"Not quite long enough to understand," she replied. "Did you say those poor creatures were fighting—among themselves?"
"Yes."
"But why?" she persisted. "What did they fight for?"
He shrugged his neat shoulders. "Why does a Kafir do anything?" he enquired. "They told a cock-and-bull story that seems to be getting fashionable among them of late, about a son of one of their old chiefs appearing among them dressed like a white man. He went from kraal to kraal, talking English and giving money, and at one kraal the headman, an old chap who used to be a native constable of ours, actually seems to have laid his stick across some wandering nigger who couldn't explain what he wanted. The next kraal heard of this, and decided at once that a chief had been insulted, and the next thing was a fight and the old headman with an assegai through him. But if you want my opinion, Miss Harding—it does n't make such a good story, but I 've had to do with niggers all my life—"
"Yes?" said Margaret. "Tell me."
"Well," said Van Zyl, "my opinion is that if the old headman had n't been the owner of twelve head of cattle, all ready to be stolen, he might have gone on whacking stray Kafirs all his life without hurting anybody's feelings."
"Except theirs," suggested Mr. Samson. "Hah, ha! Except the chaps that he whacked—what?"
"Quite so!" Sub-Inspector Van Zyl smiled politely. "He was a vigorous old gentleman, and rather given to laying about him with anything that came handy. Probably picked up the habit in the police; the Kafir constables are always pretty rough with people of their own color. Anyhow, he 's done for; they drove a stabbing assegai clean through him and pinned him to a post of his own hut. I think I 've got the nigger that did it."
Mrs. Jakes at the tea-table shook her skirts applaudingly. At any rate, the rustle of them as she shook came in like applause at the tail of the sub-inspector's narrative.
"He ought to be hanged," she said.