These guards lie down in the veldt twenty-five yards away from the victim. They have their loaded Mausers with them, and their orders are, if the prisoner lifts a leg, to put a bullet into it; if he lifts an arm, a bullet goes into that defaulting member; if he jumps down from his perch altogether, the leaden messengers sent from both rifles will cancel all his earthly obligations. The sun shines down in savage mockery; it strikes upon the bare neck of the quivering wretch, who dare not lift a hand to shift his hat to cover the blistering skin. It strikes in his eyes and burns his lips until they swell and feel like bursting. The barrel of his rifle grows hotter and hotter, until his fingers feel as if glued to a gridiron. The very clothes upon his body burn the skin beneath. He feels desperate; he must shift one arm, for the anguish is intolerable. He makes an almost imperceptible movement of his shoulder, and glances towards his guards. The man on his right front lays his pipe quickly in the grass, and swiftly lifts his Mauser to his shoulder. The wretch on the ant-heap closes his eyes with a groan, and stands as still as a Japanese god carved out of jute-wood. The guard lays down his rifle and picks up his pipe. The sun climbs higher and higher, until it gleams down straight into the ant-heap; the scorching heat penetrates into the unprotected cells, and enrages the dwellers inside. They swarm out full of fight, like an army lusting for battle. Their home has been ravished of the protection they had raised with half a lifetime of labour, and in their puny way they want vengeance. They find a foe on top, a man ready to their wrath. They crawl into his scorched boots, over his baked feet, guiltless of stockings; they charge up the legs, on which the trousers hang loosely, and as they charge they bite, because they are out for business, not for a picnic. The very stillness of their victim seems to enrage them. The first legion retires at full speed down into the ant-heap again. They have gone for recruits. In a few seconds up they come again, until the very top of the heap is alive with them. They climb one over another in their eagerness to get in their individual moiety of revenge. Down into the veldtschoon, up the bare, hairy legs, over the hips, round the waist, over the lean ribs, along the spine, under the arms, round the neck, over the whole man they go, as the Mongolian hordes will some day go over the Western world. And each one digs his tiny prongs into the smarting, burning, itching poor devil on top of their homestead. He shifts a leg the hundredth part of an inch. The guard on the left gives his bandolier a warning twist, and glances along the long brown barrel that nestles in the hollow of his left hand.