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"What is it, Swart?" inquired his master. "Mein baas! mein baas! der duyvel um da dar skellum is da 'tsetse!" "And what if it be the tsetse?" "Mein Gott! all dead dead ebery horse!"
Then he gave me coffee and ham and good bread, and he looked at my map. "What is this?" he cried, growing red in the face. "It is the staff-map of one Stumm, a German skellum who commands in yon city," I said. 'He looked at it close and read the markings, and then he read the other paper which you gave me, Dick. And then he flung up his arms and laughed.
Old Coetzee saved me the trouble of answering, for he broke in with Skellum! Skellum! I asked him his objection to the storekeeper, but he would say nothing beyond that he was too thick with the natives. I fancy at some time Mr Japp had sold him a bad plough. We spoke of hunting, and I heard long tales of exploits away on the Limpopo, in Mashonaland, on the Sabi and in the Lebombo.
'Tom, says the auld man, 'I'm thinking ye maun tak a wife. 'Verra weel, father, says the puir skellum; 'and wha's wife shall I tak? Wha's style shall I tak? say all the callants the noo. Mak a style as ye would mak a wife, by marrying her a' to yoursel; and ye'll nae mair ken what's your style till it's made, than ye'll ken what your wife's like till she's been mony a year by your ingle."
Nevertheless, by those wicked laws and mole-catching customs, whereat there is a little hinted in what I have already spoken to you, there is no scurvy, measly, leprous, or pocky ruffian, pander, knave, rogue, skellum, robber, or thief, pilloried, whipped, and burn-marked in his own country for his crimes and felonies, who may not violently snatch away and ravish what maid soever he had a mind to pitch upon, how noble, how fair, how rich, honest, and chaste soever she be, and that out of the house of her own father, in his own presence, from the bosom of her mother, and in the sight and despite of her friends and kindred looking on a so woeful spectacle, provided that the rascal villain be so cunning as to associate unto himself some mystical flamen, who, according to the covenant made betwixt them two, shall be in hope some day to participate of the prey.
Well, I got into German territory all right, and then a skellum of an officer came along, and commandeered all my mules, and wanted to commandeer me with them for his fool army. He was a very ugly man with a yellow face. Peter filled a deep pipe from a kudu-skin pouch. 'Were you commandeered? I asked. 'No. I shot him not so as to kill, but to wound badly.
Von Bloom could no longer doubt that his favourite and only dogs had been killed. Excited by this new misfortune he almost lost prudence. He was about to rush forward to the door, where he might deliver his fire close to the hated enemy, when a bright idea came into the brain of Swartboy; and the Bushman was heard calling out, "Baas! baas! we shut him up! we close da skellum up."
"What is it, Swart?" inquired his master. "Mein baas! mein baas! der duyvel um da dar skellum is da `tsetse!" "And what if it be the tsetse?" "Mein baas! all dead dead ebery horse!"
Von Bloom could no longer doubt that his favourite and only dogs had been killed. Excited by this new misfortune he almost lost prudence. He was about to rush forward to the door, where he might deliver his fire close to the hated enemy, when a bright idea came into the brain of Swartboy; and the Bushman was heard calling out, "Baas! baas! we shut him up! we close da skellum up!"
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