Chapter Seventy.
Congo a Captive.
The horsemen pulled up with a shout of exultation.
“What did you stop for?” asked the one who had struck the blow. “Why didn’t you keep on running?” he added with a fiendish laugh, as he leaned over the prostrate body of the Kaffir.
“Yaas, why don’t yer go on to tell where der two cameels be, to der fools whom found um?” asked the other. “Why don’t yer do datch?”
The two men who were addressing the half-unconscious Congo were the same two Willem, Arend, and Hendrik had met the day before,—the men who had directed them to search to the south. One was the brother of Mynheer Van Ormon, the other was his brother-in-law. They were men who had for many years been living on the borders of the colony,—part of their time engaged in fighting Kaffirs and Griquas, and robbing them of their cattle, the other part in trading with the natives for ostrich-feathers and ivory. They had lately returned from an unsuccessful expedition to the north, the object of which had been to procure two young giraffes, in order to obtain the reward or price offered for them by the consul of the Netherlands. On seeing within the kraal of their kinsman Mynheer Van Ormon, the very animals they had sacrificed so much time in vainly searching for, they could not resist the opportunity of appropriating them. Their idea was, to conceal the animals for a few weeks among the hills, until those to whom they properly belonged, giving them up as lost, should return to their homes. The giraffes might then be taken to Cape Town, and disposed of, without the original owners ever knowing anything of the trick that had been played upon them.
Unfortunately for Congo, they had that morning been in search of something for food, and had returned just in time to see him playing spy upon their camp.
“This is the villain who pretended to quarrel with his master and leave him,” said the man who had knocked the Kaffir down. “I told Van Ormon to send him off with the others, but he was sure the fellow did not wish to assist them, and could not if he would. By his folly our game has been nearly lost. We’ve just been in time; but what are we to do with the black brute, now that we’ve caught him?”
“Kill him!” replied the other, who was the brother of Van Ormon. “He mus never got to de white mens. Dey would come and rob us all.”