'He says "He too,"' replied Spaarwater. 'Besides, we cannot see your soldiers. At Dundee I was looking down the hill and saw nothing except rows of black boots marching and the black belts of one of the regiments.'
'But,' I said, 'you managed to hit some of them after all.'
He smiled, 'Ah, yes, we are lucky, and God is on our side. Why, after Dundee, when we were retiring, we had to cross a great open plain, never even an ant-hill, and you had put twelve great cannons—I counted them—and Maxims as well, to shoot us as we went; but not one fired a shot. Was it not God's hand that stopped them? After that we knew.'
I said: 'Of course the guns did not fire, because you had raised the white flag.'
'Yes,' he answered, 'to ask for armistice, but not to give in. We are not going to give in yet. Besides, we have heard that your Lancers speared our wounded at Elandslaagte.' We were getting on dangerous ground. He hastened to turn the subject. 'It's all those lying newspapers that spread these reports on both sides, just like the capitalists made the war by lying.'
A little further on the ticket collector came to join in the conversation. He was a Hollander, and very eloquent.
'Why should you English take this country away from us?' he asked, and the silent Boer chimed in broken English. 'Are not our farms our own? Why must we fight for them?'
I endeavoured to explain the ground of our quarrel. 'After all British government is not a tyranny.'
'It's no good for a working-man,' said the ticket collector; 'look at Kimberley. Kimberley was a good place to live in before the capitalists collared it. Look at it now. Look at me. What are my wages?'
I forget what he said they were, but they were extraordinary wages for a ticket collector.