“Or as if it was the slope of a volcano, and those were the masses of pumice which had fallen and rolled down.”
“So that we look like a couple of flies walking amongst lumps of sugar. Well, yours is a good simile, but not so romantic as mine. That’s a deep crack, Drew, old chap. Like to see how far in it goes?”
“No, thanks. I want my dinner,” said Lennox.
“Dinner! Mealie cake and tough stewed horse.”
“Wrong,” said Lennox; “it’s beef to-night, for I asked.”
“Beef! Don’t insult the muscle-giving food of a Briton by calling tough old draught-ox beef. I don’t know but what I would rather have a bit of cheval—chevril, or whatever they call it—if it wasn’t for that oily fat. But we might as well peep in that crack. Perhaps there’s a cavern.”
“Not to-day, Bob. It’s close upon mess-time.”
“Hark at him! Prefers food for the body to food for the mind. Very well. Go on; I’m at your heels.”
They descended to the more level part of the granite-strewn eminence, acknowledged the salutes of the sentries they passed, and soon after reached the mean-looking collection of tin houses that formed the village—though there was very little tin visible, the only portion being a barricade or two formed of biscuit-tins, which had been made bullet-proof in building up a wall by filling them with earth or sand. The tin houses, according to the popular term, were really the common grey corrugated iron so easily riveted or screwed together into a hut, and forming outer and partition walls, and fairly rain-proof roofing, but as ugly in appearance as hot beneath the torrid sun.
Groenfontein consisted of a group of this class of house ranged about a wide market-square, while here and there outside were warehouses and sheds and a few farms.