ar, came up and
fired his piece two or three times into the beast, which was now at a
stand, just about dying. Then it fell, and the little fellow climbed up
on to its back, screaming and waving his arms, took off his hat and
cried out something about `La France.' Laugh! I nearly split my sides
with laughing at that little jackanapes fellow dancing about up there on
the big elephant."

And the old man, as he recalled that absurd scene of forty years agone,
laughed in his hearty, massive way so heartily that I, too, was impelled
to join him.

"Well," went on Cornelis, "that evening Cellois' wagon came on to the
spot where the elephants lay, and the little Frenchman wrote home a long
letter to his wife. He had picked up Dutch at Cape Town, and he told me
in his excitable way how he had headed his letter. He wrote: `From the
camp upon the Crocodile River, upon the day we slew four elephants.' I
laughed, and didn't say much; but I thought the little man a bit of a
liar, considering that _I_ had shot the elephants, and that _he_ had
done no more than fire two or three bullets into a bull which was
already as good as dead. However, bless you, I didn't much mind, and I
reckoned it would please his vrouw at home. These Frenchmen, I
understand, _are_ rather queer in their ways compared to us Boers, or
even to you English folk.

"A day or two after, having chopped out the tusks, we trekked back to my
camp, and the little Frenchman met my vrouw. I can tell you she didn't
much appreciate him, in spite of his fine clothes and his prancing ways.
If he was highly dressed before, he was a thousandfold more gay now.
In the evenings, after coming into camp, he would deck himself up in all
sorts of finery--silk waistcoats covered with flowers, white shirts with
frills--frills, I tell you--collars, blue neckerchiefs, and I can't tell
what. Then he was for ever paying my wife compliments, which she hated.
The vrouw then was, I can tell you, a very handsome young woman, and
although she wore but simple clothes, and her big _kapje_ (sun-bonnet),
it was very plain that he admired her strongly. But then, where a woman
was concerned little Pierre was a perfect fool. Why, I have heard him
paying compliments and talking nonsense to his Hottentot driver's wife,
_Kaitje_--such trash as that!

"What my wife couldn't stand was the habit the little fellow had of
holding her hand when they met, and sometimes even of kissing it.
Almighty