Between Snow and Fire — page 89: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XIV. A CURTAIN SECRET. THE settlement of Komgha—called after an infinitesimal stream of that name—was, like most frontier townships, an utterly insignificant place.’ It consisted of a few straggling blocks of houses plumped down apparently without rhyme or reason in the middle of the ve/dt, which here was open and undulating. It boasted a few stores and canteens, a couple of institutions termed by courtesy “ hotels,” an ex-— ceedingly ugly church, and a well-kept cricket ground. To the eastward rose the Kei Hills, the only picturesque element about the place, prominent among these the flat, table-topped summit of Moordenaar’s Kop,* a tragical spot so named on account of the surprise and massacre of a party of officers who had incautiously ventured up there in small force during one of the previous wars. The village was virtually the headquarters of the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police, the substantial square barracks, which harboured the artillery troop of that useful force, crowning the hill nearly a mile away, and there was generally another troop or two quartered around the place. ‘The main road from King Williamstown to the Transkeian territories ran through the village. At the period of our story, however, there was no lack of life or stir about the normally sleepy little place, for it was in process of transformation into a huge /aager or armed camp. Waggons were coming in from several directions— laden mostly with the families and household goods of flee- ing settlers, and the sharp crack of whips and the harsh yells of their drivers rose high above the general turmoil, Men were bustling to and fro, bent upon nothing in particu-_ lar and looking as though each and all carried the fate of a nation in his pockets, or standing in knots at street corners, discussing the situation, each perchance with a little less knowledge than his neighbour. All sorts of wild rumours — were in the air, the least of which was that every white in # Dutch, ‘‘ Murderer’s Peak.” a i Eomicbooks.com