the sky’s look, it will blow a good wind. So, to-morrow early I shall send all our cattle north to the new grazing. That will make a great dust for the English to see from their helio yonder.” He pointed to a winking night-lamp stabbing the darkness with orders to an out-lying picket. “With the cattle we will send all our women. Yes, all the women and the wagons we can spare, and the lame ponies and the broken carts we took from Andersen’s farm. That will 45make a big dust—the dust of our retreat. Do you see?”

45

They saw and approved, and said so.

“Good. There are many men here who want to go home to their wives. I shall let thirty of them away for a week. Men who wish to do this will speak to me to-night.” (This meant that Jan needed money, and furlough would be granted on strictly business lines.) “These men will look after the cattle and see that they make a great dust for a long way. They will run about behind the cattle showing their guns, too. So that, if the wind blows well, will be our retreat. The cattle will feed beyond Koopman’s Kop.”

“No good water there,” growled a farmer who knew that section. “Better go on to Zwartpan. It is always sweet at Zwartpan.”

The commando discussed the point for twenty minutes. It was much more serious than shooting rooineks. Then Jan went on:

“When the rooineks see our retreat they may all come into our kopjes together. If so, good. But it is tempting God to expect such a favour. I think they will first send some men to scout.” He grinned broadly, 46using the English word. “Almighty! To scoot! They have none of that new sort of rooinek that they used at Sunnyside.” (Jan meant an incomprehensible animal from a place called Australia across the Southern seas who played what they knew of the war-game to kill.) “They have only some Mounted Infantry,”—again he used the English words. “They were once a Red-jacket regiment, so their scoots will stand up bravely to be shot at.”

46

“Good—good, we will shoot them,” said a youngster from Stellenbosch, who had come up on free pass as a Capetown excursionist just before the war to a farm on the border, where his aunt was taking care of his horse and rifle.

“But if you shoot their scoots I will sjambok you myself,” said Jan, amid roars of laughter. “We must let them all come into the kopjes to look for us; and I pray God will not allow any of us to be tempted to shoot them. 

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