The Settler and the Savage | Page 5

hear it, as we should soon have the pleasure of parting company. This put him in a rage. He kicked over the pot containing part of our breakfast, and told me I might part company then and there if I pleased. My temper does not easily go, but it went at last. I jumped up, saddled my horse, mounted, and rode away. Of course I lost myself immediately, and for two days have been trying to find myself, without success, mourning over my fate and folly, and fasting from necessity. But for my opportune meeting with you, Mr Marais, it might have gone hard with me and my poor horse, for the want of water had well-nigh floored us both."
"You'll never make your fortune by doctoring on the frontier," said Hans, after a few minutes' silence. "Nobody gets ill in this splendid climate--besides, we couldn't afford to waste time in that way. People here usually live to a great age, and then go off without the assistance of a doctor. What else can you turn your hand to?"
"Anything," replied Considine, with the overweening confidence of youth.
"Which means nothing, I suspect," said the Dutchman, "for Jack-of-all-trades is proverbially master of none."
"It may be so," retorted the other, "nevertheless, without boasting, I may venture to assert--because I can prove it--that I am able to make tables, chairs, chests, and such-like things, besides knowing something of the blacksmith's trade. In regard to doctoring, I am not entitled to practise for fees, not yet being full-fledged--only a third-year student--but I may do a little in that way for love, you know. If you have a leg, for instance, that wants amputating, I can manage it for you with a good carving-knife and a cross-cut saw. Or, should a grinder give you annoyance, any sort of pincers, small enough to enter your mouth, will enable me to relieve you."
At this Hans smiled and displayed a set of brilliant "grinders," which did not appear likely to give him annoyance for some time to come.
"Can you shoot?" asked Hans, laying his hand on his companion's double-barrelled gun, which lay on the ground between them, and which, with its delicate proportions and percussion-locks, formed a striking contrast to the battered, heavy, flint-lock weapon of the Dutchman.
"Ay, to some extent, as the lions' skins in Jan Smit's waggon can testify.--By the way," added Considine quickly, "you said that you knew Smit. Can you tell me where he lives? because I still owe him the half of the money promised for permission to accompany him on this trip, and should not like to remain his debtor."
"Ja, I know where he lives. He's a bad specimen of a Dutch farmer in every respect, except as to size. He lives quite close to our farm-- more's the pity!--and is one of those men who do their best to keep up bad feeling between the frontier-men and the Kafirs. The evil deeds of men such as he are represented in England, by designing or foolish persons, as being characteristic of the whole class of frontier farmers, hence we are regarded as a savage set, while, in my humble opinion, we are no worse than the people of other colonies placed in similar circumstances--perhaps better than some of them. Do you know anything of our past history?"
"Not much," replied Considine, throwing away the remnant of the stick he had been whittling, and commencing on another piece. "Of course I know that the Cape was first doubled by the Portuguese commander Bartholomew Diaz in, I think, 1486, and after him by Vasco de Gama, and that the Dutch formed the first settlement on it under Van Riebeek in 1652, but beyond this my knowledge of Cape history and dates is hazy and confused. I know, however, that your forefathers mismanaged the country for about a century and a half, after which it finally came into possession of the British in 1806."
"Humph!" ejaculated Hans, while a shade of displeasure flitted for a moment across his broad visage. "'Tis a pity your reading had not extended farther, for then you would have learned that from 1806 the colony has been mismanaged by your countrymen, and the last fruit of their mismanagement has been a bloody war with the Kafirs, which has only just been concluded. Peace has been made only this year, and the frontier is now at rest. But who will rebuild the burned homesteads of this desolated land? who will reimburse the ruined farmers? above all, who will restore the lost lives?"
The young Dutchman's eyes kindled, and his stern face flushed as he spoke, for although his own homestead had escaped the ruthless savage, friends and kindred had suffered deeply in the irruption referred to, which took place in 1819, and one or two of