h people. Therefore my
advice to all you who stay behind is that you should not scatter, but
keep together, so that in case of any trouble the men who are left may
be at hand to defend this camp. For if they are here you have nothing
to fear from all the savages in Africa. And now God be with you, and
good-bye. Come, trek, brothers, trek!"

Then followed a few moments of confusion while men kissed their wives,
children and sisters in farewell, or shook each other by the hand. I,
too, kissed Marie, and, tumbling on to my horse somehow, rode away, my
eyes blind with tears, for this parting was bitter. When I could see
clearly again I pulled up and looked back at the camp, which was now at
some distance. It seemed a peaceful place indeed, for although the storm
of the morning was returning and a pall of dark cloud hung over it, the
sun still shone upon the white wagon caps and the people who went to and
fro among them.

Who could have thought that within a little time it would be but a field
of blood, that those wagons would be riddled with assegais, and that the
women and children who were moving there must most of them lie upon
the veld mutilated corpses dreadful to behold? Alas! the Boers, always
impatient of authority and confident that their own individual judgment
was the best, did not obey their commandant's order to keep together.
They went off this way and that, to shoot the game which was then so
plentiful, leaving their families almost without protection. Thus the
Zulus found and slew them.

Presently as I rode forward a little apart from the others someone
overtook me, and I saw that it was Henri Marais.

"Well, Allan," he said, "so God has given you to me for a son-in-law.
Who would have thought it? You do not look to me like a new-married
man, for that marriage is not natural when the bridegroom rides off and
leaves the bride of an hour. Perhaps you will never be really married
after all, for God, Who gives sons-in-law, can also take them away,
especially when He was not asked for them. Ah!" he went on, lapsing into
French, as was his wont when moved, "qui vivra verra! qui vivra verra!"
Then, shouting this excellent but obvious proverb at the top of his
voice, he struck his horse with the butt of his gun, and galloped away
before I could answer him.

At that moment I hated Henri Marais as I had never hated anyone before,
not even his nephew Hernan. Almost did I ride to the commandant to
complain of him,