“Bang! Boom!”

Rock and frowning krantz rolled back the reverberations in swooping echo as the first seven-pounder spoke, launching its whistling shrapnel across the deep, thickly-bushed valley of the Tsolo River. Hardly had the echoes died away than the second gun spoke.

Simultaneously with its roar, branches and stones were seen to split and fly, on the opposite hillside, some six hundred yards away. Simultaneously, too, a deep-chested ejaculation of wonderment broke from the throats of more than double that number of human beings. But the mere handful of brown-clad, helmeted men stood calm and alert, feeling perhaps a little grim, as they marked the effect of the gun practice upon the ochre-smeared groups which dotted the hillside hard by. More and more Kafirs came hurrying up from near and far, eager to witness the fun of what was to them an entirely new experience. For this was no battle, only a “demonstration” on the part of the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police, whose recently formed battery of artillery was delighted to have a chance of showing the turbulent inhabitants of the Transkei what they might hope to expect in case of—accidents.

With each successful shot—and the new artillerymen were making wonderfully good practice—a gasp of admiring amazement ran through the entranced spectators like the breaking of a wave on the shore. These had increased till there could not have been less than a couple of thousand, reddening the slopes like a swarm of ants. They were not armed, except with sticks; and without his kerrie a Kafir rarely moves. The Police Commandant had sent word to all the principal chiefs, inviting them to witness the gun drill, and some had accepted. Besides the artillery, there were three full troops of mounted men.

Tall and bearded, his stature and smart uniform and shining sword impressing the savages no less than his calm imperturbability of demeanour, the Commandant stood, among three or four Inspectors. Two others made up the group, and these, old friends of ours—Harley Greenoak and his charge, Dick Selmes. A little way from these squatted a knot of chiefs and councillors, eagerly discussing, in a low hum, the effect of every shot. They were all old or elderly men, differing outwardly in no way from the commonest of their people. They wore the same red blanket, and some the massive ivory armlet. But the faces of all were remarkably shrewd and intelligent.

“Well, Greenoak, so you couldn’t induce old Kreli to show up?” said the Commandant, naming the great and paramount chief of all the Transkeian, and also of the Kafir tribes within the Colonial border. “Even you couldn’t manage that, eh?”

“Not even me,” was the laconic reply.

“Well, I never supposed you would. He’s got a long memory, and that warns him that it may be no safer for his father’s son within a white man’s camp than it was for his father before him.”

“Why? What happened to his father, Commandant?” eagerly struck in Dick Selmes, scenting a yarn.

“Shot—‘while trying to escape.’”

“But wasn’t he trying to escape?” said Dick, upon whom a certain significant cynicism of tone underlying this remark was not lost.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t, and history agrees that he was,” answered the Commandant, drily. “But then, you see, Kreli can’t read history, and wouldn’t believe it if he could. So he’d rather be excused coming to see the new Police artillery make very fair gun practice, and I for one don’t blame him. Why, there’s my old friend, Botmane,” he broke off, as his glance rested on the group of potentates above mentioned. Then to an orderly, “Bring him here, Harris, I must have a talk with him.”

“Who’s he?” asked Dick.

“One of Kreli’s big amapakati, or councillors,” answered Greenoak. “In fact the biggest.”

“Oh!” and he looked with vivid interest as the Kafir, an old man with a pleasant face, rose from his place in the group and strode forward, which interest deepened as he listened to the subsequent conversation. This he was able to do, as the Commandant, though perfectly at home in the vernacular, chose, for reasons of his own, to use an interpreter. But the said conversation was of no political importance, being a mere exchange of compliments, with here and there a reminiscence. The old Kafir expressed unbounded wonder at the gun practice. The white people could do anything—he declared, as he was shown the working of the guns—could kill men as far distant as anybody could see. “What was it done with?”

“Show him the powder,” said the Commandant.

This was done, and the old councillor dipped his fingers, not without awe, into the black, large-grained stuff. No wonder the guns could shoot so far with stuff like that, he remarked.

“Give him a big h............