“I hope they peppered the Dutchmen properly,” cried Nick.
“Well, they seem to have made a good fight of it; but the Dutchmen were ten to one, and the Hottentots very little good. The upshot was that a large part of the tribe escaped, and the rest, together with the survivors of the English, surrendered themselves at discretion. Omatoko was one of those made prisoners, and he was for eight years in the service of a boor. He was pretty well treated; for the colony was all that time in the hands of the English, and they wouldn’t allow any cruelties to be exercised against the slaves. But two years ago the Cape was given back to the Dutch, and they began the old system again as soon as they were in possession. Omatoko and one or two others made their escape some twelve months ago; and he went back to his tribe, who are living, he says, at no great distance from this. The Dutch, he declares, have been trying to seize or kill him ever since—”
“Whew!” exclaimed Nick. “What, did those Dutch beggars bury him in the well after that fashion, then? Well, I always thought the Dutch to be brutes, but I never could have believed—”
“Stop that, Nick,” interposed Frank. “Have you forgotten that the Hottentot himself told us that it was the Bushmen who buried him?”
“Oh, ay, to be sure, I had forgotten that,” said Gilbert. “Go on, doctor. Did the Dutch send a commando after him?”
“Omatoko says that the Dutch had given up their system of commandos for several years, and could not easily organise them again, but they employed the Bushmen to seize any of the fugitives, and paid a large price for every one brought in.”
“But if that is true, what made the Bushmen bury Omatoko in that way, instead of carrying him to the Dutch to claim the reward?” asked Warley. “I must say, Charles, that sounds very suspicious.”
“So it did to me, Ernest,” said Charles; “but the Hottentot answered me, readily enough, that the Dutch would have paid the same sum for a runaway’s head, as they would if he had been brought to them alive. He declared that the Bushmen hated him, for having repeatedly escaped them, and for having several times requited their outrages in kind. He said they meant to have left him in the well, to die of cold and hunger; after which they would have cut off his head and carried it to the nearest Dutch village.”
“Well, that might be true, I suppose,” said Wilmore.
“Yes, I think so. The story hung well together. I could detect no flaw in it.”