“Are you God, then, Englishman, that you dispose of the lives of men and women at your will? It was He Who saved us, not you.”
“He may have saved you, but it was through me. I carried out the rescue of these poor people whom you deserted, and I nursed you back to life.”
“I did not desert them; I went to get help for them.”
“Taking all the powder and the only horse with you! Well, that is done with, and now you want to borrow goods to pay for cattle—from me, whom you hate. You are not proud, Mynheer Pereira, when you have an end to serve, whatever that end may be,” and I looked at him. My instinct warned me against this false and treacherous man, who, I felt, was even then plotting in his heart to bring some evil upon me.
“No, I am not proud. Why should I be, seeing that I mean to repay you twice over for anything which you may lend me now?”
I reflected a while. Certainly our journey to Natal would be pleasanter if Pereira were not of the company. Also, if he went with us, I was sure that before we came to the end of that trek, one or other of us would leave his bones on the road. In short, not to put too fine a point on it, I feared lest in this way or in that he would bring me to my death in order that he might possess himself of Marie. We were in a wild country, with few witnesses and no law courts, where such deeds might be done again and again and the doer never called to account for lack of evidence and judges.
So I made up my mind to fall in with his wishes, and we began to bargain. The end of it was that I advanced him enough of my remaining goods to buy the cattle he required from the surrounding natives. It was no great quantity, after all, seeing that in this uncivilised place an ox could be purchased for a few strings of beads or a cheap knife. Further, I sold him a few of the beasts that I had broken, a gun, some ammunition and certain other necessaries, for all of which things he gave me a note of hand written in my pocket-book. Indeed, I did more; for as none of the Boers would help him I assisted Pereira to break in the cattle he bought, and even consented when he asked me to give him the services of two of the Zulus whom I had hired.
All these preparations took a long while. If I remember right, twelve more days had gone by before Pereira finally trekked off from Marais’s camp, by which time he was quite well and strong again.
We all assembled to see the start, and Marais offered up a prayer for his nephew’s safe journey and our happy meeting again in Natal at the laager of Retief, which was to be our rendezvous, if that leader were still in Natal. No one else joined in the prayer. Only Vrouw Prinsloo audibly added another of her own. It was to the effect that he might not come back a second time, and that she might never see his face again, either at Retief’s laager or anywhere else, if it would please the good Lord so to arrange matters.
The Boers tittered; even the Meyer children tittered, for by this time the hatred of the Vrouw Prinsloo for Hernan Pereira was the joke of the place. But Pereira himself pretended not to hear, said good-bye to us all affectionately, adding a special petition for the Vrouw Prinsloo, and off we went.