“There’s not much to tell. I just gave him a few thumps and left him.”
“Why on earth didn’t you bring him to the top of the bank and operate there? I didn’t see any of the fun.”
Here the Jew touched his companion’s foot accidentally. Koos shrieked with anguish and uttered a horrible curse. Nathan seemed very much astonished. He riveted his gaze on the foot.
“Why, Koos, there’s blood on your veldschoen. Did you cut your foot?”
Koos could stand the pain no longer. He lifted his foot upon his left knee and began to untie the reimpje with which the veldschoen was tied. Nathan stopped the mules.
When the veldschoen was removed the great toe was found to be dislocated. It had turned from its usual direction and was pointing backward, owing to the strain on the tendon. The whole front part of the foot was turning purple.
“My eye!” said Nathan, “you must have given it to him precious hot. Why, you’ve unlatched your blooming big toe. That ain’t your blood, neither. My eye! And I didn’t see it happening. Just like my luck!”
Koos felt sick with pain. He wrapped his jacket around the injured foot and leant back. The sand-storm swept down in fury. Nathan relieved his feelings by fluent cursings. To Koos the fiery wind with its burthen of stinging sand was more grateful than the zephyrs of a springtime dawn.
“Ain’t it lucky we didn’t take the road through the dunes?” shouted Nathan during a slight comparative cessation of the wind.
Koos did not reply. He was wishing with the full strength of his tortured soul that they had taken the dune route, whatever its dangers might have been, in preference to the one which had led him to the scene of his crime.