and dropped his voice two octaves lower,
and the crowd on the balcony craned their heads further forward, so that
they might not miss a single word. He told of the women in the laagers, the
wild, unholy mirth of women, who moved from camp fire to camp fire, with
dishevelled hair streaming down their backs, with tossing arms, bare to the
shoulders, and blood besmeared, not the blood of goats or kine, but the
blood of soldiers--our soldiers. Thomas Atkins defunct, and done for by the
she-furies.

He waded in again when the shudder which shook the crowd had died away, and
hinted, as that class of shallow-souled creature loves to hint, of orgies
under the dim light of the stars, or between the flickering light of
smoking camp fires, until the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah seemed to be
crowding all around us in a peculiarly beastly and uncomfortable fashion.
Then he lay back in his chair and sighed; but anon he sprang upright, and,
with flashing eyes and extended arms, wanted to know what the ---- Roberts
meant by offering peace with honour to such a people. "Mow them down!" he
yelled. "Shoot them on sight--no quarter for such devils! Kill 'em off!
kill 'em off! kill 'em off!" and he half sobbed, half sighed himself into
silence, whilst the audience gazed on him as on one who knew what war,
wild, red, carmine war, was. I broke in on his stillness, as newspaper men
who know the game are apt to do, for I wanted data, I wanted facts, and I
had not swallowed his yarn as freely as he had swallowed my whisky.

"Born in this country?" I asked.

"Yorkshire," he answered laconically.

"Been in Africa long?"

"'Bout five years."

"Where did you put in most of your time before
the war?"

"Johannesburg."

"Mines?"

"No."

"Merchant?"

"No."

"Hotel-keeper, perhaps?"

"No."

"Shopkeeper?"

"No."

"What was your calling, or profession, or business, or means of
livelihood?"

"General agent, sharebroker, correspondent for some local papers."

H'm; I knew the class of animal well--general jackal; do the dirty work of
any trade, and master of none.

"Where were you when the war broke out?"

He scowled savagely: "Johannesburg."

"Have the same hatred for the Boers before the war as you have now?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you pick up a rifle and have a hand in the fighting?"

"I'm not a blessed 'Tommy,' sir! Do you take me for a d---- 'Tommy,' sir?"

"No; oh, no, I assure you I did nothing of the kind. But--er, have