railway station, and looked and behaved like a pair of lowbred
South Africans home for a spree. It was a fine bright day, so I hired
a motor-car and said I would drive it myself. We asked the name of
some beauty-spot to visit, and were told Cintra and shown the road
to it. I wanted a quiet place to talk, for I had a good deal to say to
Peter Pienaar.

I christened that car the Lusitanian Terror, and it was a marvel that
we did not smash ourselves up. There was something immortally
wrong with its steering gear. Half a dozen times we slewed across
the road, inviting destruction. But we got there in the end, and had
luncheon in an hotel opposite the Moorish palace. There we left the
car and wandered up the slopes of a hill, where, sitting among
scrub very like the veld, I told Peter the situation of affairs.

But first a word must be said about Peter. He was the man that
taught me all I ever knew of veld-craft, and a good deal about
human nature besides. He was out of the Old Colony -
Burgersdorp, I think - but he had come to the Transvaal when the
Lydenburg goldfields started. He was prospector, transport-rider,
and hunter in turns, but principally hunter. In those early days he
was none too good a citizen. He was in Swaziland with Bob
Macnab, and you know what that means. Then he took to working
off bogus gold propositions on Kimberley and Johannesburg
magnates, and what he didn't know about salting a mine wasn't
knowledge. After that he was in the Kalahari, where he and Scotty
Smith were familiar names. An era of comparative respectability
dawned for him with the Matabele War, when he did uncommon
good scouting and transport work. Cecil Rhodes wanted to establish
him on a stock farm down Salisbury way, but Peter was an independent