If I advance, follow me.
If I retreat, shoot me down.
If I die, avenge me.
So help me Almighty God! And Manfred drew the silver blade across his wrist so that his blood sprang dark ruby in the torchlight, and he sprinkled the parchment with it.
The high commander stepped forward to embrace him, and behind him the black ranks erupted in a jubilant warlike roar of approval. At his side Roelf Stander returned the loaded pistol to its holster, his eyelids stinging with the nettles of proud tears. As the commander stepped back, Roelf rushed forward to take Manfred's right hand in his.
My brother. His whisper was choking. Now we are truly brothers. in mid-November Manfred sat his end-of-year examinations and passed third in a law class of 153.
Three days after the results were posted, the Stellenbosch boxing squad, led by its coach, left to take part in the InterVarsity Championships. This year the venue was the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and boxers from the other universities of South Africa journeyed from every province and corner of the Union to take part.
The Stellenbosch team travelled up by train, and there was a cheering, singing crowd of students and faculty members to see them off at the railway station on their thousand-mile journey.
Uncle Tromp kissed his women farewell, beginning with Aunt Trudi and working his way down to Sarah, the youngest, at the end of the line, and Manfred followed him. He was wearing his colours blazer and straw basher and he was so tall and beautiful that Sarah could not bear it and she burst into tears as he stooped over her. She flung both arms around his neck and squeezed with all her strength.
Come along, don't be a silly little duck, Manfred gruffed in her ear, but his voice was rough with the strange unaccustomed tumult that the contact of her hot silky cheek against his provoked beneath his ribs.
Oh, Manie, you are going so far away. She tried to hide her tears in the angle of his neck. We have never been parted by such distance. Come on, monkey. People are looking at you, he chided her gently. Give me a kiss and I'll bring you back a present. I don't want a present. I want you, she sniffed, and then lifted her sweet face and placed her mouth over his. Her mouth seemed to melt in its own heat, and it was moist and sweet as a ripe apple.
The contact lasted only seconds, but Manfred was so intensely aware that she might have been naked in his arms and he was shaken with guilt and self-disgust at his body's swift betrayal and at the evil that seemed to smoke in his blood and burst like a sky rocket in his brain. He pulled away from her roughly, and her expression was bewildered and hurt, her arms still raised as he scrambled up the steps onto the balcony of the coach and joined the noisy banter and horseplay of his team mates.
As the train pulled out of the station she was standing a little apart from the other girls, and when they all turned and trooped away down the platform, Sarah lingered, staring after the train as it gathered speed and ran towards the mountains.
At last a bend in the tracks carried him out of sight of her, and as Manfred drew his head back into the carriage he saw that Roelf Stander was watching him quizzically and now grinned and opened his mouth to speak, but Manfred flared at him furiously and guiltily: Hou jou bek! Hold your jaw, man! The Inter-Varsity Championships were held over ten days with five heats in each weight division; thus each contestant would fight every second day.
Manfred was seeded number two in his division, which meant that he would probably meet the holder of the champion's belt in the final round. The reigning champion was an engineering student who had just graduated from the Witwatersrand University. He was unbeaten in his career and had announced his intention of turning professional immediately after the Olympics for which he was considered a certain choice.
The Lion of the Kalahari meets the sternest test of his meteoric career. Can he take the same sort of punishment that he deals out? This is the question everyone is asking, and which Ian Rushmore will answer for us if all goes as expected,wrote the boxing correspondent of the Rand Daily Mail. There does not seem to be any contestant in the division who will be able to prevent De La Rey and Rushmore meeting on Saturday night, 20 December 1935. It will be Rushmore's Right hand, made of granite and gelignite, against De La Rey's swarming battering two-handed style, and your correspondent would not miss the meeting for all the gold that lies beneath the streets of Johannesburg. Manfred won his first two bouts with insulting ease. His opponents, demoralized by his reputation, both dropped in the second round under the barrage of slashing red gloves, and the Wednesday was a rest day for Manfred.
He left the residence on the host university's campus before any of the others were up, missing breakfast to be in time for the early morning train from Johannesburg's Central Station. it was less than an hour's journey across the open grasslands.
He ate a frugal breakfast in the buffet of the Pretoria station and then started out on foot with a leaden reluctance in his gait.
Pretoria Central Prison was an ugly square building and the interior was as forbidding and depressing. Here all executions were carried out, and life imprisonments served.
Manfred went into the visitors entrance, spoke to the unsmiling senior warder at the enquiries desk and filled in an application form.
He hesitated over the question, Relationship to prisoner', then boldly wrote Son.
When he returned the form to the warder, the man read it through slowly and then looked up at him, studying him gravely and impersonally. He has not had a visitor, not one in all these years, he said.
I could not come before. Manfred tried to excuse himself.
There were reasons. They all say that. Then the warder's expression altered subtly. You are the boxer, aren't you? That's right, Manfred nodded, and then on an impulse he gave the secret recognition signal of the OB and the man's eyes flicked with surprise then dropped to the form in front of him.
Very well, then. Have a seat. I'll call you when he is ready, he said, and under cover of the counter top he gave Manfred the counter signal of the Ossewa Brandwag.
Kill the rooinek bastard on Saturday night, he whispered, and turned away. Manfred was amazed but elated to have proof of how widely the brotherhood had spread its arms to gather in the Volk.
