“It could not well have been closer, Meinheer. I hope that, for your own sake and for the sake of the people who go out shooting with you, you will not make such a mistake again. Good-morning!”
The handsome Boer, or Anglo-Boer, sat on his horse stroking his beautiful beard and gazing curiously after John Niel’s sturdy English-looking figure as he marched towards the cart, for, of course, the wounded vilderbeeste had long ago vanished.
“I wonder,” he said to himself aloud, as he turned his horse’s head and rode leisurely away, “if the old volk are right after all, and if there is a God.” Frank Muller was sufficiently impregnated with modern ideas to be a free-thinker. “It almost seems like it,” he went on, “else how did it come that the one bullet passed under his belly and the other just touched his head without harming him? I aimed carefully enough too, and I could make the shot nineteen times out of twenty and not miss. Bah, a God! I snap my fingers at Him. Chance is the only god. Chance blows men about like the dead grass, till death comes down like the veldt fire and devours them. But there are men who ride chance as one rides a young colt—ay, who turn its headlong rushing and rearing to their own ends—who let it fly hither and thither till it is weary, and then canter it along the road that leads to triumph. I, Frank Muller, am one of those men. I never fail in the end. I will kill that Englishman. Perhaps I will kill old Silas Croft and the Hottentot too. Bah! they do not know what is coming. I know; I have helped to lay the mine; and unless they bend to my will I shall be the one to fire it. I will kill them all, and I will take Mooifontein, and then I will marry Bessie. She will fight against it, but that will make it all the sweeter. She loves that rooibaatje; I know it; and I will kiss her over his dead body. Ah! there are the carts. I don’t see the Captain. Driven home, I suppose, on account of the shock to his nerves. Well, I must talk to those fools. Lord, what fools they are with their chatter about the ‘land,’ and the ‘verdomde Britische Gouvernment.’ They don’t know what is good for them. Silly sheep, with Frank Muller for a shepherd! Ay, and they shall have Frank Muller for a president one day, and I will rule them too. Bah! I hate the English; but I am glad that I am half English for all that, for that is where I get the brains! But these people—fools, fools! Well, I shall pipe and they shall dance!”
“Baas,” said Jantje to John, as they were driving homewards, “Baas Frank shot at you.”
“How do you know that?” asked John.
“I saw him. He was stalking the wounded bull, and not looking for a calf at all. There was no calf. He was just going to fire at the wounded bull when he turned and saw you, and he knelt down on one knee and covered you, and before I could do anything he fired, and then when he saw that he had missed you he fired again, and I don’t know how it was that he did not kill you, for he is a wonderful shot with a rifle—he never misses.”
“I will have the man tried for attempted murder,” said John, bringing the butt-end of his rifle down with a bang on to the bottom of the cart. “A villain like that shall not go scot-free.”
Jantje grinned. “It is no use, Baas. He would get off, for I am the only witness. A jury won’t believe a black man in this country, and they would never punish a Boer for shooting at an Englishman. No, Baas! you should lie up one day in the veldt where he is going to pass and shoot him. That is what I would do if I dared.”
CHAPTER XI.
ON THE BRINK
For a few weeks after John Niel’s adventure at the shooting-party no event of any importance occurred at Mooifontein. Day followed day in charming monotony, for, whatever “gay worldlings” may think, monotony is as full of charm as a dreamy summer afternoon. “Happy is the country that has no history,” says the voice of wisdom, and the same remark may be made with even more truth of the individual. To get up in the morning conscious of health and strength, to pursue the common round and daily task till evening comes, and finally to go to bed pleasantly tired and sleep the sleep of the just, is the true secret of happiness. Fierce excitements, excursions, and alarms do not conduce either to mental or physical well-being, and it is for this reason that we find that those whose lives have been chiefly concerned with them crave the most after the quiet round of domestic life. When they get it, often, it is true, they pant for the ardours of the fray whereof the dim and distant sounds are echoing through the spaces of their heart, in the same way that the countries without a history are sometimes anxious to write one in their own blood. But that is a principle of Nature, who will allow of no standing still among her subjects, and who has ordained that strife of one sort or another shall be the absolute condition of existence.