Joeboy shook his head violently.
“What Joeboy do now, Boss?”
“Rub my wrists, Joeboy,” I said, stripping up my sleeves and showing him their bruised state and my swollen arms.
He understood why they were so, and took first one and then the other in his big soft grey palms, to mould and knead and rub them with untiring patience for long enough, the effect being pleasurable in the extreme.
But I checked him when he was in the midst of it, and pointed to my leg.
“Boer tie up leg?” he said wonderingly.
I explained what was wrong, and he knelt before me, carefully removing my laced-up boot, and giving me sickening pain as he drew off my coarse home-knitted stocking, to lay bare the wrenched and swollen foot and ankle.
“Um!” he said. “Boss Val come to water.”
He lifted me to the edge of the stream as easily as if I had been a child, and when I sat down, carefully bathed the joint for fully half-an-hour, dried it by pouring sand over it again and again, and then as tenderly as a woman replaced stocking and boot, which latter he laced very loosely.
“Boss Val go one leg when off Sandho.”