“You’s bin my friend, Orpin, but I cannot help you dis time. Booby not under me now, an’ we’s bof b’long to Dragoener’s band. I’s sorry, but not can help you.”
“Never mind, Ruyter, I daresay you’d help me if you could,” said Stephen, with a sigh; then, with an earnest look in the Hottentot’s face, he continued, “I’m not, however, much distressed about the goods. The Lord who gave them has taken them away, and can give them back again if He has a mind to; but tell me, Ruyter, why will you not think of the things we once spoke of—that time when you were so roughly handled by Jan Smit—about your soul and the Saviour?”
“How you knows I not tink?” demanded the Hottentot sharply.
“Because any man can know a tree by its fruit,” returned Orpin. “If you had become a Christian, I should not now have found you the leader of a band of thieves.”
“No, I not a Christian, but I do tink,” returned Ruyter, “only I no’ can onderstan’. De black heathen—so you calls him—live in de land. White Christian—so you calls him—come and take de land; make slabe ob black man, and kick ’im about like pair ob ole boots—I not onderstan’ nohow.”
“Come, I will try to make you understand,” returned Orpin, pulling out the New Testament which he always carried in his pocket. “Some white men who call themselves Christians are heathens, and some black men are Christians. We are all,—black and white,—born bad, and God has sent us a Saviour, and a message, so that all who will, black or white, may become good.” Orpin here commenced to expound the Word, and to tell the story of the Cross, while the Hottentot listened with rapt attention, or asked questions which showed that he had indeed been thinking of these things since his last meeting with the trader, many years before. He was not very communicative, however, and when the two parted he declined to make any more satisfactory promise than that he would continue to “tink.”
Stephen Orpin spent the night alone in a tree, up which he had climbed to be more secure from wild beasts. Sitting there, he meditated much, and came to the conclusion that he ought in future to devote himself entirely to missionary labours. In pursuance of that idea, he made his way to one of the Wesleyan mission stations in Kafirland.
On the road thither he came to a Kafir kraal, where the men seemed to be engaged in the performance of a war-dance.
On being questioned by these Kafirs as to who he was, and where he came from, Orpin replied, in his best Kafir, that he was a trader and a missionary.
The chief looked surprised, but, on hearing the whole of Orpin’s story, a cunning look twinkled in his eyes, and he professed great friendship for the missionaries, stating at the same time that he was going to one of the Wesleyan stations, and would be glad to escort Orpin thither. Thereafter he gave orders that the white man should be taken to one of his huts and supplied with a “basket” of milk.