Chapter Eighteen.
The Arrow-Poison.
Klaas and Jan had long since ridden their ponies back to camp, and having off-saddled, remained by the wagons.
For all that they were not idle—that is, they were not without something to interest and amuse them. Swartboy was the genius worshipped by Klaas and Jan, for there was no bird in all Africa that Swartboy could not either snare or trap; and in his hours of leisure, when the oxen were kraaled and off his hands, he was in the habit of showing the two young “mynheers” how to construct many a sort of decoy and trap for the fowls of the air.
Upon this day in particular, however, they were more than usually interested in the Bushman’s proceedings, as his attention was turned to capturing,—not a fowl of the air, but of the earth,—an ostrich.
Swartboy had resolved to pluck the plumes out of the old cock that had been seen, and whose dwelling had been so rudely approached and plundered in the morning.
But how was Swartboy to capture the cock?
It was not his intention to take him alive. That is a difficult matter, and can only be managed by men mounted upon fleet horses, and then after a very long and troublesome chase.