and mysterious in turn. To begin with, he alluded to my exalted position and importance and suggested that I should remove myself, or be removed by him, to Pretoria.
“You expect trouble, then?” I asked.
His reply was so worded as to have no meaning whatsoever, so I gathered that they were expecting serious trouble. I suggested to him that his government were letting things go rather far.
“There is such a thing as giving a man enough rope, and letting him hang himself, Sir Eustace.”
“Oh, quite so, quite so.”
“It is not the strikers themselves who are causing the trouble. There is some organization at work behind them. Arms and explosives have been pouring in, and we have made a haul of certain documents which throw a good deal of light on the methods adopted to import them. There is a regular code. Potatoes mean ‘detonators,’ cauliflower, ‘rifles,’ other vegetables stand for various explosives.”