“Val, old chap, the dad says I’m not to come along with Joeboy to join. I told him it was a shame, for I felt in a passion, and he knocked me down.
“That’s only my larks. He did knock me down, but not with his fist or the handle of a— I don’t know how you spell it; but I mean chambock. He knocked me over with what he said. He told me it was my duty to stop and help him and auntie. He might want me to fight for him and her. If he does, I’ll shove in two cartridges—I mean only one bullet; and I don’t care if the old rifle kicks till she breaks my collar-bone. I mean to let the Boers have it for coming and upsetting us. I never knew how nice dear old home was before. Old—”
That was the bottom of the paper; but upon turning it over, there at the very top on the other side, and in the left-hand corner above the word “Val,” where my father had begun, was the word “Beasts,” which I had passed over unnoticed as being part of some memorandum on the paper when my father took it up hurriedly to write.
I always was a weak, emotional sort of fellow—perhaps it was due to the climate, and my having had the fever when we first came there—and the writing looked very dim and blurry before my eyes; and yet I felt inclined to laugh over what Bob had scribbled. I did laugh when my eyes grew clear again, for Bob had, apparently at the last, taken up the pen to write along the edge of the paper, and so badly that it was hard to read:
“I say, Joeboy looks fizzing. He’s been oiling himself over to make him go easy, and sharpening his saygays with the scythe-rubber.”
“And so there’s to be no more home,” I said softly as I carefully folded up the paper and placed it in my breast. Then somehow the terrible feeling of hunger died out, and I only drank some more water.
“Boss Val eat lot,” said Joeboy, his voice making me start.
“No more, now, Joeboy,” I said. “I’ll wait a bit.”
“Wait a bit,” he said, nodding his head, and then carefully replacing what I had left in the satchel.
“Fasten that to the back of my saddle,” I said.