“Your honour,” he said, facing Oom Paul again, “I have a request to make. You have commanded that I shall have my liberty. I ask for protection. That man there, together with a German whom I had the misfortune to wound when escaping from the magazine, have threatened to deal with me should I receive my freedom at your hands. I ask you now to grant me some kind of an escort to the frontier.”
“Have I not ordered that you shall have your freedom?” answered Paul Kruger brusquely. “That is enough. Should anyone attempt to molest you he shall account for it.”
Satisfied with his answer, Jack murmured his thanks and retired. He was at once placed in charge of two Boers whom he had never seen before, and was driven off into the veldt again. About an hour later an engine and a single carriage steamed up and he was told to get in. Then they were whirled away to Johannesburg just in time to catch a train starting on the long run to Port Elizabeth.
One of the guards remained behind, but the other stayed on with Jack, making himself most pleasant, and chatting with him constantly.
Many hours later he shook hands with him, and wished him good-bye.
“Don’t come back to us,” he said shortly, as the train ran into Norval’s Pont, the southern border of the Orange Free State. “You have escaped with your life, but you would not do so a second time. Here is money which the president told me to hand to you. It is just sufficient to pay for your journey and comfort to Port Elizabeth, and here also is your ticket.”
Jack thanked him, pressed his hand, and then watched him depart. A few moments later the train was in motion again. At Naauwpoort, the next stopping point, there is a junction, with a connecting line running westward to De Aar to join the Cape Town line to Kimberley and Mafeking, and here Jack left the carriage and boarded another train. Late the next evening he had reached the diamond city, and had called on Tom Salter, an old friend of Mr Hunter’s.
“Hallo, Jack!” exclaimed the latter, who had met him before. “What brings you here? Your place should be alongside of the Hunters, for they are likely to want every man they can lay hands on soon.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” Jack answered, “but unfortunately I have got into hot water in Johnny’s Burg, and have consequently come here for the good of my health.”
“Ha, ha! That’s queer, my lad,” laughed Tom Salter, a typical, red-faced, and robust-looking colonist. “You’ve been punching that fellow’s head again, I suppose? What’s his name? Piet Maartens, or something of that sort, isn’t it? Ah, it’s you quiet, harmless-looking lads who are always getting into a warm corner!”