Charge! Part 55

"What about the doctor, sir?" said Briggs dubiously.

"Won't be here for an hour. I'll give you leave. Fill and light up."

The Sergeant obeyed orders willingly.

"Now then," said Denham, "talk away. I want to know exactly how matters stand since yesterday."

"All right, sir," said the Sergeant, carefully crus.h.i.+ng out the match he had struck, as he smoked away.

"Well, go on," said Denham impatiently. "You said yesterday that things were as bad as they could possibly be."

"I did, sir."

"Well, how are they now?"

"Worse. Ever so much worse."

"What do you mean, you jolly old muddler?" cried Denham, rousing up and looking brighter than he had been since he came under the doctor's hands.

"What I say, sir," replied the Sergeant, staring. "Things are ever so much worse."

"Val," cried Denham, turning to me, "poor old Briggs has had so much to do with that scoundrel Moriarty that he has caught his complaint."

"I beg pardon, sir," growled the Sergeant stiffly; "I've always been faithful to Her Majesty the Queen."

"Of course you have, Sergeant."

"Beg pardon, sir. You said I'd caught his complaint, meaning I was turning renegade."

"Nothing of the kind; but you have caught his national complaint, for there you go again-blundering. Can't you see?"

"No, sir," said the Sergeant, drawing himself up stiffer than ever.

"Then you ought to. Blundering-making bulls. If the state of affairs was as bad as it could be yesterday, how can it be worse to-day?"

The Sergeant scratched his head, and his countenance relaxed.

"Oh!" he said thoughtfully, "of course. I didn't see that at first, gentlemen."

"Never mind, so long as you see it now. But go ahead, Briggs. You can't think what it is to be lying here in hospital, with fighting going on all round, and only able to get sc.r.a.ps of news now and then."

The Sergeant chuckled.

"Here, I don't see anything to laugh at in that," cried Denham, frowning. "Do you find it funny?"

"I just do, sir. Think of you talking like that to me? Why, twice over when I was in the Dragoons I was bowled over and had to go into hospital, up north there, in Egypt. Thirsty, gentlemen? I was thirsty, double thirsty, in the nasty sandy country-thirsty for want of water, and twice as thirsty to get to know how things were going on. That's why I always come, when I'm off duty, to tell you gentlemen all I can."

"There, Val," cried Denham, beaming. "Didn't I always say that old Briggs was a brick?"

"I don't remember," I replied.

"Well, I always meant to.-Now then, Sergeant, go ahead."

"Nay! I don't want to damp your spirits, sir, seeing how bad you are."

"I'm not bad, Sergeant; neither is Moray. We're getting better fast, and news spurs us on to get better as fast as we can. Now then, don't make us worse by keeping us in suspense. Tell us the worst news at once."

"That's soon done, sir. These Doppies, as they call 'em-these Boers-shoot horribly well."

"Yes," sighed Denham; "they've had so much practice at game."

"They've got so close in now, with their wagons to hide behind, that I'm blessed if it's safe for a sentry to show his head anywhere."

"But our fellows have got stone walls to keep behind, and they ought by now to shoot as well as the Boers," I said.

"That's quite right, Mr Moray," cried the Sergeant, angrily puffing at his pipe; "they ought to, but they don't-not by a long way. Every time they use a cartridge there ought to be one Doppie disabled and sent to the rear. I keep on telling them this fort isn't Purfleet Magazine nor Woolwich a.r.s.enal; but it's no good."

"But, Sergeant," cried Denham anxiously, "you don't mean to say that we're running out of cartridges?"

"But I do mean to say it, sir; and the time isn't so very far off when we shall either have to hang out the white flag-"

"What!" cried Denham, dragging himself up into a sitting position. "Never!"

"Or," continued the Sergeant emphatically, "make a sortie and give the beggars cold steel."

"Ah! that sounds better," cried Denham, dropping back upon his rough pillow. "That's what we shall have to do."

"Right, sir," cried the Sergeant. "Cold steel's the thing. I've always been a cavalry man, and I've seen a bit of service before I came into the Light Horse as drill-sergeant and general trainer. I've been through a good deal, and learned a good deal; and I tell you two young men that many a time in a fight I've felt wild sitting on horseback here, and trotting off there, dismounting to rest our horses; finding ourselves under fire again, and cantering off somewhere else-into a valley, behind a hill, or to the shelter of a wood, because our time hadn't come-and the infantry working away all the while. I'm not going to run down the cavalry; they're splendid in war when they can get their chance to come to close quarters. You see, we haven't done much with our swords, for the Doppies won't stand a charge. Where we've had them has been dismounted, as riflemen, and that's what our trouble is now. We can't get at the enemy; what we want is a regiment of foot with the bayonet. Just a steady advance under such cover as they could find, and then a sharp run in with a good old British cheer, and the Doppies would begin to run. Then we ought to be loosed at them, and every blessed Boer among them would make up his mind that it was quite time he went home to see how his crops are getting on."

"Yes, Sergeant," said Denham gravely; "that's exactly the way to do it, and that's what people at home are saying. But we're shut up here, ammunition is failing, and we have no regiment of foot to give the brutes the cold steel and make them run; so what's the best thing to do under the circ.u.mstances?"

Chapter Thirty Eight.

The Sergeant's Notion.

"Ah!" said the Sergeant, tapping the ashes out of his pipe and refilling it; "that's a bit of a puzzle, sir."

"Hang out the white flag?" cried Denham bitterly.

"No, sir," cried the Sergeant fiercely.

"What then?" I said.

"What then, sir?" said Briggs fiercely. "We've got plenty of pluck and lots of fight in the boys."