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Updated: May 26, 2025
"D d if I do," exclaimed that worthy. "When I was young and played with gentlemen they always gave losers an opportunity of revenge." "Then," replied Anscombe with a flash of his eyes, "let us try to follow in the footsteps of the gentlemen with whom you played in your youth. I suggest that we double the stakes." "That's right! That's the old form!" said Marnham.
Off it went like lightning, whereon Anscombe let drive with the left barrel of the Express, almost at hazard as it seemed to me, and by some chance hit it above the near fore-knee, breaking its leg. "That was a good shot," he cried, jumping on to his horse. "Excellent," I answered. "But what are you going to do?" "Catch it. It is cruel to leave a wounded animal," and off he started.
This meant that I should have been obliged to leave Anscombe alone, which I did not wish to do, so I just sat still and, as I have said, was intensely bored, hanging about the place and smoking more than was good for me.
I don't know the value of either the diamonds or the pipelights, it may be less or more, but for God's sake don't let me see the beastly things again. There's no need, I have plenty." "I must speak to Anscombe," I answered. "The money at stake was his, not mine." "Speak to whom you will," he replied, and I noted that the throbbing vein upon his forehead indicated a rising temper.
Making Anscombe lie down on one of these he turned up his trouser, undid my rough bandage and examined the wound. "Painful?" he asked. "Very," answered Anscombe, "right up to the thigh." After this he drew off the nether garments and made a further examination. "Um," he said again, "I must syringe this out. Stay still while I get some stuff."
It was on our way back to the wagon that I chanced to mention to Anscombe that there was still a herd of buffalo within a few days' trek of Lydenburg, of which I had shot two not a month before. "Are there, by Jove!" he said. "As it happens I never got a buffalo; always I just missed them in one sense or another, and I can't leave Africa with a pair of bought horns. Let's go there and shoot some."
Here I found Marnham, whose eyes were rather bloodshot, though otherwise, except for a shaky hand, he seemed right enough. He murmured something about having overslept himself and inquired very politely, for his manners were beautiful, after Anscombe and as to whether we were quite comfortable and so forth.
She bent down and kissed my brow, while Anscombe took my hand. "Now you know," she answered. "We are both of us alive and well." "Thank God!" I exclaimed. "Kaatje swore that she saw you dead and buried." "One sees strange things in the Black Kloof," replied Anscombe speaking for the first time, "and much has happened to us since we were parted, to which you are not strong enough to listen now.
"No," I answered, "unless you are particularly anxious to say good-bye to the world pinned over a broken ant-heap in the sun, or something pleasant of the sort." Then we rode on in silence, I thinking what a fool I had been first to allow myself to be overruled by Anscombe and cross the river, and secondly not to have taken warning from that war-horn.
We looked at each other as people, yet dazed with the shock, might on a battlefield when the noise of the explosion has died and the smoke cleared away, to see who is still alive. Anscombe spoke the first. "I don't know what you mean or to what you refer," he said quietly.
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