Note 1. The author had the pleasure of spending a night last year (1876) under the hospitable roof of Mr Pringle, shortly before his death, and saw the identical assagai, which was bent by the force with which it had been hurled against him on that occasion.
Chapter Twenty Four.
Shows what befell a Trader and an Emigrant Band.
Stephen Orpin, with the goods of earth in his waggon and the treasures of heaven in his hand, chanced to be passing over a branch of the Amatola Mountains when the torch of war was kindled and sent its horrid glare along the frontier. Vague news of the outbreak had reached him, and he was hastening back to the village of Salem, in which was his bachelor home.
Stephen, we may remark in passing, was not a bachelor from choice. Twice had he essayed to win the affections of Jessie McTavish, and twice had he failed. Not being a man of extreme selfishness, he refused to die of a broken heart. He mourned indeed, deeply and silently, but he bowed his head, and continued, as far as in him lay, to fulfil the end for which he seemed to have been created. He travelled with goods far and wide throughout the eastern districts of the colony, became a walking newspaper to the farmers of the frontier, and a guide to the Better Land to whoever would grant him a hearing.
But Stephen’s mercantile course, like that of his affections, did not run smooth. At the present time it became even more rugged than the mountain road which almost dislocated his waggon and nearly maddened his Hottentot drivers, for, when involved in the intricacies of a pass, he was suddenly attacked by a band of “wild” Bushman marauders. The spot chanced to be so far advantageous that a high precipice at his back rendered it impossible to attack him except in front, where the ground was pretty open.
Orpin was by no means a milksop, and, although a Christian man, did not understand Christianity to teach the absolute giving up of all one’s possessions to the first scoundrel who shall demand them. The moment, therefore, that the robbers showed themselves, he stopped the waggon at the foot of the precipice, drew his ever-ready double-barrelled large-bore gun from under the tilt, and ran out in front, calling on his men to support him. Kneeling down, he prepared to take a steady aim at the Bushman in advance, a wild-looking savage in a sheepskin kaross and armed with an assagai. The robbers were evidently aware of the nature of a gun, for they halted on seeing the decided action of the trader.