"And I've known a Kaffir to drink off a bottle of Worcester sauce. But why? 'Cos some blamed white man invented the sauce to help out his finicking appetite, and if the Kaffir's fool enough to drink white man's mixtures, why there's an end to him. When you start to civilise a Kaffir you give him toothache, and fill him as full o' wickedness an' sickness as a white man. That's so!" "I didn't know you were such an admirer of Kaffirs." "Ghoisters! You're like a ramrod; you can't see your way unless it's straight. I'm not in love with the black because his teeth is good." Abe scooped up the broken maize, and proceeded to make his morning pap, after which he lit his pipe and was at peace. "What was the end of your scouting, Abe?" "I ain't scouting." "I mean at Pluto's Vale, when the young officer left you." "Is that so! Lemme see. I left him running like a blind hoss at a precipice, straight for the path by the kloof which I reckoned were full o' Kaffirs, and with three chaps runnin' down to cut him off. That weren't me. No! I jest skipped round back o' the krantz opposite the kloof, an' crawled up to where I'd seen the vidette. It were as I thought Stone dead he were, with his face to the sky and his arms stretched out, assegaied through the back and then turned over by them as stabbed him--and who who was sneaking down the hill to do the same for my partner. I jest peeped over the rock--and far down the valley to the lef I see the regiment on the march, with the waggons in the centre and the Colonel riding ahead's if he were going on parade. Sonny, them _rooibaaitjes_ can fight, but they're foolish. They're too stiff in the lip to ask questions, and too proud to learn. That's so! There were the Colonel marching his men straight into the tightest kind o' fix without waiting for me to report the lay o' the land. I looked down below, and there were that young chap booming along like a rock rolled from the top, leaping like a buck, an' jes' ahead o' him, in a turn in the road, crouchin' behin' bushes, was them three red Kaffirs waitin' to stab him. A hundred paces he had to cover afore he came up to the fust of 'em, and I seed in a flash he were a gone coon, unless somethin' happened. I tell you, sonny, I did some quick thinking while he were running them hundred paces. S'pose I fired! The report would jes' boom from side to side o' that valley and wake up every darned Kaffir in the kloof--s'posing Kaffirs was there. The Kaffirs would be on the watch, the Colonel would hear, an' rush up his men, leaving his waggons unprotected. Then there'd be a awful kind of a mess--s'posing the Kaffirs was in that kloof. I thunked all that, and that young chap had gone half-way. If I fired he couldn't a pulled up in time, so I jest fetched a yell in Kaffir. From the bottom o' my throat I fetched up one of them deep Kaffir shouts. `Look out!' I yelled; `the soldiers--run!' The words fell on them Kaffirs like the lash of a whip.