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Next day the clay wall was carried two feet higher, and then the doctor made them work on the other side and buttress the dyke with supports so enormous as seemed extravagant to Dick and Phoebe; but, after all, it was as well to be on the safe side, they thought: and soon they were sure of it, for the whole work was hardly finished when the news came in that the dyke of a neighboring Boer, ten miles off, had exploded like a cannon, and emptied itself in five minutes, drowning the farm-yard and floating the furniture, but leaving them all to perish of drought; and indeed the Boer's cart came every day, with empty barrels, for some time, to beg water of the Dales.
"Did you not know that a Boer's oath is only good so long as a gun is pointed at him? Perhaps it will be like this again, and when you have conquered them you will again trust them, and march away. But they tell us, it is not you who will conquer them, but they who will conquer you.
Men who wore spectacles were numerous, while those who suffered from diseases which debar a man from a regular army were without number. The high percentage of men unfit for military duty was not due to the Boer's unhealthfulness, for he is as healthy as farmers are in other parts of the earth.
Through some difference with his employer he was dismissed; and his own version of the affair indicates that he suffered considerable injustice. From the evidence given in the case in which he subsequently figured it appeared that in order to urge his grievance he returned to the Boer's farm and even re-entered the house which he had formerly occupied.
"It was well worth seizing, for it completely commanded the Boer's position on Laing's Nek, and had the whole force come up the Boers must have fallen back directly it was captured. However, Colley decided not to wait, and with about five hundred and fifty men and officers he started at night.
Such dependants are otherwise treated with familiar equality, as are also other white employees, and are admitted at the common table like any of the family, but below the salt. To acquire farms is a Boer's greatest ambition. The love of land is his special passion, so that his children also may be independent owners of farms.
I ran stumbling through a stubble of boulders, around an upstanding rock spire, back to the path again. There were other shots. Then De Boer's voice, faint by distance: "Stop! Fools! We will alarm the village! The landing field can see our shots from here! Take it easy! You can't get him!" The turmoil quieted. I went around a bend in the path, running swiftly. Pursuit was behind me.
We knew little of our route save that our destination lay due east, so due east we steered. After riding for about twenty miles, and crossing the Mahaliesburg range, that stretches away north for hundreds of miles, we came to a Boer's house, where we off-saddled to feed our horses.
Like gloomy sentinels, furry cattails nod in the bog where the blue gentian peeps timidly into murky pools; the only human habitation in sight some heath boer's ling-thatched hut, flanked by rows of peat stacks in vain endeavor to stay the sweep of the pitiless west wind.
If he'd had money, wouldn't he have bought a horse? Men who walk are thieves, liars, murderers, Rome's priests, seducers! I see the devil in his nose!" cried Tant Sannie shaking her fist at him; "and to come walking into the house of this Boer's child and shaking hands as though he came on horseback! Oh, no, no!"
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