“Ah!” said the biggest of his companions, who, in spite of his huge form, had something of the simplicity and good nature of a child in his handsome face; “it’s because you’re not a big enough swell, you know! He’ll be a colonel, or a general, before we’ve done with him. I call them all generals or colonels up here; it’s safest, you know; if they’re not that today they will be tomorrow!”

This was intended as a joke, and in that hot weather, and in that dull world, anything was good enough to laugh at: the third man smiled, but the first speaker remained serious.

“I only know this,” he said, “I’d teach these fellows a lesson, if any one belonging to me had been among the people they left to be murdered here, while they went gallivanting to the Transvaal. If my mother or sister had been killed here, I’d have taken a pistol and blown out the brains of the great Panjandrum, and the little ones after him. Fine administration of a country, this, to invite people to come in and live here, and then take every fighting man out of the country on a gold hunting marauding expedition to the Transvaal, and leave us to face the bitter end. I look upon every man and woman who was killed here as murdered by the Chartered Company.”

“Well, Jameson only did what he was told. He had to obey orders, like the rest of us. He didn’t make the plan, and he’s got the punishment.”

“What business had he to listen? What’s all this fine administration they talk of? It’s six years since I came to this country, and I’ve worked like a nigger ever since I came, and what have I, or any men who’ve worked hard at real, honest farming, got for it? Everything in the land is given away for the benefit of a few big folks over the water or swells out here. If England took over the Chartered Company tomorrow, what would she find?—everything of value in the land given over to private concessionaires—they’ll line their pockets if the whole land goes to pot! It’ll be the jackals eating all the flesh off the horse’s bones, and calling the lion in to lick the bones.”