“So, Colvin. You smoke Transvaal tobacco, then?” said one young Boer with a wink at his neighbours, and affecting surprise.
“Rather, Marthinus. Why not?”
“Why, because you’re an Englishman, to be sure.”
“Ha-ha. But then, Marthinus, I happen to be an Englishman who smokes what he likes. And I like Transvaal tobacco. Shall I tell you what else I like? I like dop. So just send along that decanter that’s at the other side of Barend Van Zyl’s elbow, will you?”
There was a great laugh at this, and Barend Van Zyl aforesaid made believe to withhold the decanter on the ground that its contents might impair the speaker’s patriotism. It led to a lot of chaff with regard to the political situation, some of which, albeit good-humoured, was keen enough to have thrown some Englishmen, Frank Wenlock, for instance, into a real fighting rage. This one, however, was made of different stuff. It didn’t ruffle him in the least. Moreover, he knew that they were merely “taking the measure of his foot.”
“And they say that we can’t shoot any more, we young ones,” said another Boer. “I saw it in a Cape English newspaper which Piet Lombard had sent him. They say that we are all going off in our shooting, and are good for nothing; that we cannot bring down game like out fathers could.”
“Maagtig! but they are liars, those English newspaper men,” assented somebody else. “Nee wat. I would like to get the miserable ink-squirter who wrote that, and make him run at five hundred yards from my Martini. We would soon show him whether we young ones are so sleg.”
“Hallo, Marthinus, that’s a little too loud,” cut in Colvin Kershaw with a laugh. “Why, man, how about that old springbuck ram I saw you miss twice running that shoot we had at Tafelfontein at the end of last season there, oerkant, by the vlei? He wasn’t a step over four hundred yards. Come now, what would you do with your runaway man at five hundred?”
“That’s true,” assented Marthinus a little crestfallen. Then brightening up: “But then the English newspaper man would be running too hard. Ja, kerelen. Now, an English newspaper man would run!”
“Do you know how I was taught to shoot, Colvin?” asked a wiry, middle-aged Boer with a long light beard, pushing his tobacco bag made of dressed buckskin across to the Englishman. “When I was eight years old my father used to put a loaded rifle into my hand. It was a muzzle-loader—we had no Martinis or Mausers in those days. Maagtig—no. He didn’t give me a second charge for reloading either. He would start me out into the veldt at daybreak, and if I returned without having shot a buck I got no breakfast. Then he would start me off again, and if I returned a second time without having shot a buck I was allowed some dinner, but first of all I got plenty of ‘strop.’ Then I was turned out again, and if I failed again I got still more ‘strop,’ and went to bed without any supper. But it was not more than two or three times that happened. Nee, kerelen! Well, that is the way to teach a youngster to shoot.”