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In answer to the Kaffir's inquiries, the chief stated that hippopotami were not often seen in that part of the river; but that, a day's journey farther down, there was a large lagoon, through which the stream ran; there, sea-cows were as plentiful as the stars in the sky. "That is just the place we have been looking for," said Willem; "and now, Congo, question him about camelopards."
It was a tall native, who carried himself proudly, and after a glance at me, stalked along at my side. He wore curious clothes, for he had a kind of linen tunic, and around his waist hung a kilt of leopard-skin. In such a man one would have looked for a ting-kop, but instead he had a mass of hair, not like a Kaffir's wool, but long and curled like some popular musician's.
The Kaffir's solicitude for the safety of his young master had been so great on all former occasions, and he had shown such an unwillingness to be separated from him, that his present behaviour was a surprise to everybody who knew him. He was allowed to have his own will and way, for it was known that any efforts at making him useful, by denying him this privilege, would be of no avail.
He drinks like hell, but it's my belief he'd die in torment if he didn't." Still Burke said nothing, and Kelly's curiosity grew. "You know what he's doing; don't you?" he said. "He's doing a Kaffir's job for Kaffir's pay. It's about the vilest hole this side of perdition, my son. And I'm thinking you won't find it specially easy to dig him out."
They gain access to gaols and pester unfortunate prisoners with callipers and cameras, and quite unforgivable prying into personal and private matters, and they hold out great hopes that by these expedients they will evolve at last a "scientific" revival of the Kaffir's witch- smelling. We shall catch our criminals by anthropometry ere ever a criminal thought has entered their brains.
When it was gone, the white man and the Kaffir, who had pulled up their horses at a distance, returned to the fallen buck, cut its throat, and lifted it on to the Kaffir's horse, then rode slowly towards the waggon. "They are coming to call," said Rachel. "How should one receive a gentleman in skins?"
Through the dulled noises of London there came to their ears the click of the wheels of a cape-wagon, the crack of the Kaffir's whip, the creak of the disselboom.
This upright mass, apparently 40 feet high, and seeming, like the "Lumba" of Kinsembo to rest upon a basement, is very conspicuous from the east, where it catches the eye as a watch- tower would. At the bluff-base, a huge slab, an irregular parallelogram, slopes towards the water and, viewed far up stream, it passably represents a Kaffir's pavoise.
There was little to mark the day beyond the steady shelling of snipers by the Natal Navals, and a great 96lb. shell from Bulwan which plunged through a Kaffir house, where black labourers live stuffed together, took off a Kaffir's foot, ricocheted over our little mess-room, just glancing off the roof, and fell gasping, but still entire, beside our verandah.
Not to be outdone in hospitality, the old chief produced the kaffir beer of the country, a liquid which has nothing to recommend it beyond the fact that it intoxicates rapidly. A meat feast and a beer drink is a great event in the average kaffir's life, and as the evening wore on a general jollification started to the thump of tomtoms and the squeak of kaffir fiddles.
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