“I can almost see it now: getting dark, and an outpost challenges. ‘Come on, gallop!’ says old Ingle, and they stick their spurs into their nags and are off over the veldt. Then crack, cracky crack, go the rifles till the saddles are emptied and two gallant defenders of Kimberley and brave despatch-riders lie kicking in the dust.
“Ugh! How. I should like to be there with my flute. I’d stand and look on till they’d given their last kick and stretched themselves out straight, and then I’d play the ‘Dead March’ in ‘Saul’ all over ’em both. Don’t suppose they’d know; but if they could hear it they wouldn’t sneer at my ‘tootling old flute’—as Ingle called it—any more.
“Urrrr! I hated the pair of ’em. Ingle was a hound—a regular sniffing, smelling-out hound, and Noll West a miserable, sneaking cur. Beasts! So very good and nice and straightforward. Hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth—yes, millions’ worth of diamonds being scraped together by the company, and a poor fellow not allowed to have a handful. I don’t say it’s the thing to steal ’em; but who would steal? Just a bit of nice honest trade—buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest. It’s what the company does, but nobody else ought to, of course. Who’s going to ask every Kaffir who comes to you and says: ‘Buy a few stones, baas?’ ‘Where do you get ’em from?’ Not me. They’ve as good a right to ’em as the company, and if I like to do a bit of honest trade I will, in spite of the miserable laws they make. Hang their laws! What are they to me? Illicit-diamond-buying! Police force, eh? A snap of the fingers for it!
“A bit sooner than I expected,” mused the flute-player. “A few months more, and I should have made a very big thing if the Boers hadn’t upset it all and Master Ingle hadn’t been so precious clever! Never mind: it isn’t so very bad now! I’ll be off while my shoes are good. I don’t believe the Boers have got round to the south yet, and, if they have, I don’t believe it’ll matter. Say they do stop me, it’ll only be: ‘Who are you—and where are you going?’ Down south or west or anywhere, to do a bit of trade. I’m sloping off—that’s what I’m doing—because the British are trying to force me to volunteer to fight against my old friends the Boers. I’ll soft-soap and butter ’em all over, and play ’em a tune or two upon the flute, and offer ’em some good tobacco. They won’t stop me.”
The quiet, plump, thoughtful-looking muser was on his way to a farm just beyond the outskirts of Kimberley, as he walked slowly through the darkness, hardly passing a soul; and he rubbed his hands softly at last as he came in sight of a dim gleaming lantern some distance ahead.
“All ready and waiting,” he said softly, and now he increased his pace a little in his excitement, but only to stop short and look back once or twice as if to make sure that he was not followed. But, neither seeing nor hearing anything, he rubbed his hands again, muttered to himself something about wiping his shoes of the whole place, and went on quickly.
“Das you, baas?” said a thick guttural voice just above the lantern.
“Yes, this is me,” replied Anson. “Team in-spanned?”
“Yaas, baas: big long time ago. Not tink baas come.”
“But I said I would,” replied Anson. “Got the water-barrel slung underneath?”