I first asked him what he had been up to since the war began. He
spat, in the Kaffir way he had, and said he had been having hell's time.

'I got hung up on the Kafue,' he said. 'When I heard from old
Letsitela that the white men were fighting I had a bright idea that I
might get into German South West from the north. You see I
knew that Botha couldn't long keep out of the war. Well, I got into
German territory all right, and then a _skellum_ of an officer came
along, and commandeered all my mules, and wanted to commandeer
me with them for his fool army. He was a very ugly man with a
yellow face.' Peter filled a deep pipe from a kudu-skin pouch.

'Were you commandeered?' I asked.

'No. I shot him - not so as to kill, but to wound badly. It was all
right, for he fired first on me. Got me too in the left shoulder. But
that was the beginning of bad trouble. I trekked east pretty fast,
and got over the border among the Ovamba. I have made many
journeys, but that was the worst. Four days I went without water,
and six without food. Then by bad luck I fell in with 'Nkitla - you
remember, the half-caste chief. He said I owed him money for cattle
which I bought when I came there with Carowab. It was a lie, but
he held to it, and would give me no transport. So I crossed the
Kalahari on my feet. Ugh, it was as slow as a vrouw coming from
_nachtmaal_. It took weeks and weeks, and when I came to Lechwe's
kraal, I heard that the fighting was over and that Botha had conquered
the Germans. That, too, was a lie, but it deceived me, and I
went north into Rhodesia, where I learned the truth. But by then I
judged the war had gone too far for me to make any profit out of
it, so I went into Angola to look for German refugees. By that time