“You killed him?”
“Maybe he died; but Kaffirs is tough, and at the thrust he gave his cry, standin’ there with his legs wide apart, afore he sank among the ferns. I turned an’ ran, keeping down the little stream till I come to a krantz, with the water slidin’ down, an’ I swung over, holdin’ fast to a monkey tow. I slid down fifty feet, and then let go, holdin’ the rifle high over head, and fell feet first inter a little round pool at the bottom. It was a chance, sonny, but I kep’ my bones sound and the powder dry. I did that. I tell you young Abe Pike was some pumpkins. Then I pushed on an’ on till I went over a ridge into another kloof, an’ through that to another kop, standing up above the wood in a mass of stone. I sat down in a cleft, and the weakness came on me from the loss of blood and the want of food. Well, I tell you, sonny, I fit ag’inst the weakness, an’ with a spread of shirt, holdin’ one end in my teeth, I bound up the wound after plugging it with dirt. Right away I looked over the country, an’ I see’d to the right the smoke rising and across a stretch of veld I seed a black patch movin’. ’Twere Kaffirs on the march, an’ following the directshun they were taking, I seed a white speck to the left; a farmhouse, sonny, with a thin trail of smoke going up from the one chimney.”
“The Kaffirs were on their way to sack the place.”
“They were that, and I set off to beat ’em. But look here, I said when I started talking, I was going to tell you how I trekked the Kosa chief, and here I been a’ spinnin’ on about another thing.”
“Did you get to the house first?”
“What—me! I did that, sonny. I got there fust, an’ there was nobody in—not a one though the pot was on the fire. I went off with the pot into a patch of mealies, and when the Kaffirs came up an’ smashed things I were eatin’ pap outer the pot, yes, that’s so.”
“And did they find you?” I ventured after a long pause.
“That pap were good, but it wanted salt—it did that. So long, sonny, so long,” and the old man moved off to bed.