When morning came, and they were hustled into the Pretoria train, they felt almost half dead. Faint and breathless, they gasped as they were dragged into the court, and listened to the charges with dull apathy. There was little enough fight in them now.
By the time they reached Pretoria, however, their young constitutions, aided by the fresh veldt air, had restored both their appetites and their courage. In spite of their jailors’ grunts of disapproval, they were laughing and jesting more from bravado than through good spirits.
“We must show them we are game, no matter what happens to us,” said Ned; and his chums’ loyalty backed him up.
In the same train, but in a different compartment, Stephanus Groblaar and the wounded and battered Zarps travelled to give their evidence. The boys caught a glimpse of Stephanus as he got out, and could not help enjoying the sight. The baton had smashed the bridge of his nose and spoilt what little beauty he possessed. He was marked for life, so that they would recognise him under any disguise almost. They caught his one eye glaring luridly on Ned, for the other was bandaged up, and they grinned broadly as they were pushed past.
They were marched along to the tronk, getting hasty glimpses of the Dopper Kirk, where Oom Paul sometimes preaches; the frowning forts and warlike batteries which he has erected at so much expense to his insolvent government, as a sign of the friendly disposition of the Volksraad towards the Uitlander, and the open gallows and stocks, which also were tokens of the social advancement of the constitution. That church obstructing the traffic was typical of the people’s wisdom and foresight, as their town lying in the swamp was. They doted on mud and pestilential swamps, as they piously believed in obstruction, dirt, bad drainage, and public executions.
The Pretoria tronk—at least, the part into which our heroes were locked—was a shade more endurable than had been their lodging of the night before. Morality, if not sanitary arrangements, was slightly more observed.
Their cell, which was the same size as the last, was not quite so crowded, and they had white companions only, and of their own sex. Between them and the Kaffirs was a sheet of corrugated iron.
Small holes were bored in the sheet-iron walls; these were, however, close to the roof, and did not give them much fresh air. During the day the heat was intense, as the thin iron became almost red-hot under the sun glare. At night it was in proportion cold.
There had been thirty-five prisoners in this cell two days before, but eighteen of these had been removed; thus they had only seventeen companions waiting their sentences. Fortunately, also, the majority of these prisoners were respectable citizens, whose crimes were as yet to be invented. Like our heroes, they had been seized upon without any pretext, without being aware yet of the charges. They would learn all that at the time appointed by their tyrants.
Small straw mattresses were given to them to sleep on at nights; these were placed side by side along the walls, leaving a narrow gangway between. These mattresses had served hundreds of prisoners before them; they were dirty in the extreme, worn by holes, and infested by other inhabitants beside themselves, that not only did not sleep when darkness fell, but did their best to murder sleep. A Salvation Army night-shelter might be as lively, but it could not be worse than were those unhallowed beds. They were placed upon the ground, and each morning were taken out and aired in the exercise-yard. Otherwise the cells were devoid of furniture. There were neither seats nor tables.