20 
LAND & WATER 
July 13. 1916 
done. I had a pull on old Sloggett, for 1 had known him ever 
since he owned a dissolute tug-boat at Delagoa Bay. 
Then Peter and I went ashore and swaggered into Lisbon 
as if we owned De Beers. We put up at the big hjtel oppo- 
site the railway station, and looked and behaved hke a pair of 
low-bred South Africans home for a spree. It was a fine 
bright day, so I hired a motor car and said I would drive 
it myself. We asked the name of some beauty-spot to visit 
and were told Cintra and shown the road to it. I wanted a 
quiet place to talk, for 1 had a good deal to say to Peter 
I'ienaar. 
1 christened that car the Lusitanian Terror, and it was a 
marvel that we did not smash ourselves up. There was 
something immortally wrong with its steering-gear. Half 
a dozen times we slewed across the road, inviting destruction. 
But we got there in the end, and had luncheon in a hotel 
opposite the Moorish palace. There we left the car and 
wandered up the slopes of a hill, where, sitting among scrub 
very like the veld, I told Peter the situation of affairs. 
.But first a word must be said about Peter. He was the 
man that taught me all I ever knew of veld-craft, and a good 
deal about human nature besides. He was out of the Old 
Colony —Burgersdorp I think, but he had come to the Trans- 
vaal when the Lydenburg goldfields started. He was pros- 
pector, transport rider, and hunter in turns, but principally 
hunter. In those days he was none too good a citizen. He 
was in Swaziland with Bob Macnab, and you know what that 
means. Then he took to working off bogus gold propositions 
07 'Kimberlcy and Johannesburg magnates, and what he 
didn't know about salting a mine wasn't knowledge. After 
that he was in the Kalahari, where he and Scotty Smith were 
familiar names. An era of comparative respectability dawned 
for him with the Matabele War, when he did uncommon good 
scouting and transport work. Cecil Rhodes wanted to estab- 
lish him on a stock farm down Salisbury way, but Peter was 
an independent devil and would call no man master. He 
took to big-game hunting which was what God intended him 
for, for he could track a tsessebe in thick bush, and was far 
the finest shot I have seen in my life. He took parties to the 
Pungwe flats, and Barotseland, and up toTanganyika. Then 
he made a speciality of the Ngami region, where I once 
hunted with him, and he was with me when I went prospecting 
in Damaraland. 
When the Boer War started, Peter, like many of the very 
great hunters, took the British side and did most of our in- 
telligence work in the North Transvaal. Beyers would have 
hanged him if he could have caught him, and there was no 
love lost between Peter and his own people for many a day. 
When it was all over and things had calmed down a bit, he 
settled in Bulawayo and used to go w'ith me when I went on 
trek. At the time when I left Africa two years before, I 
had lost sight of him for months, and heard that he was some- 
where on the Congo poaching elephants. He had always 
a great idea of making things hum so loud in Angola that 
the Union Government would have to step in and anne.K it. 
After Rhodes Peter had the biggest notions south of the 
Line. 
He was a man of about five foot ten, very thin and active, 
and as strong as a buffalo. He had pale blue eyes, a face as 
gentle as a girl's, and a soft sleepy voice. From his present 
appearance it looked as if he had been living hard lately. 
His clothing was of the cut you might expect to get at Lobito 
Bay, he was as lean as a rake, deeply browned with the sun, 
and there was a lot of grey in his beard. He was fifty-si.K 
years old, and used to be taken for forty. Now he looked his 
age. 
I first asked him what he had been up to since the war 
began ? He spat, in the Kaffir way he had, and said he 
aad been having Hell's time. 
" I got hung up on the Kafue," he said. " When I heard 
from old Letsitela that the white men were fighting 1 had a 
bright idea that I might get into German South West from 
the North. You see I knew that Botha couldn't long keep 
out of the war. Well, 1 got into German territory all right, 
and then a akellum of an Dfficer came along and commandeered 
all my mules, and wanted to commandeer me with tliem for 
his fool army. He was a very ugly man with a yellow face." 
Peter filled a deep pipe from a koodoo-skin pouch. 
" Were you commandeered ? " I asked. 
" No. I shot him — not so as to kill, but to wound badly. 
It was all right for he fired first on me. Got me too in the 
left shoulder. But that was the beginning of bad trouble. 
I trekked east pretty fast, and got over the border among 
the Ovamba. I have made many journeys but that was the 
worst. ^ Four days I went without water, and six without 
food. Then by bad luck I fell in with 'Nkitla— you re- 
member, the half-caste chief. He said I owed him money for 
cattle which I bought when I came there with Carowab. It 
was a lie, but he held to it, and would give me no transport. 
So I crossed the Kalahari on my feet. Ugh, it was as slow 
as a vrouw coming from nachtmaal. It took weeks ;md 
weeks, and when 1 came to l.echwe's kraal, 1 lieard that the 
fighting was over and that Botha had conquered the Germans. 
That, too, was a lie, but it deceived me, and I went north into 
Rhodesia, where I learned the truth. But by then 1 judged 
the war had gone too far forme to get any profit out of it, so 
I went into Angola to look for German refugees. By that 
time I was hating Germans worse than hell." 
" What did you propose to do with them ? " I asked. 
" I had a notion they would make trouble with the Govern- 
ment in those parts. I don't specially love the Portugoose, 
but I'm for him against the Germans any day. Well, there 
was trouble, and I had a merry time for a month or two. 
But, by and bye, it petered out, and I thought 1 had better 
clear for Europe, for South Africa was settling down just as 
the big show was getting really interesting. So here I am, 
Cornelis, my old friend. If I shave my beard, will they let 
me join the Flying Corps ? " 
I looked at Peter sitting there smoking, as imperturbable as 
if he had been growing mealies in Natal all his life and had 
run home for a month's hoUday with his people in Peckham. 
" You're coming with me, my lad," I said. " We're 
going into Germany." 
Peter showed no surprise. " Keep in mind that I don't 
hke the Germans," was all he said. " I'm a quiet Christian 
man, but I've the devil of a temper." 
Then I told him the story of our mission. 
" You and I have got to be Maritz's men. We got into 
Angola, and now we're trekking for the Fatherland to get a 
bit of our own back from the infernal EngUsh. Neither of us 
knows a syllable of German — publicly. We'd better plan out 
the fighting we were in — Kakamas will do for one, and Schuit 
Drift. You were a Ngamiland hunter before the war. They 
won't have your dossier so you can tell them any lie you like. 
I'd better be an educated Afrikander, one of Beyers's bright 
lads, and a pal of old Hertzog. We can let our imaginition 
loose about that part, but we must stick to the same yarn 
about the fighting." 
" Ja, Cornelis," said Peter. (He had called me Cornelis 
ever since I had told him my new name He was a wonderful 
chap for catching on to any game.) " But after we get into 
Germany, what then ? there can't be much difficulty 
about the beginning. But once we're among the beer-swillers 
I don't quite see our line. We're to find out about something 
that's going on in Turkey ? When I was a boy the predikant 
used to preach about Turkey. I wish 1 was jjetter educated 
and remembered whereabouts on the map it was." 
" You leave that to me," 1 said. " I'll explain it all to 
you before we get there. We haven't got much of a trail, 
but we'll cast about and with luck will pick one up. I've seen 
you do it often enough when we hunted koodoo on the 
Kafue." 
Peter nodded " Do we sit still in a German town ? " he 
asked anxiously. " I shouldn't like that, Cornelis." 
" We move gently eastward to Constantinople," I said. 
Peter grinned. " We should cover a lot of new country. 
You cam reckon on me, friend Cornelis. I've always had a 
hankering to see Europe." 
He rose to his feet and stretched his long arms. 
" We'd better begin at once. God, I wonder what's 
happened to old Solly .\Iaritz with his bottle face ? Yon was 
a fine battle at the drift when I was sitting up to my neck in 
the Orange praying that Brits' lads would take my head for 
a stone. 
Peter was as thorough a mountebank, when he got started, 
as Blenkiron himself. All the way back to Lisbon he yarned 
about Maritz and his adventures in German South West till 
I half believed they were true. He made a very good story 
of our doings, and by his constant harping on it I_ pretty soon 
got it into my memory. That was always Peter's way. He 
said if you were going to play a part you must think yourself 
into it, convince yourself that you were it, till you really were 
it and didn't act but behaved naturally. The two men who 
had started that morning from the hote'l door had been bogus 
enough, but the two that returned were genuine desperadoes, 
itching to get a shot at England. ■ 
We spent that evening piling up evidence in our favour. 
Some kind of republic had been started in Portugal, and 
ordinarily the cafes wouM have been full of politicians, but 
the war had quieted all these local squabbles, and the talk 
was of nothing but what was doing in France and Russia. 
The place we went to was a big well-lighted show on a main 
street, and there were a lot of sharp-eyed fellows wandering 
about that I guessed were spies and police agents. I knew 
that Britain was the one country that doesn't bother about 
this kind of game, and that it would be safe enough to let 
ourselves go. 
I talked Portuguese fairly well, and Peter spoke it like a 
Louren90 Marques bar-keeper with a lot of Shangaan words to 
fill up. He started on curagoa, which I reckoned was a new 
