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By Root 3821 0

and Magubane rose and walked agitatedly about the room. It was the situation they had fought against for the past three years. 'We no longer want crumbs from the master's table,' Jonathan said. 'We don't want a slice of bread. We don't want the loaf. We want the whole damned bakery. And we want it now.'

'We're not part of their society,' Magubane said sardonically. 'We would not appreciate Shakespeare or Goethe.' He kicked at the chair he had just vacated. 'I can recite whole pages of Othello, but I can never see it performed.'

Jonathan burst into laughter. 'Magubane, you ass. Othello is not really welcomed in South Africa. He's black, man. He's black, or didn't you know?'

Magubane brushed his chin as if embarrassed by his ignorance, then stood by the door, his right hand across his chestI am a Moor of Venice!' and declaimed:

'Had it pleased heaven

To try me with affliction; had they rained

All kinds of sores, and shames, on my bare head;

Steeped me in poverty to the very lips, Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes, I should have found in some part of my soul A drop of patience . . .'

He quit his oratory and said quietly, 'We have that "drop of patience," but only for so long.'

'What I was trying to say,' Daniel Nxumalo continued, 'was that right now in Pretoria booths have been set up in many spots. White people, women mostly, manage them . . .'

'For what purpose?' Jonathan asked.

'They're collecting signatures, petitioning the authorities to allow non-whites to attend performances in the new theater. And I understand the response has been overwhelmingly in favor.'

'Well,' Jonathan admitted grudgingly, 'change does come. Slowbut inevitable.' He rocked back and forth, then asked, 'Dan, do you think I'll ever be free to come back here and live like an ordinary workman?'

'Yes. Without the slightest hesitation I say yes. There's change in the air. Good things are happening, and I honestly believe we can attain our goals.'

'I don't,' Jonathan replied. 'Not without armed revolution, which will probably not come till I'm an old man.'

'You see yourself living a life of exile?' Philip asked.

'Yes. Magubane here will never see his birthplace free. Tubakwa, when you join us over the border you will never come home.'

'What will you do?' Philip asked.

'Maintain pressure. Goad the Afrikaners into taking an open Hitler stance until the world has to intervene.'

'If the government offered you amnesty'

'We would reject it,' Magubane broke in. 'This is war to the finish. The evil tricks of these people must be ended.'

'But Frikkie and Jopie, the two rugby players. They say almost the same thing. War to the finish. To preserve the kind of government God willed them to have.'

Jonathan started to make a cynical denouncement, but Magubane cut him off, saying to Philip, 'That's why I advise you to marry the girl and get out of here. You Americans proved in Vietnam you had no stomach for the long fight. The Troxels do. And we do. This war will last forty years, and it can only increase in severity and barbarity. That's why the airplanes are filled with those young people leaving. That's why you should go.'

Philip turned to Daniel Nxumalo. 'But you think there's still hope?'

'I do! The people signing those petitions in Pretoria are proof.'

But when Philip reached his camp he found his workmen excited by a news flash from the capital. Rural Afrikaners calling themselves the Avengers of the Veld had stormed into Pretoria, dynamited the kiosks in which the theater petitions were being signed, and burned the rubble, threatening to donder the women if they persisted in this unpatriotic effort to mix the races. The spokesman for the Avengers explained: 'God has forbidden us to accept Canaanites in our midst, and if this effort continues, we shall have to burn down the theater.'

When Sannie and the Troxel boys returned home, they were elated.

Philip wasted much of his leisure time at the diggings trying to fathom why above all elsethe men at Vrymeer were so devastated by the cancellation of the New Zealand tour. He reached