“Oh, you were?” said Peter. “I saw a photograph of the niggers hanging, and our fellows standing round smoking; but I didn’t see you in it. I suppose you’d just gone away?”
“I was beside the men when they were hung,” said the stranger.
“Oh, you were, were you?” said Peter. “I don’t much care about seeing that sort of thing myself. Some fellows think it’s the best fun out to see the niggers kick; but I can’t stand it: it turns my stomach. It’s not liver-heartedness,” said Peter, quickly, anxious to remove any adverse impression as to his courage which the stranger might form; “if it’s shooting or fighting, I’m there. I’ve potted as many niggers as any man in our troop, I bet. It’s floggings and hangings I’m off. It’s the way one’s brought up, you know. My mother never even would kill our ducks; she let them die of old age, and we had the feathers and the eggs: and she was always drumming into me;—don’t hit a fellow smaller than yourself; don’t hit a fellow weaker than yourself; don’t hit a fellow unless he can hit you back as good again. When you’ve always had that sort of thing drummed into you, you can’t get rid of it, somehow. Now there was that other nigger they shot. They say he sat as still as if he was cut out of stone, with his arms round his legs; and some of the fellows gave him blows about the head and face before they took him off to shoot him. Now, that’s the sort of thing I can’t do. It makes me sick here, somehow.” Peter put his hand rather low down over the pit of his stomach. “I’ll shoot as many as you like if they’ll run, but they mustn’t be tied up.”
“I was there when that man was shot,” said the stranger.
“Why, you seem to have been everywhere,” said Peter. “Have you seen Cecil Rhodes?”
“Yes, I have seen him,” said the stranger.
“Now he’s death on niggers,” said Peter Halket, warming his hands by the fire; “they say when he was Prime Minister down in the Colony he tried to pass a law that would give their masters and mistresses the right to have their servants flogged whenever they did anything they didn’t like; but the other Englishmen wouldn’t let him pass it. But here he can do what he likes. That’s the reason some fellows don’t want him to be sent away. They say, ‘If we get the British Government here, they’ll be giving the niggers land to live on; and let them have the vote, and get civilised and educated, and all that sort of thing; but Cecil Rhodes, he’ll keep their noses to the grindstone.’ ‘I prefer land to niggers,’ he says. They say he’s going to parcel them out, and make them work on our lands whether they like it or not—just as good as having slaves, you know: and you haven’t the bother of looking after them when they’re old. Now, there I’m with Rhodes; I think it’s an awfully good move. We don’t come out here to work; it’s all very well in England; but we’ve come here to make money, and how are we to make it, unless you get niggers to work for you, or start a syndicate? He’s death on niggers, is Rhodes!” said Peter, meditating; “they say if we had the British Government here and you were thrashing a nigger and something happened, there’d be an investigation, and all that sort of thing. But, with Cecil, it’s all right, you can do what you like with the niggers, provided you don’t get HIM into trouble.”
The stranger watched the clear flame as it burnt up high in the still night air; then suddenly he started.
“What is it?” said Peter; “do you hear anything?”
“I hear far off,” said the stranger, “the sound of weeping, and the sound of blows. And I hear the voices of men and women calling to me.”