! that sent her mad. I could see the angry flush rise to her
cheeks and neck, and at last one day she snatched her hand from his and
slapped his face pretty smartly.

"Not long after, we were outspanned together on the Crocodile River, in
a clear place where there was no tse-tse fly for some miles. It was a
pleasant camp, and we stood there some time. Here the Frenchman
collected birds and butterflies, and I was often away shooting game.
One day the little Frenchman was fishing from a high spit of sand below
the banks. He had, it seems, waded into the water a little to get his
line further out, and a young crocodile, about five feet long, made a
grab at him, and caught him by the leg. The reptile was not big enough
and strong enough to pull the little fellow in, and a pretty tussle the
two had. The vrouw, who was on the wagon close by, hearing some
dreadful cries for help, snatched up a gun and ran down. There she saw
the crocodile and the Frenchman pulling and hauling and kicking on the
spit of sand. She at once let off the gun close into the beast's side.
It was my big elephant _roer_, carrying four balls to the pound. It
made a great hole in the crocodile's side, so that it quitted its hold,
turned over belly upwards, and lay there dead in the shallows. Well, a
pretty fuss Cellois made about this affair. He wasn't much hurt; he had
his high boots on, and the crocodile had only given him a few pinches in
the calf and side of the leg. He was all right again in a day or two.
But he pestered the vrouw nearly to death with his speeches and
grimaces, called her his angel, his deliverer, and what not. I was away
a good deal just then, and being a veldt-man, and knowing my wife, and
not wasting much thought upon the little Frenchman, except when he
amused me in camp, I took little heed of what was passing, so to speak,
beneath my nose. It seems then that the foolish fellow began to make
love to my wife after the crocodile episode. At last, two or three
evenings after, when Pierre had gone to his wagon for the night, the
vrouw said to me,--

"`Cornelis, you are a fool. This little jackanapes of a Frenchman is
making love to me, and you see nothing and do nothing. If you don't
tell him to pack up and trek to-morrow, I shall. I will put up with it
no longer.'

"`Wait till to-morrow night, Anna,' I said. `I am riding at dawn
to-morrow after zwart-wit-pens (sable antelope). I will see to the
matter when I c