
+and screaming like mad, while the squabs in the nest squealed till my
+head split.  They had sense enuf to see I were angry, and they sot up
+that racket to starve me off; but a hungry man don't stop to listen to
+speeches when his dinner is callin' out loud for him, so I went up with
+my mouth full of nails.  Very soon I were over the bough, and the
+screeching and squealing were terrible to listen to."
+
+"Didn't the eagles attack you?"
+
+"No, sonny!  They were jest helpless with laughing!"
+
+"Laughing?"
+
+"When I threw my leg over the bough, I got the hammer ready to strike,
+but I seed them shakin' all over, till some of the wing feathers dropped
+out, and tears were running down their beaks and droppin' off the sharp
+point of the hook.  It was not fear--you never seed a eagle afraid--he
+couldn't be if he tried--an' I seed at once they were laughin' fit to
+die.  I sot there in a tremble at the unnatural circumstance, and then
+began to climb till I could look into the nest.  Sonny, d'you know what
+they were laughing at."
+
+"The pig in the nest."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Oh, I just guessed."
+
+"Well, I'm blessed!  Ghoisters!  You never seed a pig in a nest up a
+tree seven hundred feet high?"
+
+"Not that I remember, Abe."
+
+"Gum!  Yes, sir; there were a pig in that nest.  Them birds, sonny, had
+kept me off till their squabs could fly, and then they played that joke
+on me.  I chucked the pig out, and when I got down he were as dead as
+bacon.  Come to think of it, sonny, it were a kind thought of them
+eagles to put it up there, and it makes me smile every time to think of
+the way them birds laughed till they shook their feathers out."
+
+The old man fixed his abstracted gaze on a cloud of tobacco smoke.
+
+"I hope to train 'em next year," he said, "to keep me in venison and
+lard.  Going?  Well, so long!"
+
+"So long, Abe!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
+
+ABE'S BILLY GOAT.
+
+Our Poison Club was in a flourishing condition.  During the past year
+the members had killed off 1,500 red cats, wild dogs, jackals, seven
+leopards, and 500 baboons.  This represented a good round sum--each tail
+being equivalent to a five-shilling demand on the exchequer of the
+country--and the chairman had called a meeting to distribute the awards.
+
+"I have pleasure in announcing, gentlemen," he said, "that Mr Si Amos
+is the champion poisoner--having placed to his credit 300 cat tails,
+seventy-five jackal tails, fifty-four baboon tails, and one leopard
+tail.  In addition to the dues which are rightly his, he is entitled to
+the silver medal presented by the club."
+
+"Well done, Si!  Step up!"
+
+Silas pulled his lank figure together, hitched up his trousers, wiped
+his mouth with his sleeve, and lumbered up the narrow passage.
+
+"Give him pizen!" said someone in a loud voice, whereat there were cries
+of "Shame!"
+
+Silas paused, balanced himself uncertainly on one leg, and searched the
+audience.
+
+"It's that Abe," he said.  "What he says don't amount to nothin'."
+
+"Mr Pike," expostulated the chairman; "I'm astonished at you."
+
+"Look here, Jim Hockey," said Abe, rising up from a back seat, and
+pointing his pipe-stem at the chairman; "I don't keer if you give that
+_thing_ there a whole string o' silver buttons--and Lord knows he wants
+'em, to keep himself from falling to pieces--but I tell you, you're
+opsettin' the laws of nature goin' about killing the animiles off the
+face of the yearth.  It's not the mean, sneaking way you've got inter of
+dropping pizen pills all over the place that riles me so much as the
+killin' of 'em off by the thousan' without takin' any thought of what's
+coming.  Take baboons--"
+
+"Are we here, Mr Chairman, to listen to a speech from Mr Pike, or are
+we not?" asked one member, who was credited with having opened a market
+in jackals' tails.
+
+"Take baboons," said Abe, pointing his pipe-stem insultingly at his
+interrupter.  "I allow they're mean, I allow they eat your mealies,
+steal your fruit, kill a sheep or two, and frighten your wives; but if
+it warn't for the baboons there'd be a scorpion under every stone and a
+centipede in every ole stump.  The baboons eat them vermin.  Take cats--
+if it warn't for cats the lands would be swarmin' with mice.  If it
+warn't for the jackals there'd be a hare in every grass clump."
+
+"If it warn't for Abe Pike," said Silas, with a look of disgust,
+"there'd be a durn sight less jaw."
+
+"Hear, hear!"
+
+"Year away," said Abe, "and listen to this.  When you're done killin'
+all these critturs, the scorpions, an' the centipedes, an' the rats, an'
+the snakes, an' the spiders'll swarm all over you.  What yer got ter do
+is to set Nature ag'in Nature.  The wild buck can look after hisself;
+teach the tame goat and the sheep to do the same."
+
+"The laws of Nature, Abe, have covered your lands with weeds."
+
+"Yes; and reduced his mangy live stock to one goat," added Si.
+
+"Laugh! yer yeller-eyed, big-footed, long-legged, two-headed,
+freckled-faced duffers--laugh!--but I bet you that ole goat'll knock the
+stuffin' out of your club, and purtect hisself ag'in any wild crittur,
+from a stink-cat to a tiger."
+
+"You're jawing," said Si; "otherwise I'd hold you to your bounce."
+
+Abe took from his pocket a skin purse, tightly bound with a long thong,
+unwound this, emptied out into his yellow hand, which shook with
+excitement, two bright sovereigns.
+
+"That ain't any wild cat tail money," he said; "it's the saving of sixty
+years' hard work--and I stake that."
+
+"What's the wager?" asked the chairman.
+
+"That my ole goat proves to this yer club that Nature provides a way
+outside of pizening by holding his own ag'inst anything on two feet or
+four feet, 'cept a elephant or a steam roller."
+
+"The club takes the bet," said the chairman, in a solemn voice and a
+winking eye.
+
+"Well; jes' take keer o' that money until your nex' meeting, when I'll
+turn up with the ole Kapater.  So long!"
+
+"You'll lose that money, Abe," I said following him as he slouched away.
+
+"It's a heap of money," he said; "a glittering pile that I been saving
+up for my ole age."
+
+"Call the bet off, Abe."
+
+"You think the ole man's a blasteratious ijiot, sonny?  Well, well!
+maybe.  Let him stand at that till nex' meeting."
+
+In three months the meeting was called, and due notice served on Mr Abe
+Pike and his goat.  It was a full house that met in the drowsy afternoon
+in the big shed on Mr Hockey's farm, and the discussion turned at once
+on the disposal of Abe's money--the general opinion being that it should
+be given back.
+
+"I object," said Si Amos, who had brought with him a huge and hideous
+half-breed between a boar-hound and a mongrel.  "That ole man's been
+throwing slurs on this club, and it's my opinion he ought to pay for it.
+Anyhow, I'll `psa' my dog on to his goat."
+
+Last of all, Abe Pike himself entered the shed, wearing an expression of
+profound despondency.
+
+"Anyone got a pipe of tobacco?" he said, looking around gloomily.
+
+There was no tobacco hospitably forthcoming, everyone being too
+disgusted at the thought that all the fun was off.
+
+Abe leant wearily against the wall.  "Time was," he said, "when a man
+would hand you his tobacco bag as he said `Good-morning.'  There's a
+natural meanness in pizening animiles, and it's jes' oozing out of yer."
+
+"Where's your goat, you old humbug?"
+
+"Gentlemen, I'm very sorry, but that goat's woke up with a most awful
+temper, and I jes' drop in t' ask you _voetsack_ all the dogs outer the
+place 'fore I bring him in."
+
+"Yah!" said Si Amos; "I knew he'd back down.  It was part of the bet
+that dogs was to be brought."
+
+"That's so," said Mr Hockey.
+
+"You won't turn out your dogs?"
+
+"No sir!  But this yer dog'll eat your goat, and I give you fair
+warning!" said Si, stirring the big mongrel with his toe.
+
+Abe looked round, gave me a wink, and went out.
+
+When he reappeared he was leading one of the biggest goats--a great blue
+"Kapater," with a long beard, massive horns, and a boss of leather and
+brass over his forehead.
+
+"Well I'm jiggered!" said one member, getting behind the table.
+
+Someone--I don't know who the rash individual was--said "psa," and the
+big mongrel stood up, showing his teeth and growling in his throat.
+
+Abe smiled sadly, let go his hold of the goat, pinched his ear, and then
+the great rout of the Poison Club began.  The goat walked briskly up to
+the dog, reared up, brought his head down, and sent the mongrel smash
+under the table, where he remained whimpering; then in a brace, at a
+whistle from his master, the unnatural billy cleared the shed with the
+effectiveness of a battering ram.  At the outset the strong man of the
+country tried to seize him by the horns, but he evaded the grasp and
+shot his massive enemy over a form; and when the others fled, he butted
+them from behind so that each man flew out headlong, helping to swell
+the struggling pile at the doorway.  After this feat he amused himself
+by reducing the table and chairs to splinters, then he came to the door
+and stood scratching his ear with his left hind foot, while chewing the
+remains of the minute book.
+
+"Fetch me a gun," yelled Si Amos, with his hand pressed to his
+waistcoat.
+
+"What will you take for that thunderstorm, Abe?" asked Mr Hockey,
+tenderly feeling his elbow.
+
+"You don't want to buy him so's you can shoot him?"
+
+"No; I want him as a watch dog."
+
+"Well, seeing's how it's you, you can have him for a pair of blankets
+and a bag of meal."
+
+"It's a swap, Abe.  What do you call him?"
+
+"I calls him `Peaceful William.'  I s'pose the club admits it's lost the
+bet; 'cos, if not, William will purceed to further business."
+
+"The bet's yours, Abe.  Take the money, for Heaven's sake!"
+
+"All right, then; I'll kraal the goat for you."
+
+The goat was penned up, and Abe loaded his meal on to his horse and went
+off.
+
+The club watched the old man out of sight, each member absently rubbing
+himself, and all of them remarkably silent.
+
+"Oh!--'ell," said someone, in a tone of unmistakable dismay.
+
+We all, as one man, faced round to the kraal, and then we simultaneously
+skurried up to the barn roof.  From this position of safety we saw
+Peaceful William, in a shower of dust, carefully demolish the walls of
+the pen and the poles that supported the thatched roof, and we fearfully
+gazed down upon him as he walked steadily round and round the barn,
+stopping at intervals to rear against the wall, to eye us threateningly.
+I don't know when he left, but he was not there next morning, when, at
+the break of day, Abe's voice greeted us.
+
+"I thought I'd tell you Peaceful Billy is at my place; and he's there
+when you care to fetch him.  Fine sunrise, ain't it?  Nice place to see
+it from.  Nature's better than pizen if you take her early."
+
+There was a strange gurgling sound of suppressed laughter.
+
+"I say!"  It was Abe again.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Goat fat 's mighty good for bruises!  So long!"
+
+"Darn you and your goat!" growled the chairman.  "Boys, I vote we
+descend to business."
+
+We descended, and while we ate our breakfast the women of the house
+giggled till they almost choked.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY.
+
+A KAFFIR'S PLAY.
+
+The red Kaffir is a man with a good deal of character, which he does his
+best to destroy.  The pure kraal Kaffir, who lounges negligently in his
+red blanket or squats on his loins by the fire at night, telling
+interminable stories about nothing in particular, has many points which
+mark him from the "town boy"--the spoiled child of civilisation, who
+treads tenderly in his hard "Blucher" boots, and covers his corduroy
+trousers with bright patches of other material; who has to support his
+weary frame against every pillar and post and corner he comes across,
+and who is generally shiftless, saucy, and squalid.
+
+The kraal Kaffir is lean, long, and tough, dignified in his movements,
+courteous to his friends, given over to long spells of silence broken by
+fits of noisy eloquence, his sullen, solemn face seldom lit up by a
+smile, and his black smoke-stained eyes smouldering always with an
+unquenchable fire, that flames out when he meets a Fingo on the highway,
+or when the fire-water runs through his veins at the beer-drinking.
+
+The red Kaffir is a warrior.  He is also a lawyer.  I am not certain
+whether he most prefers to settle a dispute by argument or by the
+kerrie, but I think his idea of greatest happiness would be a long
+disputation extending over a week, to be rounded off with the clashing
+of kerries.  Some people, who have seen the wide smile on the face of a
+West Coast negro, accept that all-pervading grin as the main feature of
+the entire black race, and argue from it that all blacks are
+good-tempered children, prone to every impulse.  That is not true of the
+Kaffir.  He is of the Bantu stock, which includes the Zulu and the
+Basuto, whose chief sentiment is stern pride of race, whose ruling
+expression is one of sullen reserve, and whose national impulse is to
+fight.  They were cradled somewhere in the valley of the Nile, the hot
+nursery of fierce races; their remote ancestors swept South, destroying
+as they went, and the southernest fringe are Amaxosa of the Cape
+frontier, the men who have waged five separate wars with the red-coats
+of England and the sure-shooting border settlers.  Pringle has, in these
+lines, given a vivid picture of the Kaffir:
+
+  "Lo! where the fierce Kaffir
+  Crouches by the kloof's dark side,
+  Watching the settlers' flocks afar--
+  Impatient waiting till the evening star
+  Guides him to his prey."
+
+Under the fierce ordeal of war the Kaffir thrived.  His limbs were free
+and straight, his step springy, his eyes far-seeing, his nostrils could
+sniff the taint in the air, his deep melodious voice could boom the
+war-cry or the message across the wide valleys.  As a man of peace he
+looks squalid in his broken clothes; he moves stiffly in his boots; he
+sings hymns in a queer, high note, with great melancholy but little
+meaning; goes reeling home from dirty canteens, and is a hopelessly
+casual labourer.  He is the victim of civilisation, of strange laws, and
+in the confusion of many counsellors his only hope is the goal which has
+been offered to the already civilised labourer of a more favoured race--
+three acres and several cows, with a title of his own.  There lies his
+salvation.  If he could get his title to a plot of land sufficient for
+his wants, he may retain some of those characteristics which made
+conquerors of his warrior ancestors, if not he will go under in the
+struggle in a pair of uncomfortable boots, with a bottle of brandy in
+his hands, and strange oaths of civilised man on his lips.
+
+"Yes," said Abe; "the Kaffir can use two things better'n a white man,
+easy--his tongue and his stick.  I seed a Kaffir onct get the better of
+a fencing master.
+
+"I were sitting in the schoolyard, away up in town, where a sergeant
+from the barracks were showing the big boys how to use a singlestick.
+There were a Kaffir, leaning his chin on the top of the gate, looking
+on, with no more life in his face than a chip of mahogany.
+
+"Bymby the sergeant he spotted the Kaffir, and he sed, sed he, `Now, you
+boys; I'll jes' show you what singlestick play is,' and he called to the
+Kaffir to come in.
+
+"Well, the black feller, he came in--very slow, pulling his blanket up
+to his chin, and looking like a young horse all ready to bolt in a
+minnit.  The end of his long kerrie peeped out below his blanket, and
+the sergeant touched it with his ash stick, then stood on guard.
+
+"`You keep your eye on my wrist-play, boys,' sed the sergeant, swellin'
+out his chest till the brass buttons nearly popped off.  `You keep your
+eye on me,' he sed, `and you'll see how I get over his guard every
+time.'
+
+"The Kaffir he jes' stood there, looking solum, and the sergeant poked
+him in the stomjack.
+
+"`Yinnie!' sed the Kaffir, backing off an' snappin' fire from his eyes.
+You see he didn't know what the sergeant were about, and though he
+wern't fool enough to strike a _rooibaaitje_ in the town, his dander got
+up at that poke.
+
+"`Do you want to fight this chap?' sed I.
+
+"`I want to show these boys what real wrist-play is,' sed the sergeant,
+making an under-cut with his stick; `and this Kaffir will do well as a
+block.  Tell him to put up his kerrie.'
+
+"I jes' tole the Kaffir, and had a quiet larf.  To think of anyone bein'
+sich a simple ijiot as to play at sticks with a Kaffir.  I tole the
+`boy,' and he said, `Yoh!' in surprise.  Then a sort of smile flickered
+about his mouth, and his black eyes began to shine.  He let slip the
+blanket offen his shoulders, and caught it on his left arm.  Then he
+took his kerrie by the end, and held it out the full length of his arm,
+with his head forrard and his toes apart, and back so that he leant
+forward.  You know the fighting kerrie, about five feet long, and tough
+as steel.
+
+"The sergeant--he smiled--threw forrard his right foot, balanced hisself
+on his left, crooked his elbow, and pointed his stick slanting.
+
+"`You see, boys,' he sed; `you must stand naturally, with your body
+nicely balanced, ready to advance or retreat.  Look at me, and look at
+the Kaffir,' he said.  `He stands on his toes, and if he lost his
+balance he would fall on his face.  Watch me get over his guard.'
+
+"`Ready!' he sed, and they begun.
+
+"Well the boys watched, I tell you.  There were a grunting, a clatter
+and a whirlwind of sticks--outer which whizzed chips of ash and bits of
+the basket-hilt.  They didn't see nuffing of the sergeant's wrist-play,
+I tell you.  No, sir, all they seed was that whirling of sticks like the
+spokes of a wheel, and bymby outer the dust come the sergeant.
+
+"He didn't look the same man.  His face were red an' angry, his
+basket-hilt was all smashed in, his knuckles were raw, and there were no
+more'n but a foot left of his stick.
+
+"The Kaffir stood there, solum as a judge, with jes' a touch of fire in
+his eyes.  There were not so much as a mark on his smooth skin, as he
+slipped the blanket over his shoulder, and waited for more.
+
+"The sergeant fished up sixpence, and gave it to the boy, without a
+word.
+
+"`You'd better go,' I sed.
+
+"`Yoh,' sed the Kaffir, looking at the sixpence; `is he done?  Let him
+take another stick; we were but playing, and no one's head is broken.'
+
+"`You go,' I said; and he went, looking mighty troubled.
+
+"I tell you what, sonny; the Queen should take a thousand of these yer
+red Kaffirs, and make soldiers of 'em for service in a hot country.  Not
+here, of course, but away off in Injia.  It's a pity to waste 'em, and
+they'd do more good scouting than drinkin' Cape brandy, lifting cattle,
+and loafin' around.  A black battalion of Kaffirs and Zulus would be no
+small pumpkins, an' they could be officered by Colonials who know the
+language."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
+
+A BUGLE CALL.
+
+"Hulloa, Bassie!  I thought this fine morning would bring you over.  The
+sap's running strong, and the quail are gathering thick in the young
+wheat.  Hear to them whistling.  Where's your gun?"
+
+"I did not come to shoot."
+
+"Soh!  Well, you don't look like shooting.  Been eating too much green
+fruit?"
+
+"I've passed the green fruit stage, Abe."
+
+"I ain't; there's nothing better'n a pie of green apricots with cream,
+and green mealies is better'n kissing.  You're not in love, are you?"
+
+"I have been writing poetry," I said, with an air of unconcern; "and I
+want to take your opinion of it."
+
+"Fire away," said Abe, fetching up a judicial expression; "it's many a
+year since I learnt poetry, my boy--many a year.  The ole mum onct, in
+the moonlight, when I were knee high, read to me outer a torn sheet she
+had, and these words I remember:
+
+  "`He prayeth best who loveth best
+  All things, both great and small;
+  For the dear God that loveth us,
+  He made and loveth all.'
+
+"Long years agone the old mother read that outer a torn slip of paper,
+and I know it yet, sonny.  I'd like to year some more."
+
+"I don't think I'll read it you, on second thoughts," I said, with
+sudden doubt.
+
+"You bet you will, sonny.  A man that's got the gift of making poetry
+has no occasion to stand back in the corner."
+
+"Well it's only a little thing I dashed off the other night.  Here it
+is:
+
+  "`Oh, frog, that sits on the garden seat
+  (Croak, croak! where the trees hang low),
+  Have you ever swum in the ocean deep,
+  In the waves where the wild winds blow,
+  Where the red crabs crawl on the rocks below,
+  On the rocks where the dead men sleep?'"
+
+"It's kind o' buttery," said Abe slowly, "but I don't see no sense in
+it.  What's a frog on a garden seat got anything to do with dead men?
+And crabs ain't red."
+
+"Oh, that's a poet's licence."
+
+"It are, eh?  Well, I won't go to your shop for spirrits.  Is there any
+more?"
+
+"This is the second verse," I said, rather discouraged:
+
+  "`Oh, speckled toad, did you ever dream
+  (Croak, croak! there's a snake on the wall),
+  Did you ever dream of my lady dear,
+  Who sometimes walks in the garden here
+  (While the milk in the pan is making cream),
+  And sings when there's no one near?'"
+
+"How does it sound?"
+
+"It sounds like treacle," said Abe, with a puzzled look; "but I don't
+see what the podder's got to do with it, anyhow; and the young woman's
+got no business to be wasting her time waiting for the milk to set.  Why
+don't she use the cream separator?"
+
+"I couldn't write about a machine."
+
+"Why not--hum--er--hum--why not say this:
+
+  "After she turned the cream separator,
+  She sat and ate a cold pertater."
+
+"There is no sentiment in that!"  I said indignantly; "and the words
+have no rhythm."
+
+"What's rhythm?"
+
+"Why, tone, modulation, music; you know!"
+
+"Sonny! is there any music in the croak of a frog--is there?  In course
+not!  Now listen--what do you hear?"
+
+I listened, and heard nothing but the drowsy hum and hollow drone of the
+surf.
+
+"I can hear nothing."
+
+"Soh!  Well, now jes' cock yer ear, and hearken to the voice of the
+sea--rising and falling, soft and melancholy.  Dying away to a whisper,
+then swellin' up as the big wave rolls in, swinging to and fro in a
+great song of quiet and peace.  That's music, sonny; and when the wind
+rises, and in the dark of the night, the spring-tide, coming in with the
+power of the sea behind, thunders on the beach, there's music there--
+wild and grand--and when the clouds pile up outer the sea higher and
+higher, and the yearth waitin' in silence, when there is no breath of
+air, shakes to the rollin' crash of the thunder--there's music then.
+Where's your potery beside them sounds and the lightning flash and the
+rush of the wind, and the splashing of water risin' suddenly?"
+
+I thrust my paper back into my pocket.
+
+"There's music, sonny, in the veld and bush, and in the night cries of
+the wild animiles and birds; but I yeard onct a sound I shall never
+forget, and I guess there was in it a whole book of potery.  But you
+ain't finished about your podder."
+
+"Never mind the frog, the snake has swallowed him by this.  Tell me the
+story."
+
+"Well it were in the Borna Pass, time of the Kaffir War, and the ole
+94th were halted in the jaws of the pass, waitin' for the cool of the
+afternoon before they marched.  I recomember it well--the dark woods in
+the narrow pass rising up till they 'most shut out the sky; the
+red-coats down by the water; the smoke rising in tall columns from the
+cooking fires; the horses standing in a bunch switching the flies offen
+'em; the oxen knee-deep in the water; and a silence born of the hot sun
+over all.  It were as quiet as Sunday down in the mouth of the pass,
+with the sun running up and down the bayonets like fire, and no red to
+stain them, for there was no news of Kaffirs within a day's march.
+
+"I yeard a honey-bird call outer the black of the wood, and I jes' moved
+off with nothin' mor'n a pipe and a clasp-knife.
+
+"`Where you going, Abe?' said a little bugler chap, lookin' up from the
+shade of a bush.
+
+"`Bee huntin', sonny.'
+
+"`I'll come along o' you,' he sed; `as there ain't no bloomin' Kafs to
+hunt, bees'll do.'
+
+"He were a little chap, with his lips all cracked by the sun, and a
+little nose that you couldn't see for the freckles, and brown eyes like
+you see in a bird or a buck--clear and bright.  Always he were on the
+move, like a willey-wagtail, and him and me were chums.  Ah yes; many a
+story I tole him by the camp fire, him a sitting with his chin in his
+hands staring at me with his big round eyes, and they called him `Abe's
+kid,' 'cos I downed a fellow for boosting him with a leather belt.  I
+tole you how a little dream lad had come to me one night outer the sea;
+that were he, my son--that were my little boy."
+
+"Did he die?"  I said, looking at the old man.
+
+"He went away, sonny, but he said he'd wait for me, and he'll keep his
+word."  There was a wistful look in the old man's face as he looked
+towards the sea for some time in silence.  "Yes; we slipped inter the
+wood, the honey-bird calling--the only sound outer the great stillness
+of the woods, 'cept for the crushing of the dried leaves under our
+tread, and the bird, flitting like a shadder from tree to tree, led us
+on deeper and deeper into the heart of the Borna Pass, till I pulled up
+to take bearings.
+
+"`We must get away back, little chap,' I said.
+
+"`Then it's not true what you tole me about the honey-bird?' and he
+looked at me askance.
+
+"`Why not?' said I.
+
+"`'Cos there he is a calling like mad, same as ever.  I don't believe
+he's a honey-bird, and I don't believe any of them stories you've been
+tellin' me.  You're no pal of mine,' he said, looking at me with a
+wrinkle 'tween his eyes.
+
+"`I'm thinkin' we're gettin' too far from the lines,' I sed, `and you
+ain't used to the bush if Kaffirs were to come.'
+
+"`You're afraid,' he sed; `that's what.'
+
+"`Come on,' I sed, like a fool; and I went on, stooping through the
+bush, going mighty quick, and him panting after me.  `I can smell
+honey,' I sed, stopping short, and noticin' that the bird had done his
+flight.
+
+"`Garn!' he sed, wrinkling up his little nose.  There was a holler tree
+standin' up in a little clearin' no bigger'n a room, and the hum of the
+bees came to us as we stood.
+
+"`I see 'em,' he says; `look at 'em streaming in!  What a lark!  Cut a
+hole with your knife,' he says, `'an I'll carry some honey back in this
+bugle,' and he laughed.
+
+"`Well,' says I, `who's been tellin' lies?'
+
+"He laughed again.
+
+"`I takes it back, Abe,' he says.  `Oh my eye!  Jes' look!'
+
+"I seed then we'd clomb high up on the left side of the pass, and from
+the clearin' there was a sight of the hanging woods over against us, of
+the narrow path below, and the soldiers away down to the left.
+
+"`Now you've seed the bee-tree,' I says, `we mus' go back.'
+
+"`Jes' a little honey, Abe,' he says; `jes' a little to take back, else
+that Jimmy'll never b'lieve I been up here.'
+
+"I were looking across at the dark wood, and I said to him quietly, `Get
+behind the tree,' for I'd seed a Kaffir stretched out on a grey rock
+that stood outer the bush.
+
+"`What's the row?' he says, looking a little scared.  Maybe 'cos I
+looked the same.
+
+"`Take off that coat,' I sed; for the red showed up plain.
+
+"`Take off the Queen's coat?' he sed, going red and white; `not me!'
+
+"`My lad,' I sed to him quiet; `there are Kaffirs in the bush.'
+
+"`What larx,' he sed in a whisper, and his eyes opening wide as he
+stared at me.
+
+"`And if you keep your coat on they'll see you.'
+
+"`Let 'em,' he said, swallering his throat.
+
+"`Take it off,' I said.
+
+"`Not me.'
+
+"`Then I leave you.'  And with that I slipped away, but turned on my
+tracks and come back softly to peer at him.  He were still standing
+behin' the tree, looking away off at the soldiers, but his coat were
+buttoned up tight to his throat I went up to him tip-toe and touched him
+on the soldier, and he gave a low cry and jumped aside with his fists
+up.  When he seed who it were, the tears came into his eyes.
+
+"`Abe Pike,' he sed, tremblin', `that's a mean trick to play on a boy--a
+mean dirty trick.'
+
+"I allow it were mean, but I thought I'd skeer him into taking off that
+red rag.  Then I give it up.  `Come on,' I sed, `foller me; stop when I
+stop, run when I run, and keep quiet.'
+
+"So we sot off tenderly through the bush, and we hadn't gone mor'n fifty
+paces when I smelt the Kaffirs.  I sank down; he did, too, and I peered
+through the shadders.  A sound came to us--the sound of naked feet, of
+moving branches--and I knew the pass were full of men.
+
+"He touched me on the arm as the bugle call to `fall in' rang along into
+the still pass, ekering as it went from side to side.
+
+"I put my mouth to his ear to tell him the Kaffirs were swarming, and
+that we could not go on, but must go up the ridge and work round to the
+troops.
+
+"`What are the Kaffirs doing?' he sed.
+
+"`They are making an ambush.'
+
+"`And the General doesn't know?'
+
+"`No, sonny, he doesn't.'
+
+"`And they'll march in and be stabbed,' he whispered, with his eyes
+round and staring.
+
+"`Oh, they'll fight their way out,' I sed.  `Come on after me.'
+
+"`Good-bye,' he said, sitting down.  `You go on--I'm tired.'
+
+"`I'll carry you, little chap,' says I, and I picked him up, but he was
+heavy for his size, and the bush was thick, and more than that, he
+kicked.
+
+"So I sot him down, and I yeard a Kaffir calling out to his friends to
+know what the noise was.  I motioned to him to come, but he sot there,
+with his face white, and shook his head; then he altered his mind.  `Go
+on,' he said, `I'll foller--go quick!'  So I sot off up the ridge
+through the wood, slipping from tree to tree, thinking he were coming,
+when all of a sudden outer the wood, ringing out clear and loud, a bugle
+sounded the alarm.  I looked round and the boy were not there.  I ran
+back, and saw him with the bugle to his lips, and his cheeks swelling as
+he blew another blast.  I can hear it now--the call of that little chap,
+with the muttered cries of the Kaffirs, and the sound of their naked
+feet running, as they came up.
+
+"`You little devil,' I yelled; `they'll kill you.  Run!'
+
+"He gave me one look over his shoulder, and he put his life into that
+last blow.  As the last note went swinging away, there came an answering
+note from the regiment--to form square.
+
+"`That'll be Jimmy,' he said.  And the next minnit an assegai struck him
+on the neck, and he fell into my arms."
+
+Abe stopped, and looked away.
+
+"What, then?"  I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+"I don't know, sonny, what happened, till I laid him down afore the
+General."
+
+"You carried him out?"
+
+"I s'pose so--I s'pose so--seeing as we were both there; and my clothes
+were in rags from the thorns, and my head cut open with a kerrie.  Yes,
+I laid him afore the General.
+
+"`What's this?' he says.
+
+"`General,' I said, `this boy has saved the regiment; he could a' run--
+but he didn't.'
+
+"`Who sounded the alarm?' he sed.
+
+"`It was him, and the pass is full of Kaffirs.'
+
+"The General stooped down, and looked into the little feller's face.
+
+"`Damn you, man,' he said, turning on me; `what did you take him into
+the wood for?'
+
+"The little chap opened his eyes, and they were fixed, all glazed, on
+the General, and the officers stood around, looking, and the soldiers in
+the square.
+
+"The General brought his hand to his cap, then he wheeled round: `Ninety
+fourth--present--arms!'
+
+"The ranks came to a salute, and the officers brought their heels
+together and their swords up.
+
+"The little chap let his eyes scan the lines.
+
+"`They are saluting you, my brave boy,' said the General.
+
+"I felt him move in my arms, and I lifted his hand to his head to
+salute.  Then he sighed, then he smiled, and his eyes closed.  `I'll
+wait for you, Abe,' he said, and he was dead.
+
+"`Ninety-fourth,' said the General, `the enemy's in the pass.'
+
+"They came by in columns, and as they passed, they looked at the little
+chap and saluted, and they went on in silence with their mouths shut.
+
+"They clean frightened the Kaffirs that time; and next day--they buried
+the little chap--the band playing--and all the regiment in full dress.
+My little chap--my little chap!" said Abe, in a whisper--"`I'll wait for
+you, Abe,' he sed.  And when he sounds the bugle ole Abe'll go.  Yes, I
+sit and listen for it."  He sat still, looking toward the sea, and I
+went quietly away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.
+
+THE "RED" KAFFIRS!
+
+I found Abe Pike one afternoon poring over a newspaper, tracing each
+word with a horny finger, and laboriously spelling out the long words.
+
+"Getting hints about pumpkin-growing, Abe?"
+
+"No, sonny; jes' studying how to give spoon-food to infants, and you've
+come in time."
+
+The old man looked vexed.  He suddenly rolled the paper into a ball, and
+threw it at a lizard.
+
+"It's mean!" he said; "danged mean!"
+
+"What?"
+
+He held out his hand, and I mechanically gave him my tobacco pouch.
+
+"Ever been to England?" he said.
+
+"Yes; you know I have."
+
+"Soh!  Is the people there white?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+"Same as you and me?"
+
+"A little whiter, I should say, Abe.  What are you driving at?"
+
+"Look here, sonny!  I've been in this country, man an' boy, ever since I
+were born; and, you b'lieve me, I never get hole of a paper from the Ole
+Land but there's some abuse of us colonists.  That's why I ask you is
+they white."
+
+"What have they been saying now?"
+
+"Saying; why the same old story--that we're a hard lot, always driving
+the Kaffirs, an' killing 'em, an' stealing their lands, an' 'busin'
+their women-folk, and grindin' 'em down."
+
+"Well; what does it matter!"
+
+"It matters the hull sackful.  Look at me--I've never been to England,
+but all the same it's my home.  I love the ole flag, and cry `Hurrah'
+for the Queen; an', ole as I am, I'd boost anybody over the head as 'ud
+up an' say England was not the best and the biggest and the grandest
+country in the world.  Yessir!"
+
+"She's not very big, Abe."
+
+"Soh!  Well, she's big enough to spread her arms all round the yearth,
+and fetch anybody on the other side `ker-blum' with a man-o'-war's big
+gun.  We give her all--it ain't much, maybe--an' we get back a crop of
+suspicions.  That's why I ask, is the people in the Ole Land white?"
+
+"We are all of one family, Abe, and relations don't compliment each
+other."
+
+"Who's crying out for compliments?  I leave 'em to the chaps over in
+England, who praise each other to their face in the halls, and tell each
+other what fine fellows they are to save the Kaffirs from them cruel,
+savageous colonists.  May the Lord look up and down 'em for the mischief
+they've done."
+
+"You seem very bitter, Abe."
+
+"Well, the reading in that paper has lef a bitter taste.  You see,
+sonny, I recomember the wars of the `thirties' and the `forties,' when
+your father were a boy--and his uncles and brothers, and sisters and
+wives--the whole lot of us--were raw to the land--when the country all
+round were wild--and the Kaffirs hangin' on the frontier like a great
+dark wave way out on the sea--ready to rush in and sweep us offern the
+land.  Three times they rushed in--three times we had to leave our
+homes, our flocks, our crops, and make for the posts.  Then we had to
+fight 'em back, and those people away over in England each time 'ud
+fetch a howl that reached across the sea about the cruelty of the
+colonists--with never a word about the burnt houses, and the cattle
+swept off, and the women and children.
+
+"Look here, sonny," said Abe, his face growing dark; "I'll tell you
+somethin' I seed when I was a grown boy--somethin' about one of these
+very wars the people at home have blamed us for making for our own gain.
+
+"The Kaffirs were over yonder; about twenty miles away across the
+Chumie, and the farmers were scattered all about, thinkin' of nothin' at
+all but the mealie crop, and the wheat nearly ripe, and the pumpkin
+patches--for they had been through hard times, and the season were good.
+Jes' away back of this place, where the three springs of the
+Kleinemonde rise out of the flats, there were a little valley no
+bigger'n ten acres, set around with small hills, and the water runnin'
+through and round it under big yellerwood and Kaffir plum trees; while
+in the water stood clumps of palmeit and tree ferns, yeller and green,
+and rustlin' to the wind.  Beyond the hills the grass veld rolled away
+to the Fish River bush, over here towards the Kaffirs, and the Kowie
+bush 'way back.  On the grass veld were a many herd of bucks--springbok
+and blesbok--while in the thick bush were koodoo and buffel--ay, an'
+elephant!
+
+"It is a _mooi_ place now, that little valley; but I tell you then it
+were a spot to make a man look and long.  But it were risky.  The Fish
+River bush were a leetle too close, in case the Kaffirs raided.
+
+"Howsomdever, there were one man who took the risk.  He were ole Mr
+Tolver--a farmer from Devonshire, and with him were seven sons--two on
+'em born here, the rest away in the ole country.  My gum! you should a
+seed 'em.  The ole man hisself were not so big, though he were broad an'
+deep; but four of his boys were over six feet, and the other three were
+growing fast.  Ole Mr Tolver druv his stake into the little valley.
+`This is my settlement,' he sez to the Government officer who came
+riding round, and tried to persuade him to give it up, because of its
+aloneness.  `Here I am,' he sez, `and here I stays, and durn the
+Kaffirs!'
+
+"`You're a stubborn man, Tolver,' sez the officer, `but I have warned
+you.  If the Kaffirs come they would cut you off before you could reach
+Grahamstown.'
+
+"`Jes' cast your eyes over my boys,' sez Tolver; and the boys laughed,
+and stood in a row.
+
+"There was Jake at the top, six-foot-four, with a yeller beard, and eyes
+blue as a bit of sky.  Slow he were and heavy in his tread, with a hand
+like a leg o' mutton and a heart soft as a woman.  He were courtin' a
+girl over at Clumber.  I seed him offen there, but all the time you'd a
+thought he were there to play with the little girl, and not her big
+sister.  Nex' to him were Oll, with a smooth face and a bull neck, and
+brown eyes that were always laughing.  He took arter his mother.  Arter
+him come Seth--long and thin and solum, with a habit of croonin' to
+hisself.  And nex' him were Harry--the devil of the family; straight as
+a ramrod, handsome, and hot-tempered.  He were a fine young chap, and
+the girls ran when he came in sight to put their hair straight.  Then
+come one below six foot--young Willie, who took after his brother Jake,
+and jes' follered Harry like a shadder.  Nex' him were barefooted
+Jimmy--a boy that was a born hunter, and knew more about animiles and
+how to cotch 'em than any man; an' last of all were the baby Tom.  Tho'
+they called him `baby,' he were as big a'most as you, with the hair
+sticking through a hole in his felt hat, and bare brown legs.
+
+"There they stood in a row--the seven sons; and the officer threw his
+eye along 'em.
+
+"`By God!' he sed, `they're fine chips from the ole country.  Well,
+you'll do as you like, Tolver; but take my advice--build a house with
+stone walls out in the clearing, and don't have a thatch-roof.'
+
+"Well; he rode off, and Tolver squatted in that little valley, clearing
+out the bush from the centre, and growing a'most anything.  Many a time
+I went over there to climb the trees for plums with Tom, or go off bee
+huntin' with Jimmie, and in the quiet of the evenin' I've sot outside
+with the others, while Seth he played on his concertina bellers, making
+the saddest music, fit to make you roll over an' cry.
+
+"One night I went over, so to be ready to go on a long hunt nex' day
+with Jimmie, and down the hill there came a Kaffir, with his kerrie
+across his shoulder, and his arms resting on the stick by the wrists,
+after their way of walking.
+
+"`Gumela!' he sed, and stood near by, waiting, drawin' his red blanket
+round him, and his face set like a block o' wood.
+
+"Ole baas Tolver he jes' grunted, and the Kaffir he stood there lookin'.
+
+"Arter a time the ole baas up and sed--`Jake, fetch him a stick o'
+tobacco!'
+
+"Jake riz up, and there seemed no end to him, and he reached out a long
+arm with a yank of black tobak.
+
+"`Yoh!' sed the Kaffir.
+
+"`Oll,' said the ole baas; `step inside for a strip of meat.  Seth, put
+another stick on the fire.  You, Harry, draw a bucket o' water from the
+spring.'
+
+"As, one arter the other, these big chaps riz up from the ground, and
+went striding off about their jobs which the ole man had set them
+a-purpose, the Kaffir looked more an' more s'prised.
+
+"`Sit and eat,' sed the ole baas.
+
+"`Inkosi,' sed the Kaffir; and he squatted down to the fire, with his
+hands out to the blaze, and his black eyes half-closed; while the meat
+spluttered on the coals, giving off a fine smell.
+
+"`Willie,' sed the ole man; `fetch out the guns and give 'em a clean
+up.'
+
+"Willie sprang up--nearly six foot of him--and the Kaffir looked roun'
+the fire at the other two boys.
+
+"`Yoh,' he said, `these men are like trees;' and his eyes shone in the
+light, and on his breast there gleamed white a string of tiger claws.
+
+"So he sot and eat, and then he said he were going on to the Kasouga to
+see his brother, who was herding cattle for a white man.
+
+"When he went the ole man laughed in his beard.  `I guess,' he sed,
+`he'll see we're too much of a mouthful in case they mean trouble.'
+
+"`I hope we haven't frightened him,' sed Harry; `things are gettin' too
+quiet.'
+
+"`The quieter the better,' sed Jake; `we don't wan't any Kaffirs
+swooping down here.  I didn't like the look of that fellow; he said too
+little.'
+
+"`Phooh!' said Harry, `I'd take him with one hand.'
+
+"`I'll jes' walk over to Clumber,' sed Jake, stretching hisself, `and
+fetch the sweet pertaters for sowing to-morrow.'
+
+"Harry laughed.
+
+"`You're getting nervous, Jake,' he sed, `now you're in love.  There's
+somethin' sweeter'n pertaters over yonder.'
+
+"Jake laid Harry on his back--not so's to hurt him, and swung off inter
+the dark, while me and Jimmie and Tom reckoned that Harry was the chap
+if there was any trouble.
+
+"Early next morn, me and Jim stretched away across the veld, towards the
+Fish River, carrying a tin for the honey and a hunk of black bread.
+
+"We'd gone about six miles when Jimmie stubbed his toe, and sit down,
+with a holler, to nurse it.
+
+"`My gum!' he sed, `it's bad; I guess we'll go back and leave this trip
+for nex' week.  There's a honey-tree near home, and we'll go there.'
+
+"I were 'leven and he were sixteen, and what he sed I'd got to do, so we
+turned back, and he limpin'.
+
+"All o' a sudden, when we got in a dip, he give over limpin'.  `Abe,' he
+says, breathin' hard, `there were a Kaffir watching us.  Now you go
+along home--quick!  Don't say nothin' to father.  Maybe the chap's up to
+no mischief, but if he is, I'll find out.'
+
+"`Come back with me,' I sed, skeered.
+
+"`Do what I tell you,' he sez; and when I started to go, he slipped away
+to the left, up the hill.  Well, I went on, gettin' more and more
+skeered, till I saw the house, then I jes' hid away and waited for Jim.
+Bymby, in the afternoon, here he came running, and I run to meet him
+when he slowed down.
+
+"`Whatjer see?'  I asked him.
+
+"`Nothin',' he sez.
+
+"`Whatjer run for, then?'
+
+"`To keep warm,' he sez, though the sweat were running off him.
+
+"Well, when we got to the clearin' we met Jake hauling on a big stump.
+
+"`Well, youngsters,' he says; wiping his forehead with the back of his
+hand; `had a good time?'
+
+"`Jake,' said Jimmie, `there's Kaffirs over yonder.'
+
+"`What's that!  Are you joking?'
+
+"`There's Kaffirs over yonder,' sed Jimmie, staring at his brother; `and
+the chap as was here last night is with 'em.  I heard them call him.
+His name's Tyali.'
+
+"`My God!' said Jake, going white.  `Tell father,' he sed, and then he
+ran.
+
+"I laughed, sneering at Jake, and Jimmie hit me in the side, though his
+mouth were twitching.
+
+"`What the row?' sed Harry, coming up.
+
+"`Kaffirs!' sed Jimmie, scowling after Jake.
+
+"`Hurrah!' sed Harry, and threw up his hat.
+
+"`What's all this I yere from Jake?' said ole man Tolver, striding up.
+`So,' he sed, when Jimmie tole him, putting the ends of his beard into
+his mouth, which were a trick he had when thinking.  `So; they're
+coming.  Well, let 'em come!  I tole that Guv'ment chap I'd stay here,
+and here I'll stay.  If any of you boys would like to go, you'd better
+clear now.'
+
+"They were all of them together--all but Jake, and he had gone running
+into the house.
+
+"`It's too much trouble to run,' said Oll, biting on a piece of grass.
+`'Sides, I ain't finished "scoffling" the mealies.  I'll stay.'
+
+"The ole baas he jes' grunted.
+
+"`So'll I,' said Seth.
+
+"`Ef you all went,' said Harry, with his eyes shining, `I'd stop.'
+
+"The ole baas he jes' grunted ag'in.
+
+"`An' me,' said Willie; `and me too'--`and me,' said Jim and baby Tom.
+
+"`Thank you, my sons,' sed Tolver, softly, and jes' then Jake came outer
+the house--Jake the biggest and the oldest, and the kindest of the
+brothers.  In his hand he carried a big chopping axe, which were like a
+little stick in his grasp.  He looked at his brothers, and his father
+looked at him.
+
+"`I'm going over to Clumber,' he sed.
+
+"`So,' sed his father; and they all stood silent.
+
+"`Yes,' sed Jake after a time, `I give 'em warning.'
+
+"`And take yourself out of danger,' sed the ole baas quietly.
+
+"Jake looked at his father rather sad-like, and then he said: `Shall I
+take Jim and Tom with me?'
+
+"`I won't go,' sed Tom, turning red.
+
+"Jimmie sed nothin', but his lip trembled.  He thought a heap of Jake,
+and here he seed him turnin' tail.
+
+"`Abe,' said Jake, speaking quietly; `you've got no part in this--come
+with me.'
+
+"`I'm not running away,' I sed.  `I'll stay with Harry.'
+
+"Jake opened his mouth as if he'd speak, then he turned on his heel and
+strode away with his axe over his shoulder.
+
+"His brothers turned to look after him, and ole Tolver, he called out in
+a hard voice, `Don't you come back here again.  You're no son of mine.'
+Jake he gave no sign, and I seed Jimmie's face working.
+
+"`Yah! you're afraid like him,' I sed.
+
+"`You lie,' he sed, and hit me 'longside the jaw.
+
+"`Be quiet, boys,' said Oll Tolver, ketching Jim by the arm.
+
+"`Seth,' said the ole baas, speaking short and firm.  `Get ter the top
+of that hill, and keep a sharp look-out.  Willie and Jim, bring the cows
+into the kraal.  Oll and Harry, fill the water barrel, and put it inside
+the house.  Tom and you, Abe, move all the things outer the big room,
+and get the guns ready.'
+
+"Seth sot off up the hill at a lope, and the other boys all went about
+their work, and got things to rights in no time.  Then we hung about
+fidgettin'--picking things up and putting them down, and looking up to
+Seth all the time.
+
+"Arter a long time Seth lifted up his hand, and we all stood in a bunch
+watching him till our eyes ached--then here he come down the hill like a
+cart wheel, while the big chaps grabbed their guns, and I bolted inter
+the house.
+
+"`Are they coming?' shouted Harry.
+
+"Seth nodded as he ran.
+
+"`How many?'
+
+"`One,' said Seth, with a gasp.
+
+"`Good lord!' said Harry, throwing his rifle down.
+
+"`I say,' sed Seth, drawlin' out his words--his neck was that long; `you
+fellows jes' slouch around 's if you were at work.  I'm goin' to meet
+this chap.  Maybe he's a spy.'
+
+"`Seth's right,' said the ole baas; and the boys put the guns away, and
+scattered about as if they were restin'.
+
+"Seth slipped a naked hunting-knife inside the band of his trousers, and
+lounged away up the path; and bymby, when he nearly got to the top, a
+Kaffir came over the ridge, stood a moment looking, then come down.  He
+carried his blanket over his right shoulder.
+
+"When they met, the Kaffir he took snuff, and Seth he gave him a bit of
+tobacco.  Then they talked and talked, and the Kaffir, he kep' his eye
+on the house, and arter a time he kep' movin' around--'s if he'd like to
+get behind Seth--and Seth all the time he kep' his face to the t'other.
+Then the Kaffir went away back, and Seth went up to the ridge again, and
+there was another spell of waiting.
+
+"Then Harry sed he weren't going to fool about any more, and he made
+tracks for the little wood above the clearing, and Willie follered.  No
+sooner'd they got clear than here comes Seth again, like a streak.
+
+"`It's all right,' he sed; `they're comin' thick.  The veld's red with
+'em.'
+
+"They gave a hail for Harry and went inside, and each one looked to see
+the shiny, brass caps were hard down on the nipple--while Tom, he laid
+out the round bullets, and the greased rags for wroppin' 'em in, and the
+slugs handy.  Seth were tellin' how the Kaffir ast him questions, and
+how he seed the assegai under his blanket--then there came a deep sound
+rolling along the ground, which made me hide away in the barrel churn,
+and made the brothers all go silent.  It were the war song of the red
+Kaffirs, deep from their chests, slow and boomin', and solum, and in
+between there were the shrill crying of the women, follering behind the
+fightin' men with the mats and the pots.
+
+"Ole baas Tolver stood at the door looking for Harry, and he give a
+shout for him to hurry; and the Kaffirs came over the crest of the hill.
+Jimmie pushed his rifle through a hole in the wall, with a gasp in his
+throat.
+
+"`Don't shoot!' sed his father; and he looked away to the woods for his
+two sons.  And so they stood, waiting and watching.
+
+"I crept out of the barrel to see what they were looking at so set, and
+there I seed the Kaffirs slipping down the hill, from rock to rock,
+edging all the time towards the wood, and others coming up over the
+ridge, their bodies stripped and oiled for war, and their faces smeared
+with red clay.
+
+"`My God!' sed the ole man under his breath; then he bellered out `Run!'
+
+"I looked between his legs, and seed Harry and Willie comin' up from the
+wood, and walkin' jes' 's if they were comin' in to dinner.
+
+"The Kaffirs yelled when they seed them, and started running.  Harry
+threw up his gun, and they dropped down, hiding away behind nothing.  I
+yeard Harry laugh.  Well, they came on at that fool pace, and all on a
+sudden the Kaffirs came leaping and dodging down.  The two brothers they
+stood still, with their rifles up and fired; then they come on loading,
+and fired again.
+
+"`Run, Willie,' sed Harry; `let's see who can get in first,' and with
+that he made to run, and Willie let out full speed, with the Kaffirs
+yelling like mad.  When he got near the door he looked round and seed
+Harry walking backwards with his rifle ready, and the Kaffirs hanging
+away back and whizzing their assegais.  He made 's if to start back, but
+the ole man caught him by the arm and yanked him in.
+
+"`Fire!' sed the ole baas, and he and the three boys blazed away, Jimmy
+letting rip a handful of slugs.
+
+"Well, the Kaffirs they dropped, crawling for shelter, and Harry came in
+as cool as you please, with an assegai in his hand that he picked up.
+Then he seed me crouching down, and laugh'd a'most till he cried, for I
+were covered with the leavings of the churn.
+
+"They took their places inside the room, each one at a hole, and began
+firing by fits and starts, Tom standin' ready with a charge of powder
+from the horn each time.
+
+"`They're going to rush the cattle,' sed Oll; `and we can't prevent 'em
+from here.  Some of us had better get into the shed.'
+
+"Well, three of them boys went out--Oll, and Harry, and Willie--and
+there were a terrible how-de-do out there, shoutin' an' whistlin', and
+bangin'; the dogs barking fit to bust themselves, the ole red bull
+bellering, and the fowls that had flew to the roof cackling all
+together.  My!  I were skeered, and Tom, he looked if he'd bolt inter
+the tub along with me, but he jes' kep on pouring out the powder.
+
+"Then I yeard `Hurrah,' and ole Tolver tore open the door, and Tom most
+split his throat.
+
+"The Kaffirs were on the run, and when I crep' out, I seed Harry a
+tearin' up the hill arter them, with Will at his heels, then--oh, lad!--
+oh, lad!--from the wood there came out, swift and silent, a party of
+Kaffirs led by the chief Tyali, and they cut between the three boys and
+the house.
+
+"I yeard Oll shout, `Back!  Turn back!' then again, `Together,
+brothers!'--and the three, clubbing their rifles, went straight at the
+chief and his men, an' ole Tolver dancing about at the door, fearing to
+shoot, and Tom staring with his eyes wide, and the powder running from
+the horn on the floor.
+
+"Then there were a whirling crowd of men, and the smack of sticks--and
+the `thud--thud--thud,'--and groans--and out of the pack Oll lurched,
+carrying Willie, whose head lay back limp.
+
+"He came along like a tipsy man--rolling--with his mouth fixed in a
+smile, and the blood running from his head.
+
+"When he were near the door a Kaffir stabbed him in the back, and the
+ole baas shot the Kaffir.
+
+"Then Oll reeled back, and he spoke in gasps, `I can't--go--any--
+further--father--take Will--he's hurt,'--then he jes' sank to the
+ground, and rolled over.
+
+"Seth brought Willie in, and laid him down on the floor.
+
+"And ole man Tolver stood outside the door calling for a loaded gun; and
+then he sprang at a Kaffir who were stooping to stab Oll, and broke the
+stock of his gun.
+
+"I were by the door, 'cause I had no strength to move, and I seed
+someone pass.
+
+"`Get into the house, father,' he sed, `and hold it.'
+
+"It were Jake; and in his hand he held the axe he took away in the
+morning.
+
+"He put his hand on his father's shoulder a moment `Get back,' he sed,
+`for the sake of the boys,' and then he ran up to where the Kaffirs
+still swarmed around Harry.  He opened a lane with his axe.  I tell you
+I thought it were like splitting water-melons, and I laughed, and
+Jimmie, he cried.  The Kaffirs gave way, crouching and holding their
+shields up.  Then Jake lifted Harry, who were on his knees, and carried
+him down.  As he came, the whole lot of them--maybe five hundred--came
+with a rush; then Jimmie dashed out, and took Harry from his brother,
+and Jake stood out alone.
+
+"`Shut the door!' he shouted loud and stern; `do you hear--shut it!'
+
+"The old baas looked wildly at Seth; and Seth he shook his head.
+
+"`Shut it,' sed Jake; `in the name of our mother!' and the ole man with
+a sort of groan pulled the door to, jamming my fingers.
+
+"Outside were the noise of that fight, and inside were silence, and
+white set faces, and the tears running from Jimmie's eyes.
+
+"`Let me out!' he cried; `let me out!' he kep' on cryin'--`let me out!'
+and then he struggled to open the door.
+
+"Then we heard Jake again.
+
+"`Good-bye,' he sed; and we held our breath, till the fierce shout rose
+higher and higher, and we knew Jake were dead.
+
+"Then the ole man's beard curled up.  He forgot about his other sons.
+He opened the door, and with a roar he ran into the Kaffirs, and Jimmie
+with him.  Seth were follering, too, when an assegai whizzed into the
+room, and a Kaffir stood at the doorway, when Seth jabbed him in the
+stomach with the muzzle, and druv his fist into the face of another;
+then he pulled-to the door, and there were only him and Tom and me, with
+Willie dead and Harry gasping.
+
+"Then Seth began to sing.  He'd stop to shoot, then he'd sing again; and
+the sound of his singing were worse than the yelling of the Kaffirs
+swarming all round the house.  Tom he stood up in the room tremblin' and
+loadin', his face black where the smoke stuck to the tears, and once and
+again he'd jump to a hole and shoot.
+
+"And at last an ole pot leg struck Seth on the head and he sot down.
+
+"He put his hand to his head and looked at the blood; then he shook his
+head and laughed a strange laugh.
+
+"`It's all over,' he sed--`dang it.'  Then he saw Harry, and he said
+softly: `Poor chap,' then he stared at Willie, and his eye came on to me
+watchin' him.
+
+"`Abe,' he sed, `you'll find my concertina hanging up; jes' hand it to
+me.'
+
+"Well, I gave it him, and bolted back into the tub, and he began to
+play.
+
+"The Kaffirs stopped, and I yeard one call out `Yinny!' and others said
+`Yoh!' and you could hear them trying to peep in.
+
+"`Tom,' he said soft.
+
+"`Yes, Seth.'
+
+"`You and Abe get into the mealie pit in the pantry.  Maybe, they'll not
+see you.'
+
+"Tom he shook his head, and banged the gun--and the Kaffirs came hard at
+the door.
+
+"Seth he went on playing, and Harry rolled over.  `I've got a pain,' he
+muttered; `mother, I've got a pain,'--and Seth he went on playing softer
+and softer.
+
+"Then I crawled away inter the dark of the pantry--inter the mealie
+hole."
+
+Abe stopped, and his face looked grey and aged.
+
+"Well, Abe?"
+
+"That's all sonny.  They did not find me."
+
+"And what became of Tom?"
+
+"He went with his brothers, sonny.  Seven better boys you'd never want
+to meet, and seven finer men you could not.  They all went--in that one
+day--and the Kaffirs swep' on over the land."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.
+
+OUT OF THE DEEP SEA.
+
+"I see that the magistrate at Port Nolloth has seen the sea-serpent.  It
+was a mile out at sea--raised its head ten feet from the water, and
+remained in sight for an hour."
+
+"Is he partickler about the ten feet?" said Abe Pike.
+
+"Yes, he is explicit on that point."
+
+"Seems to me it's difficult to judge that height at a distance of a
+mile," said Abe; "but, come to think of it, there was a magistrate at
+Mossel Bay who had the same luck about two years ago.  He seed the
+serpent sporting around for a hour off the coast, and the crittur raised
+its head somewhere about ten feet.  So I guess it's the same that's
+cruising off Port Nolloth."
+
+"Ever been to Port Nolloth?" asked Long Jim.  "Well, I have; and the
+country's that lonesome and sand-blown, and gen'rally lost to all sense
+of what's fittin' for human beings to admire, that I'm not surprised the
+magistrate thought he saw something."
+
+"Don't you believe in sea-serpents, Jim?"
+
+"What, me!  Well onct I spent a whole hour trying to smash a sea-serpent
+with rocks, and at the end of that time I found the thing were
+sea-bamboo--round and smooth, and tapering away to a point like a moving
+tail.  No, sir; give me something I can see and feel."
+
+"'Cording to all accounts," said Abe, drily, "if you did feel the
+crittur, it would be when passing down his throat."
+
+"Of course you've seen one, Abe?" said Si Amos with a slight sneer.
+
+"I have," said Abe, quietly, as he reached over for the demijohn of
+Cango.
+
+"Did he lift his head ten feet from the sea?" asked Long Jim.
+
+"I see what it is," said Abe; "you fellows been listening to my
+exper'ences so long that you think I'm lying; and I'm not gwine to
+sacrifice my self-respeck by telling you things you don't believe.
+That's so!"
+
+There was a long pause, as no one felt disposed to make the needed
+sacrifice to Abe's exacting honour.
+
+"Was it a big snake?" asked Long Jim presently.
+
+"Pretty big," said Abe, shortly.
+
+"Twenty feet?" asked Jim, anxiously.
+
+Mr Pike smiled.
+
+"Not so much?" said Jim.
+
+"About a quarter of a mile long," said Abe, rising.  "Well, I guess I'll
+go.  So long."
+
+"Stay a moment," said Jim, firmly; "I can't let you go without saying
+that Abe Pike's word's as true as steel.  A quarter of a mile, you
+said?"
+
+"Might a been a yard shorter," said Abe, carelessly, as he paused at the
+door.
+
+"Come back, old man," said Jim.  "Take this chair--and there's more in
+the jug.  So; that's good.  A quarter of a mile," he muttered.  "Well,
+that's good enough for a stretcher."
+
+"If you come along with me, Jim," said Abe, "I'll tell you about it.
+But I'm not laying myself open to words from them as is full of
+suspicion as a family of jackals."
+
+"That's not fair to me," I said.  "I've swallowed--I mean I've
+accepted--all your stories without question."
+
+"And me, too," said Si, with a gulp.  "Try some of this Transvaal
+tabak--it's first rate."
+
+Abe permitted himself to be appeased.  He filled his pipe, and as he
+leant back in the chair with his heels up on the chimney, and a glass in
+one hand, a reminiscent look overspread his rugged face.
+
+"This yer exper'ence happened to me away back 'fore you younkers wore
+shoes--but I never told it, as I were afraid of skeering the wits outer
+you.  That's so.  The Little Kleinemonde over yonder were a blind river,
+same as now, with a stretch of beach about 200 yards wide 'tween its lip
+and the sea-foam hissing along the hard sands where the little
+tumble-crabs swarm in their shells, and the air comes bubbling up outer
+the sea-worm's holes.  It were more lonely than now--for there's town
+families as picnic there for weeks in their tents--and you can hear the
+little children laugh--and sometimes see a string of girls holding hands
+and jumping up in the foam.  There was never a soul then on the wide,
+white beach, that stretched away miles east and west--with black rocks
+running out into the breakers--and back of the beach the high white
+sandhills, rimmed on the top with thick berry bushes.  It were that
+lonely that sometimes I could have a run away, and the birds that
+flitted along, hunting for what the tide cast up--the oyster catcher and
+the curlew made it lonelier with their wild cries.  And the river lay
+back, still and quiet, without a current--between the dark woods--quiet
+and still--crouching down behind the stretch of beach sand--as if it
+feared the roaring surf--always tossing and thundering jest across that
+narrow riband.  And the waves came always rushing in, as though they
+would like to wash away the sand strip and pour their waters over the
+silent river--and in the spring tides I seed the outermost fringe of
+foam sweep a'most up to the lip of the river--and go back and come up
+again--swinging to and fro--till sometimes a little trickle of the salt
+water would fall into the dead stream, where a many fishes gathered,
+hoping to get out at last into the great wild waters.  I caught fish
+there at them times--going into ten pounds--springers and steinbrasse.
+Well, one day there came a great storm of rain--like a cloudburst--and
+every cattle track and footpath were a running stream--and every river
+bed were filled to the brim.  And in the night I yeard the thunder of
+the waves at the fall of the spring tide.  My!  How they roared through
+the night--and crashed as the big waves curled over and smote the water
+with the blow of a falling rock.  The night were that wild that I could
+get no sleep--and went to the door to look out.  The ground was wet and
+steaming, and the sound of running water came from every dip and hollow.
+I sed to myself the dead river will be alive, and the tide and flood
+will cut a passage deep and wide through the beach, and there will be a
+litter heaped along the tide mark all down the beach, with good pickings
+for the first man.  So I put a sack over my head, and taking the old
+muzzle-loader, stepped out into the slushy dark, and squelched away over
+the sodden veld towards the Kleinemonde.  I struck the ridge above the
+river jest about sunrise, and the light coming through the mist showed
+up the wildest sight of tossing waters and a beach all strewn with trees
+and litter of seaweed.  As I thought, the dead river was alive and
+roaring into the seas through a broad channel cut deep into the sand.  I
+went down to the beach and watched the flood pour out, while the spray
+from the waves druv stinging against my face.  I tell you, it was a
+sight to stand and watch, not heeding the wind or the wet--and the
+savageness of it gripped hold of me.  Bymby I crept along the beach, in
+and out the piled masses o' rubbish--finding a many dead birds and sich
+things--then about noon I was back ag'in at the river--where the
+incoming tide, all red with the wash from the land, was rolling back the
+river water and damming up the channel ag'in with tons of sand and
+seaweed.  I made a fire under the shelter of the wood and cooked a fat
+duck I picked up, and when I finished him off I dried myself by the fire
+while I watched the river.  Jes' then I seed something in the river that
+made me jump behind a tree--the black fin of the biggest shark you ever
+seed, standing out maybe a yard high--and raking back maybe twelve
+feet--with spikes all along.  `Lord luv me!' thinks I; `what in
+thunder's that?'  And I let drive with both barrels, and the thing
+darted off with a rush that sent a wave up both sides of the banks among
+the trees--and far up the river I seed the sun shine on the curve of his
+body as he turned to come down--and I cut my stick.  When I got home I
+set to and bent a fish-hook outen a steel stable rake--lashing on a line
+of buffalo rheims.  I went back, baited the hook with a sea-bird that I
+had picked up, and let it run out, taking a bend round the tree with the
+rheim.  The crittur I reckoned was still there--for why, he couldn't get
+out by reason of the silting up of the channel--though I could see no
+sign of him--and he paid no heed to the bait.  Well, I were getting
+tired, when I noticed some cattle at the bend on the other side, where
+there's a bit of the flat with a `salt lick'--that's a favourite place
+for them, by reason of the salt in the soil.  They were jest capering
+around with their tails up, then standing to stare at something in the
+river, with a ole black bull nearer than the rest, pawing at the ground.
+I could tell there was some crittur there that they didn't like--maybe
+a tiger--but I could see nix beyond a rock or tree stump.  As I watched,
+wondering what could ha' disturbed them, the ole bull shook his head,
+then fetched a deep beller and rolled on a few yards--while the cows and
+young stock behind came together in a bunch.  Then the bull stood
+ag'in--pawing the wet ground--and Lord sakes!--jes' then that rock riz
+out of the river."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Yessir!" and Abe wiped the perspiration from his forehead.  "My sakes!
+I jes' sunk inter the rushes in a tremble, and the ole bull, with a
+beller that rolled down the river, turned to run.  He never got mor'n
+ten yards when he were caught by the neck, and I yeard his bones
+crunch."
+
+"What caught him?"
+
+"A mouth!  It were a mouth that caught him, set in a head like a water
+barrel, with a neck behind thick as a blue-gum tree, blue along the top
+and white below.  Shaped like a snake it were.  It caught the bull by
+the neck, and lay outstretched, sucking his blood, while the four legs
+of the poor crittur beat the air, and the cows standing off rushed about
+lowing.  Eighty yards he was distant, and for all I were in a lather
+from fear, I plunked a bullet jes' back of the opened jaws.  Believe me,
+at the sound of the gun them cows, with their tails up, charged down on
+that sarpint.  Yessirs, they went for him like a troop of hosses.  Some
+of them took the neck flying, without attempting any mischief, but two
+old cows went slap at the body with their horns down, druving them in
+till the blood spurted high.  Then he let go o' the bull, swept the cows
+off their feet, and with a snort slid into the river, and came charging
+down like a steam tug for the mouth--his head lifted high up, and the
+waves streaming as he went I let drive at him as he went by, clean into
+the head--and at the shot he towered up like a column--and, so lifting
+himself, flung half his length onto the sand bar.  Then he wriggled and
+writhed till the bulk of his middle lay high and dry, and the tail of
+him, twenty yards up the river, lashed the water with blows that sounded
+like cannon--till the swell of the waves he raised floated him off, and
+I saw him cut through the waves out into the deep sea beyond."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Yessir, that's all; and if you'd a been there 'sted of me, Si Amos, I
+guess you'd a said it was too much--a darn sight too much for your
+nerves.  As for me, I niver went near the place for a year, and when
+there's a spring-tide I keep indoors.  One thing I seed, and that was a
+growth of barnacles and seaweed on his back, which explains why it is
+that some folk say the sea-serpent has got a mane like a hoss."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.
+
+THE YOUNG BURGHER.
+
+The little Dutch village was astir, where almost hidden by the trees of
+the orchards and quince hedges grown high, it stood beneath the bare
+rock-bound hills beyond Kambula.
+
+The Zulus had lifted the cattle when they grazed homewards at dusk amid
+the thin scattering of dark mimosas on the grey plain.  The herdsman
+lay, with his face to the sky, unburied yet, with a terrible wound in
+his breast, and the long, ugly slit downwards through the abdomen that
+told of Zulu work.
+
+And the Commando was turning out.
+
+Ten men, sitting loosely in their saddles, were all there were--big,
+gaunt men with shaggy beards and lined faces of the colour of smoked
+leather.  Of untanned leather, too, were their trousers and veldschoens.
+Each one carried his food in the small saddle-bag of "rattel" skin,
+food of the scantiest--a strip of biltong, a pound or two of "ash
+cookies"--and slung from each bent shoulder was the powder-flask and
+bullet-bag.
+
+Ten men and a boy--and he alone showed excitement in the brightness of
+his brown eyes and the firm set of his mouth.  A boy so brown that you
+would have said he was of coloured origin, and with clothes so worn that
+no street boy would have envied him.  A sullen boy and dull of wit you
+would have thought from his narrow forehead and bent brows, but there
+was one who did not think so.
+
+"Oh, my _kind_!" she said, standing by the gate in the quince hedge;
+"they do not want one so young.  And there is the wood to be brought
+in."
+
+"Ja!" said one burgher, taking his pipe from his mouth; "he is
+altogether too young for this work.  Let him stay."
+
+"Hear to Oom Jan," cried the woman, stepping across a tiny stream that
+gurgled pleasantly in its narrow bed beside the road; and she laid a
+restraining hand on the old rheim that did service for the boy's reins.
+"Come, my son--my little one."
+
+The boy looked steadily at his mother.  "I am not little any more," he
+said.
+
+"It is true," said the big man who led the little band, turning slowly
+in his saddle.  "He is no longer little.  He must come!"
+
+The woman let go her hold and stood back humbly, while her tear-stained
+face was turned appealingly at the man--her own man; and the burghers,
+smoking, took advantage of the pause to look back at their own wives and
+children, who stood out in the solitary street, drawing comfort from
+each other.
+
+"We must all give," he said.
+
+"Why should I give all?" she cried with renewed hope.  "My husband and
+my son.  Let him stay.  Oh! let him stay!"
+
+"Ride!" said the Commandant, sternly; then he sighed, and rode on in
+silence, never turning.
+
+The boy kept his eyes fixed on his father's broad back; then a lump came
+into his throat.
+
+Oom Jan touched him on his shoulder, and the boy started.
+
+"Do not leave her so, neef," he said.
+
+The boy looked back and waved his ragged cap.  "I will come 'gain soon,
+little mother," he shouted.
+
+"If the Groot Herr wills," muttered Oom Jan.
+
+The boy looked at him sharply, then rode on with his head up and his
+hand firmer upon the stock of his long rifle, as long almost as himself.
+Already his keen young eyes swept the veld for signs of the Zulus--and
+he had forgotten the little house and the little patient mother.
+
+The village soon was left behind, and the little band went slowly over
+the ridge and down the long slope, into a narrow valley, and at dusk
+reached the broken veld that stretches up to the frowning height of
+Hlobane.  It was very silent.  The burghers smoked, but talked not; and
+very plain, and seeming very near, came the dismal baying of a Zulu dog
+from a lofty kraal on Zunguin Nek, where a fire gleamed red through the
+dark.
+
+"There are men there," said the Commandant in a guttural whisper.  "We
+must ride hard in the morning when we return."
+
+"Ja!" said Oom Jan; "else they will cut us off.  I hope they will eat
+and drink much this night, so that they sleep fast."
+
+The other burghers glanced up at the red fire and round into the
+darkness, as if calculating which way they would ride in case they were
+cut off.
+
+Young Piet Uys breathed hard.  He had often looked at the steep height
+of Zunguin's Kop from afar--and now the dark mass that seemed to shut
+out half the sky oppressed him with the sense of hidden danger.
+Moreover, he was hungry and cold.  They had been four hours in the
+saddle, and it was surely time they stopped?  Why didn't they tell his
+father that the horses would grow tired, and that men couldn't go on all
+night without feeding and warming themselves?
+
+"There is water here," he ventured, "and good grass."
+
+"Ja!" growled Oom Jan.
+
+"Perhaps we will stop soon," said the boy timidly.
+
+A burgher on his left grunted, and young Piet felt that he had said
+something stupid.  There was deeper silence now, for they were riding in
+a hollow, and he heard the sound of eating.  Why were they eating?
+Perhaps they would not stop!
+
+"If we stop," said Oom Jan, as if answering his thoughts, "we shall not
+get there before sun-up."
+
+Young Piet sighed heavily and thought of his rheim bed at home, and then
+of the little mother.  He felt now why it was she cried when he left.
+This was weary work--this blundering on over rocks and through cold
+streams, with none of the rush and excitement he had pictured.
+
+"And if we do not get there before sun-up," continued Oom Jan, in his
+slow way, "we lose the cattle and all."
+
+"Hold still!" came a muttered command from the leader.
+
+The men drew up, and the horses shook their heads, then pricked their
+ears, as out of the darkness ahead came the murmur of a chant, swelling
+up to a deep boom, and sinking again till almost inaudible.
+
+"They dance and make merry," said the leader.  "Ride!"
+
+Once more the horses moved on, picking their way, while each man unslung
+his rifle and held it with the butt on his thigh.  And louder rose that
+monotonous chant, mounting to the shrill notes of the women's voices,
+and sinking to the menacing bass of the warrior's deep chest notes; and
+presently there suddenly started out of the gloom a score of gleaming
+fires in a circle at the base of a vast bulk that stood for Hlobane.
+
+"Pipes out!" said the leader.  "Groot Andries, and you Dick Stoffel, and
+you Piet Uys, will stand here, keeping out of sight, and fire on the
+Zulus if they follow.  The rest--ride!"
+
+The two burghers and the boy remained, and the others filed out of
+sight.  Slowly the time passed to these three as they crouched behind
+rocks, with their horses tethered in a hollow, and the cold wind of the
+early morning numbing their fingers and biting their poorly-clad bodies,
+till the grey of the dawn appeared and threw the mountain of Hlobane
+into relief.  The singing had died away as the wind rose, the fires were
+dim, and the silence of the early morn was over the land.
+
+"Look!" said Groot Andries, pointing a huge hand, and a mile off on the
+buttress of the mountain young Piet saw a dark mass in motion, with a
+few moving specks behind.
+
+He drew his breath in sharply, and the misery left his face.  "They are
+driving the cattle," he said.
+
+"Ja!" said Andries, moving in his lair to get more comfortable, and
+sighting along his rifle.
+
+How quickly they come.  Piet could see the gleam of tossing horns--and
+then he counted the riders, with his father riding last.  "They have not
+been seen," he whispered.
+
+"Oh, ja!" growled Stoffel, "the verdomde folk come."
+
+Piet raised his head, and his heart almost stopped, as on the left of
+the cattle he saw Zulus running like greyhounds, speeding to reach a
+kopje by which the cattle must be driven, and his startled glance
+roaming further, marked a thin grey whisp of smoke curling up the
+mountain's dark side, while his ear caught the hoarse sound of the Zulu
+horn spreading the alarm.
+
+Groot Andries turned his head and looked long.
+
+"Alle magtij!" he cried; "they sleep not up there.  May the Groot Heer
+help us out for our wives sake."
+
+Young Piet stared at the big man, then glanced back up Zunguin's
+rock-rimmed summit, and saw tiny dark figures like ants hurrying amid
+the huge rocks.  He moistened his lips, and looked at his horse.
+
+"Mount and ride, neef," said Andries, softly.  "Keep towards the Blood
+River over by Kopje Alleen.  Go, little neef."
+
+"Ja!" growled Stoffel, who was smoking furiously; "loop, little one!"
+
+Young Piet stared at them wildly, then he looked ahead and saw the
+cattle coming on in a mass, with his own red heifer leading.  He saw,
+too, his father stand alone, looking back, while the other burghers rode
+hard behind the cattle, and the Zulus poured along untiring.  Why did
+his father stop?  Could he not see the warriors?
+
+"Father," he screamed; "ride!"  He would have risen, but a heavy hand
+was laid upon him.
+
+"Remember the order," growled Stoffel--"to keep ourselves hid."
+
+"I will be still," said Piet, quietly.  Then he saw his father throw up
+his gun and shoot, while another burgher halted and wheeled round with
+his rifle ready.  With a rush the cattle swept by--the burghers after.
+
+Not one drew rein.  Not even the Commandant, who simply glanced at the
+three forms as he went by, last of all, saying briefly, "Shoot straight,
+and follow fast!"
+
+"Wait, little neef," said Andries, "and don't fire anyhow, but single
+out your man.  Then load, mount, and gallop."
+
+Piet was calm now that he was called upon to act.  He dropped a warrior
+in his stride, loaded quickly, making the ramrod spring, and was waiting
+by his horse with the reins of the other two all ready for their riders.
+
+"Good neef," said Andries, as he swung into the saddle, and having
+momentarily checked the enemy's advance, they dashed after their
+comrades.  A quarter of a mile further on they passed an ambush, where
+three other burghers were lying in readiness, and then they dashed up to
+the cattle with a whoop.  Young Piet, flushed with his act, looked for
+approval from his father, but the Commandant's gaze was fixed anxiously
+ahead on a column of dark figures leaping like antelopes down Zunguin's
+side.  From the rear, too, came the loud slap of three rifles, and the
+angry war shout of the Hlobane warriors.
+
+"They will head the cattle off," said Stoffel; "and we will be caught
+between two fires.  Let us leave the cattle and ride to the left, when
+they will let us go free."
+
+"That is a bad word," said the Commandant, sternly.  "We go back with
+the cattle or not at all."
+
+They rode, then, into a stretch of donga-worn country, where they had to
+slow up; and the cattle, no longer hard pressed, stood to get their
+wind, with their heads down and tongues lolling out.
+
+It was only a brief rest; but the Zunguin warriors profited by it, and
+their fleetest men were already rounding the cattle to turn them up the
+hill.  There rang out the sharp crack of a rifle, and one of the black
+warriors pitched forward on his face.
+
+"Keep your fire," said the Commandant, sternly, as he looked round at
+his son.  "Was that you, Piet?  It was a good shot, my little one."
+
+Piet hung his head, and looked askance to see whether any of the men
+were laughing at him, but they were never so far from laughter as then.
+Several were hedging away to the left, looking at the Commandant out of
+the tail of their small eyes, ready for the bolt across the rolling
+plain to the Blood River.
+
+"We must turn the cattle," said the leader.  "Come, all together," and
+he moved on up the hill.  But no one followed.
+
+"If we are killed," said Oom Jan, slowly, "our wives and children will
+suffer more than if we return not with the cattle."
+
+"Ja, ja! that is altogether true," said the others, eagerly.
+
+The Commandant glanced back and saw that he was alone.
+
+"Keep the Kaffirs back," he said, without any anger, "and I will myself
+turn them."
+
+So he urged on his great horse up the hill, while the others faced about
+and fired, not recklessly, but only when they were sure.
+
+Young Piet looked after his father and feared, and urged his horse
+forward, and drew back as he saw dark figures crouching low along the
+hillside, and flitting swiftly from rock to rock.  Up the hill his
+father went, menacing now one warrior, now another, with his rifle,
+getting at last above the cattle, then with a roar he turned and swept
+the herd before him down on to the rolling grass veld again.
+
+All would have been well if the burghers had stood fast a moment longer,
+but seeing the cattle safe they galloped after, and the Zulus, fearing
+to be baulked of their prey, made their last effort.
+
+"My Gott!" cried the Commandant, "why do you run?  Hold them back!"  But
+the men had got the madness of flight in their blood now, and nothing
+would hold them, though the Zulus were now out on the plain and without
+shelter.  So once again he stood alone, checking the rush of the foe
+with his menacing rifle before he galloped on.  Assegais whizzed by his
+head; then his horse reared with a shrill scream of pain, and he was
+hurled headlong.
+
+When he presently sat up with a ringing in his head, he saw the Zulus
+standing away off with the assegais poised, and he attempted to rise.
+
+"My leg is broken," he muttered.
+
+"Lay still, my father.  Oom Jan will come for you."
+
+The big man looked round and saw his son standing behind, with his rifle
+ready, facing the warriors, alone.  "Oh, Heer!  Oh, Heer!" he groaned.
+"My son, why are you here?"
+
+"Oom Jan will come," muttered the boy, huskily.
+
+"Anything but this," cried the big man.  Then he said sternly, "Give me
+your rifle, Piet, and run--run for your mother's sake.  Run, you are
+untired and the Kaffirs have come miles.  Your rifle--quick!"
+
+Young Piet shook his head.  "Oom Jan will come," he whispered.
+
+The Zulus, silent with quivering nostrils and gleaming eyes, drew in
+closer.
+
+The veld echoed the sound of rapid hoof-beats.
+
+Old Piet Uys raised himself on his arm and looked over the veld.  He saw
+his burghers coming; but they were far, and he faintly heard Oom Jim's
+voice ring out in encouragement.
+
+"Run, my little one," he repeated; "run, I order you!  Your father tells
+you," and the man looked sternly at his son.
+
+The boy shook his head, his lips parted, but the words never came.  The
+next instant his rifle spoke its last message, and the Zulus rushed in.
+
+They found them both; the boy lying across his father's broad breast.
+And the little mother sat tearless through the night crying that "The
+Groot Heer was good, but he had taken all--all," while Oom Jan wept like
+a child.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.
+
+UNCLE ABE AND THE SNAKE.
+
+The day was wet, the ploughing was over, and as we had an idle spell,
+what more natural than that most of us should find business at the
+store? where we sat on bags and boxes, and smoked and talked, or
+sometimes sang beautifully to the wailing tunes from Long Jim's
+concertina.  This day old Abe Pike, humped up on the counter, with his
+heels drumming against the side of it, was holding forth on the iniquity
+of Parliament, when a stranger entered, wringing wet, and Abe stopped to
+investigate his appearance.
+
+"Don't let me interrupt you," said the stranger--a townsman evidently,
+from his dress and assurance.
+
+"Take a seat," said Abe, pointing with his boot at a box of soap.  "Not
+walking, are yer?" with a curious glance at the stranger's
+knickerbockers.  "Going far?  Stopping here long?  Stranger, aren't
+you?"
+
+"Well, yes," said the newcomer with a laugh.  "I've come thirty miles
+since breakfast."
+
+"Grub early?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?  Oh, no; had breakfast at eight, left at nine."
+
+"Phew!" said Abe, "thirty miles in four hours.  Must be a good horse
+you've got."
+
+"It is rather," said the stranger, with a curious smile.
+
+"Hoss knocked up, I s'pose.  Been riding too hard?"
+
+"No, not at all.  He's good for another thirty miles before sunset," and
+he gave us a wink.
+
+Abe looked gravely at the stranger for some seconds, while one by one,
+on some excuse or other, we went outside to look at the stranger's
+horse.  We found a new pattern bicycle in the shed--new to us--and we
+returned to the room looking as much unconcerned as we could, but eager
+to get a rise out of Abe.
+
+"That's a fine animal," said Long Jim; "clean in the limbs, with plenty
+of grit, and full of fire.  Never turned a hair, too, what's more!"
+
+Abe looked at Long Jim, who was trying to suppress a smile; then he
+relit the pipe he had suffered to go out.
+
+"Reminds me," he said, "of that there hoss Topgallant, which carried me
+one hundred miles twixt sun-up and sun-down."  Fixing his eyes on--the
+stranger, he launched into a long yarn about some impossible incident.
+He was not, however, up to his usual form, being suspicious of our nods
+and winks, and the stranger was not astonished.
+
+"It's a curious thing," he said, "that people are slow to believe in
+things which have not come under their own observation unless they read
+of them in print.  Now this very morning I met with an experience which
+may seem to you incredible."
+
+"Go ahead," said Long Jim.  "If you've got a story, tell it, and we'd be
+thankful to you, after the stuff we've been obliged to swallow from Mr
+Pike there."
+
+"If I may say so," said the stranger, "his story was fair, but it lacked
+circumstance.  There is an art in building up a story which perhaps my
+friend on the counter has missed."
+
+"Fire away," said Abe, grimly.  "I'm not too old to larn."
+
+"Thank you.  Of course, you all know the long descent into Blaauw
+Krantz, and the sharp elbow bend in the wood near the bottom before the
+steep fall into the river.  Of course.  Well, I have been in the habit
+of riding out on Saturday evenings to visit a farmhouse on this side,
+and, as a precautionary measure, I ring the bell continuously while
+riding down the slope."
+
+Abe arrested the narrative by a gesture--"Whatjer carry a bell for?" he
+asked, suspiciously.
+
+"To warn people ahead.  You see," with a slight movement of the eyelids,
+"I travel so fast that I am obliged to herald my approach."
+
+"Better carry a trumpet," growled Abe.  "Well, ring along."
+
+"You are doubtless aware," continued the stranger, with a keen look at
+the old man, "that snakes are sensitive to the influence of music."
+
+"I've marked that circumstance," said Abe, with a lingering on the word.
+"Why there's a snake in our Chapel as beats time to the `Ole Hundred,'
+and many a time I've--"
+
+"Oh! shut up," said Long Jim.  "You were saying, sir--"
+
+"My bell," continued the stranger, speaking more rapidly and keeping his
+eye on Abe, "has a most melodious tinkle, and on the second occasion of
+my visit to the house I have mentioned I noticed just at the elbow bend
+what appeared to be the head and neck of a large snake thrust out from
+the bush.  On my next visit I observed the same spot more carefully, and
+saw that I had not been mistaken.  On three separate occasions that
+snake was there, evidently attracted by the music of the bell."
+
+"Why--" began Abe.
+
+"I understand what you mean," exclaimed the stranger.  "Why did I not
+stop?  Because I was travelling too fast; and whenever I returned up the
+hill, going naturally slower, I could never see the slightest trace of
+the snake.  To come to the climax, this morning I sounded the bell as
+usual, and on nearing the bend I saw that there were two snakes, and
+that one of them, in order probably to hear the music more distinctly,
+had glided partly into the road with his head raised about three feet.
+To take the bend I was obliged to keep on the outer edge, which brought
+me closer to the snake than I could wish--and evidently too close for
+his comfort--for as I whizzed by he lost his presence of mind, and,
+instead of retreating, advanced, with the result that his head and neck
+went through the spokes of the front wheel."
+
+"Front wheel!" said Abe with a snap.
+
+"Certainly--the front wheel of the bicycle."
+
+"A bysticle!" ejaculated Abe, with a snort of disgust that would have
+sent us into an explosion of laughter if we had not been too much
+absorbed in the story.
+
+"Of course, the revolution of the wheel swung the remainder of the body
+clear of the bush, and the tail whizzed by my head.  To my fear and
+horror, the next instant my left wrist was seized as in a grasp of iron
+by the tail.  The head, after one or two sickening thuds on the hard
+road, which must have temporarily stunned the creature, slipped out on
+the left side, when the momentum of the wheel immediately strung the
+entire body straight out behind me, where it streamed with all its
+twenty pounds weight acting as a brake."
+
+"A brake?" said Long Jim.
+
+"Yes, sir.  As the tail seized my wrist, the curve of it took a bend
+also round the handle bar.  To that circumstance I owe my life.  The
+slackening in the speed of the machine, over which I had lost control,
+owing to the dead weight of the serpent, prevented what would most
+certainly have been a fatal smash among the boulders in the river bed.
+As it was, the bicycle narrowly missed a large rock, and ran straight
+into deep water, where it was, of course, brought to a stop.  You notice
+that my clothes are wringing wet still.  I was, of course, thrown out of
+the saddle by the jerk of the sudden stoppage, but as my wrist was
+manacled to the handle bar I was in danger of suffocation by drowning."
+
+The stranger paused, and Abe observed him with an admiring glance.
+
+"How did you escape?" asked Long Jim.
+
+"Why, sir, owing to the gratitude of that serpent.  The cold bath
+revived him, and when he realised the situation, he swam ashore and drew
+me out with the machine.  Yes, gentlemen, I assure you that was the
+case.  Then he unwound his tail and moved his wounded head, while
+regarding me with a bright, but rather disconcerting, stare.  I realised
+in a flash what he was waiting for, and I rang the bell for five
+minutes, when he slowly moved off into the wood, looking very sick from
+the severe bashing.  I do not ask you to believe the story, gentlemen,
+but I am convinced that if the next time you come down Blaauw Krantz on
+a bicycle you ring your bell you will credit me with keeping to the
+exact facts."
+
+"That beats your yarns, Abe Pike," said Si Amos, who had often been the
+butt of the old man; "beats them to smithers."
+
+"Jest does, and no mistake," said Long Jim.
+
+"Why, Abe couldn't tell a story like that, with `circumstance' in it, to
+save his life," said a third.
+
+Abe shook his head sadly, and left the store, the stranger bidding him
+good-bye very politely, then turning to join in the laugh.  He was a
+very pleasant young fellow, and he received our open flattery with a
+quite affable air.
+
+Old Abe, however, had not retired vanquished from the scene.  When we
+trooped out of the store we saw him lost in solemn contemplation of the
+stranger's bicycle.
+
+"A good horse, is it not?" said the stranger slyly.  "Like to mount?"
+
+"Sir," said Abe, "allow an old man to shake hands with you.  I'm
+thankful for your offer, but I won't mount now."  The boys laughed.
+"No, sir, not now; but, if you're coming down Blaauw Krantz next
+Saturday week I'll meet you at the top and ride down."
+
+"Can you manage a bicycle?"
+
+"I can't now; but I'll larn.  Is it a go?"
+
+"Let him," said Long Jim, "and we'll all be at the bottom to pick him
+up."
+
+The stranger at last consented, very reluctantly; and it was agreed that
+on the day named we should be at the "drift".  Abe disappeared for
+several days, returning at the end of that time with several scratches
+on his hands and a decided stiffness in his legs.  He would say nothing
+to satisfy our curiosity beyond the simple remark that he had been
+"Larning to steer a lightning wheel-barrer down a hill."
+
+On the appointed day, having satisfied ourselves that Abe Pike meant to
+stick to his contract, we all rode off to the "drift" to await the
+descent and pick up the pieces.
+
+The stranger kept up his side of the agreement; and, as it turned out,
+he gave up his machine into the shaky control of Uncle Abe, after much
+advice upon the art of steering round a corner on a slope.
+
+Precisely at noon we heard, far up the hill, coming out of the dense
+wood which hid the road and the curve from our view, the silver tinkle
+of a bell rung continuously.  Clear and sharp the sound came to us as we
+waited in silence, for the space of a minute, growing louder, till
+suddenly it ceased.  After waiting a minute we all mounted and galloped
+up.  At the great elbow bend we saw the stranger tearing down on foot,
+but there was no sign of Abe or of the machine.
+
+On the road, however, there was the track of the wheel in the dust--a
+track that faded away up the road, but stopped short at the bend.
+
+"Where the blazes!" said Long Jim, looking around and up into the sky.
+
+"What's that in the trees?" said Si, pointing down into the forest below
+the bend.
+
+"It's my cycle!" gasped the stranger, as he came up.  "What a mad fool I
+was to let him ride."
+
+"Damn your cycle!" said Jim; "where's the old man?"
+
+We peered over the edge, and saw him in a thicket blinking up at us.
+
+We had him out and up in no time, while two men climbed the tree to
+recover the machine, the stranger dancing about as if he were on hot
+bricks.
+
+"Is it injured?" he kept on crying.
+
+"Injured be blowed," growled Si Amos; "it'll be injured sharp enough if
+the old man's hurt."
+
+"Who said I was hurt," said Abe suddenly, sitting up and feeling his
+body.  "I'm all right; but, boys, my sakes, you'll never b'lieve me,
+never!"
+
+"What's happened?  Are you all right?  Sure?"
+
+Abe slowly rose and felt himself.  "Yes.  You listen," he said,
+solemnly.  "The stranger's right about them snakes--dead right."
+
+"It's no time to joke," said the stranger, looking ruefully at the bent
+spokes and twisted handle bar.
+
+"You're right there; no man would joke who's jest escaped from death.
+No, sir; I tell you, jes' as I came to this yer bend I looked out for
+the snake, but instead of the snake I seed--and my heart jumped into my
+throat at the sight--a thick rope stretched right across the road from
+the bank on this side to the tree on the other, raised about two feet
+from the level.  The next instant I went smash into it."
+
+"Who could have done that trick?" said Long Jim, with a dangerous look.
+
+"The snake," said Abe, with a croak.
+
+"The snake!"
+
+"Yessir.  I seed the glisten of his scales jes' as I went flying into
+the bush."
+
+"The snake!" said the stranger.  "Absurd!  Rot!"
+
+"It were the snake--the friend of the crittur you hurt," said Abe with a
+groan.  "You see as I allow he were determined to have revenge, and when
+he heard the bell he hitched his jaw to that root hanging down the bank,
+and he stretched his tail round the bough of that tree on the other
+side.  A twenty-foot rock snake he were.  I guess he's got the
+stomach-ache from the hit I give him."
+
+For a moment there was intense silence as the boys grasped the
+situation, then they laughed till they sat down.
+
+"Whatjer laughing at?" said Abe, solemnly, though his lips twitched
+either with fun or pain.
+
+The stranger smiled sadly, then he laughed too.  "Old man," he said,
+"let us shake again.  You have beaten me.  I confess I was lying, and
+you have taken a strong measure to punish me."
+
+"You was lying!" said Abe, opening his eyes and looking the picture of
+astonishment.  "Then why did that durned snake upset me?"
+
+Then he fell back in a swoon, for he had been sore hurt--and we carried
+him to the nearest homestead, while Si Amos rode furiously for a Doctor,
+and Long Jim went about on tip-toe from the room to the door and back in
+a state of restless anxiety.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The End.
+
+
+
+
+
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