Another was brought up. “I’d have got off in a minute,” says he.
“You’d have got off as it was if you had the pluck of a louse,” says his captor. The conversation languished after that.
In came the Staff, galloping grandly. The town is ours.
A red-headed Irish-American is taken on the kopje. “What the hell is that to you?” he says to every question. He is haled away to gaol—a foul-mouthed blackguard.
We find the landlady of our small hotel in tears—her husband in gaol, because a rifle has been found. We try to get him out, and succeed. He charges us 4s. for half a bottle of beer, and we wonder whether we cannot get him back into gaol again.
“The house is not my own. I find great burly men everywhere,” he cries, with tears in his eyes. His bar is fitted with pornographic pictures to amuse our simple farmer friends—not the first or the second sign which I have seen that pastoral life and a Puritan creed do not mean a high public morality.
We sit on the stoep and smoke in the moonlight.
There comes a drunken inhabitant down the main street. A dingy Tommy stands on guard in front.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
“A friend.”