“Then I am already set up,” said Wilfred. “Our friends here told me they could let me have a reliable pony whenever I liked to ask for him. Since coming down here I have obtained a complete campaigning kit and a Lee-Metford rifle and bayonet. So I am ready to set off just whenever you like.”
Three days later, therefore, the two lads—or rather, young fellows they should be called, for both stood well above five feet nine inches in their boots, and were broad-shouldered and muscular in proportion—set out for Durban, and having embarked there, arrived in due course at Port Elizabeth, having had a pleasant sail.
An hour after landing they were in the train, and after many long stops and tedious delays arrived at De Aar, a town where there was a small force of troops, and which was likely before long to be a station of some importance, for it was filled with vast military stores, and truck-loads were still arriving.
Here they learned that the Boers had already crossed the Orange River and were invading Cape Colony.
Jack and Wilfred took up their quarters for the night at a small hotel, and having washed, and enjoyed a hearty meal, they lit up their pipes and strolled through the town.
Then they returned, and were chatting with the owner of the hotel when a stranger, to all appearance an English colonist, entered, and without invitation joined in the conversation.
“Warm evening, landlord!” he exclaimed. “The kind of evening that makes one thirsty! Let me have a bottle of something good, and perhaps these gentlemen will join me. All Englishmen are comrades in these times.”
Jack and his friend were naturally surprised, but they had already experienced that sense of brotherhood in the colony now that war had commenced, and rather than offend the stranger they consented to join him, with an expression of their thanks. A moment later the landlord returned with the liquor, and as he placed it on the table and prepared to draw the cork of the bottle which contained it, deliberately nudged Jack, and nodded significantly at the stranger, whose back happened to be turned. Jack was puzzled, but passed on the nudge to Wilfred; then the three sat down and chatted. For half an hour the stranger plied his two guests with all sorts of seemingly careless questions, casually asking them where they were going, and whether they belonged to the volunteers. But the nudge the landlord had given had warned Jack and his friend to be on the alert, and to all the questions they gave incomplete or totally incorrect answers. Then the stranger left, and the landlord came from behind his counter and explained the mystery.
“I don’t know what you two are here for, or where you are going,” he said, “and if you will take my advice you will keep everyone you meet in the same ignorance. That fine chap is a Boer spy, paid with Pretoria gold, and I can tell you this whole colony holds heaps more like him. So my advice is, keep all your own affaire to yourself. Supposing you two wanted to get into Kimberley, and had told him so, thinking him to be a colonist, as he certainly looks, he’d have set the Boers on your trail, and you’d find yourselves prisoners before you could look round.”
Jack and Wilfred took the warning to heart. They had heard that spies were to be found everywhere, even in England itself, so lavishly had the Transvaallers spent their money, and so carefully had they prepared their plans. But they had never met one before, and to find him in the guise of a loyal colonist was a surprise, though, if they had only given the matter a thought, they would have seen that that was the most probable appearance he would assume.