o tell later in my story,
but even then his dark face and savage temper had earned for him the
name of "the little Kaffir."

Now the wife of the Heer van Vooren was dead, and he had a tutor for his
boy Piet, a poor Hollander body who could speak English. That man knew
figures also, for once when, thinking that I should be too clever for
him, I asked him how often the wheel of our big waggon would turn round
travelling between our farm and Capetown Castle, he took a rule and
measured the wheel, then having set down some figures on a bit of paper,
and worked at them for a while, he told me the answer. Whether it was
right or wrong I did not know, and said so, whereon the poor creature
grew angry, and lied in his anger, for he swore that he could tell how
often the wheel would turn in travelling from the earth to the sun or
moon, and also how far we were from those great lamps, a thing that is
known to God only, Who made them for our comfort. It is little wonder,
therefore, that with such unholy teaching Swart Piet grew up so bad.

Well, Jan went to beg the loan of this tutor, thinking that he would
be able to understand what the English boy said, and in due course the
creature came in a pair of blue spectacles and riding on a mule, for he
dared not trust himself to a horse. Afterwards, when the child woke up
from his long sleep, and had been fed and dressed, the tutor spoke with
him in that ugly English tongue of which I could never even bear the
sound, and this was the story that he drew from him.

It seems that the boy, who gave his name as Ralph Kenzie, though I
believe that really it was Ralph Mackenzie, was travelling with his
father and mother and many others from a country called India, which is
one of those places that the English have stolen in different parts
of the world, as they stole the Cape and Natal and all the rest. They
travelled for a long while in a big ship, for India is a long way off,
till, when they were near this coast, a storm sprang up, and after the
wind had blown for two days they were driven on rocks a hundred miles or
more away from our stead. So fierce was the sea and so quickly did the
ship break to pieces that only one boat was got out, which, except for
a crew of six men, was filled with women and children. In this boat
the boy Ralph and his mother were given a place, but his father did
not come, although the captain begged him, for he was a man of some
importance, whose life was of mo