United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She shut them quickly so that the gleam reflected from them should not betray her, then held her breath and remained still as the dead. In another second Muller took away the light and replaced it on the mealie bag. "So you say you saw it all. Well, it must have shown you that I was in earnest. The old man took it well, did he not? He is a brave man, and I respect him.
April had gone off to see that the oxen did not wander too far. Jan lighted a fire, made coffee for us, and broiled some meat and green mealie cobs. We felt better after our meal, though we had not been hungry for it. Then, to my surprise, Jan settled down to enjoy his share, as close to the fire as he could.
Presently the viands made their appearance a haunch of venison, cut from a buck that Grosvenor had shot early that morning, served sparingly with red currant jelly, the last pot of which had been opened for the occasion, sweet potatoes, purchased from the savages a few days earlier, "flap-jacks" so called because they could find no other name for them made by Ramoo Samee of flour, mealie meal, and water, and baked over the embers of the cooking fire, a few wild guavas, and as much water from the stream as they cared to drink, followed by a very small cup of coffee each, for both coffee and sugar were now becoming exceedingly scarce commodities with them.
There are the sheer kloofs cut in the hills by the rushing rains of centuries, down which the rivers sparkle; there is the deepest green of the bush, growing as God planted it, and the other greens of the mealie gardens and the sugar patches, while now and again a white house, smiling out at the placid sea, puts a finish and gives an air of homeliness to the scene.
A short gallop sufficed to carry them to the crest of the ridge, when they beheld the dogs baying and snarling round a fine, well-set-up native "boy", who, armed with assagais and knobkerrie, constituted one of a party of some thirty in number who appeared to be guarding a herd of about three hundred grazing cattle, while about half a mile farther on was a native village of some fifty Kafir huts of the usual beehived shape, built in the midst of a number of mealie fields occupying an area of, roughly, about half a square mile, situated near the banks of a small stream.
Somehow I did not seem to fancy that portion of it which touched the platter, for who knew what those dishes might have contained and how often they were washed. Stephen also appeared to have found salvation on this point, for he, too, patronized the mealie cobs and the pumpkin; so did Mavovo, and so did even that inveterate meat-eater, Hans.
My mother called the white-faced cow and gave it mealie leaves which she had brought with her. Then the boys went on with the cattle, but the white-faced cow stopped by my mother. She said that she would bring it to the kraal when she came home. My mother sat down on the grass and nursed her baby, while I played round her, and the cow grazed.
In the mealie gardens I stopped awhile, for I was very hungry, and filled myself with the half-ripe mealies. Then I went on till I came to the kraal. Some of my people were seated outside of a hut, talking together over a fire. I crept near, silently as a snake, and hid behind a little bush. I knew that they could not see me outside the ring of the firelight, and I wanted to hear what they said.
I mounted my horse, and, quite alone, rode up the valley, noticing with a strange prescience of evil that the road was overgrown, and, save for the music of the waterfalls, the place silent as death. The kraals that used to be to the left of the road by the river had vanished. I rode towards their site; the mealie fields were choked with weeds, the paths were dumb with grass.
Condiments were no longer available; mealie meal was withheld, and the soup had thus become thinner and less seasoned. But the trade had been established, and business continued brisk. The meat used was strictly orthodox. The Press dilated speciously on the economy practised under the system and on its general advantageousness. Universal confidence was reposed in the Soup Directorate.
Word Of The Day