Charge! Part 45

"Sure, me wound and me fall put it all out of me head; but I had a man with me when I was. .h.i.t, and we were cut off in the fight."

"Yes," I said; "the poor fellow lies close here-dead."

"Thin lade the horse round another way, boy. I don't want to look at the poor lad. Ah! I don't fale so faint now. To think of me bad luck, though. Shot down like this, and not in battle, but hunting a gang of wagon-thieves."

"Ha, ha, ha! ha, ha, ha!" roared the Sergeant, slapping his thigh again and again as he laughed. "Come, I like that, Mr Moray.-Here, Mr Captain, let me introduce you to the gentleman who so cleverly carried off your stores last night."

I was scarlet with indignation at being called a cattle-thief, and turned angrily away.

"What!" said the prisoner; "him? Did-did he-did-But Moray-Moray? Sure, I thought I knew his face again. Here, I arrest ye as a thraitor and a deserter from the commando, boy;" and his hand went to the holster to draw his revolver, which had not been interfered with.

"Drop that!" roared the Sergeant roughly, and he dragged the prisoner's hand from the holster, wrenching the revolver from his grasp, and nearly making him lose his balance and fall out of the saddle. "I've heard all about it. So you're the Irish scoundrel who summoned that poor lad, and when he refused to turn traitor and fight against his own country, you had his hands lashed behind his back and treated him like a dog. Why, you miserable renegado! if you weren't a wounded man I'd serve you the same. An officer and a gentleman! Why, you're a disgrace to your brave countrymen."

"Whisht! whisht!" cried our prisoner contemptuously.

"Whisht! whisht! I'd like to whisht you with a Boer's sjambok," cried the Sergeant. "Here he finds you wounded and where you'd have lain and died, and the carrion-birds would have come to the carrion; and when the brave lad's helped you, given you water, bound up your wound, and put you on his own beast, like that man did in Scripture, you turn round in the nastiness of your nature and try to sting him. Bah! I'd be ashamed of myself. You're not Irish. I don't even call you a man."

The Sergeant's flow of indignation sounded much poorer at the end than at the beginning; and, his words failing now, I had a chance to get in a few.

"That's enough, Sergeant," I said. "You forget he's a wounded man and a prisoner."

"Not half enough, Mr Moray," cried the Sergeant. "I'm not one of your sort, full of fine feelings; only a plain, straightforward soldier."

"And a brave man," I said, "who cannot trample on a fallen enemy."

Sergeant Briggs gave his slouch felt hat a thrust on one side, while he angrily tore at his grizzled shock of closely-cut hair: it was too fierce to be called a scratch.

"All right," he said-"all right; but the sight of him trying to get out a pistol to hold at the head of him as-as-"

"Be quiet, Sergeant," I said, smiling in spite of myself. "Look: the poor fellow's turning faint. Let's get him to the camp. Ride alongside him and hold him up or he'll fall."

"If I do may I-"

"Sergeant!" I shouted.

"Oh, all right, all right. I- But here, I'm not going to let you begin to domineer over your officer."

"Sergeant," I said gently, and without a word he pressed his horse close alongside the prisoner, thrust a strong arm beneath him, and we went out into the open, pa.s.sing, after all, the prisoner's Boer companion, whose fighting was for ever at an end; and at last we reached the entrance to the old fort, with our wounded prisoner nearly insensible. After the horses had been led in, the prisoner had to be lifted down and placed in the temporary hospital made in a sheltered portion of the pa.s.sage. Here the surgeon saw him at once, and extracted a rifle-bullet, which had nearly pa.s.sed through the shoulder.

The Colonel was soon made acquainted with all that had pa.s.sed, the Sergeant being his informant, and men were sent out to give a soldier's funeral to the dead Boer, who, with the Captain, must have dashed out in one of our skirmishes, after being wounded, and tried to escape by going right round the kopje, but had fallen by the way.

"Here, Moray," said the Colonel to me the next time he pa.s.sed, "you've been heaping coals of fire upon your enemy's head, I hear?"

"Oh, I don't know, sir," I said uneasily.

"I've heard all about it, my lad; and a nice sort of a prisoner you've brought me in. If he had been a Boer I'd have put him on one of the captured horses and sent him to his laager, but I feel as if I must keep this fellow. There, we shall see."

"A brute!" said Denham that same night. "He's actually had the impudence to send a message to the Colonel complaining of his quarters and saying that he claims to be treated as an officer and a gentleman."

"Pooh! The fellow only merits contempt," I said.

"There are fifteen Irishmen in the corps, and they're all raging about him. They say he ought to be hung for a traitor. He doesn't deserve to be shot."

"But there isn't an Irishman in the corps would put it to the proof," I said.

"Humph! Well," said Denham, "I suppose not, for he is a prisoner after all. Officer and a gentleman-eh? One who must have left his country for his country's good."

Chapter Thirty One.

Denham's bad luck.

The men of the corps were in high glee during the following days, the Boers making two or three attempts to cut off our grazing horses and oxen, but smarting terribly for being so venturesome. In each case they were sent to the right-about, while our cattle were driven back into safety without the loss of a man.

The enemy still surrounded us, occupying precisely the same lines; and, thoroughly dissatisfied with a style of fighting which meant taking them into the open to attack our stronghold, they laagered and strengthened their position, waiting for us to attack them. This could only be done at the risk of terrible loss and disaster, for the Boers were so numerous that any attempt to cut through them might only result in our small force being surrounded and overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Therefore our Colonel decided not to make an attack.

"The Colonel says they're ten to one, Val; and as we've plenty of water and provisions, he will leave all 'acting on the aggressive' to the Doppies."

This remark was made by my companion Denham when we had been in possession of the old fortress for nearly a fortnight.

At first, while still suffering a little from the injuries I had received, the confinement was depressing; but as I gradually recovered from my wrenches and bruises, and as there was so much to do, and we were so often called upon to be ready for the enemy, the days and nights pa.s.sed not unpleasantly. Discipline was strictly enforced, and everything was carried out in the most orderly way. Horses and cattle were watered and sent out to graze in charge of escorts, and a troop was drawn up beyond the walls, ready to dash out should the Boers attempt to cut them off; guard was regularly mounted; and the men were set to build stone walls and roofs in parts of the old place, to give protection from the cold nights and the rain that might fall at any time.

As for the men, they were as jolly as the proverbial sandboys; and at night the walls echoed with song and chorus. Then games were contrived, some played by the light of the fires and others outside the walls. Bats, b.a.l.l.s, and stumps were made for cricket; of course very roughly fas.h.i.+oned, but they afforded as much amus.e.m.e.nt as if they had come straight from one of the best English makers.

There was, however, a monotony about our food-supply, and the officers more than once banteringly asked me when I was going to cut out another half-dozen wagons.

"Bring more variety next time," they said merrily. "Pick out one loaded with tea, coffee, sugar, and b.u.t.ter."

"Yes," cried Denham, laughing; "and when you are about it, bring us some pots and kettles and potatoes. We can eat the big ones; and, as we seem to be settled here for the rest of our days, we're going to start a garden and plant the little 'taters in that."

"To be sure," said another officer; "and I say, young fellow, mind and choose one of the next teams with some milch-cows in it. I feel as if I should like to milk."

I laughed too, but I felt as if I should not much like to undertake such another expedition as the last, and that it would be pleasanter to remain content with the roast beef and very decent bread our men contrived to make in the old furnace after it had been a bit modified, or with the "cookies" that were readily made on an iron plate over a fire of glowing embers. Oh no! I don't mean damper, that stodgy cake of flour and water fried in a pan; they were the very eatable cakes one of our corporals turned out by mixing plenty of good beef-dripping with the flour, and kneading all up together. They were excellent-or, as Denham said, would have been if we had possessed some salt.

One of our greatest difficulties was the want of fuel, for it was scarce around the old stronghold when we had cut down all the trees and bushes growing out of the ledges and cracks about the kopje; and the question had been mooted whether we should not be obliged to blast out some of the roots wedged in amongst the stones by ramming in cartridges. But while there was any possibility of making adventurous raids in all directions where patches of trees existed, and the men could gallop out, halt, and each man, armed with sword and a piece of rein, cut his f.a.ggot, bind it up, and gallop back, gunpowder was too valuable to be used for blasting roots. This was now, however, becoming a terribly difficult problem, for the enemy-eagerly seizing upon the chance to make reprisals when these were attended by no great risk to themselves-had more than once chased and nearly captured our foraging parties.

Consequently all thoughts of fires for warmth during the cold nights, when they would have been most welcome, were abandoned; while the men eagerly volunteered for cooks' a.s.sistants; and the officers were not above gathering in the old furnace-place of a night, after the cooking was over, for the benefit of the warmth still emitted by the impromptu oven.

Meanwhile every economy possible was practised, and the fuel store jealously guarded. The said fuel store consisted of every bone of the slaughtered animals that could be saved, and even the hides; these, though malodorous, giving out a fine heat when helped by the green f.a.ggots, which were in turn started ablaze by chips of the gradually broken-up wagons.

Then, too, the veldt was laid under contribution, men going out mounted, and furnished with sacks, which they generally brought back full of the scattered bones of game which had at one time swarmed in the neighbourhood, but had been ruthlessly slaughtered by the Boers.

So the days glided on, with not the slightest prospect, apparently, of our escape.

"Every one's getting precious impatient, Val," said Denham one day when we were idling up on the walls with his field-gla.s.s, after lying listlessly chatting about the old place and wondering what sort of people they were who built it, and whether they did originally come gold-hunting from Tyre and Sidon. "Yes," he added, "we are impatient in the extreme."

"It doesn't seem like it," I replied; "the men are contented enough."