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Updated: May 6, 2025
Jantje let go the horses' heads and uttered a whoop. Mouti, giving up star-gazing, suddenly became an animated being and scrambled into the cart with surprising alacrity; the horses sprang forward at a hand gallop, and were soon hidden from Bessie's dim sight in a cloud of dust.
Next, before Jantje could guess what he meant to do, he proceeded to make it practically impossible for his robbery to be discovered, or at any rate very improbable, by lighting a match, and, having first glanced round to see that nobody was looking, reaching up and applying it to the thick thatch wherewith the house itself was roofed, the fringe of which just at this spot was not more than nine feet from the ground.
Jumping into the cart again, and leaving the dead blesbuck to look after itself for the present not a very safe thing to do in a country where there are so many vultures John, or rather Jantje, put the horses into a gallop, and away they went at full tear.
Jantje was lurking about between the stems of the trees in the peculiar fashion that is characteristic of the Hottentot, and which doubtless is bred into him after tens of centuries of tracking animals and hiding from enemies.
Hendrik paused, stepped a few paces back, resting his shoulders against the wall, immediately the other side of which was Jantje, and began to chuckle aloud and rub his hands as he admired the results of his labours. This proved too much for the Hottentot behind him. The provocation was overmastering, and so was the opportunity.
The next moment, in obedience to a sign from the officer, six couples detached themselves from the main body of the soldiery; and in a trice the two young Englishmen and their four dark-skinned followers, Mafuta, Ramoo Samee, Jantje, and 'Nkuku the latter absolutely shivering with fear found themselves prisoners, with their arms tightly bound behind them with stout raw-hide thongs.
I will be responsible for the prisoners till then." The man growled out an answer something about the rain, and then departed round the end of the building, followed by Muller. "Now then, come on," whispered Jantje; "there is a hole in the store-room wall, and you may be able to speak to Missie Bessie." Jess did not require a second invitation, but slipped up to the wall in five seconds.
Now this vilderbeeste lay within a hundred yards of them, and Jantje pointed out to John that his best plan would be to get out of the cart and creep on his hands and knees up to the dead animal, from the cover of which he would get a good shot at his own wounded bull.
Then, while Jantje and 'Nkuku loosed the oxen and drove them to the water-hole, Ramoo Samee prepared a couple of cups of strong black coffee, which Mafuta carried into the tent; and as the Kafir looped back the flaps of the entrance, giving admission to a flood of brilliant sunlight and a brisk gush of cool, invigorating air, Dick stirred uneasily in his hammock, sat up, rubbed his eyes, and exclaimed, sleepily: "Hillo, Mafuta, surely it is not yet time to turn out, is it?
Jess laughed, and answered, "Jantje does not like Frank Muller any more than I do, but I don't know why. He will never tell me." He did not find this a disagreeable task, especially when he had so fair an instructress as Bessie, who knew all about it, to show him the way in which he should go.
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