“Friend,” he said hoarsely. “English.”
He heard speech behind the parapet. An electric torch was flashed on him for a second. A voice spoke, a friendly voice, and the sound of it seemed to be telling him to come over.
He was now standing up, and as he got his hands on the parapet he seemed to feel bayonets very near him. But the voice that spoke was kindly, so with a heave he scrambled over and flopped into the trench. Once more the electric torch was flashed, and revealed to the eyes of the onlookers an indescribably dirty, lean, middle-aged man with a bloody head, and scarcely a rag of shirt on his back. The said man, seeing friendly faces around him, grinned cheerfully.
“That was a rough trek, friends,” he said; “I want to see your general pretty quick, for I’ve got a present for him.”
He was taken to an officer in a dug-out, who addressed him in French, which he did not understand. But the sight of Stumm’s plan worked wonders. After that he was fairly bundled down communication trenches and then over swampy fields to a farm among trees. There he found staff officers, who looked at him and looked at his map, and then put him on a horse and hurried him eastwards. At last he came to a big ruined house, and was taken into a room which seemed to be full of maps and generals.
The conclusion must be told in Peter’s words.
“There was a big man sitting at a table drinking coffee, and when I saw him my heart jumped out of my skin. For it was the man I hunted with on the Pungwe in ’98—him whom the Kaffirs called ‘Buck’s Horn’, because of his long curled moustaches. He was a prince even then, and now he is a very great general. When I saw him, I ran forward and gripped his hand and cried, ‘Hoe gat het, Mynheer?’ and he knew me and shouted in Dutch, ‘Damn, if it isn’t old Peter Pienaar!’ Then he gave me coffee and ham and good bread, and he looked at my map.
“‘What is this?’ he cried, growing red in the face.
“‘It is the staff-map of one Stumm, a German skellum who commands in yon city,’ I said.
“He looked at it close and read the markings, and then he read the other paper which you gave me, Dick. And then he flung up his arms and laughed. He took a loaf and tossed it into the air so that it fell on the head of another general. He spoke to them in their own tongue, and they, too, laughed, and one or two ran out as if on some errand. I have never seen such merrymaking. They were clever men, and knew the worth of what you gave me.