“‘What d’you do about aliens?’ I said, and the dirt I’d coughed up seemed all back of my tongue again.
“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘we don’t do much of anything. They’re about all the society we get. I’m a bit of a pro-Boer myself,’ he says, ‘but between you and me the average Boer ain’t over and above intellectual. You’re the first American we’ve met up with, but of course you’re a burgher.’
“It was what I ought to have been if I’d had the sense of a common tick, but the way he drawled it out made me mad.
“‘Of course I am not,’ I says. ‘Would you be a naturalised Boer?’
“‘I’m fighting against ’em,’ he says, lighting a cigarette, ‘but it’s all a matter of opinion.’
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘you can hold any blame opinion you choose, but I’m a white man, and my present intention is to die in that colour.’
“He laughed one of those big, thick-ended, British laughs that don’t lead anywhere, and whacked up some sort of compliment about America that made me mad all through.
“I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir, but I do not understand the alleged British joke. It is depressing.
“I was introdooced to five or six officers that evening, and every blame one of ’em grinned and asked me why I wasn’t in the Filipeens suppressing our war! And that was British humour! They all had to get it off their chests before they’d talk sense. But they was sound on the Zigler. They had all admired her. I made out a fairy-story of me being wearied of the war, and having pushed the gun at them these last three months in the hope they’d capture it and let me go home. That tickled ’em to death. They made me say it three times over, and laughed like kids each time. But half the British are kids; specially the older men. My Captain Mankeltow was less of it than the others. He talked about the Zigler like a lover, Sir, and I drew him diagrams of the hopper-feed and recoil-cylinder in his note-book. He asked the one British question I was waiting for, ‘Hadn’t I made my working-parts too light?’ The British think weight’s strength.
“At last—I’d been shy of opening the subject before—at last I said, ‘Gentlemen, you are the unprejudiced tribunal I’ve been hunting after. I guess you ain’t interested in any other gun-factory, and politics don’t weigh with you. How did it feel your end of the game? What’s my gun done, anyway?’