s
cheek and smiled, wrinkling his nose and looking at the ground.

"'Did you get speech of the baboons last night among the rocks?'
Shadrach asked.

"The other shook his head, grinning. 'I am old,' he said. 'They pay no
attention to me, but I will try again. Perhaps, before long, they will
listen.'

"'When they do that,' said Shadrach, 'you shall have five pounds of
tobacco and five bottles of dop.'

"The man was squatting on his heels all this time at Shadrach's feet,
and his hard fingers, like claws, were picking at the ground. Now he
put out a hand and began fingering the laces of the farmer's shoes
with a quick, fluttering movement that Shadrach saw with a spasm of
terror. It was so exactly the trick of a baboon, so entirely a thing
animal and unhuman.

"'You are more than a baboon yourself,' he said. 'Let go of my leg.
Let go, I say! Curse you, get away--get away from me!'

"The creature had caught his ankle with both hands, the fingers, hard
and shovel-ended, pressing into his flesh.

"'Let go!' cried Shadrach, and struck at the man with his sjambok.

"The man bounded on all fours to evade the blow, but it took him in
the flank, and he was human--or Kafir--again in a moment, and rubbed
himself and whimpered quite naturally.

"'Let me see no more of your baboon tricks,' stormed Shadrach, the
more angry because he had been frightened. 'Keep them for your friends
among the rocks. And now, be off to your kraal.'

"That night again the Kafirs drummed all about the green corn, and
sang in chorus the song which the mountain Kafirs sing when the new
moon shows like a paring from a finger-nail of gold. It is a long and
very loud song, with stamping of feet every minute, and again the
baboons came down to see and listen. The Kafirs saw them, many
hundreds of humped black shapes, and sang the louder, while the crowd
of beasts grew ever denser as fresh parties came down and joined it.
It was opposite the rocks on which they sat that the singing-men
collected, roaring their long verses and clattering on the buckets,
doubtless not without some intention to jeer at and flout the baffled
baboons that watched them in such a silence. It was drooping now to
the pit of night, and things were barely seen as shapes, when from
higher up the line, where the guardians of the crops were sparser,
there came a discord of shrieks.

"'The baboons are through the line!' they cried; and it was on that
instant that the great watchi