Now her tone rang hard and steely. Still clinging to him, so that he could not move from her side without using force, and yet leaving herself the freedom of her right hand, she had drawn a revolver—a very nasty looking and business-like one at that.
“Now come, brave burghers,” she cried. “Advance. The first man who makes a move on us I will shoot—will shoot dead. Then the next, and the next, and then myself. As God is in Heaven above I will do this.”
Not a move was made. They stared at each other stupidly, this crowd of armed men. She would be every bit as good as her word—the flash of her eyes told them so much, for it was that of a tigress when her cubs are threatened. Things were at a deadlock.
“The paper, Commandant! Ask him if he will sign the paper now,” was one of the suggestions thrown out.
“Ja, ja. He will sign it now,” cried several voices. “The paper! The paper!”
But Commandant Schoeman was in a cold, quiet sort of rage. He was being set at defiance in the face of his whole command, and that by a girl. He rejected this way out of the difficulty—rejected it curtly and uncompromisingly.
“Remove her,” he said again.
One or two of the older men stepped forward, intending to try the effect of remonstrance. But the revolver covered them instantly, aimed low, they noted, and there was such a deadly gleam in Aletta’s eyes that they stopped short and retired. Schoeman was white with rage. But before he could decide on what to do next, a diversion occurred, unlooked for and startling.
The sound of many hoofs clattering up the road over beyond the nek was borne to their ears. Whoever the new arrivals were, they were advancing at a furious gallop. The cry went up that the English were upon them, and for a moment the assembly was in a state of tumult.
Only for a moment, though. Schoeman, as cool and brave a man as ever lived, quelled the confusion by a word or two. For his ears had caught the challenge of their own vedette on the ridge, and the answer thereto in the taal. These were not enemies, he decided.