I am very much afraid that most people would consider him rather a bad lot. The fact of the matter is he belonged to another period and other conditions. He was simply a great passionate¹ fighting savage², and, instead of wearing the cast-off clothing of the white man and peacefully driving bullock waggons³ along a transport road, should have been decked in his savage finery of leopard⁵ skin and black ostrich-feathers, showing off the powerful bronzed limbs and body all alive with muscle, and sharing in some wild war-dance; or, equipped with shield and assegais, leading in some murderous fight. Yes, Jim was out of date: he should have been one of the great Chaka’s fighting guard—to rise as a leader of men, or be killed on the way. He had but one argument and one answer to everything: Fight! It was his nature, bred and born in him; it ran in his blood and grew in his bones. He was a survival of a great fighting race—there are still thousands of them in the kraals of Zululand and Swaziland—but it was his fate to belong to one of the expelled families, and to have to live and work among the white men under the Boer Government of the Transvaal.  
In a fighting nation Jim’s kraal was known as a fighting one, and the turbulent blood that ran in their veins⁹ could not settle down into a placid¹⁰ stream merely because the Great White Queen had laid her hand upon his people and said, “There shall be peace!” Chaka, the ‘black Napoleon’ whose wars had cost South Africa over a million lives, had died—murdered by his brother Dingaan—full of glory, lord and master wherever his impis could reach. “Dogs whom I fed at my kraal!” he gasped¹¹, as they stabbed him. Dingaan his successor, as cruel as treacherous¹², had been crushed by the gallant¹³ little band of Boers under Potgieter for his fiendish massacre¹⁴ of Piet Retief and his little band. Panda the third of the three famous brothers—Panda the peaceful—had come and gone! Ketshwayo, after years of arrogant¹⁵ and unquestioned rule, had loosed his straining impis at the people of the Great White Queen. The awful day of ’Sandhl’wana—where the 24th Regiment¹⁶ died almost to a man—and the fight on H’lobani Mountain had blooded the impis to madness; but Rorke’s Drift and Kambula had followed those bloody¹⁷ victories—each within a few hours—to tell another tale; and at Ulundi the tides met—the black and the white. And the kingdom and might of the house of Chaka were no more.
 
Jim had fought at ’Sandhl’wana, and could tell of an umfaan sent out to herd¹⁸ some cattle within sight of the British camp to draw the troops out raiding while the impis crept round by hill and bush and donga behind them; of the fight made by the red-coats as, taken in detail, they were attacked hand to hand with stabbing assegais, ten and twenty to one; of one man in blue—a sailor—who was the last to die, fighting with his back to a waggon⁴-wheel against scores before him, and how he fell at last, stabbed in the back through the spokes²⁰ of the wheel by one who had crept up behind.
 
Jim had fought at Rorke’s Drift! Wild with lust²¹ of blood, he had gone on with the maddest of the victory-maddened lot to invade Natal²² and eat up the little garrison²³ on the way. He could tell how seventy or eighty white men behind a little rampart of biscuit-tins and flour-bags had fought through the long and terrible hours, beating off five thousand of the Zulu best, fresh from a victory without parallel or precedent²⁴; how, from the burning hospital, Sergeant²⁵ Hook, V.C., and others carried sick and wounded through the flames into the laager; how a man in black with a long beard, Father Walsh, moved about with calm face, speaking to some, helping²⁷ others, carrying wounded back and cartridges²⁸ forward—Father Walsh who said “Don’t swear, boys: fire low;” how Lieutenants²⁹ Chard and Bromhead—V.C.s too for that day’s work—led and fought, and guided and heartened their heroic little band until the flour-bags and biscuit-tins stood lower than the pile of dead outside, and the Zulu host was beaten and Natal saved that day.
 
Jim had seen all that—and Ulundi, the Day of Despair! And he knew the power of the Great White Queen and the way that her people fight. But peace was not for him or his kraal: better any fight than no fight. He rallied to Usibepu in the fight for leadership when his King, Ketshwayo, was gone, and Jim’s kraal had moved—and moved too soon: they were surrounded one night and massacred; and Jim fought his way out, wounded and alone. Without kith or kin⁶, cattle, king, or country, he fled to the Transvaal—to work for the first time in his life!
 
Waggon-boys—as the drivers were called—often acquired a certain amount of reputation on the road or in the locality where they worked; but it was, as a rule, only a reputation as good or bad drivers. In Jim’s case it was different. He was a character and had an individual reputation, which was exceptional in a Kaffir. I had better say at once that not even his best friend would claim that that reputation was a good one. He was known as the best driver, the strongest nigger, the hardest fighter, and the worst drinker on the road.
 
His real name was Makokela, but in accordance with a common Zulu habit, it was usually abbreviated³⁰ to Makokel’! Among a certain number of the white men—of the sort who never can get any name right—he was oddly enough known as McCorkindale. I called him Jim as a rule—Makokel’, when relations were strained. The waggon-boys found it safer to use his proper name. When anything had upset him it was not considered wise to take the liberty of shouting “Jim”: the answer sometimes came in the shape of a hammering.
 
Many men had employed Jim before he came to me, and all had ‘sacked’ him for fighting, drinking, and the unbearable³¹ worry he caused. They told me this, and said that he gave more trouble than his work was worth. It may have been true: he certainly was a living test of patience, purpose, and management; but, for something learnt in that way, I am glad now that Jim never ‘got the sack’ from me. Why he did not, is not easy to say; perhaps the circumstances under which he came to me and the hard knocks of an unkind fate pleaded for him. But it was not that alone: there was something in Jim himself—something good and fine, something that shone out from time to time through his black skin and battered³² face as the soul of a real man.
 
It was in the first season in the Bushveld that we were outspanned one night on the sand-hills overlooking Delagoa Bay among scores of other waggons dotted about in little camps—all loading or waiting for loads to transport to the Transvaal. Delagoa was not a good place to stay in, in those days: liquor was cheap and bad; there was very little in the way of law and order; and every one took care of himself as well as he could. The Kaffir kraals were close about the town, and the natives of the place were as rascally³³ a lot of thieves and vagabonds as you could find anywhere. The result was everlasting³⁴ trouble with the waggon-boys and a chronic³⁵ state of war between them and the natives and the banyans or Arab traders of the place. The boys, with pockets full of wages, haggled³⁶ and were cheated in the stores, and by the hawkers, and in the canteens; and they often ended up the night with beer-drinking at the kraals or reprisals³⁷ on their enemies. Every night there were fights and robberies: the natives or Indians would rob and half-kill a waggon-boy; then he in turn would rally his friends, and raid and clear out the kraal or the store. Most of the waggon-boys were Zulus or of Zulu descent, and they were always ready for a fight and would tackle any odds³⁸ when their blood was up.
 
It was the third night of our stay, and the usual row was on. Shouts and cries, the beating of tomtoms, and shrill³⁹ ear-piercing whistles, came from all sides; and through it all the dull hum of hundreds of human voices, all gabbling together. Near to us there was another camp of four waggons drawn⁴⁰ up in close order, and as we sat talking and wondering at the strange babel in the beautiful calm moonlight night, one sound was ever recurring⁴¹, coming away out of all the rest with something in it that fixed⁴² our attention. It was the sound of two voices from the next waggons. One voice was a kaffir’s—a great, deep, bull-throated voice; it was not raised—it was monotonously⁴⁴ steady and low; but it carried far, with the ring and the lingering vibration⁴⁵ of a big gong.
 
“Funa ’nyama, Inkos; funa ’nyama!” (“I want meat, Chief; I want meat!”) was what the kaffir’s voice kept repeating at intervals⁴⁶ of a minute or two with deadly monotony and persistency⁴⁷.
 
The white man’s voice grew more impatient, louder, and angrier, with each refusal; but the boy paid no heed⁴⁸. A few minutes later the same request would be made, supplemented now and then with, “I am hungry, Baas, I can’t sleep. Meat! Meat! Meat!” or, “Porridge and bread are for women and piccaninnies. I am a man: I want meat, Baas, meat.” From the white man it was, “Go to sleep, I tell you!”
 
“Be quiet, will you?”
 
“Shut up that row!”
 
“Be still, you drunken brute⁴⁹, or I’ll tie you up!” and “You’ll get twenty-five in a minute!”
 
It may have lasted half an hour when one of our party said, “That’s Bob’s old driver, the big Zulu. There’ll be a row to-night; he’s with a foreigner chap from Natal now. New chums are always roughest on the niggers.”
 
In a flash I remembered Bob Saunderson’s story of the boy who had caught the lion alive, and Bob’s own words, “a real fine nigger, but a terror to drink, and always in trouble. He fairly wore me right out.”
 
A few minutes later there was a short scuffle, and the boy’s voice could be heard protesting in the same deep low tone: they were tying him up to the waggon-wheel for a flogging. Others were helping the white man, but the boy was not resisting.
 
At the second thin whistling stroke some one said, “That’s a sjambok he’s using, not a nek-strop!” Sjambok, that will cut a bullock’s hide! At about the eighth there was a wrench⁵⁰ that made the waggon rattle⁵¹, and the deep voice was raised in protest, “Ow, Inkos!”
 
It made me choke: it was the first I knew of such things, and the horror of it was unbearable; but the man who had spoken before—a good man too, straight and strong, and trusted by black and white—said, “Sonny, you must not interfere⁵² between a man and his boys here; it’s hard sometimes, but we’d not live a day if they didn’t know who was baas.”
 
I think we counted eighteen; and then everything seemed going to burst.
 
The white man looked about at the faces close to him—and stopped. He began slowly to untie⁵³ the outstretched arms, and blustered⁵⁴ out some threats. But no one said a word!
 
The noises died down as the night wore on, until the stillness was broken only by the desultory⁵⁵ barking of a kaffir dog or the crowing of some awakened⁵⁶ rooster who had mistaken the bright moonlight for the dawn and thought that all the world had overslept itself. But for me there was one other sound for which I listened into the cool of morning with the quivering sensitiveness of a bruised⁵⁷ nerve. Sometimes it was a long catchy⁵⁸ sigh, and sometimes it broke into a groan⁵⁹ just audible, like the faintest rumble⁶⁰ of most distant surf. Twice in the long night there came the same request to one of the boys near him, uttered in a deep clear unshaken voice and in a tone that was civil but firm, and strangely moving from its quiet indifference⁶¹.
 
“Landela manzi, Umganaam!” (“Bring water, friend!”) was all he said; and each time the request was so quickly answered that I had the guilty feeling of being one in a great conspiracy⁶² of silence. The hush⁶³ was unreal; the stillness alive with racing⁶⁴ thoughts; the darkness full of watching eyes.
 
There is, we believe, in the heart of every being a little germ of justice which men call conscience! If that be so, there must have been in the heart of the white man that night some uneasy movement—the first life-throb of the thought which one who had not yet written has since set down:
 
“Though I’ve belted you and flayed⁶⁵ you,
By the living God that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din⁸!”
The following afternoon I received an ultimatum⁶⁶. We had just returned from the town when from a group of boys squatting⁶⁷ round the fire there stood up one big fellow—a stranger—who raised his hand high above his head in Zulu fashion and gave their salute⁶⁸ in the deep bell-like voice that th............