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