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Updated: June 20, 2025
The wagon, which, by the way, had passed the larger but slower vehicle, found him fast asleep, and Ucatella standing by him as ordered, motionless and grand. "Oh, dear! what now?" said Phoebe: but being a sensible woman, though in the hen and chickens line, she said, "'Tis the fighting and the excitement.
Ucatella, with all a Kafir's love of fire-arms, clapped her hands with delight. "My child shoots loud and strong," said she. "Ay, ay," replied Phoebe; "they are all alike; wherever there's men, look for quarrelling and firing off. We had only to sit quiet in the wagon." "Ay." said Dick, "the cattle especially for it is them the varmint were after and let 'em eat my Hottentots."
Just before daybreak Dick Dale saw a fire sparkle by the side of a distant thicket. He went to it, and there was Ucatella seated, calm and grand as antique statue, and Christopher lying by her side, with a shawl thrown over him. As Dale came hurriedly up, she put her finger to her lips, and said, "My child sleeps. Do not wake him. When he sleeps, he hunts the past, as Collie hunts the springbok."
Matters being thus prepared, they sauntered on; but the jackals were very wary. They came like shadows, so departed a great many times: but at last being re-enforced, they lessened the distance, and got so close, that Ucatella withdrew her head, and bleated faintly inside the wagon. The men turned, levelling their rifles, and found the troop within twenty yards of them.
The country became wilder, the signs of life miserably sparse; about every twenty miles the farmhouse or hut of a degenerate Boer, whose children and slaves pigged together, and all ran jostling, and the mistress screamed in her shrill Dutch, and the Hottentots all chirped together, and confusion reigned for want of method: often they went miles, and saw nothing but a hut or two, with a nude Hottentot eating flesh, burnt a little, but not cooked, at the door; and the kloofs became deeper and more turbid, and Phoebe was in an agony about her salt, and Christopher advised her to break it in big lumps, and hang it all about the wagon in sacks; and she did, and Ucatella said profoundly, "My child is wise;" and they began to draw near home, and Phoebe to fidget; and she said to Christopher, "Oh, dear!
Says Ucatella to Phoebe, a little ostentatiously, "My child is strong and useful; make little missy a good slave." "A slave! Heaven forbid!" said Phoebe. "He'll be a father to us all, once he gets his head back; and I do think it is coming but very slow."
You are good fellows, you Kafirs; but I think you have sworn never to put your shoulder to a wheel. But, bless your poor silly hearts, a little strength put on at the right place is better than a deal at the wrong." "You hear that, you Kafir chaps?" inquired Ucatella, a little arrogantly for a Kafir.
Wheel somersaults, and, above all, swinging head downwards from a branch, were the sweeteners of his existence. "Oh! YOU are there, are you?" said Dick. "Iss," said Ucatella. "Tim good boy. Tim found my child." "Well," said Dick, "he has chosen a nice place. This is the clump the last lion came out of, at least they say so.
At this moment out came a collie dog, hunting Ucatella by scent alone, which process landed him headlong in the group; he gave loud barks of recognition, fawned on Phoebe and Dick, smelt poor Christopher, gave a growl of suspicion, and lurked about squinting, dissatisfied, and lowering his tail. "Thou art wrong, lad, for once," said Dick; "for he's an old friend, and a good one."
They flashed their blood-red flames in the African sun, and the head of Ucatella, grand before, became the head of the Sphinx, encircled with a coronet of fire. She bestowed a look of rapturous gratitude on Staines, and then glided away, like the stately Juno, to admire herself in the nearest glass like any other coquette, black, brown, yellow, copper, or white.
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