The big man laughed. “You see I am not forgotten,” he said to his friend, and then to us: “So I treat my enemies, and so will Germany treat hers. You, too, if you fail me by a fraction of an inch.” And he laughed loud again.
There was something horrible in that boisterousness. Peter was watching him from below his eyelids, as I have seen him watch a lion about to charge.
He flung himself on a chair, put his elbows on the table, and thrust his face forward.
“You have come from a damned muddled show. If I had Maritz in my power I would have him flogged at a wagon’s end. Fools and pig-dogs, they had the game in their hands and they flung it away. We could have raised a fire that would have burned the English into the sea, and for lack of fuel they let it die down. Then they try to fan it when the ashes are cold.”
He rolled a paper pellet and flicked it into the air. “That is what I think of your idiot general,” he said, “and of all you Dutch. As slow as a fat vrouw and as greedy as an aasvogel.”
We looked very glum and sullen.
“A pair of dumb dogs,” he cried. “A thousand Brandenburgers would have won in a fortnight. Seitz hadn’t much to boast of, mostly clerks and farmers and half-castes, and no soldier worth the name to lead them, but it took Botha and Smuts and a dozen generals to hunt him down. But Maritz!” His scorn came like a gust of wind.
“Maritz did all the fighting there was,” said Peter sulkily. “At any rate he wasn’t afraid of the sight of the khaki like your lot.”
“Maybe he wasn’t,” said the giant in a cooing voice; “maybe he had his reasons for that. You Dutchmen have always a feather-bed to fall on. You can always turn traitor. Maritz now calls himself Robinson, and has a pension from his friend Botha.”
“That,” said Peter, “is a very damned lie.”