“They first tried to blast the rocks, but that had no effect but that of wasting powder. Then a sort of blockade was established. Guards were set at every opening, and nothing allowed to come out or go in. But either the Kaffirs had collected large stores of food, or they had some way of going out and getting in which we could not detect. At last the Dutchmen came to the conclusion that the only thing to be done was to build them in.”
“Build them in! What, build a wall in front of the cave, do you mean?”
“Build up the mouth of the cave itself. They had pretty clearly determined that there was but one mouth,—the fact that the cave ran deeper and deeper into the hillside seemed to prove that,—and if so, there could be no way out.”
“Why, that is very much what I remember reading in my history of Scotland,” said Margetts, “that a very barbarous Highland tribe did to another. It was in prehistoric times, so that there was only a legend about it.”
“As for barbarity, Redgy,” observed George, “I don’t fancy the Boers of the nineteenth century are much behind the McLeods of whom that story is told. And the French performed nearly the same feat in Algeria forty years or so ago. Only they, I believe, smoked the Arabs like bees in a hive.”
“That would have been much more merciful,” observed Prestcott. “These Kaffirs died of hunger, the most dreadful of all deaths, and no quarter was given them. Whenever any of them made their appearance at the mouth of the cave, they were shot down. More than a thousand were killed in that way. The blockade was maintained for nearly a month. After that no Kaffirs appeared, and there came so dreadful a stench from the cave that the Dutch could endure it no longer, and made their way in. I had gone away some time before that, not being able to endure the horror of it. But I am told that they found no living thing. The whole tribe had been destroyed.”
“Then, I suppose, they went home and celebrated their victory,” said George.
“Yes, and boast that peace has been maintained in that district ever since,” replied Mr Prestcott.
“Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant,” said George, who had not forgotten his classics. “I did not know the Boers were as bad as that!”