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dark? Yet there
you sit with your head against the light, about the best target for a
bullet that could be imagined."
"I don't think the Boers would trouble to shoot me, Sir. If you had been
here I would have drawn the blinds and shut the shutters too," you
answered, laughing again.
"Go to dress or you will be late for dinner," he said still rather sternly,
and you went. But when you had gone and after we had been
announced to him, he smiled and added something which I will not
repeat to you even now. I think it was about what you did on the
Annexation day of which the story had come to him.
I mention this incident because whenever I think of Shepstone, whom I
had known off and on for years in the way that a hunter knows a
prominent Government official, it always recurs to my mind,
embodying as it does his caution and appreciation of danger derived
from long experience of the country, and the sternness he sometimes
affected which could never conceal his love towards his friends. Oh!
there was greatness in this man, although they did call him an "African
Talleyrand." If it had not been so would every native from the Cape to
the Zambesi have known and revered his name, as perhaps that of no
other white man has been revered? But I must get on with my tale and
leave historical discussions to others more fitted to deal with them.
We had a very pleasant dinner that night, although I was so ashamed of
my clothes with smart uniforms and white ties all about me, and
Anscombe kept fidgeting his feet because he was suffering agony from
his new pumps which were a size too small. Everybody was in the best
of spirits, for from all directions came the news that the Annexation
was well received and that the danger of any trouble had passed away.
Ah! if we had only known what the end of it would be!
It was on our way back to the wagon that I chanced to mention to
Anscombe that there was still a herd of buffalo within a few days' trek
of Lydenburg, of which I had shot two not a month before.

"Are there, by Jove!" he said. "As it happens I never got a buffalo;
always I just missed them in one sense or another, and I can't leave
Africa with a pair of bought horns. Let's go there and shoot some."
I shook my head and replied that I had been idling long enough and
must try to make some money, news at which he seemed very
disappointed.
"Look here," he said, "forgive me for mentioning it, but business is
business. If you'll come you shan't be a loser."
Again I shook my head, whereat he looked more disappointed than
before.
"Very well," he exclaimed, "then I must go alone. For kill a buffalo I
will; that is unless the buffalo kills me, in which case my blood will be
on your hands."
I don't know why, but at that moment there came into my mind a
conviction that if he did go alone a buffalo or something would kill him
and that then I should be sorry all my life.
"They are dangerous brutes, much worse than lions," I said.
"And yet you, who pretend to have a conscience, would expose me to
their rage unprotected and alone," he replied with a twinkle in his eye
which I could see even by moonlight." Oh! Quatermain, how I have
been mistaken in your character.
"Look here, Mr. Anscombe," I said, "it's no use. I cannot possibly go on
a shooting expedition with you just now. Only to-day I have heard from
Natal that my boy is not well and must undergo an operation which will
lay him up for quite six weeks, and may be dangerous. So I must get
down to Durban before it takes place. After that I have a contract in
Matabeleland whence you have just come, to take charge of a trading
store there for a year; also perhaps to try to shoot a little ivory for
myself. So I am fully booked up till, let us say, October, 1878, that is
for about eighteen months, by which time I daresay I shall be dead."
"Eighteen months," replied this cool young man. "That will suit me
very well. I will go on to India as I intended, then home for a bit and
will meet you on the 1st of October, 1878, after which we will proceed
to the Lydenburg district and shoot those buffalo, or if they have
departed, other buffalo. Is it a bargain?"
I stared at him, thinking that the Administrator's