Hour after hour Black sat near his dying friend. He did little more than keep the flies away. He was helpless. He didn't know what to do. He had scarcely heard of first aid, and they possessed no medicines.
One of the waggon boys searched me out and found me. I travelled day and night, but Fernie was dead when I arrived.
After we had buried Fernie, I think Black was the most alone man in the whole world. For him there was nothing left. He had aged much during the few days of his friend's hopeless lingering. Whenever he looked at me the tears welled up and trickled from under the lower rim of his spectacles. He couldn't stop them, he no longer seemed to try.
A man crying is not a thing for a man to see. I began to avoid him. I pleaded official duties, and hated myself for it. His obvious agony of grief became a burden to me. His whole being seemed to plead for help, and I didn't know how to give it; no one could give it.
Just at that time the South African War broke out. I had official notice of it and told Black. His manner changed, changed with strange rapidity; I couldn't understand why. It did not occur to me that this helpless creature saw opportunity in that war; but he did, and he seized it.
Next day Black said good-bye to me. He was almost cheerful. He was not the old Black. He seemed resolute, more a man, he moved briskly.
I never saw him again. I learnt much of what happened from his diary, which his sister sent me; the rest from a chance acquaintance in Cape Town.
He went south to Bulawayo; from there he travelled to Beira and shipped to Durban. In Durban he volunteered for active service, and was, of course, rejected by every recruiting officer.
In the end, an enterprising newspaper man engaged him. He risked nothing, because Black asked for no pay. Black went to the front immediately, as an accredited war correspondent. What his articles would have been like I cannot imagine, but he didn't write any. His luck was in. The very day he arrived at Headquarters a stray bullet hit him in the forehead and dropped him dead.
How strange it all was! A shot, fired from no one knows where and for no obvious reason, found its mark in the brain of a man who longed for death; probably the only man in South Africa at that moment who did long for death.