“Ho, ho! There’s a girl there, and a pretty one too, is there, Jack?” Wilfred chuckled. “Well, if you think that something is happening to them we may as well go over and investigate.”
“Just what I think, Wilfred. I don’t like the look of things. Either Frank has changed his mind and gone into Kimberley with Eileen, or the Boers are ill-treating them. Keep close beside me, and we’ll see what’s up. I know every foot of the ground round here, and will see that we do not fall into a trap.”
Jack at once touched his pony with his heel, and in absolute silence the two moved forward towards the farmhouse. It consisted of one small building, surrounded by a neat English flower-garden, and lying isolated in the middle of the veldt, the outhouses and sheds for cattle being at least a mile away.
As they rode up to it on the soft noiseless turf, the sound of uproarious singing became louder, and was interrupted by bursts of hoarse laughter.
“Hold on to my ponies,” whispered Jack, when they had reached the edge of the garden. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve seen what is going on.”
Slipping to the ground, he passed the reins to Wilfred, and, climbing the iron railing which fringed the garden, stole across the beds towards the house. At the door a number of ponies were standing, knee-haltered, and picking the grass from the borders of the garden. Jack got close up to them and made sure that they were animate belonging to the Boers. Then he crept up to one of the windows, and peered in beneath the blind, which was only partly drawn.
The sight which met his eyes caused him to give a start, while an exclamation of anger escaped his lips, for Jack was a kind-hearted lad, and to see anyone wantonly inflicting pain upon a fellow-being, or indeed upon any dumb animal, was hateful to him, and doubly so when, as in this case, it was a helpless girl who was being tormented.
As he looked into the room, which was lit by a hanging lamp, he saw Eileen Russel standing, violin in hand, in the opposite corner, the very picture of terror, grief, and despair, playing an air which had been popular in Johannesburg a few months before; while, seated round a table, in all sorts of attitudes, were ten men, shouting the chorus in a mixture of Dutch and English which grated on his ear.
Jack watched them closely, and recognised with another start that the man in the centre, leaning back in his chair, with his legs upon the table, was none other than the dapper English colonist who had questioned them so closely at De Aar.
Satisfied with his inspection, he slipped back again, and a moment or two later stood by Wilfred’s side.