"I shall never convince you, and you will never convince me."

"Oh yes, I should, after you had come to your senses! There, we are not brutes, only men fighting for our liberties, and I like you, for you are brave and manly. Why not join our cause? It is just."

West looked the Boer full in the eyes, thinking the while that the man spoke in all sincerity and belief that his cause was right.

"Well, what do you say?" cried the Boer.

West tightened his lips and shook his head.

The Boer frowned and turned to Ingleborough.

"Well," he said, "you join us, and you will not repent. Prove faithful, and you will gain a place of trust among us!"

West listened for his comrade's reply.

"Oh, I can't join without him," said Ingleborough. "He's master, and I'm only man!"

"Then he was bearer of the despatch--what that man Anson said was true?"

"Oh yes, that part of his story was true enough."

"That you were despatch-riders on the way to Mafeking--you two?"

"Quite right."

"And you two had been diamond-dealers, and brought away a quant.i.ty?"

"Just as many, as we schoolboys used to say, as you could put in your eye with the point of a needle. All a lie! Anson was putting his own case. All we brought away was the despatch."

"Then where is it?" said the Boer sharply.

"I don't know; I was not the bearer," said Ingleborough quietly, "But you know where it is now?"

"I--do--not," said Ingleborough firmly. "I have not the slightest idea where it is!"

"Then you have sent it on by someone else?"

"No," said Ingleborough. "There, you know that we have failed, and if you set us at liberty, all we can do is to go back to Kimberley and say what has happened."

"You will not go back to Kimberley," said the Boer, speaking with his eyes half-closed, "and if you did it would only be to go into prison, for the Diamond City is closely besieged, and if not already taken it will in a few days be ours. There, go back to your wagon, and spend the time in thinking till I send for you again. The choice is before you--a good position with us, or a long imprisonment before you are turned out of the country."

He pointed towards their temporary place of confinement, and then turned away, while a couple of the Boers marched them to the wagon and left them in the sentry's charge.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE SKY CLEARS.

Once more in the wagon, one ox a pair of despondent prisoners, hot in temper as well as in person with the excitement of what he had so lately gone through, West cast himself down upon the floor ready to groan, while his more experienced, harder comrade sat down cross-legged to think.

"If I only knew where the coat was!" said West, with a groan.

"Hah!" sighed Ingleborough. "I'm afraid it's gone for ever! That Kaffir was one of the Boers' slave-like servants, of course, or he wouldn't have been in the camp; and after the attempt at theft, if he was not too badly wounded, he would bolt right off for his own people.

It's a sad business, old lad: but I don't think you need fear that it will fall into the Boers' hands."

"No, I don't fear that!" replied West. "But it is the misery and shame of the failure that worries me! I did so mean to succeed!"

"Hah! Yes," sighed Ingleborough again; "but someone said--hang me if I know who!--''Tis not in mortals to command success.' You're only a mortal, old fellow, and you must make the best of it."

West groaned.

"It's horribly hard; just, too, as I had hatched out a way of escape,"

continued Ingleborough.

"I don't want to escape now."

"What? You don't mean to join the Boers as old Fat Face suggested?"

"Why not?" said West dismally. "I dare not go back to Kimberley."

"You daren't turn traitor to your country, and, though you feel right down in the dumps, you dare go back to Kimberley and walk straight to the Commandant and speak out like a man, saying: 'I did my best, sir; but I failed dismally!'"

"Ah!" sighed West.

"And he would reply: 'Well, it's a bad job, my lad; but it's the fortune of war.'"

West held out his hand as he sat there tailor-fashion by his friend in the bottom of the wagon, and there was a warm grip exchanged.

"Bravo, boy! You're coming round! I knew it. You only wanted time."

"Thank you, Ingle! Now then, what was your idea of escaping?"

"Oh, a very simple one, but as likely to succeed as to fail."

"Tell me at once! It will keep me from thinking about that miserable despatch."

"And the jacket! You and I will have to take turn and turn with mine when the cold nights come, unless we pretend to lovely Anson that we are going to stop, and ask him to get you a fresh covering for your chest and back."

"Oh, none of that, Ingle! I can't bear lying subterfuges. I'd sooner bear the cold of the bitter nights."

"Don't use big words, lad! Subterfuge, indeed! Say _dodge_--a war dodge. But about my plan! You have noticed that for some reason they have not taken our ponies away."

"Yes, they are still tethered to the wheel ox that wagon. What of that?

It would be impossible to get to them and ride out unchallenged."

"Oh no: not my way!"

"What is your way?" said West excitedly.