Part 41

"On'y tell me, deer. I'll find out anythink you want me to." Before her spread a lovely vista of floors--her own floors--to scrub, and a kitchen range--hers, too--which should cook dinners nice enough to make any husband adore you.

"You shall for me find out what that Commandant of the rooineks is up to under his Flag of the Red Cross."

"He didn't say nothink about no Red Cross, darlin'."

"Stilte! They will the Red Cross Flag hoist, I tell you, and it will cover more than a parcel of nuns and schoolgirls. That Commandant is so verdoemte slim! Tell me, do you cartridges well know when you shall see them? Little brown rolls with at one end a copper cap--and at the other a bullet. And gunpowder--you have that seen also?"

She quavered.

"Yes; but you don't want me to touch the narsty, dreadful stuff, do you, Walty deer?"

He scoffed.

"Afraid of gunpowder, Meisje, that like a whey-blooded Engelschwoman is. A true Boer's daughter would know how to load a gun, look you, and shoot a man--many men--if for the help of the Republic it should be! But you will learn. Watch out, I tell you, for stores that Commandant will be sending into the Convent. Square boxes and long boxes, and cases--some of them heavy as if lined with iron; painted black with white letters, and others stone-colour with black letters, and yet others grey with red letters; the letters remember--'A.O.S.'"

"But wot'll be in the boxes, deer?"

His English, conned from recently published Imperial Army Service manuals, grew severely technical:

"If you could their big screws unscrew, and their big locks unlock, you would see, but you will not be able. What in them? Cakes! Black, square cakes, with in them holes; and grey, square cakes, and red cakes, light and crumbly, that dog-biscuits resemble; and long brown sticks, like peppermint-candy, in bundles tied together with string and paper. Boxes of stuff like the hair of horse, and packets of evil little electric detonators in tubes of copper. Alamachtig! who knows what he has not got--that Engelsch Commandant--both in the dorp and hidden in those thrice-accursed mines that he has laid on the veld about her. Prismatic powder and gun-cotton, dynamite and cordite enough to blow a dozen commandos of honest Booren into dust--a small, fine dust of bones and flesh that shall afterwards fall mingled with rain of blood. For I tell you that man has the wickedness of the duyvel in him, and the cunning of an old baboon!"

She babbled:

"'Ow pretty you talk English when you want to, Walty deer! 'Aven't you bin gittin' at me all along, makin' out ..."

He swore at her savagely, and she held her tongue, worshipping this new development of masterful brutality in a man whom she had regarded as a "big softy."

He went on:

"Now you shall know what to look for, and when the verdoemte explosives come, you will know them by the boxes and the letters 'A.O.S.'--and you will tell me--and the guns of our Staats Artillery will not shoot that way, for the sake of the little woman who is going to be a true Boer's vrouw by-and-by."

She threw her arms about his rascally neck, and laid her head upon his hulking shoulder, regardless of the hat she wrecked, and cried in ecstasy:

"I'll do it, deer! I'll do it, Walty! But why should there be any shootin', lovey? At 'Ome I never could abear to see them theayter plays what 'ad guns an' firin' in 'em; it made me 'art beat so crooil bad."

He grinned over the big hat into the darkness.

"All right! I will tell the men with the guns that you do not like to hear them, and they will not perhaps shoot at all. But you will look out for the boxes with the dynamite, and send me the message when it comes?"

"Course I will, deer! But 'ow am I to send the message?"

The shadowy right arm of Slabberts swept out, taking in the black and void and formless veld with a large free gesture.

"Out to there. Stand in this place when it becomes dark, looking east. Straight in front of us is east. The game is great fun, and very easy. Strike a match, and count to ten before you blow it out, and you shall not have done that three times before you shall see him answer."

"But oo's 'im?"

"He is my friend--out there upon the veld."

"Lor! but where'll you be? Didn't you say as I'd be talkin' to you? I don't 'arf fancy wot you calls the gyme, not if I 'ave to play it with a strynge bloke!"

The answer came, accompanied by a scraping, familiar sound.

The Slabberts was striking a match of the fizzling, spluttering, Swedish-made non-safety kind, known to W. Keyse and his circle by the familiar abbreviation of "stinkers."