The Dutch contingent now made a kind of cordon round the house and watched proceedings closely, in case it should be necessary to send a runner for the police from the nearest town.
Meanwhile we in the garden proceeded to soak our blankets, wrapped our heads in them, and, re-entering the house, assembled again round the dining-room table and announced we really were ready at last.
"The heat is too cruel!" suddenly said Veronica. "Couldn't we have something to drink before we begin? If not, I shall faint."
It was by this time getting on for 11 a.m., and a cloudless day, such as you expect in the Rand midsummer, and what with the felt masks and the blankets and the fright we were all in, we were in an awful state, and so it was imperative that whisky should be served out to the men and lemonade and sal volatile to the ladies.
"And how are we to drink it?" said someone from under his mask.
"Sit down all of you," said the Electrical Engineer, "and I'll come round and pour it into your mouths while each of you lifts your mask slightly up. We can't undo them now." So we sat in a row, and the villagers crowding towards the house beheld the operation. One of them said this sort of thing could not be permitted to go on, and so he rushed after a cart going up the hill towards the town and told the driver to make for the police-station and tell the mounted police they were wanted at once.
"Are you all ready?" said the Electrical Engineer. "Then come to the table and I'll dole out the vitriol first."
We each stood with a tin pannikin and received the stuff, though it was difficult from under our masks and blankets to see whether it was going into the pannikins or over our hands or feet, which a single drop would, of course, burn to the bone.
"Go quickly," shouted the Electrical Engineer when it was done, "and pour it into the water in the tins. I quite forgot, when I decided on tin pans, that the corrosive fluid will burn through the tin in two minutes. Run!"
"How can we run," howled Mr. H——, holding his at arm's length and jerking himself towards the room he had to do, "with this thrice-infernal stuff under our noses?"