anything before sundown. However, if you have something to eat----?"

"Oh yes, Inez--she's my daughter--will find you a bite. Those men of
yours," and he also looked doubtfully at Umslopogaas and his savage
company, "will want food as well. I'll have a beast killed for them;
they look as if they could eat it, horns and all. Where are my people?
All asleep, I suppose, the lazy lubbers. Wait a bit, I'll wake them up."

Going to the house he snatched a great sjambok cut from hippopotamus
hide, from where it hung on a nail in the wall, and ran towards the
group of huts which I have mentioned, roaring out the name Thomaso, also
a string of oaths such as seamen use, mixed with others of a Portuguese
variety. What happened there I could not see because boughs were in
the way, but presently I heard blows and screams, and caught sight of
people, all dark-skinned, flying from the huts.

A little later a fat, half-breed man--I should say from his curling hair
that his mother was a negress and his father a Portuguese--appeared
with some other nondescript fellows and began to give directions in a
competent fashion about our oxen, also as to the killing of a calf. He
spoke in bastard Portuguese, which I could understand, and I heard him
talk of Umslopogaas to whom he pointed, as "that nigger," after the
fashion of such cross-bred people who choose to consider themselves
white men. Also he made uncomplimentary remarks about Hans, who of
course understood every word he said. Evidently Thomaso's temper had
been ruffled by this sudden and violent disturbance of his nap.

Just then our host appeared puffing with his exertions and declaring
that he had stirred up the swine with a vengeance, in proof of which he
pointed to the sjambok that was reddened with blood.