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Allemachte! man, if I had aimed at you, could I have missed at that distance?" "You did not quite miss, and had I not stepped to the left, you would have blown my head off. Say your prayers, you dog!" "Allan Quatermain," he exclaimed with desperate energy, "you think I lie, who speak the truth. Kill me if you will, only then remember that you will hang for it.

I answered that I should have thought he had done enough solitary travelling in this veld, seeing how his last expedition had ended. He replied that he had, indeed, but everyone here was so bitter against him that no choice was left. Then he added with an outburst of truth: "Allemachte!

Accidents sometimes happen to men who are not wanted, especially in wild countries or, for the matter of that, to those who are." "Allemachte! Allan, you do not mean that I " "No, mynheer," I interrupted; "but there are other people in the world besides yourself Hernan Pereira, for example, if he lives. Still, I am not the only one concerned in this matter. There is Marie yonder.

I think the whisper was heard, though not the words, for I saw Pereira bite his lip and make a movement as though to interrupt her. But Pieter Retief thrust his big form in front of him rather rudely, and said with one of his hearty laughs: "Allemachte! friend, let the missje wish a good journey to the young fellow who saved her life."

But all that is a matter of history, of which I shall have to tell later. Now, while Pereira was mocking and bragging of his prowess, Pieter Retief looked at me, and our eyes met. "Allemachte!" he exclaimed, "is that the young man who, with half a dozen miserable Hottentots and slaves, held this stead for five hours against all the Quabie tribe and kept them out?"

Moreover, I think that if I had told him I was riding to the moon, beyond his customary exclamation of "Allemachte!" he would have made no objection to accompanying me thither. The next half-hour was a busy time for me. Henri Marais's money had to be got out of the strong box and arranged in a belt of buck's hide that I had strapped about me.

"Allemachte!" said Retief angrily, "if you will not grant me a favour, let it be. Or is it that you want reward? If so, all I can promise you is twenty thousand acres of the best land in the country when we get it." "No, Mynheer Retief," I replied; "it is no question of reward; and as for the land, I have already pegged out my farm on a river about thirty miles to the east.

The two parties arrived at the stone upon which I was sitting almost simultaneously, as probably it had been arranged that they should do, and halted, staring at each other. As for me, I sat still upon my stone and smoked on. "Allemachte! Allan," puffed the Vrouw Prinsloo, who was breathless with her walk up the hill, "so here you are!

Only when it was finished the Heer Meyer, whose natural gloom had been deepened by all these events, said: "Allemachte! but you have luck, Allan, to be left when everyone else is taken. Now, did I not know you so well, like Hernan Pereira I should think that you and that devil Dingaan had winked at each other." The Vrouw Prinsloo turned on him furiously.

"With loopers you would seldom kill a bird, mynheer," I replied, "for they come over from seventy to a hundred yards up. No, I mean with rifles." "Allemachte!" broke in a Boer; "you will want plenty of ammunition to hit a goose at that height with a bullet."