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Marie, how many guns are there?" "Four," she answered, "of my father's; two 'roers' and two smaller ones." "And how many of these men" and I pointed to the Kaffirs "can shoot?" "Three well and one badly, Allan." "Good," I said.
The attacking Zulus heard the mockery of their fellows, and rushed forward again with a roar. But the Boers in the laager had found time to load, and they met with a warm reception. Reserving their fire till the Zulus were packed like sheep in a kraal, they loosed into them with the roers, and the warriors fell in little heaps.
Our hope was that the sound of these guns might terrify the foe, should there be occasion to use them before our forces joined up again, and make them think they had to do with a body of raiding Dutch white men, of whose roers as the heavy elephant guns of that day were called all natives were much afraid.
There beneath her, within a few paces indeed, for the ground sloped steeply to the stream, men were passing. The first of these was white, and he carried a white woman in his arms; the rest were Kaffirs, some of whom wore karosses or cotton blankets, and some tattered soldiers' coats and trousers, while all were well armed with "roers" or other guns, and had powder flasks hung about their necks.
As the sun got up I could see something of the host around me. I am no hand at guessing numbers, but I should put the fighting men I saw at not less than twenty thousand. Every man of them was on this side his prime, and all were armed with good rifles and bandoliers. There were none of your old roers and decrepit Enfields, which I had seen signs of in Kaffir kraals.
Now please talk no more nonsense to us, which it makes us sick to hear, and don't think that you can slip away because we are only two, for you know our roers are loaded with slugs, and we have orders to use them." "There," I said when I had shut the door, "now you have heard for yourselves. As I thought, there is nothing in this fine story, so I hope you are convinced."
They met no man, black or white, and supported themselves upon game, which they shot and ate raw or sun-dried, till at length all their powder was done and they threw away their heavy roers, which they could no longer carry. It was at this juncture that from the top of a tall tree Klaus saw a certain koppie a long way off, which he recognised as being within fifteen miles or so of Marais's camp.
He was clad in the rough woollen and leathern garments worn by the frontier farmers, or boers, of that period, and carried one of those long heavy flint-lock guns, or "roers," which the Dutch-African colonist then deemed the most effective weapon in the universe. "Well met!" exclaimed Considine heartily, as he rode up.
Well, when I had been back from the Ghost Mountain something less than a moon, the Boers came, sixty of them commanded by a captain named Retief, a big man, and armed with roers the long guns they had in those days or, perhaps they numbered a hundred in all, counting their servants and after-riders.
The Boers had encountered them before, at the battle of the Blood River, and armed only with muzzle-loading 'roers, or elephant guns, despite their desperate valour, had worsted them, with fearful slaughter.
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