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Updated: May 21, 2025
"Never mind, missie, never mind," gasped the Hottentot, his ugly face growing livid with fury, "it is only one more to me. I cut it on this stick" and he held up a long thick stick he carried, on which were several notches, including three deep ones at the top just below the knob.
There was a child in the tavern on the veld; it lay in an old orange-box, half-filled with shavings, covered with a thin, worn blanket, in the daub-and-wattle outhouse, where the Hottentot woman, called the chambermaid, and the Kaffir woman, who was cook, slept together on one filthy pallet.
Knowing that a Hottentot kraal could not be many miles away, and unwilling to leave two human beings to such a fearful fate, the travellers determined to take the helpless creatures back to the people who, as Swartboy worded it, had "throwed 'um away."
They are sent now to be taught in Europe, those daughters of the Rand millionaires, the Stock Exchange speculators, the wealthy fruit-farmers, or cereal-growers, or cattle and sheep breeders, who are descended themselves from the old pioneers and voortrekkers, but they do not get a better education than was to be had at the Convent school at Gueldersdorp, where the Sisters of Mercy took in and taught and trained coltish girl-children, born in a strongly stimulating climate, and accustomed to lord it over Kaffir and Hottentot servants to their hearts' content.
There are forty of them, who darken the whole firmament in their flight; but sometimes they all coalesce into one great black storm-fiend, who rages for blood, like a werewolf. In South Africa we find the werewolf himself. A certain Hottentot was once travelling with a Bushwoman and her child, when they perceived at a distance a troop of wild horses.
So it came to this, that if anything was to be done, these two women and a Hottentot must do it, since they could hope for no help in their plans. Here I should add that the vrouw told Marie in Hans's presence that she had thought of attacking the commandant as to this matter of my proposed shooting by Pereira.
Thus was the first blow struck; but another and a heavier was soon to fall upon those who had so long sported with the lives of their fellow-creatures. The press was called to the aid of the Hottentot, and a work published by a missionary roused the attention of the public at home to their situation. Their cause was pleaded in the House of Commons, and the Hottentot was emancipated forever."
Next day a navvy had returned to the railway works. "Where have you been so long?" his comrades asked. "He keeps looking over his shoulder," said one, "as though he thought he should see something there." "When he drank his grog today," said another, "he let it fall, and looked round." Next day, a small old Bushman, and a Hottentot, in ragged yellow trousers, were at a wayside canteen.
God in mercy check the current of my brain," muttered Philip, "or my reason cannot hold its seat!" Just at that period the Dutch had formed a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, where the Indian fleets used to water and obtain cattle from the Hottentot tribes who lived on the coast, and who for a brass button or a large nail would willingly offer a fat bullock.
He called upon the said Hans and Marie herself to tell them the story, since I was too weak to do so. Thus adjured, the little Hottentot, smothered as he was in blood, stood up. In the simple, dramatic style characteristic of his race, he narrated all that had happened since he met the woman on the veld but little over twelve hours before, till the arrival of the rescue party.
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