Volume One—Chapter Twenty Three.
“Sunshine Outside—Ice at the Core.”
“After all, this is a glorious sort of life!” exclaimed Hicks, striking his hatchet into a thorn-stump and standing upright, in all the elation of his health and strength, to gaze at the sun—now rather more than an hour high—and then at the surrounding veldt, all dewy and sparkling.
“It is,” assented his companion, making a final chop at a thorn-bush which he had cut down. “Here, Tambusa, lay hold of that ‘tack’ and bang it up against the others. There. The devil himself would yell if chucked against that hedge now.”
For they were repairing sundry breaches in the fence of the wet-weather kraal.
Tambusa obeyed; but in the act of doing so stumbled, and, trying to save himself, sat right on the most thorny end of the branch he was manipulating.
“I never did see such a nigger for blundering,” laughed Claverton, as Tambusa, picking himself up, endeavoured to extract the sharp mimosa spikes which had stuck in his naked carcase. “Hang it, man; you had the whole district for as far round as you can see to sit down in, and yet you pick out such a seat as that.”
The Kafir grinned dolefully, not much relishing this keen jest; but he liked its propounder, and so he grinned.
“Yes. It’s a glorious life,” continued Hicks, bent on philosophising, apparently. “One never feels off one’s chump. Suits a fellow down to the ground.”