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e of the civilised world. Running south towards the Orange Free State border, the railway curved towards the south-east, passing in succession Heidelberg, Standerton, and Volksrust. Then, with a loud and piercing shriek from the engine whistle, the train dived into a long, dark tunnel in the Drakenberg range of mountains, and emerged into Natal, one of England's most loyal colonies. Sweeping past Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill, names which will ever cause our countrymen to grit their teeth with vexation and regret, the train passed through a mountainous and extremely rugged country, and finally pulled up at Newcastle, one of the towns where the opening scenes of the second Boer war were to be laid. Then, after a ten-minute wait, the guard's whistle sounded, and they steamed on past Glencoe and Dundee, and, swerving to the right away from the neighbourhood of Rorke's Drift (that little mission station on the banks of the deep, swift-flowing Buffalo River, where a mere handful of English soldiers kept at bay the flower of Cetewayo's army of fierce Zulus), they ran through Elands Laagte and Reitfontein, and drew up once more, at Ladysmith. On proceeding, the train ran down to the river Tugela, skirted its western bank, and thundered across the bridge, and on past Chieveley and Frere to Estcourt, stopping only when it had run into the station at Pietermaritzburg. From there to Durban was only a short spin, and very soon Jack had arrived, and had been whirled to his hotel on a "rickshaw" drawn by a strapping Kafir. On the following day he called on the agents, and inspected the leather goods he had been commissioned to buy; and having decided how many to take, and offered a certain sum down for the articles he required, he left the warehouses, promising to call at the same hour next day and hear whether they would accept it or not. Then he took a "rickshaw" a little way out of the town, and called upon a young fellow who had sailed out from England with him. "What! Somerton! The fellow with a groggy leg whom the ladies on board took so much care of!" the latter exclaimed, shaking Jack cordially by the hand, and forcing him into a chair on the shady verandah on which the two lads had met. "Boy! Joko! Do you hear?" he shouted. "Look lively! I'm on the verandah." "Coming, Baas! coming!" sounded away from the opposite side of the house, from which a Kafir appeared a moment later, in a desperate hurry to obe
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