"Against the law, baas but we can always find plenty of men ready to sell it for good money."
"They are bad men, Peter. The harm they do is very great. That is why so many of your people are in rags, though they can earn pay when they are willing to work. They will only labour for three or four days, and then spend pretty well all they have earned on spirits, and be drunk the next three."
"That is true, baas. Peter do that very often. Big fool, Peter! Often tells himself so when he gets sober. But when he gets money he smells spirit, then he makes fool of himself again."
"Well, you had better make up your mind to give it up altogether, Peter. You are getting good pay now, and ought to have a lot of money saved by the end of the war—enough to go back to your own people and build a kraal, and buy cattle, and exchange some of them for a wife."
"That true, baas. Peter will try not to be big fool again."
"Well, then, you had better begin to try at once, and drink your water without mixing whisky with it."
Peter's face fell, and he heaved a long sigh.
"Now, just suppose, Peter, that at Boshof you had opened that bottle of whisky. I have no doubt that if you had begun it you would have drunk almost all of it, and by the time you got sober you would have found me a long way towards Pretoria."
"That is just what I said to myself," Peter said with a laugh. "I take that bottle out of my pocket four or five times and look at him. But each time I took it out I said to myself, 'Peter, if you take out that cork you know what it will be. You will get drunk, and the Boers will carry your baas away.'"