The while, jeering Zarps, [Note 1], posted about the platform by twos
and threes, stood enjoying the fun. They felt no call to keep the peace
on this occasion, to interfere in quarrels between the enemies of their
land. Let these accursed Uitlanders settle their own differences. They
would have plenty of time to do it in before they got clear of the
country, decided the guardians of law and order with a certain grim
satisfaction.

The train, which was of vast length, began to move slowly out of the
station, and as it did so somebody, with more patriotism than sense of
humour, conceived the idea of striking up "Rule, Britannia." It took,
and the chorus rolled forth lustily from the fleeing crowd, mighty in
volume, but varied--exceedingly--as to time and tune, causing the Zarps,
who understood English, to break into boisterous and derisive laughter,
and to call out after the singers that, whatever Britannia ruled, it was
not the Transvaal, and if she thought otherwise she had better hurry up
her _rooi-baatjes_ [Redcoats] and try. Which comment, after all, was
not without pertinence.

Upon others, however, the effect of the parting challenge was different.
A group of armed burghers had been standing at the end of the platform,
surveying, with glances of hatred and contempt, the swirling confusion
of the crowd of refugees. Now, as they grasped the burden of the song,
several were seen to slap cartridges into their rifles, with many a
threatening scowl in the direction of the train. The latter, very
fortunately, had got sufficiently under way, for already several rifles
were pointed at the receding trucks full of packed fugitives. The
burghers were in an ugly mood, and racial feeling had reached its
highest point of tension. Something of a massacre might easily at that
moment have resulted from the display of rash and ill-timed defiance.
The result of a volley poured into those closely crowded trucks would
have been too ghastly for anything.

Few indeed were the Uitlanders who remained upon the platform as the
train disappeared, and such as did wore a grave and anxious expression
of countenance; and well they might, for the hour of retreat was past,
and they had deliberately and of their own free will elected to stay in
the Republic and face the horrors and risks of war, and that at the
mercy of the enemies of their countrymen. Such being the case, it may
be imagined that the seeing-off contingent attendant upon