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'You mean De Groot defeated your whole army?'

'Have you ever seen De Groot?'

'I have. They call him the Hero of Majuba.'

'He's a formidable man,' Hammond said.

'But what am I doing here?' Frank asked. 'I was north of the Limpopo when this happened.'

None of the prisoners, cell after cell of Uitlanders, who had called themselves Reformers, could explain why Saltwood had been arrested, but after days in the crowded jail he heard enough from the conspirators to assure himself that they were indeed guilty of insurrection and that the venture had been sorely botched.

'How could Mr. Rhodes have stumbled into this?' he asked repeatedly, and finally the Australian said, 'Because he had contempt for the Boers, like all of us did.'

'After what I wrote him?' Frank blurted out, and when these words echoed in the cell, all the prisoners looked at him.

'Oh,' one of the Englishmen said, 'you're the spy they kept asking about.'

'Spy?' Frank repeated. He suddenly realized that his prying visit to General de Groot, his chain of persistent questions and his note-taking could be interpreted as spying.

And at the trial, General de Groot and Jakob van Doorn both testified, with regret, that he had come to them some months before the raid as a friend, asking a series of probing questions relating to the rebellion. Van Doorn in particular could verify that he had written a long report which he admitted he was sending to Cecil Rhodes, and from hints that Van Doorn picked up, it concerned the military capabilities of the Boers.

'Did Mr. Saltwood appear at your farm in military uniform?'

'No, sir, he came as a spy.'

'Did he inform you that he was serving as the agent of a rebellion?'

'No, sir, he functioned as a spy.'

When the trial ended, the grim-faced judge placed on his head a small black cloth. One by one the prisoners were brought before him: 'John Hays Hammond, the court finds you guilty, and for your treasons you will be taken from jail and hanged.'

Frank felt his knees buckling as an ashen-faced Hammond was returned to the jail, and if the Australian had not held him, he might have collapsed. The Australian was sentenced, then the two Englishmen, and now it was Saltwood's turn, but as he was led into the dock a rude commotion erupted at the rear of the courtroom. Two policemen were trying to restrain an elderly Boer who was struggling with some heavy object.

When they led him before the bench, the judge looked down severely: 'Lang-Piet Bezuidenhout, what is this nonsense?'

'Forgive me, your Honor. But I bring something that might help your Honor punish these men.'

'Lang-Piet, this is a court for justice, not a place for cheap revenge. Go before I get angry.'

'But, your Honor, the men of my commando have been in the saddle many days to bring you this thing.'

'What thing?'

'Die balk van Slagter's Nek, Oom Gideon.'

And that was precisely what had happened. Lang-Piet Bezuidenhout and his cronies had ridden down to Graaff-Reinet to buy the wooden beam of the Slagter's Nek gallows from a family who had preserved the grim relic for some eighty years.

'The rebels must hang from this very beam,' the old man shouted as his cronies cheered. 'We want justice.'

The judge, Oom Gideon de Beer, said quietly, 'Lang-Piet, in these days we dispense a fairer kind of justice. Sit down and be silent.' Then he turned his attention to the man waiting in the dock: 'For your crimes you will be taken from jail and hanged.'

In this extremity, Maud Turner came to Frank's rescue. With bars separating her from the man she considered her fiance, she listened intently as he told her every detail of what he had done since she had said farewell to him at Kimberley. When he explained what he had written in his Vrymeer report to Rhodes, she cried, 'But that would exonerate you!' And when he told her of the Zimbabwe report, which the Boer commando had taken from him, she was exultant: 'It proves you honestly were doing scientific work. That makes your