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Updated: May 6, 2025
"You'll need all your own pluck presently," retorted Orpin, who thereupon told them that hundreds of Kafirs were on the other side of the ridge, and would be down on them in a few minutes. Indeed, he had not finished speaking when the ridge in question was crossed by the black host, who came yelling on to the attack, the few mounted men leading.
One of the Hottentots being called to interpret, the hunters were informed that the Fetcani had threatened to attack the town, and that the inhabitants were busy putting themselves in a state of defence. They were glad, said the chief, to see the white men, and hoped they would stay to assist him. To this Stephen Orpin replied through the interpreter.
Seeing the urgency of the case, Conrad Marais, who was considered a pretty good shot among his fellows, took steady aim, and, at the risk of hitting the white man, fired. The right arm of the savage dropped by his side and the assagai fell to the ground, but, plucking another from his bundle with his left hand, he made a furious thrust. Stephen Orpin, swaying aside, was only grazed by it.
Great was the surprise of the farmers when they heard a loud shout, and beheld a white man flying for his life from a solitary savage. With the promptitude of men born and bred in the midst of alarms, they seized their guns and issued from their fortified enclosure to the rescue, but the Kafir was already close to Orpin, and in the act of raising his assagai to stab him.
Stephen Orpin was a mechanic and a Wesleyan, in virtue of which latter connection, and a Christian spirit, he had been made a local preacher. He was on his way to offer his services as a watcher by the bedside of the dying man. This man and his opponent were not the only emigrants who finished their course thus abruptly.
The spot chanced to be so far advantageous that a high precipice at his back rendered it impossible to attack him except in front, where the ground was pretty open. Orpin was by no means a milksop, and, although a Christian man, did not understand Christianity to teach the absolute giving up of all one's possessions to the first scoundrel who shall demand them.
One of them died before he landed; the other was the man of whom Orpin now spoke. The sudden change in the demeanour of the brothers Skyd surprised as well as gratified Sandy Black.
In pursuance of that idea, he made his way to one of the Wesleyan mission stations in Kafirland. On the road thither he came to a Kafir kraal, where the men seemed to be engaged in the performance of a war-dance. On being questioned by these Kafirs as to who he was, and where he came from, Orpin replied, in his best Kafir, that he was a trader and a missionary.
Not every one was so cunning as the parish clerk of Bradford-on-Avon, Orpin, who took out the window-frames from his interesting little house near the church and inserted numerous small single-paned windows which escaped the tax. Surrey and Kent afford an unlimited field for the study of the better sort of houses, mansions, and manor-houses.
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