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When a man writes such a letter as that to the representative of the English Queen he needn't mind his spelling; it will be swallowed with the rest," and he leaned back in his chair and laughed softly. "Now, Meinheer Coetzee, what is it? Ah, I know; the prisoners. Well, what did you do?" Hans told his story, and was rambling on when the General cut him short. "So, cousin, so!
You are old, Uncle Silas, and I don't want to have to hurt you. Come now, come, come," and he held out his hand towards him as though he were a shy horse that he was endeavouring to beguile. "Hans Coetzee, traitor and liar that you are," said the old man, "if you draw a single step nearer, by God! I will put a bullet through you."
But now both the enemy and our own burghers, under Commandant Coetzee, fired at him so persistently that he was thankful to reach the rock. He lay there as still as possible, with his gaze fixed on the reef as he lay without cover on that side. It was a most critical moment. Fortunately he heard, almost at once, one of his comrades, Van Zulch, call out 'Oh, the white flag!
"The Boers are coming with a waggon, twenty of them or more, with Frank Muller at their head on his black horse, and Hans Coetzee, and the one-eyed Basutu wizard with him. I was hiding behind a tree at the end of the avenue, and I saw them riding over the rise.
At that moment, an old Boer, named Hans Coetzee, with whom John was already slightly acquainted, came up, and, extending an enormously big and thick hand, bid them "Gooden daag." Hans Coetzee was a very favourable specimen of the better sort of Boer, and really came more or less up to the ideal picture that is so often drawn of that "simple pastoral people."
Also, in the biggest chair at the other end of the room, a moderate-sized slop-basin full of coffee by her side, sat Tanta Coetzee, still actively employed in doing absolutely nothing. There, too, were the showily dressed maidens, there was the sardonic lover of one of them, and all the posse of young men with rifles.
There was a little hum of conversation, and poor Bessie, surveying the scene through the crack in the store-room wall, groaned in bitterness and despair of heart. Then Hans Coetzee spoke. "It cut his bosom in two," he said, "to have to say a word against one to whom he had for many years been as a brother. But, then, what was he to do?
Old Hans Coetzee told me that he denounced him to the Veld-Cornet as an uitlander and a verdomde Engelsmann about two years before the annexation, and tried to get him to persuade the Landrost to report him as a law-breaker to the Raad; while all the time he was pretending to be so friendly.
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cavalcade began to appear in front of the window, led, as Jantje had said, by Frank Muller on his black horse, accompanied by Hans Coetzee on the fat pony, and the villainous-looking Hendrik, mounted on a nondescript sort of animal, and carrying a gun and an assegai in his hand.
This latter intelligence was very acceptable, for I was anxious to renew acquaintance with the President, and with a personal friend of mine, Mr. J. C. Krojk, who was attached to the Field Government. Therefore, on receiving this instruction, I set out from Pilgrim's Rest accompanied by Adjutants Nel, Coetzee, Bester, and Potgieter, for the place where the Government were encamped.
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