Dutch Indies—Umballa. He is very funny, my Captain Mankeltow."
'The Dutch and the English ought to fraternise, Sir. They've the same notions of humour, to my thinking.'
'"When he gets well," says Van Zyl, "you look out, Mr. Americaan. He comes back to his guns next Tuesday. Then they shoot better."
'I wasn't so well acquainted with the Royal British Artillery as old man Van Zyl. I knew this Captain Mankeltow by sight, of course, and, considering what sort of a man with the hoe he was, I thought he'd done right well against my Zigler. But nothing epoch-making.
Next morning at the usual hour I waited on the General, and old Van Zyl come along with some of the boys. Van Zyl didn't hang round the Zigler much as a rule, but this was his luck that day.
He was peeking through his glasses at the camp, and I was helping pepper the General's sow-belly—just as usual—when he turns to me quick and says, "Almighty! How all these Englishmen are liars! You cannot trust one," he says. "Captain Mankeltow tells our Johanna he comes not back till Tuesday, and to-day is Friday, and there he is! Almighty! The English are all Chamberlains!"
If the old man hadn't stopped to make political speeches he'd have had his supper in laager that night, I guess. I was busy attending to Tom Reed at two thousand when Baldy got in her fine work on me. I saw one sheet of white
