"I think it was about two years after that before I saw my brother
again. When the war in South Africa started we were outward bound in
ballast for Buenos Ayres. At Monte Video we received orders to go to
Rosario and load remounts for Cape Town. It was a big business; I
believe the owners built three new ships out of the profits of that
charter. When we got up the river those bony Argentine cattle were
waiting for us and run aboard in a few hours. No time for boilers or
overhauling engines or anything. Straight out again, due east, with a
crowd of the toughest cattlemen I ever saw before or since. There was no
peace or quiet on the ship at all. They were not professional
cattle-deck tenders at all, you see. They only took the job to get to
the Cape, where the trouble was. Most of them deserted and drifted up
country. Each trip we had to get a fresh team. I can't say I enjoyed my
life very much during that charter. It was hard luck, though nothing out
of the way for a sailor-man, to go off the Genoa run now I was married,
and had a wife there.
"I saw my brother soon after Cronje was captured at Paardeberg. I was
ashore in Cape Town one evening taking a walk with the Second, just to
get out of sight of the ship for an hour, when he pulls my sleeve and
says he:
"'I say, Chief, you remember that new mess-man you got in B. A.? That
Lord? Well, ain't that him over there. You remember, don't you? That
chap who won the lottery in Genoa that time. Look!' He pointed across
the street to a party of chaps in khaki walking along and slapping their
legs with their canes. The tallest man and the finest-looking of the
lot was my brother. I couldn't be mistaken, though it would be difficult
to say exactly why. It was his air.
"He did not see me, but I turned away and went into the first saloon for
a drink. I wanted to be away from him and I wanted a drink. I had a
panicky feeling about him. While the Second recalled all the incidents
of 'that new mess-man's' career on board, I was thinking that perhaps we
were destined to cross each other all our lives, that go where I would,
I shouldn't be able to avoid him. You see how a man's imagination will
run away with him. I ought to have thanked God he was in South Africa
and likely to get himself shot fighting for his country instead of going
after women. When I was safe aboard the ship again I began to see how I
had been frightened. For it was fright and nothing else that turned me
into that saloon to avoid my brother. I thought of him rushing up to the
Brignole station at the last second and looking round for Rosa, and
finding her gone. He would know I'd had something to do with it. He
would swear to find her some day, swear in one of his hot, short
passions, passions like a West India hurricane that whips and crashes
and smashes everything around for a minute or two.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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