r the bushes where
Halket's bent head might be seen as he paced to and fro.

"What's he doing out there in this blazing sun?"

"He's on guard," said the Colonial. "I thought you were here when it
happened. It's the best thing I ever saw or heard of in my whole life!"
He rolled half over on his side and laughed at the remembrance. "You
see, some of the men went down into the river, to look for fresh pools
of water, and they found a nigger, hidden away in a hole in the bank,
not five hundred yards from here! They found the bloody rascal by a
little path he tramped down to the water, trodden hard, just like a
porcupine's walk. They got him in the hole like an aardvark, with a bush
over the mouth, so you couldn't see it. He'd evidently been there a long
time, the floor was full of bones of fish he'd caught in the pool, and
there was a bit of root like a stick half gnawed through. He'd been
potted, and got two bullet wounds in the thigh; but he could walk
already. It's evident he was just waiting till we were gone, to clear
off after his people. He'd got that beastly scurvy look a nigger gets
when he hasn't had anything to eat for a long time.

"Well, they hauled him up before the Captain, of course; and he blew
and swore, and said the nigger was a spy, and was to be hanged tomorrow;
he'd hang him tonight, only the big troop might catch us up this
evening, so he'd wait to hear what the Colonel said; but if they didn't
come he'd hang him first thing tomorrow morning, or have him shot, as
sure as the sun rose. He made the fellows tie him up to that little tree
before his tent, with riems round his legs, and riems round his waist,
and a riem round his neck."

"What did the native say?" asked the Englishman.

"Oh, he didn't say anything. There wasn't a soul in the camp could have
understood him if he had. The coloured boys don't know his language. I
expect he's one of those bloody fellows we hit the day we cleared the
bush out yonder; but how he got down that bank with his leg in the state
it must have been, I don't know. He didn't try to fight when they caught
him; just stared in front of him--fright, I suppose. He must have been a
big strapping devil before he was taken down.

"Well, I tell you, we'd just got him fixed up, and the Captain was just
going into his tent to have a drink, and we chaps were all standing
round, when up steps Halket, right before the Captain, and pulls his
front lock--you know the way he has? Oh