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I have seen one or both of the boys return of an evening after having been up at five or six, and out all day, scarce able to decide whether to eat or sleep! Counting and guarding the flocks formed a part of the duty. One evening the report was brought that a horse and thirteen bucks had disappeared. The Kafir thief had driven them off in the direction of Somerset.
"Come here, Stomp," said Bessie, and as she spoke a wild hope shot across her heart like a meteor across the night: perhaps the letter was from John. The dog obeyed her unwillingly enough, for evidently he did not like that Kafir; and when he saw that Stomp was well out of the way the Kafir himself followed.
This Kafir said that he had been watching the fight from a mountain; that the English were completely hemmed in and fighting well, but that "their arms were tired," and they would all be killed at night-time. The Boers, he said, were not suffering at all the English could not "shoot straight." After hearing this they passed a sufficiently miserable day and evening.
Considine, although "lost," was sufficiently aware of his whereabouts to understand that he was near the north-eastern frontier of Cape Colony. He deemed it prudent, therefore, to unsling his gun. On drawing nearer he became convinced from the appearance of the stranger that he could not be a Kafir.
He touched nothing belonging to the white men, though guns and blankets and other tempting objects were more than once within reach of his hand. Neither did he attempt to steal that which to the Kafir is the most coveted prize of all a fat ox. Gradually he melted away into the darkness from which he had emerged.
You never see a Kafir without something of the sort in his hand: if he is not twirling a light stick, then he has a sort of rude reed pipe from which he extracts sharp and tuneless sounds. As a race, the Kafirs make the effect of possessing a fine physique: they walk with an erect bearing and a light step, but in true leisurely savage fashion.
He also knew that the exhibition of a trustful spirit goes a long way to create good-will. That his judgment was correct appeared from the fact of the Kafir holding out his hand and allowing George to grasp and shake it. But what to do next was a question that puzzled the white man sorely, although he maintained on his good-natured countenance an expression of easy nonchalance.
"The Kafir waits to kiss the dust of your sublime feet," replied the vizier. "Let him approach, then, Mustapha," said the pacha joyfully, and the renegade immediately made his appearance. "Kosh amedeid, you are welcome, Huckaback. We have had our ears poisoned since you quitted us. I forget where it was that you left off."
A very striking, and rather unfortunate instance of this false style of judgment occurred not many days afterwards in reference to some Kafir princes and chiefs: it was on the occasion of my quitting Port Elizabeth for Capetown. We were to have started on a Saturday afternoon, but a gale said "no," and we left on Sunday morning.
Whilst doing so they came at Fipa on the Wapoka, another offshoot of the Cushite-Abyssinians, who, crossing the Nile, took the name of Wahuma, and have spread as far down south as Fipa, where their name, in course of time, had changed from Wahuma to Watusi, and from Watusi to Wapoka, in the same way as the Watuta had changed their name from Masai to Kafir and Zulu Kafir, and again from that to Watuta.
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