"Now," said Klein Piet, rising from his knees; "who will tell me what the other end of that chain is fast to?"
It was a strange thing for a house-building Boer to find; their shovels only showed them that there was a long chain there, running level perhaps six feet below the surface of the ground. They bared a couple of fathoms of it, red as gold with its long burial, and then Piet bade them halt.
"We must cut it," he said. "It will be hard work, but plainer to do than digging up the whole of it. And for today, let us go back to camp and leave it."
Piet was a little resentful of these things that had arrived to disturb the course of his work. First, the sudden stranger who left no spoor where he walked, and now the anchor lying where the roots of his home should be—they were beyond the calculations of an upright Boer. Like many more sophisticated men, Piet relied on his environment possessing a certain quality; when foreign elements colored it, when it was flavored with unascertained ingredients, a sort of helplessness sapped his powers; he was like a man walking blindfold. Only his bull-headed pluck served him at such times; and now, when he doubted and was uneasy, he held on without hesitation in the task he had undertaken. A brand-wacht was maintained that night, the four of them taking turns to sit sentry by the great wood fire; and though, during his turn of the watch, the night seemed alive with lurking men who stared and slunk, he faced the new dawn with no leak in his courage.
That day, they set to work at cutting through the great chain that was fast to the anchor ring. Their equipment for such a purpose was poor; there was nothing for it but to flog a cold chisel through the wrought iron; and though the rust flaked from it if one but scratched with a fingernail, the metal below was sound and tough yet, a heartbreaking thing to assault with mere strength of arm. Further, there is a science of cutting with the cold edge which was outside all their knowledge. The younger lads took turns to hold the chisel while Piet and Klein Piet, swinging alternately, rung a strenuous bob-major on its head; but the hot hours passed in sweat and labor, and afternoon was upon them, while the chain seemed scarcely scratched. It was cruel work for all of them, jarring to the arms and stunning to the ears. At last, Piet dropped his sledge-hammer and wiped the wet from his face.
"Honest men made that chain," he said. "We shall be all to-morrow cutting at it. Hullo! What kafir is this?"
None of them had seen the approach of the kafir who now stood on the edge of the pit looking down at them; he carried his hand to his head in a salute as they looked up at him. He was an old kafir, with tufts of white on his chin and a skin hanging on his loins, gaunt and big and upstanding, with a kind of dignity that was new to them in kafirs. He supported their stare with no embarrassment, and gave them back an unabashed regard of quiet curiosity.
"Who are you?" demanded Piet. "Where do you come from?"
But the kafir could speak no Dutch; he made a reply in some tongue of his own, sonorous and full-throated, and raised his hand again in salute.
"We must know where he comes from," said Piet to the lads. "Between ourselves and our own kafirs, we must find some language he can understand."