I had lost sight of him for
months, and heard that he was somewhere on the Congo poaching
elephants. He had always a great idea of making things hum so loud in
Angola that the Union Government would have to step in and annex it.
After Rhodes Peter had the biggest notions south of the Line.

He was a man of about five foot ten, very thin and active, and as
strong as a buffalo. He had pale blue eyes, a face as gentle as a
girl's, and a soft sleepy voice. From his present appearance it looked
as if he had been living hard lately. His clothes were of the cut you
might expect to get at Lobito Bay, he was as lean as a rake, deeply
browned with the sun, and there was a lot of grey in his beard. He was
fifty-six years old, and used to be taken for forty. Now he looked
about his age.

I first asked him what he had been up to since the war began. He spat,
in the Kaffir way he had, and said he had been having hell's time.

'I got hung up on the Kafue,' he said. 'When I heard from old
Letsitela that the white men were fighting I had a bright idea that I
might get into German South West from the north. You see I knew that
Botha couldn't long keep out of the war. Well, I got into German
territory all right, and then a _skellum_ of an officer came along, and
commandeered all my mules, and wanted to commandeer me with them for
his fool army. He was a very ugly man with a yellow face.' Peter
filled a deep pipe from a kudu-skin pouch.

'Were you commandeered?' I asked.

'No. I shot him--not so as to kill, but to wound badly. It was all
right, for he fired first on me. Got me too in the left shoulder. But
that was the beginning of bad trouble. I trekked east pretty fast, and
got over the border among the Ovamba. I have made many journeys, but
that was the worst. Four days I went without water, and six without
food. Then by bad luck I fell in with 'Nkitla--you remember, the
half-caste chief. He said I owed him money for cattle which I bought
when I came there with Carowab. It was a lie, but he held to it, and
would give me no transport. So I crossed the Kalahari on my feet.
Ugh, it was as slow as a vrouw coming from _nachtmaal_. It took weeks
and weeks, and when I came to Lechwe's kraal, I heard that the fighting
was over and that Botha had conquered the Germans. That, too, was a
lie, but it deceived me, and I went north into Rhodesia, where I
learned the truth. But by then I judged the war had gone too far