When Steve and Oom Hans recovered from their fit of laughter, into which they had fallen at the sight of the Jew’s fear of a charge of loose gunpowder, they saw the Jew disappearing on a rise about a mile away, his arm still rising and falling as he lashed his horse furiously. The Jew must have done the distance from the farm to Pretoria in record time that day, as he was seen by several people on the road, riding his horse at full speed, looking back every minute to see if he was pursued.

He was never seen on that farm again.

CHAPTER VI
HISTORY A LA RHODES

We shall pass on now to more stirring times in the life of Steve, who has grown into a strong young man of twenty-seven years of age now. He has always borne in mind the dying words of his father, and has never neglected his weekly letter to his mother and sisters, or his monthly contribution towards their house-keeping at home. He had kept that part of his promise to his father to the best of his ability. As to the patriotic promise his father had obtained from him, that was hardly ever out of his thoughts. Walking in the quiet suburban walks in which he delighted, the thought of his country and his race was ever with him. If he could not sleep at night, the same thoughts occupied his mind. And many a plan did he think out—only to reject—as to how his people could be raised up to a higher level as a nation, or how they were to be united in all the states and colonies, as a free and united people.

He had watched the political events in South Africa closely. He saw that the Republics were slowly being driven into a corner by the great Imperialistic amalgamator.

He fancied that he could see how Rhodes was using the Afrikander Bond of the Cape Colony to manufacture a rope, which was intended to be used eventually to strangle their own hopes of national existence.

There was only one doubt in his mind. Was Rhodes working for Imperialism on behalf of the British Empire? or was he so flattered by being called the South African Napoleon, that he wanted to really earn that name, and to build up a new empire, with himself as emperor? However, whichever of the two was intended by Rhodes, both must be resisted to the death. We neither desire to be a united British colony, nor a united South African Empire. We wish to be a united South African Republic. Such were Steve’s thoughts on the matter. But everything seemed to be tending towards a crisis. He felt that the time was not far distant when it would be decided whether a great new nation would be formed in South Africa by the fusion of the races, or whether South Africa would be put down, and kept down as a vassal state, for, perhaps, another decade, or maybe two decades. He never doubted that in the end South Africa would fulfil its destiny, and become a great Free country.

Steve had watched with pain how the Republics were robbed of all just claims for northern extension, through delusive promises of eastern extension towards the sea-coast. He had seen the formation of the British South African Chartered Company; only another name, he said, for an anti-Boer company.

He had seen how this company had dispossessed Afrikander holders of concessions in Mashonaland. How this company had robbed and deprived poor Lobengula of country and life on the shallow pretence of Matabele aggression in Mashonaland. Ah, if a Boer republic had done what the Chartered Company did in Matabeleland, how they would have been reviled, how they would have been abused. New names would have been invented to call the Boers by, as the English language had already been exhausted on them when they defended their own country. How the Boers were called murderers, slaveholders, and God knows what more, when they subdued two rebellious chiefs in Zoutpansberg in the interest of law and order. After having treated those two chiefs with the greatest consideration and kindness, both before and after their subjection, the Boer haters invented lies and deeds of cruelty never perpetrated in order to blacken the name of Boer before the world. But Rhodes and his followers were called ‘Napoleons,’ ‘heroes,’ and all sorts of high-sounding names, for doing what no Christian man in the world ought to have countenanced—shooting down naked human beings, armed partly with comparatively harmless assegais, or in their hands harmless rifles, in hundreds and thousands, with Satanic inventions of machine guns. Ah, God! how long wilt thou permit the strong to murder the weak? All those hundreds and thousands of poor innocent human beings were murdered or driven starving from their homes, for the sole reason to make a dividendless company pay dividends—Civilisation? The sooner such civilisation is swept from off the earth the better it would be for humanity in general. It must be remembered that these Matabeles were not rebels, but were fighting in defence of their own country, which up to then had been free and independent.