“All right, my boy; where the fighting is, there will the Englishmen be gathered together;” and they climbed down off the waggon and made for the crowd. The row was this. Among the Boers assembled for the “nachtmaal” festival was a well-known giant of the name of Van Zyl. This man’s strength was a matter of public notoriety all over the country, and many were the feats which were told of him. Among others it was said that he could bear the weight of the after-part of an African buck waggon on his shoulders, with a load of three thousand pounds of corn upon it, while the wheels were greased. He stood about six feet seven high, weighed eighteen stone and a half, and had a double row of teeth. On the evening in question this remarkable specimen of humanity was sitting on his waggon-box with a pipe, of which the size was proportionate to his own, clinched firmly between his double row of teeth. About ten paces from him stood a young Englishman, also of large size, though he looked quite small beside the giant, who was contemplating the phenomenon on the waggon-box, and wondering how many inches he measured round the chest. That young Englishman had just got off a newly arrived waggon, and his name was Jeremy Jones. To these advances a cringing Hottentot boy of small size. The Hottentot is evidently the servant or slave of the giant, and a man standing by Jeremy, who understands Dutch, informs him that he is telling his master that an ox has strayed. Slowly the giant rouses himself, and, descending from the waggon-box, seizes the trembling Tottie with one hand, and, taking a reim of buftalo-hide, lashes him to the waggon-wheel. “Now,” remarked Jeremy’s acquaintance, “you will see how a Boer deals with a nigger.” “You don’t mean to say that great brute is going to beat that poor little devil?” Just then a small fat woman put her head out of a tent pitched by the waggon, and inquired what the matter was. She was the giant’s wife. On being informed of the straying of the ox, her wrath knew no bounds. “Slaat em! slaat de swartsel!” (Thrash him! thrash the black creature!) she cried out in a shrill voice, running to the waggon, and with her own fair hands drawing out a huge “sjambock,” that is, a strip of prepared hippopotamus-hide, used to drive the after-oxen with, and giving it to her spouse. “Cut the liver out of the black devil!” she went on, “but mind you don’t hit his head, or he won’t be able to go to work afterwards. Never mind about making the blood come! I have got lots of salt to rub in.” Her harangue, and the sight of the Hottentot tied to the wheel, had by this time attracted quite a crowd of Boers and Englishmen who were idling about the market-square. “Softly, Vrouw, softly; I will thrash enough to satisfy even you, and we all know that must be very hard where a black creature is in question.”