it over us! It's a damned shame! Why, I want to know, amn't I as good as
any of these fellows, who come swelling it about here? Friends got money,
I suppose!" He cast his sharp glance over towards the bell tent. "If they
gave us real English officers now--"

"Ah!" said the biggest of his companions, who, in spite of his huge form,
had something of the simplicity and good nature of a child in his handsome
face; "it's because you're not a big enough swell, you know! He'll be a
colonel, or a general, before we've done with him. I call them all
generals or colonels up here; it's safest, you know; if they're not that
today they will be tomorrow!"

This was intended as a joke, and in that hot weather, and in that dull
world, anything was good enough to laugh at: the third man smiled, but the
first speaker remained serious.

"I only know this," he said, "I'd teach these fellows a lesson, if any one
belonging to me had been among the people they left to be murdered here,
while they went gallivanting to the Transvaal. If my mother or sister had
been killed here, I'd have taken a pistol and blown out the brains of the
great Panjandrum, and the little ones after him. Fine administration of a
country, this, to invite people to come in and live here, and then take
every fighting man out of the country on a gold hunting marauding
expedition to the Transvaal, and leave us to face the bitter end. I look
upon every man and woman who was killed here as murdered by the Chartered
Company."

"Well, Jameson only did what he was told. He had to obey orders, like the
rest of us. He didn't make the plan, and he's got the punishment."