Chapter Thirty Five.
“To your Tents, O Israel!”
At Mafeking our heroes received their final instructions, and were metamorphosed into three large-boned, amazonian young women, more awe-inspiring than beautiful to look upon. They were costumed in a homely fashion, as they were acting the character of domestic servants. Under this disguise they passed scrutiny and were not suspected by their fellow-passengers. Tall women are by no means a novelty nowadays, nor are awkward and masculine women, since bicycles and feminine athletics are the vogue. Indeed, to find a gentle, soft-voiced, graceful, and retiring lady traveller is now the exception rather than the rule.
Therefore, when our heroes forgot their acting and took big leaps in and out of carriage doors, or crossed their legs and their arms, it did not strike any one as peculiar behaviour. Women of this generation do all that men were at one time only privileged to do. They raise their dresses and plant their feet on the cushioned seats opposite them, and do all sorts of things that were at one time supposed to be most indelicate. Our heroes, being well-bred, gentlemanly young fellows, conducted themselves a great deal more decorously than the majority of nineteenth-century ladies would have behaved. Indeed, their native politeness made them appear singularly superior servant-girls.
They left their treasures with Dr Jim to bank for them at Mafeking, and went on together as far as Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State.
They had changed trains at De Aar, and again at Tuur Berg for the Boer line.
At Bloemfontein the first of their partings took place, where Fred went off.
Ned and Clarence felt a bit melancholy when they said good-bye to their faithful and long-tried chum. They reckoned that some fighting had to be done before they were re-united, if ever they were. If it could have been managed they would have liked to do the fighting in company, yet as it could not be so, they bore the parting bravely.
As the pair crossed the border at Viljoen’s Drift, and saw the train boarded by the hateful Boers, they felt the old rage again possess them, which had so long been almost forgotten. These arrogant, uncouth bullies, who treated male and female with the same rough brutality, made them clench their teeth and draw their brows together until they looked very forbidding females indeed.
But the officials were wonderfully pleasant towards them, considering their unfriendly demeanour. They admired muscle and bone like theirs, and said audibly that they would be fine vrows some day, when they got fatter. They were passed on much more easily than they expected. Once Ned had to correct an impertinent German, who tried to make himself agreeable in the fashion some cads have with unprotected females. Ned promptly knocked the ruffian down and kicked him under the seat. Then he leaned back calmly and gazed out of the window, until he suddenly recollected that he should have called the guard instead. He did this at once as soon as he remembered his sex, and had the man removed in a very dejected and dilapidated condition.