“I heard your gun, and found you in a swoon. This is my house; it is called Malopo’s Kloof.”
“I am very thankful,” said George. “How long have I been ill?”
“It is more than five weeks since I found you—five weeks last Monday.”
“Five weeks!” repeated George, becoming dimly conscious of strange, wild scenes, among which he seemed to have passed an immeasurable period of time,—gallops over interminable plains, struggles with armed assassins, writhings of wounded snakes, and the like phantasmagoria of a sick fancy, succeeding and intermingling with one another. “Five weeks! Have I had a fever?”
“A marsh fever, and a very bad one. I thought several times the Englishman would die,” said the old man.
“And who has been my doctor?” inquired Rivers, only able to recall two figures that were not quite shadowy and unreal,—the figure of the man before him, and another younger than he. “Who have been my doctor and my nurse?”
“You have had no doctor: there is none in these parts. Rudolf and I nursed you,” was the answer. “We put on cool bandages and gave you cool drinks—nothing else.”
“And I have to thank you for my life then!” exclaimed George, feebly stretching out his hand, and becoming aware for the first time how thin and wasted it had become.
“We could not let the Englishman die,” said the old man simply. “But you must be quiet—you are not strong enough to talk.” Putting a glass containing some mixture which tasted deliciously cool and refreshing to his lips, the Dutchman now withdrew, and Rivers was soon once more buried in slumber.
He woke again after a long interval, feeling stronger, and so went on for a week or two more, gaining strength continually, until at last he was permitted to get up and sit for an hour in the garden, which was now in the prime of its beauty and luxuriance. Mynheer Kransberg—that he presently discovered to be his host’s name—had been one of the earliest settlers in the Transvaal, long before the country bore that name, and when it was only inhabited by the native tribes. He had been quite a young man, though possessed of good means, when the Dutch first broke out into resistance to the English rule. Aware of the hopelessness of rebellion, and unwilling to take part against his countrymen, he had withdrawn with a considerable following of his own dependants into the then unknown regions lying to the north of the Orange river. Here he had purchased land of one of the native chiefs, built his house, and enclosed his farm, and here he had lived ever since, through all the numerous changes which the country had undergone, paying as little heed to them as if he had belonged to another planet. He had never married, or felt any inclination to do so. He had ridden about his fields, and reared his cattle and sent them to market, and brewed his Dutch beer, year after year, with a placid contentment which is rarely witnessed, even in a Dutchman. If he was indolent he was at all events extremely good-tempered, and his oldest servants scarcely ever remembered to have seen him ruffled.