"You were n't quite sure what you were trying for," said the Kafir. "Was n't that it?"
"Was it?" wondered Paul.
"I think so." The Kafir's smile shone out again. "Once you 're sure what you mean to do, it 's easy. If I had a piece of clay, I 'd show you. There 's a way of thumbing it up, just a trick, you know—"
"I 'm there every evening," said Paul eagerly. "But tell me: do other people make things out of clay, too—over there?"
His arm pointed along the railway; the gesture comprehended sweepingly the cities and habitations of men. The idea that there was a science of fingering clay, that it was practised and studied, excited him wildly.
"Gently!" warned the Kafir. He looked at the boy curiously. "Yes," he said. "Lots of people do it, and lots more go to look at the things they make and talk about them. People pay money to learn to do it, and there are great schools where they are taught to model—to make things, you know, in clay, and stone, and bronze. Did you think it was all done behind dam walls?"
Paul breathed deep. "I did n't know," he murmured.
"Do you know Capetown?" asked the other. "No? It doesn't matter. You 've heard of Jan van Riebeck, though?"
As it happened, Paul had heard of the Surgeon of the Fleet who first carried dominion to the shadow of Table Mountain.
"Well," said the Kafir, "you can imagine Jan van Riebeek, shaped in bronze, standing on a high pedestal at the foot of a great street, with the water of the bay behind him, where his ships used to float, and his strong Dutch face lifted to look up to Table Mountain, as it was when he landed? Don't think of the bronze shape; think of the man. That's what clay is for—to make things like that!"