"Well, I shall make a point of working hard at it, father. My own idea is to go up to Kimberley or Johannesburg, when I have been out a couple of years, with an introduction from Mr. Allnutt to some store-keeper or manager of mines there, and then work my way up. Of course I don't expect to make much money for a time, but I shall certainly lay by every penny I earn over and above keeping myself."
"Whatever you do, don't be too sanguine, because if you do you will assuredly meet with severe disappointment."
"I don't mean to, father; once I get into a thing that seems likely to turn out well, I will stick to it patiently. There is one comfort—I have read that out in the colonies men do not care what they turn their hands to; no one thinks the worse of a young man for doing any honest job, so that he keeps himself straight. I mean to keep myself straight. I am determined that I will never touch liquor of any kind unless I am ill, or under extraordinary circumstances."
"You could not make a better resolution, Yorke. I believe that in the colonies, even more than here, drink is the bane of too many young men, and it is certainly an obstacle to success with all. I know your cousin, when he was here, said nineteen out of twenty of the young fellows who go to the bad, after arriving full of hope and energy, owe their downfall solely to drink. The life at the back stations is lonely, there is an entire absence of amusement, and it is especially dull of an evening. The temptation, therefore, to take drink to cheer up the spirits is strong, and when he has once yielded to it a man is almost sure to go from bad to worse. 'In my experience,' he said, 'I have known of no instance where a young man who resisted all temptations to drink was a complete failure. He may suffer very heavily from droughts, and have misfortunes over which he has no control, but he can keep his head afloat and so do fairly well in the end.' The native spirit, that is to say, the Boer spirit—Cape smoke it is called—is vile, and is simply liquid poison. However, the Dutch are not a drunken set, and do not very often drink to excess; perhaps the very badness of the liquor keeps them from it. That being the case, Yorke, it is evident that you cannot be too careful, and it would be a comfort both to your mother and me to know that you have set out with a stern resolution to avoid liquor—except, of course, in case of illness or in exceptional circumstances, such as a long journey in a pouring rain, when a small amount of spirits may prevent bad consequences. But Mr. Allnutt said that even then it was more effective if you stripped, poured some of it into your hand, and thoroughly rubbed yourself with it."
"That is a good idea, father, and I will try it under such circumstances."
A week later, after a tearful parting from his mother and sisters, Yorke went up to town accompanied by his father, who took him on board one of the Castle Line steamers, and remained with him until she went out of dock. The voyage was altogether uneventful. There were several young fellows, sons of gentlemen, going out in the second class. Yorke was three or four years younger than any of them, but they all took to him, and he had a pleasant time. For three or four hours a day he worked steadily at Dutch, and received a good deal of assistance in the pronunciation from a Dutch gentleman returning home from a visit, who took an interest in the boy who so steadily sat apart from the rest and studied his language. Yorke also made the acquaintance of several of the third-class passengers, miners, carpenters, and other workers, who had been back to the old country to see their friends, and from them he learned a good deal more of the colony than he had hitherto known.
"I don't say that it is not necessary to learn Dutch," one of them said in answer to a question, "if you are going into a store or mean to farm, but in the towns it is not much needed, for we and the Dutch don't have much to do with each other. Very few of them are engaged at the mines or even in the stores. They treat us as dirt under their feet. But the general idea is that it won't be very long before there is a change. England is a long while making up her mind to see us righted, but she will do so some day. When she does, she will find it a tougher job than she expects. For the past four or five years they have been importing arms and ammunition of every sort. No one can understand out there why England does not put a stop to it. She will certainly pay heavily for it in the future. The Boers have an idea that we cannot fight. That is a big mistake, you know, but with such a great country, with hills—big hills, too—and passes, and that sort of thing, the Boers, who are mostly good shots, will be able to make a desperate resistance, even if it is only the Transvaal. But there is a general idea that the Orange Free State will join them, and in that case it will be a big job, especially as there are Dutch all over Cape Colony, who likely enough will rise also. People in England do not seem to have an idea what a big place South Africa is. Why, it is as big as England and Scotland and Ireland and France all thrown together, and you can count your miles by the thousand instead of the hundred. All these fellows, too, have horses, any number of them, and men marching on foot would not have a ghost of a chance of catching them. I tell you it will be a big business if it ever begins."