on the left gives his bandolier a warning twist, and glances along the long
brown barrel that nestles in the hollow of his left hand.

The commandant comes out of the circle of burghers, looks at the victim,
sees that the eyes are bloodshot and protruding far beyond the normal
position. He is not a hard man, but he knows that the culprit has
endangered the lives and liberties of all. "You will remember this," he
says sternly; "you will not again sleep when it is your turn to watch."
"Never, so help me God!" gasps the prisoner. "Stand down, then; you are
free." Quicker than a swallow's flight is the movement of the liberated
man. He drops his rifle with a gasp of relief, tears every stitch of
clothing from his body, throws the garments from him, and pelts his
veldtschoon after them. Some sympathetic veteran, who has possibly, in
earlier wars, been through the ordeal himself, runs up with a drink of
blessed water. He does not drink it; he pours it down his burning throat,
then sits on the grass, drawing his breath in long, sobbing sighs, all the
more terrible because they are tearless. From head to heel he is covered
with tiny red marks, just like a schoolboy who has had the measles; in
three days there will not be a mark on him, but he won't forget them, all
the same, not in thirty-three years, or three hundred and thirty-three, if
he happens to have a memory of any kind at that period.

This mode of punishing recalcitrant persons was picked up, I am told, from
one of the savage tribes. I do not know if this is so or not, but there is
no doubt that the niggers know all about it, because one day, when I found
that one of my niggers had been helping himself lavishly to my tobacco, I
promised to stand him on an ant-heap as soon as I had finished shaving.
Five minutes later my other nigger, Lazarus, came into my tent and informed
me that Johnnie had bolted. I went out, and by the aid of my glasses I
could just espy a black dot away out on the veldt, making a rapid and