the dirt I'd coughed up seemed all back of my tongue again.
' "Oh," says he, " we don't do much of anything. They're about all the society we get. I'm a bit of a pro-Boer myself," he says, " but between you and me the average Boer ain't over and above intellectual. You're the first American we've met up with, but of course you're a burgher."
' It was what I ought to have been if I'd had the sense of a common tick, but the way he drawled it out made me mad.
' "Of course I am not," I says. "Would you be a naturalised Boer?"
' "I'm fighting against 'em," he says, lighting a cigarette, "but it's all a matter of opinion."
' "Well," I says, "you can hold any blame opinion you choose, but I'm a white man, and my present intention is to die in that colour."
' He laughed one of those big, thick-ended, British laughs that don't lead anywhere, and whacked up some sort of compliment about America that made me mad all through.
' I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir, but I do not understand the alleged British joke. It is depressing.
' I was introdooced to five or six officers that evening, and every blame one of 'em grinned and asked me why I wasn't in the Filipeens suppressing our war ! And that was British humour! They all had to get it off their chests before they'd talk sense. But they was sound on the Zigler. They had all admired her. I made out a fairy-story of me being wearied of the war, and having
