"'Did you get speech of the baboons last night among the rocks?' Shadrach asked.
"The other shook his head, grinning. 'I am old,' he said.
'They pay no attention to me, but I will try again.
Perhaps, before long, they will listen.'
"'When they do that,' said Shadrach, 'you shall have five pounds of tobacco and five bottles of dop.'
"The man was squatting on his heels all this time at Shadrach's feet, and his hard fingers, like claws, were picking at the ground. Now he put out a hand, and began fingering the laces of the farmer's shoes with a quick fluttering movement that Shadrach saw with a spasm of terror. It was so exactly the trick of a baboon, so entirely a thing animal and unhuman.
"'You are more than half a baboon yourself,' he said. 'Let go of my leg! Let go, I say! Curse you, get away—get away from me!'
"The creature had caught his ankle with both hands, the fingers, hard and shovel-ended, pressing into his flesh.
"'Let go!' he cried, and struck at the man with his sjambok.
"The man bounded on all fours to evade the blow, but it took him in the flank, and he was human—or Kafir—again in a moment, and rubbed himself and whimpered quite naturally.
"'Let me see no more of your baboon tricks,' stormed
Shadrach, the more angry because he had been frightened.
'Keep them for your friends among the rocks. And now be off
to your kraal.'
"That night again the Kafirs drummed all about the green corn, and sang in chorus the song which the mountain-Kafirs sing when the new moon shows like a paring from a fingernail of gold. It is a long and very loud song, with stamping of feet every minute, and again the baboons came down to see and listen. The Kafirs saw them, many hundreds of humped black shapes, and sang the louder, while the crowd of beasts grew ever denser as fresh parties came down and joined it. It was opposite the rocks on which they sat that the singing men collected, roaring their long verses and clattering on the buckets, doubtless not without some intention to jeer at and flout the baffled baboons, who watched them in such a silence. It was drooping now to the pit of night, and things were barely seen as shapes, when from higher up the line, where the guardians of the crops were sparser, there came a discord of shrieks.