“Can’t I sing a song if I want?” returns Frank. “Besides, Oom Paul isn’t your President.”
“Ah, but he soon will be. And won’t he make the rooineks run?”
“Well, here’s a rooinek you can’t make run, Hermanus Delport, elephant as you are. Come along and have a try, will you? What? You won’t? You’re a bally coward then—and you’re twice my size.
“Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ay,
Oom Paul op een vark gerij—”
he begins again in a tone that is insulting and defiant to the last degree.
There are other Dutchmen on the stoep. These, who have laughed hitherto, expecting to see their huge compatriot simply double up the smaller but foolhardy Englishman, now spring to their feet with incensed shouts.
“Go at him, Hermanus. Knock him down and lay your sjambok about him. Cut him into riempjes. We’ll give him Oom Paul!” are some of the cries wherewith they nerve their champion on to war.
There is no backing out of it now. Delport hurls himself upon Frank, who stands there, squaring up, and still singing the nonsensical—and to Boer susceptibilities offensive—quatrain. But a very hard right- and lefthander meets him, and that in each eye, causing him to stagger back. Frank, however, has not come off unscathed, for the big Boer’s fist has more than grazed his cheekbone. The others crowd up behind their champion, renewing their shouts of encouragement.
“Come on, come on! I’ll take the bally lot of you, when I’ve polished off that elephant there,” shouts Frank in English, waltzing towards the group, his hands up and ready.
“No, you jolly well won’t, Frank,” cuts in another English voice, whose owner tranquilly steps in between the combatants. “Come now, stop making a fool of yourself, of all yourselves.”