In a Single Day.
“Mopela, what on earth have you been doing all this time? I sent you for that water half an hour ago.”
There is menace as well as wrath in the tones of the speaker as he confronts the individual addressed, who is calmly squatting on the ground between two pails containing water just drawn out of the dam. It is midday, and a blazing sun pours down upon them, to the delectation of certain mud turtles basking on the hard, cracked surface of the baked ooze, and who, alarmed by the sound of angry voices, scuttle away into the water as fast as their legs can carry them; while, in the noontide stillness, the smooth surface of the reservoir glows like copper beneath the burnished rays. Again Claverton—for it is he—repeats his question in a more irate tone than before.
Mopela rises and eyes his interlocutor in a manner that betokens mischief. He is a huge Kafir, tall and broad-shouldered, and his bronze, sinewy frame, whose nudity shows the development of great muscular power, looks formidable enough. He hates Claverton, who has more than once had occasion to be “down on” him for careless herding, or other derelictions, and never loses an opportunity, whether by covert insolence or neglect of orders, of showing it. And for some time past the relations between the two have been—in the language of diplomacy—a trifle “strained.”
“I haven’t been half an hour,” he replies, defiantly, “I only stopped a minute to light my pipe.”
“You infernal blackguard, do you mean to give me the lie direct?” says Claverton; and his voice shakes with pent-up fury as he advances a pace nearer the last speaker. “Take up those buckets and get away at once!”
The savage gives an exclamation of disgust, and his eyes glare. Then throwing back his head contemptuously, he says with an insolent sneer: “You are not Baas here.”
“The devil I’m not!” Crack!—woof!—a right and left-hander straight from the shoulder, and the huge barbarian goes down like a ninepin. “You dog! you’ve played the fool with me long enough, and now you’ve come to the end of your tether. Get up,” he continues, spurning with his foot the prostrate man, from whose mouth and nostrils a red torrent is gushing. “Get up, and I’ll floor you again!” His fierce temper is now completely beyond his control, and for the moment he is as thoroughly a savage as the dusky giant lying at his feet.
How it will end Heaven only knows, but at this juncture a low cry of horror behind him causes him to turn, and what he sees brings a hot flush to his face, up till now livid with rage. For there stands Lilian Strange, and her white face and dilated eyes betray that she has been a terrified witness of the whole scene.
Claverton started as if he had been shot.