tricity in the
atmosphere. She knew no Dutch, and was perfect in the etiquette of the
outing, which, when the young woman has been supplied with the one
regulation drink, stands her up in the corner like an umbrella in dry
weather as long as her young man is a-talking to 'is pals.

"So," the bar-keeper went on, "if you shall want that bad finger of yours
looked to, you will have to wait until the Dop Doctor wakes up. He is a
big man, who can drink as much as three Boers.... He came in this morning
to get drunk, and you shall not wake him now if you fire off a rifle at
his ear. But he will get up presently and shake himself, and then he will
be quite steady; you would not guess how drunk he had been unless you had
seen.... He is over there, sleeping on that table in the corner, and it
will be very bad for the man who shall wake him up. For, look you, that
Dop Doctor is a duyvel. I have seen him break a man like a stick between
his hands for nothing but cutting up a thieving monkey of a little Kaffir
with the sjambok. And he took the verdoemte thing home where he lives,
they say, and strapped up its black hide with plaster, and set its arm as
if it had been a child of Christians. But every Engelschman is mad. Groot
Brittanje breeds a nation of madmen."

The saloon got fuller and fuller. The air solidified with the Taal and the
tobacco, and other things less pleasant. It was not the hour for a crowd
of customers, but nobody had seemed to be working much of late. They were
all Transvaalers and Free Staters, tradesmen of the town, or Boers from
outlying farms, and not a man there but was waiting a certain signal to
clear out and leave Gueldersdorp to her fate, or remain in the place on a
salary paid by the Republics as a spy. The English customer who came in
knew at one whiff of the thick atmosphere that it was unhealthy, and if
the man happened to be alone, he ordered, and paid, and drank, and went
out quickly. If he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed his
conversation to his countrymen, and left with a certain degree of swagger,
and without the appearance of undue haste.

Once the swing-doors of the saloon opened to admit a short, spare,
hollow-chested, dapper young Englishman, whose insignificant Cockney
countenance was splashed with orange-coloured freckles of immense size.
Between his thin anaemic lips dangled the inevitable cigarette. And
Emigration Jane, toying with the dregs of her tumbler, recognize