Of course the inevitable happened. Several of the little lads demanded that they be allowed their turn at wearing the trousers, the badge of authority, as it were. Sibijaan refused.
"No, no, you cannot wear them!" he shouted. "Now I am a man; I am almost white! I am a man and you are little boys! Who am I that I should take notice of such dirt?"
But he did. This last insult was too much. The indignant lads attacked Sibijaan, and in a second there was a squirming mass of black legs, arms, and bodies, with my precious trousers in danger of destruction. We all had assegais, or short stabbing spears, and regardless of these I dashed into the mêlée. Death or wounds were little things compared to the loss of those trousers.
When the fight was over I had been stabbed in the eye, but I had the trousers! Practically every boy had at least one wound, and one of the little fellows died before we got him back to the house where he could have attention. Owing to lack of proper medical care my eye was allowed to get well without expert attention and will always show the effects of this trouser-fight. From then on, however, I wore the trousers.
I shall always remember my father's comment on this happening. He asked me how the row had started and who had stabbed the boy to death. It was practically impossible to determine the latter, and I explained why. He listened in his quiet way and then gave me a talking to.
"Yours is the guilt for the death of that boy," he said. "You forgot you were a Boer and lowered yourself to the level of a Mapor! When you gave Sibijaan the trousers you became as the dirt under his feet. White men wear clothes; kaffirs go naked. Does my son, the son of Slim Gert O'Neil, want to be a nigger?"
Only in one other way did Sibijaan threaten my supremacy as the undisputed leader of our impi. This was due to his extraordinary knack in handling clay in the making of models of all kinds.
Not far from the house, along the bank of the river, there was a large clay-bank. I established a toy factory there and we made all sorts of clay toys, including idols, oxen, horses, and models of everything we handled in our daily life. To make it a contest Sibijaan and I, with our followers, used to compete with Klaas and his in the excellency of our models. My sister, Ellen, was the judge. Klaas, by the way, was the other little kaffir who was captured at the same time our neighbor brought Sibijaan to us.