to
command attention, cried:

"Boys, there's a white woman comin'!"

"A white woman!" was chorused in various tones of disbelief. "What,
here? White woman comin' here, Dan?"

And then some one inquired if she was a Boer.

"Boer--no," replied Dan; "English--English as I am; leastways Englisher,
bein' Amurrican-born myself. Overtook her et Hottentot Drift. Thort I'd
spur on an' tell yer. We'd do wi' a clean-up, some on us."

Dan spoke indistinctly, as a bullet had lately disarranged some of his
teeth; but his words had a wonderful effect.

Each man began instinctively to tidy himself. The would-be duellists,
forgetting their quarrel, stuck the revolvers in their belts and
followed the general example. The Cripple hied him to the store, and
after breaking down the door abstracted the only blacking-brush in the
camp,--putting down a sovereign on the counter in exchange for it,--and
set to polishing his high boots as if a fortune depended on their
brightness. The Scholar bought Herr Gustav's white shirt for a fiver,
threatening to murder its owner if he did not render it up. And
Partridge, a good man from Norfolk, with a regrettable weakness for
shooting other people's game, induced a friend to denude him of his
flowing locks by means of a clasp-knife and a hunk of wood, as no
scissors were procurable.

The wardrobes of Big Stone Hole were stocked more with a view to strict
utility than variety or ornamentation, and the slender resources of the
store utterly gave out under the sudden strain that was put upon them.
In every direction grimy, unkempt men might be seen attempting to
beautify themselves. Here was one enduring agonies from a razor that
would scarcely whittle a stick; here another recalling the feel of a
cake of soap; there a great fellow pulling faces as he struggled to get
the teeth of a comb into his shock of hair; there another brushing the
clay from his moleskin trousers with a tuft of stiff grass.

It seemed to these men ages since they had last seen a woman in
the flesh,--Kaffir women don't count; they are not women, merely
Kaffirs,--and, with the natural instinct of males of every species, they
set about pluming their feathers.

These operations, though speedy as might be, were necessarily prolonged,
for most of the men required several buckets of water over the head
before they felt fit for such unaccustomed exercises, and they were
scarcely finished before the creaking of wheels and the cries o