They had also gained a considerable insight of the Boers’ other peculiarities. Their utter lack of humour and sullen stolidity; their merciless barbarity to their servants and cattle, joined to their stern and one-sided religious fervour. The Bible, the cowhide, and the rifle were always kept handy for constant use by those pious dopper farmers. The word of God for themselves and families. The cowhide for their cattle and servants, and the rifle where the cowhide failed to convince.
They had seen these farmers flog the Kaffirs within an inch of their lives for the slightest offence, or perhaps because the master was in a bad temper, and the Kaffir chanced to be in his road. They had seen them bring out their guns, if the braced-up and lacerated natives looked nasty, and deliberately shoot them dead, then go indoors immediately after, read their Bibles, sing their psalms, and thank the Lord of hosts for giving them grace. Their infernal cruelties never touched their consciences in the slightest degree, and they had no fear of the laws of the land condemning them. Each Boer made his own laws, and these were merciless. There was no justice for the native; he was a beast to be down-trodden and enslaved. His land and his life were theirs, the chosen people of the Lord, to abuse or murder as they pleased.
Yet they never neglected family worship. Nor would they permit the stranger to go from them without reading a chapter, and delivering themselves of an unctuous prayer. Sylvan life amongst the pious doppers was very unlovely and revolting.
Having already experienced so much, the young men hardly noticed the filthy and disgraceful conditions of the Johannesburg tronk, or jail. That they were crammed into a small cell of ten by twenty feet, along with twenty-five other prisoners, was nasty; yet they endured this fate with as much philosophy as they could.
Twenty-eight prisoners, waiting their trial, were immured in this suffocating, dark, and noisome den, which could be compared with nothing else than the hold of a slaver, or the black hole of Calcutta. A third of these were Kaffir women, and the majority of the rest, the vilest and most foul-mouthed scum in Johannesburg.
There was no separation of the sexes; they were all crushed together, regardless of their ages or offences. The atmosphere was horrible, for there was no other ventilation than what the opening of the door gave.
It was opened occasionally by the warders as they thought fit, to give the captives a little air and prevent suffocation.
The floors were cemented, and the roof of corrugated iron; but as water is a luxury in Johannesburg, and the Boers are averse to washing and also are regardless of dirt, weeks if not months had passed since last the accumulations had been shovelled out. The mind of an Englishman at home could not conjure up any idea approaching this abomination of stench and overpowering heat.
Here our heroes had spent their first night of Boer prison life, listening, or rather trying to shut their ears, to the groans, curses, and obscenities of their fellow-captives. Packed closely together, they were forced to stand still and upright, with the perspiration pouring from them, and swallow the poison that entered their lungs instead of air.
Many—indeed, most—of these prisoners had broken heads and other wounds, and these, clotted and untended, added to the disgusting horrors.