before you sailed into him?”
“Not one bally second,” replied Frank briskly.
“Well,The main benefit of using, then–you’ve trodden on these chaps’ corns pretty hard, and you might as well tell them you were only larking.”
The speaker was on tenterhooks, for he knew by experience what a difficult customer Frank Wenlock was to manage on the few occasions when he had had a drop too much. The chances that he would become obstreperous and provoke a general row or not were about even. But either the moral influence of his mentor was paramount, or some glimmer of the logical faculty had worked its way into Frank’s thoughtless but good-natured mind, and he was amenable.
“Toen, kerelen, I didn’t mean anything,” he called out in Dutch; “I was only larking. Let’s have another drink all-round.”
“No, you don’t, Frank,” said Colvin quickly and in an undertone. “You’ve quite enough of that cargo on board already.”
By this time the horses were inspanned,throw the pots and pans, and the two went among the group of Boers to bid farewell. Some put out a paw with more than half a scowl on their faces, others turned into the house to avoid the necessity of shaking hands with Englishmen at all. Among these was Hermanus Delport.
“Ja, wait a bit!” he growled, half aloud. “Wait a bit, friend Wenlock! If I don’t put a bullet through you before this year is dead, I’ll–I’ll become an Englishman.”
And he rubbed some raw spirit on his now fast-swelling bruises, a dark and vengeful scowl upon his heavy face. The seed scattered by Andries Botma had been well sown.
Chucking a sixpence to the ragged, yellow-skinned Hottentot, who sprang away from the horses’ heads,from the distance like a thick, Colvin whipped up, sending the buggy spinning over the flat Karroo road,swamps his national feeling, the dust flying up obliquely from the hoofs and wheels in a long, fan-like cloud. They were return
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