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Updated: June 22, 2025
He only sat himself again upon the disselboom of the wagon and went on cutting up the tobacco viciously, as though he were slicing the heart of a foe. Even the Vrouw Prinsloo was silent and stared at him whilst she fanned herself with the vatdoek. But Retief spoke. "I wonder if you are mad, or only wicked, Henri Marais," he said.
I suppose everybody by this time knows, either from pictures or from having seen the thing itself, what a South African wagon is like; and also knows that it is drawn by a team of from twelve to eighteen oxen yoked together in pairs, the cleverest pair being yoked next the wagon to the disselboom which answers to the ordinary carriage pole where a pair of horses are driven abreast while the remainder of the team are yoked, also in pairs, to the trek chain, which is attached to the extremity of the disselboom.
Had it not broken the cart would have overset; as it was, in another minute, oxen, cart, trektow, reims, broken disselboom, and everything were soon tied in one vast heaving, plunging, bellowing, and seemingly inextricable knot.
Now I advise you to take a walk, and when you are calm again, to pray God to forgive you your wicked words, lest they should be fulfilled and drag you down to judgment." Then we all went, leaving Henri Marais still cutting up his tobacco on the disselboom. On the Sunday I met Marais walking about the camp, followed by the guard whom Retief had set over him.
"The oxen, which were as usual tied to the disselboom of the Scotch cart, were very restless they kept snuffling and blowing, and rising up and lying down again, so I at once suspected that they must wind something. Presently I knew what it was that they winded, for within fifty yards of us a lion roared, not very loud, but quite loud enough to make my heart come into my mouth.
As it was, Harry was run over, and poor Jim-Jim being caught by the trektow somewhere beneath the arm, was hurled right across the skerm, landing by my side only some paces off. "Snap went the disselboom of the cart beneath the transverse strain put upon it.
Later in the evening, but while it still was moonlight, the boy descended from his seat and ran forward to belabor the first spans of oxen. This was the opportunity for which Burnham had been waiting. Slipping quickly over the driver's seat, he dropped between the two "wheelers" to the disselboom, or tongue, of the trek wagon.
They have trekked back along the Middelburg Road, and are a dozen miles off by now, I'll be bound. Now, no words; go, both of you. "Tom, the driver, swore and caught the lad a hearty kick, which he richly deserved, and then, having tied old Kaptein up to the disselboom with a riem, they took their assegais and sticks, and started.
I have never seen them from that hour to this. "I sat down on the black veldt by the spring, and gazed at the charred axles and disselboom of my waggon, and I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, I felt inclined to weep. As for Mashune and Hans they cursed away vigorously, one in Zulu and the other in Dutch. Ours was a pretty position.
Then we set to work on the laager. The waggons, of which, including my two, there were ten, were drawn into the form of a square, and the disselboom of each securely lashed with reims to the underworks of that in front of it.
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