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Updated: June 9, 2025
"Well, Sir, I wasn't looking for that, and it near knocked me over, while old man Van Zyl started in to explain. "'Don't you waste your breath, Mister Van Zyl, the man says. 'I know this breed. The South's full of 'em. Then he whirls round on me and says, 'Look at here, you Yank.
He'd wipe his long thin moustache between drinks lime-juice and water he used and blat off into a long 'a-aah, and ladle out more taffy for me or old man Van Zyl on his right. I told him how I'd had my first Pisgah-sight of the principles of the Zigler when I was a fourth-class postmaster on a star-route in Arkansas.
"He must have fixed it all right, for when we sailed over to the General's dinner my Captain had Van Zyl about half-full of sherry and bitters, as happy as a clam. The boys all called him Adrian, and treated him like their prodigal father. He'd been hit on the collarbone by a wad of shrapnel, and his arm was tied up. "But the General was the peach.
"Well, Sir, then and there they began arguing whether St. Helena would suit Adrian's health as well as some other places they knew about, and fixing up letters of introduction to Dukes and Lords of their acquaintance, so's Van Zyl should be well looked after. The old man allowed he didn't want to roost with Cronje, because one of Cronje's kin had jumped one of his farms after Paardeberg.
I knew this Captain Mankeltow by sight, of course, and, considering what sort of a man with the hoe he was, I thought he'd done right well against my Zigler. But nothing epoch-making. "Next morning at the usual hour I waited on the General, and old Van Zyl come along with some of the boys. Van Zyl didn't hang round the Zigler much as a rule, but this was his luck that day.
If you'd invented your own gun, and spent fifty-seven thousand dollars on her and had paid your own expenses from the word 'go'? An American citizen has a right to choose his own side in an unpleasantness, and Van Zyl wasn't any Krugerite ... and I'd risked my hide at my own expense. I got that man's address from Van Zyl; he was a mining man at Kimberley, and I wrote him the facts.
He had had the foresight to provide two pairs in case of accident, which was fortunate, for now each rider was independent of the other. Acting upon the advice of their friend Van Zyl, they confined themselves strictly to short treks, averaging about five miles each, and three treks per day, for the first four days, in order to keep the oxen in good condition as long as possible.
He was dead against the war from the start, but, being a Dutchman, he fought a sight better than the rest of that 'God and the Mauser' outfit. Adrian Van Zyl. Slept a heap in the daytime and didn't love niggers. I liked him. I was the only foreigner in his commando. The rest was Georgia Crackers and Pennsylvania Dutch with a dash o' Philadelphia lawyer.
But raw hide's cheap and lastin'. I guess I'll make my next gun a thousand pounds heavier, though. "Well, Sir, we struck the General on his beat Vrelegen it was and our crowd opened with the usual compliments at two thousand yards. Van Zyl shook himself into his greasy old saddle and says, 'Now we shall be quite happy, Mr. Zigler. No more trekking.
Everybody, with one solitary exception, declared that it was a most risky thing to do; but the solitary exception, in the shape of an old Boer farmer named Van Zyl, applauded their pluck, and declared that they were far more likely to succeed by learning the lesson of the wild for themselves, and depending upon their own courage and adaptiveness, than if they set out under the guidance of another, and remained more or less in leading strings throughout the journey.
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