Thus it was that at last we arrived in the camp, where, having seen us coming, all the Boers were gathered. They are not a particularly humorous people, but this spectacle of the advance of Pereira seated on the pack-ox, a steed that is becoming to few riders, with the furious and portly Vrouw Prinsloo striding at his side and shrieking abuse at him, caused them to burst into laughter. Then Pereira’s temper gave out, and he became even more abusive than Vrouw Prinsloo.
“Is this the way you receive me, you veld-hogs, you common Boers, who are not fit to mix with a man of position and learning like myself?” he began.
“Then in God’s name why do you mix with us, Hernan Pereira?” asked the saturnine Meyer, thrusting his face forward till the Newgate fringe he wore by way of a beard literally seemed to curl with wrath. “When we were hungry you did not wish it, for you slunk away and left us, taking all the powder. But now that we are full again, thanks to the little Englishman, and you are hungry, you come back. Well, if I had my way I would give you a gun and six days’ rations, and turn you out to shift for yourself.”
“Don’t be afraid, Jan Meyer,” shouted Pereira from the back of the pack-ox. “As soon as I am strong enough I will leave you in charge of your English captain here”—and he pointed to me—“and go to tell our people what sort of folk you are.”
“That is good news,” interrupted Prinsloo, a stolid old Boer, who stood by puffing at his pipe. “Get well, get well as soon as you can, Hernan Pereira.”
It was at this juncture that Marais arrived, accompanied by Marie. Where he came from I do not know, but I think he must have been keeping in the background on purpose to see what kind of a reception Pereira would meet with.
“Silence, brothers,” he said. “Is this the way you greet my nephew, who has returned from the gate of death, when you should be on your knees thanking God for his deliverance?”
“Then go on your knees and thank Him yourself, Henri Marais,” screamed the irrepressible Vrouw Prinsloo. “I give thanks for the safe return of Allan here, though it is true they would be warmer if he had left this stinkcat behind him. Allemachte! Henri Marais, why do you make so much of this Portuguese fellow? Has he bewitched you? Or is it because he is your sister’s son, or because you want to force Marie there to marry him? Or is it, perhaps, that he knows of something bad in your past life, and you have to bribe him to keep his mouth shut?”
Now, whether this last unpleasant suggestion was a mere random arrow drawn from Vrouw Prinsloo’s well-stored quiver, or whether the vrouw had got hold of the tail-end of some long-buried truth, I do not know. Of course, however, the latter explanation is possible. Many men have done things in their youth which they do not wish to see dug up in their age; and Pereira may have learned a family secret of the kind from his mother.
At any rate, the effect of the old lady’s words upon Marais was quite remarkable. Suddenly he went into one of his violent and constitutional rages. He cursed Vrouw Prinsloo. He cursed everybody else, assuring them severally and collectively that Heaven would come even with them. He said there was a plot against him and his nephew, and that I was at the bottom of it, I who had made his daughter fond of my ugly little face. So furious were his words, whereof there were many more which I have forgotten, that at length Marie began to cry and ran away. Presently, too, the Boers strolled off, shrugging their shoulders, one of them saying audibly that Marais had gone quite mad at last, as he always thought he would.