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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Hans," I said, "you have to be a bait for vultures; choose if you will be a live bait or a dead bait," and I cocked the rifle significantly, although, in truth, the last thing that I wished or intended to do was to shoot my faithful old Hottentot friend. But Hans, knowing all I had at stake, came to a different conclusion. "Allemachte! baas," he said, "I understand, and I do not blame you.
Yet I say outright that I think you are foolish to visit this king with so large a force. Still, I am ready to do so myself with one or two others. Let me go, then, and try to persuade him to sign this treaty as to the land. If I am killed or fail, you can follow after me and do better." "Allemachte!" exclaimed Retief; "that is a fair offer.
For a long while he stared at me, for I had laid him in the mouth of the cave, where the light was good, although the overhanging rocks protected him from the sun. Then he said: "Allemachte! you remind me of someone, young man. I know. Well, whoever you are, you can't be he, thank God." "You are mistaken, Heer Pereira," I answered.
I called to Hans, who was loafing about outside, and said quietly: "I ride to Port Elizabeth, and must be there by eight o'clock to-morrow morning." "Allemachte!" exclaimed Hans, who had been that road several times. "You will go with me, and from Port Elizabeth on to Delagoa Bay. Saddle the mare and the roan horse, and put a headstall on the chestnut to lead with you as a spare.
"I give thanks for the safe return of Allan here, though it is true they would be warmer if he had left this stinkcat behind him. Allemachte! Henri Marais, why do you make so much of this Portuguese fellow? Has he bewitched you? Or is it because he is your sister's son, or because you want to force Marie there to marry him?
"Allemachte!" exclaimed Retief, "this is serious," and, as though to summon them to my help, he looked behind him towards the main body of the Boers, who by this time were nearly all of them through the gate, which was guarded by a great number of Zulus. "Allan," he went on, "if you are not afraid, I think that you must go.
"There, nephew," she said triumphantly, "there are more ways of killing a cat than by drowning. What a fool I was not to think of the vatdoek at first. Allemachte! how the flesh has burnt me; I don't suppose that being killed would hurt much more. Also, if the worst comes to the worst, it will soon be over.
I looked, and there with outstretched wings lay the foul bird dead, stone dead, eight or ten paces from the bodies. "Allemachte! that's better," said Hans. "You threw stones on to all the other heaps, didn't you, baas?" The Zulus grew excited, and the odds went down a little. The Boers stretched out their white faces and stared at me; I saw them out of the corner of my eye as I loaded again.
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