An enterprising clothier, named Taylour, undertook to make other jackets of a similar nature to those spoiled; and a most intelligent mechanic (a Mr Rawbone, gunsmith of Cape Town) engaged to replace the Minie bullet by another equally effective. It was an absolute necessity to make another-shaped bullet, as the original Minie was useless without the socket of condensed paper, which I could not procure in the colony. Putting our heads together, we invented a bullet in two unequal sizes, slightly dovetailed together in the centre, and which, under the concussion of lighted gunpowder, were driven into one another, and thus expanding, filled up the grooves of the rifle, took the twist, and went spinning through the air on its axis, as true in its flight as the Minie. I was also greatly aided by a Mr Andersen, a Norwegian gentleman, an enthusiastic sportsman and traveller, at the Cape. He took an almost passionate interest in me, my task, and the Minie rifle. From him I gained much useful information concerning bush-life, and the habits, history, and traditions of the Kaffir tribes. He had very little faith in the half-worldly, half-sentimental policy of the British Government towards the Kaffir and the Dutch settler; and my experience afterwards only confirmed the truth of his observations. I now began to practise the men with their firelocks. As this was almost the only drilling they got, there remained plenty of spare time for drinking-bouts in public-houses, and for them to spend their bounty-money and report on the glorious advantages of being _soldiers in prospective_. I had, amongst the men, enlisted a noted character at Cape Town called “Happy Jack.” Evans was his real name, a common sailor now, but who had been boatswain in the navy. He was rarely in barracks, but always to be hailed, as he good-naturedly explained to the guard on duty, in such or such a public-house. It may be readily supposed that men enlisted under the auspices of Happy Jack were not the best of characters; in fact, many of them were what they termed at the Cape, _laggers_--that is to say, men who, having got away from Norfolk Island, or other penfolds for black sheep, lag behind, under guardianship of Dutch laws at the Cape, instead of trusting their precious selves to the supervision of their own natural police at home.