“Just so. You may as well give up all idea of farming here at this rate, Sewin, if you intend to keep on on that tack. The fellow didn’t do it, because in all probability he hadn’t the ghost of a notion what you were telling him to do. Here. I’ll put it to him.”
I did so. It was even as I had expected. The boy didn’t understand a word of English, and young Sewin couldn’t speak a word of Zulu—or at any rate a sentence. I talked to him, but it was not much use. He would leave, he declared. He was not going to stand being punched. If he had had an assegai or a stick perhaps the other would not have had things all his own way, he added meaningly.
In secret I sympathised with him, but did not choose to say so. What I did say was:
“And you would spend some years—in chains—mending the roads and quarrying stones for the Government? That would be a poor sort of satisfaction, would it not?”
“Au! I am not a dog,” he answered sullenly. “Tyingoza is my chief. But if the Government says I am to stand being beaten I shall cross Umzinyati this very night, and go and konza to Cetywayo. Now, this very night.”
I advised him to do nothing in a hurry, because anything done in a hurry was sure to be badly done. I even talked him over to the extent of making him promise that he would not leave at all, at any rate until he had some fresh grievance—which I hoped to be able to ensure against.
“Come on in, Glanton,” sung out young Sewin, impatiently. “Or are you going to spend the whole evening jawing with that infernal young sweep. I suppose you’re taking his part.”
This was pretty rough considering the pains I had been at to smooth the way for these people in the teeth of their own pig-headed obstinacy. But I was not going to quarrel with this cub.
“On the contrary,” I said, “I was taking yours, in that I persuaded the boy not to clear out, as he was on the point of doing.”
“Did you? Well then, Glanton, you won’t mind my saying that it’s a pity you did. D’you think we’re going to keep any blasted nigger here as a favour on his part?”