Pereira, he is one of the true sort,
but you'll pay him all the same and in bad coin if you get the chance.
Oh! I have come out to tell you what I think of you. You are a stinkcat;
do you hear that? A thing that no dog would bite if he could help it!
You are a traitor also. You brought us to this cursed country, where
you said your relatives would give us wealth and land, and then, after
famine and fever attacked us, you rode away, and left us to die to save
your own dirty skin. And now you come back here for help, saved by him
whom you cheated in the Goose Kloof, by him whose true love you have
tried to steal. Oh, mein Gott! why does the Almighty leave such fellows
alive, while so many that are good and honest and innocent lie beneath
the soil because of stinkcats like you?"

So she went on, striding at the side of the pack-ox, and reviling
Pereira in a ceaseless stream of language, until at length he thrust his
thumbs into his ears and glared at her in speechless wrath.

Thus it was that at last we arrived in the camp, where, having seen
us coming, all the Boers were gathered. They are not a particularly
humorous people, but this spectacle of the advance of Pereira seated on
the pack-ox, a steed that is becoming to few riders, with the furious
and portly Vrouw Prinsloo striding at his side and shrieking abuse at
him, caused them to burst into laughter. Then Pereira's temper gave out,
and he became even more abusive than Vrouw Prinsloo.

"Is this the way you receive me, you veld-hogs, you common Boers, who
are not fit to mix with a man of position and learning like myself?" he
began.

"Then in God's name why do you mix with us, Hernan Pereira?" asked the
saturnine Meyer, thrusting his face forward till the Newgate fringe he
wore by way of a beard literally seemed to curl with wrath. "When we
were hungry you did not wish it, for you slunk away and left us, taking
all the powder. But now that we are full again, thanks to the little
Englishman, and you are hungry, you come back. Well, if I had my way I
would give you a gun and six days' rations, and turn you out to shift
for yourself."

"Don't be afraid, Jan Meyer," shouted Pereira from the back of the
pack-ox. "As soon as I am strong enough I will leave you in charge of
your English captain here"--and he pointed to me--"and go to tell our
people what sort of folk you are."

"That is good news," interrupted Prinsloo, a stolid old Boer, who stood
by puffing at his