You don't know what _thatt_ means--eh?"
"Why?" said Copper. "I'm smokin' baccy stole by a renegid. Why wouldn't I
know?"
If it came to a flogging on that hillside there might be a chance of
reprisals. Of course, he might be marched to the Boer camp in the next
valley and there operated upon; but Army life teaches no man to cross
bridges unnecessarily.
"Yes, after eight years, my father, cheated by your bitch of a country, he
found out who was the upper dog in South Africa."
"That's me," said Copper valiantly. "If it takes another 'alf century,
it's me an' the likes of me."
"You? Heaven help you! You'll be screaming at a wagon-wheel in an hour....
Then it struck my father that he'd like to shoot the people who'd betrayed
him. You--you--_you_! He told his son all about it. He told him never to
trust the English. He told him to do them all the harm he could. Mann, I
tell you, I don't want much telling. I was born in the Transvaal--I'm a
burgher. If my father didn't love the English, by the Lord, mann, I tell
you, I hate them from the bottom of my soul."
The voice quavered and ran high. Once more, for no conceivable reason,
Private Copper found his inward eye turned upon Umballa cantonments of a
dry dusty afternoon, when the saddle-coloured son of a local hotel-keeper
came to the barracks to complain of a theft of fowls. He saw the dark
face, the plover's-egg-tinted eyeballs, and the thin excited hands.
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