"Why, man, it's against human nature.

You've got all their wool: now do you think they want you to have their skin too ?" Whereupon the weasel-faced individual uttered a howl of wrath, and pretended to make a rush at the author of these random gibes, waiting halfway for somebody to stop him and prevent a breach of the peace.
"Oh, Miss Croft!" cried out a woman in the crowd, who, like Jess, had been trapped in Pretoria while on a flying visit, "if you can, do send a line to my husband at Maritzburg, to tell him that I am well, except for the rheumatism from sleeping on the wet ground; and tell him to kiss the twins for me." "I say, Niel, tell those Boers that we will give them a d--d good hiding yet, when Colley relieves us," sang out a jolly young Englishman in the uniform of the Pretoria Carbineers.

He little knew that poor Colley--kind-hearted English gentleman that he was--lay sleeping peacefully under six feet of ground with a Boer bullet in his brain.
"Now, Captain Niel, if you are ready, we must trek," said one of the Boers in Dutch, suiting the action to the word by giving the near wheeler a sharp cut with his riding _sjambock_ that made him jump nearly out of the traces.
Away started the horses with a plunge, scattering the crowd to the right and left, and, amid a volley of farewells, they were off upon their homeward journey.
For more than an hour nothing particular happened.

John drove at a fair pace, and the two Boers cantered along behind.

At the end of this time, however, just as they were approaching the Red House, where Frank Muller had obtained the pass from the General on the previous day, one of the Boers rode up and told them, roughly enough, that they were to outspan at the house, where they would find some food.