Perceval Gibbon

“ At last, Piet dropped his sledge-hammer and wiped the wet from his face.
"Honest men made that chain," he said. "We shall be all to-morrow cutting at it. Hullo! What kafir is this?"
None of them had seen the approach of the kafir who now stood on the edge of the pit looking down at them; he carried his hand to his head in a salute as they looked up at him. He was an old kafir, with tufts of white on his chin and a skin hanging on his loins, gaunt and big and upstanding, with a kind of dignity that was new to them in kafirs. ”

“ Only Susanna was not completely at her ease, Piet found no matter for surprise in this, but looked to see a change when the house should be built and the offices of home-keeping should have set up landmarks in her life. A Boer woman should live between her kitchen and her bed, he was used to say, and he held to this unswervingly even when the kitchen was but the cheek of a wood-fire in the veld and the bed the windy sail of a wagon. ”

“ They stared at each other stupidly, half-aghast at the knowledge they shared. Their faces, in the firelight, were white and hard.
"Have we trekked too far?" said Piet, almost in a whisper. "Can a man trek to hell? God, there are those hammers again." ”

“ That day, they set to work at cutting through the great chain that was fast to the anchor ring. Their equipment for such a purpose was poor; there was nothing for it but to flog a cold chisel through the wrought iron; and though the rust flaked from it if one but scratched with a fingernail, the metal below was sound and tough yet, a heartbreaking thing to assault with mere strength of arm. ”

“ But what kind of man—" he broke off, frowning. "There is nothing for it," he added, "but to go on with the work and be wary."
"Yes, the work." Klein Piet turned to him. "When you came back from the spruit, we had just found a curious thing where we were digging."
"An iron cross," put in young Andries.
"A cross?" repeated the father.
"It is not a cross," said Klein Piet, quickly. "It is—something else. Come and see it, father."
They had been talking together outside their laager, and now they went across to the great pit that the lads and the kafirs had dug to plant the house in. ”

“ It was a wind that struck men as with a club and killed them; it lifted the sea as mowers lift hay and stacked it high on the veld, so that here where we sit was all water, and the shore was a mile inland. ”

“ There was little enough to fear now, but his old lore of war still governed him, and he carried his rifle to his work with him, and had chosen to work in a spot where he could not be suddenly approached by one coming secretly through the hummocks, Here, at noon, on the fourth or fifth day of the building, he was laboring happily. His was the part to swing the great sledge on the wedges; three, four full-bodied blows, each ringing true as a bell on the iron wedges, and a fat, flat slice of stone jarred loose from the body of the rock, to be hauled apart by the kafirs ”

“ But the kafir could speak no Dutch; he made a reply in some tongue of his own, sonorous and full-throated, and raised his hand again in salute.
"We must know where he comes from," said Piet to the lads. "Between ourselves and our own kafirs, we must find some language he can understand."
They came out of the pit and took the kafir back to the camp with them, leaving their tools where they lay. The old man went in obedience to their gestures without demur, and squatted himself on his hams to be talked to. The average Boer knows no native tongues ”

“ Piet kept his boys on watch for another hour, but nothing showed, and then they ate quickly, and he disposed them for a search. It was all done in good order and after the approved fashion; as each moved forward, his retreat was covered by another's rifle; and between them they scoured all the broken ground within a couple of miles.
"Well," said Piet at last, when the search was over and they had not found Sb much as a spoor of a foot, "this is a wonderful thing."
"You are sure it was a man you saw?" asked Klein Piet, doubtfully. "The sun plays tricks with a man's eyes, sometimes." ”

“ Neither did it happen that he took any account of his kafirs, for Piet was sound Boer to the bone; or he might have seen that they, too, had their fears and misgivings, The black man's solitude is peopled with ghosts and devils; beyond the ring of his firelight, the dark is uneasy with presences ”