in all the years. I gave you your life twice. I
gave you good money. I kept you in luxury--you that fed in the
cattle-kraal; you that had mealies to eat and a shred of biltong when
you could steal it; you that ate a steinbok raw on the Vaal, you were
so wild for meat ... I took you out of that, and gave you this."

He waved an arm round the room, and went on: "You come in and go out of
my room, you sleep in the same cart with me, you eat out of the same
dish on trek, and yet you do the Judas trick. Slim--god of gods, how
slim! You are the snake that crawls in the slime. It's the native in
you, I suppose.... But see, I mean to do to you as Oom Paul did. It's
the only thing you understand. It's the way to make you straight and
true, my sweet Krool."

Still keeping his eyes fixed on Krool's eyes, his hand reached out and
slowly took the sjambok from the table. He ran the cruel thing through
his fingers as does a prison expert the cat-o'-nine-tails before laying
on the lashes of penalty. Into Krool's eyes a terror crept which never
had been there in the old days on the veld when Oom Paul had flayed
him. This was not the veld, and he was no longer the veld-dweller with
skin like the rhinoceros, all leather and bone and endurance. And this
was not Oom Paul, but one whom he had betrayed, whose wife he had
sought to ruin, whose subordinate he had turned into a traitor. Oom
Paul had been a mere savage master; but here was a master whose very
tongue could excoriate him like Oom Paul's sjambok; whom, at bottom, he
loved in his way as he had never loved anything; whom he had betrayed,
not realizing the hideous nature of his deed; having argued that it was
against England his treachery was directed, and that was a virtue in
his eyes; not seeing what direct injury could come to Byng through it.
He had not seen, he had not understood, he was still uncivilized; he
had only in his veins the morality of the native, and he had tried to
ruin his master's wife for his master's sake; and when he had finished
with Fellowes as a traitor, he was ready to ruin his confederate--to
kill him--perhaps did kill him!

"It's the only way to deal with you, Hottentot dog!"

The look in Krool's eyes only increased Byng's lust of punishment. What
else was there to do? Without terrible scandal there was no other way
to punish the traitor, but if there had been another way he would still
have done this. This Krool understood; behind every command the Baa