You daren't shoot a spy when you
catch him in your own uniform. You daren't touch our loyall people in Cape
Town! Your masters wont let you. You will feed our women and children till
we are quite ready to take them back. _You_ can't put your cowardly noses
out of the towns you say you've occupied. _You_ daren't move a convoy
twenty miles. You think you've done something? You've done nothing, and
you've taken a quarter of a million of men to do it! There isn't a nigger
in South Africa that doesn't obey us if we lift our finger. You pay the
stuff four pounds a month and they lie to you. _We_ flog 'em, as I shall
flog you."
He clasped his hands together and leaned forward his out-thrust chin
within two feet of Copper's left, or pipe hand.
"Yuss," said Copper, "it's a fair knock-out." The fist landed to a hair on
the chin-point, the neck snicked like a gun-lock, and the back of the head
crashed on the boulder behind.
Copper grabbed up both rifles, unshipped the cross-bandoliers, drew forth
the English weekly, and picking up the lax hands, looked long and intently
at the fingernails.
"No! Not a sign of it there," he said. "'Is nails are as clean as mine--
but he talks just like 'em, though. And he's a landlord too! A landed
proprietor! Shockin', I call it."
The arms began to flap with returning consciousness. Private Copper rose
up and whispered: "If you open your head, I'll bash it.
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