Kitabı oku: «The Kopje Garrison: A Story of the Boer War», sayfa 8
“Well, gentlemen, the French proverb says, Il faut manger.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, with a grim smile; “but it is necessary to have something in the manger.”
“Quite so, doctor,” said the colonel, with a good-humoured nod; “so I may as well open a discussion on the position at once, and tell you that while Roby and his company have been searching the kopje the major and I have formed ourselves into a committee of ways and means, and gone round the stores. – Tell them, major.”
The gentleman addressed shrugged his shoulders.
“There is so little to tell,” he replied; “only that with about quarter-rations we can hold out for another week. That’s all.”
“Not all,” said the colonel. “We have the horses as a last resource; but they are life to us in another way, and must be left till the very end.”
Dead silence reigned, every man looking down at the rough table.
“Well, gentlemen,” continued the colonel, “after giving every thought to our position I come to the conclusion that at all hazards I must hold this place.”
“Hear, hear!” came from every lip.
“We are keeping three commandos fully employed, and that is something.”
There was a sound like a murmur of satisfaction.
“I might determine,” said the colonel, “to try and reach Rudolfsberg, and somehow or another we would cut our way there; but our losses would be terrible, and we should reach safety – some of us – with the feeling that we had not done our duty by holding Groenfontein at all hazards.”
“That’s quite right,” said the major as his chief paused, and a murmur of assent followed the major’s words.
“Then, gentlemen, that brings me back again to the French proverb. We must eat, so the first thing to do is to decide on which direction a raid is to be made: that means scouting, and the discovery of the nearest Boer store of provisions, with sheep and cattle. We are quite alone here, without the possibility of my words being heard, so I can speak out freely. Scouting parties must go out at once in the direction of each of the three commandos, and on the strength of their reports the expedition will be made.”
“To-night?” said the major.
“Yes,” replied the colonel. “Hush! Don’t cheer! Let matters go on as if nothing fresh were on the way. We cannot afford to have our proceedings carried out of the lines by Kaffir spies.”
Chapter Twelve.
The Boer Advance
The scouting parties went out in three different directions after a long survey from the top of the kopje, the routes being marked out for the leaders in consultation with the colonel, who, glass in hand, selected the most likely routes to be followed so that the enemy might be avoided, and the more distant country reached where two or three Boer farms were known to be situated.
Then, with three of the best mounted men in each, they set off; and the colonel took especial care that no one of the many friendly – said to be friendly – natives who hung about the camp should follow. It was a necessary precaution, for the outposts stopped no less than a dozen men stealing through the long grass on both sides of the river, and, to their great disappointment, turned them back to go and squat down sulkily in such shade as they could find.
The instructions given were that at the latest the scouts were to be back at sundown, so as to give ample time for pointing out the route to be followed and preparations made for the raid to come.
Plenty of discussion ensued when the scouts had ridden off at a walk, opening out so as not to take the attention of the Boers; and as far as could be made out by the watchers there was not a sign of an enemy upon either of the hills.
The question of the discussion was which company of the regiment would be called upon to start upon the raid, the members of each hoping to be selected; and Captain Roby maintaining loudly, in a sharp, snappish way, that without doubt his company would be chosen, and turning fiercely upon any of his brother officers who differed from him.
“He’s precious cock-sure, Drew,” said Dickenson later on, as they strolled together up the steep sides of the kopje; “but we had our bit of work this morning, and it is not likely that the old man will send us.”
“Of course not; but it was of no use to say anything. Our failure has had a strange effect upon the poor fellow, and a word would act upon him like fire upon tinder.”
“Yes; but the starvation picnic has had its effect on other people too. Who’s he that he should have the monopoly of getting into a passion about nothing? I say, though, as we were up there this morning I don’t see what is the use of our going up again; there’ll be no shade at the top, and we shall be half-roasted.”
“Don’t come, then,” said Lennox quietly. “I’m going up to see if I can follow the scouts with a glass.”
“Don’t come?” cried Dickenson sharply. “Well, I like that! Here’s another one touched by the sun. Old Roby is not to have the monopoly of getting into a fantigue.”
“Nonsense! I’m not out of temper,” said Lennox.
“Not out of temper? Well, upon my word! But I shall come all the same. I would now if it were ten times as hot.”
“Very well,” said Lennox, drawing his breath hard so as to command his temper, for he felt really ruffled now by the heat and his comrade’s way of talking.
They climbed slowly on, step for step, till, as they zigzagged up into a good position which displayed the sun-bathed landscape shimmering in the heat, Lennox caught a glimpse of one of the scouting parties in the distance, and was about to draw his companion’s attention to it when Dickenson suddenly caught at his arm and pointed to a glowing patch of the rock in the full blaze of the sun.
“Look,” he said. “Big snake.”
“Nonsense!” said Lennox angrily; “there are no snakes up here.”
Their eyes met the next instant with so meaning a look in them that both burst out laughing, Dickenson holding out his hand, which was taken at once.
“I forgive old Roby,” he said.
“So do I,” said Lennox frankly. “Heat and hunger do upset a man’s temper. See our fellows out there?”
He pointed in the direction where he had seen the mounted figures, feeling for his glass the while.
“Not our men,” said Dickenson, following his example, and together they produced their glasses.
“Oh yes,” said Lennox. “I am certain it was they.”
“And I’m as certain it was not,” cried Dickenson.
Their eyes met again; but this time they felt too serious to laugh, and were silent for some moments.
Dickenson then said frankly:
“Look here, old chap, there’s something wrong with us. We’ve got the new complaint – the Robitis; and we’d better not argue about anything, or we shall have a fight. My temper feels as if it had got all the skin off.”
“And I’m as irritable as Roby was this morning. Never mind. Can you make out the mounted men now?”
“No,” said Dickenson after a pause. “Can you?”
“No. They’re gone behind that patch of forest. There,” he continued, closing his glass, “let’s get up to the top and sit in the men’s shelter; there’ll be a bit of air up there.”
He proved to be right, for a pleasant breeze, comparatively cool, was blowing on the other side of the mountain and tempering the glare of the sunshine, while they found that there was a bit of shade behind a turret-like projection standing out of the granite, looking as if it had been built up by human hands.
There they sat and watched for hours, scanning the veldt, which literally quivered in the heat; but they looked in vain for any movement on the part of the enemy, who had been disturbed by the scouts, and at last made up their minds to go down – truth to tell, moved by the same reason, the pangs of hunger asserting themselves in a way almost too painful to be borne.
“Let’s go,” said Dickenson; “they’ve got right away in safety. I believe the Boers are all asleep this hot day, and in the right of it: plenty to eat and nothing to do.”
“Yes, let’s go. I’m longing for a long cool drink down below there. Pst! What’s that?”
“One of the fellows round there by the gun,” said Dickenson.
“No,” whispered Lennox decidedly; “it was close at hand. Did you hear it?”
“Yes. Sounded like the rock splitting in this fiery sunshine.”
“More like a piece falling somewhere inside – beneath our feet – and I distinctly heard a soft, echoing rumble.”
“Come along down, old man,” said Dickenson. “It’s too hot to be up here, and if we stop any longer we shall have something worse than being hungry – a bad touch of the sun. I feel quite ready to go off my head and imagine all sorts of things. For instance, there’s a swimming before my eyes which makes me fancy I can see puffs of smoke rising out yonder, and a singing and cracking in my ears like distant firing.”
“Where?” cried Lennox excitedly. “Yes, of course. I can see the puffs plainly, and hear the faint cracking of the fire. Bob, my lad, then that sharp sound we heard must have been the reverberation of a gun.”
“Oh dear!” groaned Dickenson. “Come along down, and let’s get our heads in the cool stream and drink like fishes.”
“Don’t be foolish! Get out your glass.”
“To drink with?”
“No! Absurd! To watch the firing.”
“There is no firing, man,” cried Dickenson.
“There is, I tell you.”
“Oh, he has got it too,” groaned Dickenson. “Very well; all right – there is fighting going on out there a couple of miles away, and I can see the smoke and hear the cracking of the rifles. But come on down and let’s have a drink of water all the same; there’s plenty of that.”
“You’re saying that to humour me,” said Lennox, with his glass to his eyes; “but I’m not half-delirious from sunstroke. Get out your glass and look. The Boers are coming on in a long extended line, and they must be driving in our scouts.”
“You don’t mean it, do you, old chap?” cried Dickenson, dragging out his glass.
“Yes; there’s no mistake about it.”
Crack! went a rifle from behind the projection, a few yards away; and directly after, as the two officers began scurrying down, the bugles were ringing out in the market-square, and the colonel gave his orders for supports to go out, check the Boer advance, and bring the scouting party or parties in.
Chapter Thirteen.
Something in the Head
It was a narrow escape, but the nine men got safely back to quarters, but minus two of their horses. For the Boers had in every case been well upon the alert; their lines had not been pierced, and they followed up the retreating scouts till the searching fire from the kopje began to tell upon their long line of skirmishers, and then they sullenly drew back, but not before they had learnt that there were marksmen in the regiment at Groenfontein as well as in their own ranks.
“That’s something, Drew,” said Dickenson as he watched the slow movement of a light wagon drawn by mules. “But only to think of it: all that trouble for nothing – worse than nothing, for they have shot those two horses. Yes, worse than nothing,” he continued, “for they would have been something for the pot.”
Each of the scouting parties gave the same account of the state of affairs; that is to say, that though to all appearances the country round was clear of the enemy, a keen watch was being kept up, and, turn which way they would, Boers were ready to spring up in the most unexpected places to arrest their course and render it impossible to reach supplies and bring them in.
Their report cast a damp on the whole camp. For bad news travels fast, and this was soon known.
“Sounds bad,” said Dickenson cheerfully, “and just like them. They are not going to run their heads into danger unless obliged. They mean to lie low and wait for us, then turn us back to starve and surrender.”
“And they’ll find that we shall take a great deal of starving first,” replied Lennox bitterly. “But I don’t agree with you altogether. I fully expect that, in spite of their failure to blow us up, it will not be long before they contrive something else.”
“Well, we shall not quarrel about that, old man,” said Dickenson cheerily. “If they do come on in some attack, every one here will be delighted to see them. We should enjoy a good honest fight. What I don’t like is this going on shrinking and pulling the tongue farther through the buckle. If it goes on like this much longer I shall have to go to our saddler to punch a few more holes in my belt. I say, though, one feels better after that draught of water. I believe if I had stayed up yonder much longer I should have gone quite off my head, through fancying things, for it was only imagination after all.”
A fresh company occupied the kopje that evening, and once more perfect silence reigned. There was one of the glorious displays of stars seen so often in those clear latitudes, when the great dome of heaven seems to be one mass of sparkling, encrusted gems.
Lennox had been standing outside his quarters for some time, enjoying the coolness, and shrinking from going in to where the hut was hot and stuffy and smelling strongly of the now extinguished paraffin-lamp, mingled with a dash of the burned tobacco in Dickenson’s pipe.
“I say,” said the latter, “hadn’t you better come in and perch? Nothing like making your hay when the sun shines, and getting your forty winks while you can.”
“Quite right,” replied Lennox in a low, dreamy voice; “but it’s very pleasant out here.”
“That’s true enough, no doubt, old man; but you’ll be on duty to-morrow night out yonder, and you can go on star-gazing then. Yah! Oh – oh dear me, how sleepy I do feel!” he continued, yawning. “I’ll bet a penny that I don’t dream once. Regularly worn out, that’s how I am. There, good-night if you won’t come and lie down. I shall just allow myself half a – Oh, hang it! I do call that too bad!”
For ere he could finish his sentence a rifle cracked somewhere near the top of the kopje, followed by another and another; the bugles rang out, and from the continued firing it seemed evident that the Boers were going against their ordinary custom and making a night attack.
If they did, though, they were to find the camp ready for them, every man and officer springing to his place and waiting for orders – those given to Captain Roby being, as his men were so familiar with the spot, to take half a company and reinforce the detachment on the kopje.
They found that the firing had completely ceased by the time they were half-way up, and upon joining the officer in command there, to Captain Roby’s great satisfaction, he found a similar scene being enacted to that which had taken place before him.
“Another false alarm, Roby,” the officer said angrily. “Your fellows started the cock-and-bull nonsense, and it has become catching. The sentry here declares he saw a couple of figures coming down in the darkness, and he fired. The idiot! There is nothing, of course, and the colonel shall make an example of him.”
Lennox was standing close up to the offender, and in spite of the darkness could make out that the man was shivering.
“Come, come,” said the young officer in a half-whisper; “don’t go on like that. You fancy you saw something?”
“I’m sure I did, sir,” replied the sentry, grateful for a kind word after the severe bullying he had received for doing what he believed to be his duty. “I saw two of them, as plain as I can see you now. I was regularly took aback, sir, for I hadn’t heard a sound; but as soon as I fired I could hear them rush off.”
“You feel certain?”
“Yes, sir; and the captain says it was all fancy. If it was, sir, I know – ”
“Know what?” said Lennox, impressed by the man’s manner. “Speak out.”
“Oh, I know, sir,” said the man again, with a shudder.
“Well, speak out; don’t be afraid.”
“Enough to make any man feel afraid, sir,” half whimpered the man. “I don’t mind going into action, sir. I’ve shown afore now as I’d follow my officers anywhere.”
“Of course you would, my lad,” said Lennox, patting the young fellow encouragingly on the shoulder, for he could see that he was suffering from a shock, and, doubtless from abstinence and weakness, was half-hysterical.
“It’s bad enough, sir, to be posted in the darkness upon a shelf like that over there, expecting every moment to get a bullet in you; but when it comes to anything like this, it makes a fellow feel like a coward.”
“Who said coward?” said Dickenson, who had followed his companion and now came up.
“I did, sir,” said the man through his chattering teeth.
“Where is he?” said Dickenson. “I should like to look at him. I haven’t seen one lately.”
“Here he is, sir,” said the poor fellow, growing more agitated; “it’s me.”
“Get out!” cried Dickenson good-humouredly. “You’re not a coward. There isn’t such a thing in the regiment.”
“Oh yes, there is, sir,” whimpered the man. “It’s all right, sir. I’m the chap: look at me.”
“Stop a moment,” said Lennox quickly; “aren’t you one of the men who have been in the infirmary?”
“Yes, sir. This is the first time I’ve been on duty since.”
“What was the matter with you?”
“Doctor said it was all on account of weakness, sir, but that I should be better back in the fresh air – in the ranks.”
“And you feel weak now?”
“Yes, sir; horrid. I’m ashamed of myself for being such a coward. But I know now.”
“Well, what do you know?” asked Lennox, more for the sake of calming the man than from curiosity.
“I thought I was going to get all right again and see the war through, if I didn’t get an unlucky ball; but it’s all over now. I’ve seen ’em, and it’s a fetch.”
“A what?” cried Dickenson, laughing.
“Don’t laugh, sir, please;” said the man imploringly. “It’s too awful. I see ’em as plain as I see you two gentlemen standing there.”
“And who were they?” continued Dickenson; “the brothers Fetch?”
“No, sir; two old comrades of mine who ’listed down Plymouth way when I did. We used to be in the same football team. They both got it at Magersfontein, and they’ve come to tell me it’s going to be my turn now.”
“Bah!” growled Dickenson. “Did they say so?”
“No, sir; they didn’t speak,” said the man, shivering; “but there they were. I knew Tom Longford by his big short beard, and the other must have been Mike Lamb.”
“Oh, here you are,” said the captain of the company. “You can go back to quarters, and be ready to appear before the colonel in the morning.”
“One moment, Captain Edwards,” said Lennox gravely. “You’ll excuse me for speaking. This man is only just off the sick list; he is evidently very ill.”
“Oh yes, I know that, Mr Lennox,” said the officer coldly; “he has a very bad complaint for a soldier. Look at him. Has he told you that he has seen a couple of ghosts?”
“Yes. He is weak from sickness and fasting, and imagined all that; but I feel perfectly certain that he has seen some one prowling about here.”
“Ghosts?” said the captain mockingly.
“No; spies.”
“Psh! It’s a disease the men have got. Fancy. Every fellow on duty will be seeing the same thing now. There, that’s enough of it.”
“Look out!” cried Lennox angrily; and then in the same breath, “What’s that?”
For there was a sharp, grating sound as of stone against stone, and then silence.
“Stand fast, every man,” cried Lennox excitedly, seizing his revolver and looking along the broad, rugged shelf upon which they stood in the direction from which the sound had come.
“A lantern here,” cried the captain as a sharp movement was heard, and half-a-dozen men at a word from their officer doubled along the shelf for a couple of dozen yards and then stood fast, while the other end of the path was blocked in the same way.
Lennox’s heart was beating hard with excitement, and he started as he felt Dickenson grip his arm firmly.
Then all stood fast, listening, as they waited for the lantern to be brought. Quite ten minutes of painful silence elapsed before a couple of dim lights were seen approaching, the bearers having to come down from the gun-platform; and when the two non-commissioned officers who bore them approached, and in obedience to orders held them up, they displayed nothing but swarthy, eager-looking faces, and the piled-up rugged and weathered rocks on one side, the black darkness on the other.
“Come this way, sergeant,” said Captain Edwards, and he, as officer in command of the detachment that night, led on, followed closely by Captain Roby and the two subalterns.
They went along in perfect silence, the lanterns here being alternately held up and down so that the rugged shelf and the piled-up masses of rock which formed the nearly perpendicular side of the kopje in that part might be carefully examined.
This was done twice over, the party passing each time where their men were blocking the ends of the shelf which had been selected for one of the posts.
“It’s strange,” said Captain Roby at last. “I can see no loose stone.”
“No,” said Captain Edwards. “It was just as if a good-sized block had slipped down from above. Let’s have another look.”
This was done, with no better result, and once more the party stood fast in the dim light, gazing in a puzzled way.
“Can any one suggest anything?” said Captain Roby.
There was silence for a few moments, and then Lennox caught hold of Dickenson’s arm and gave it a meaning pressure as he turned to the two captains, who were close together.
“I have an idea,” he whispered. “Give the orders loudly for the men to march off. Take them round to the south, and wait.”
“What for?” said Captain Roby snappishly.
“I should like Dickenson and me to be left behind. I’ll fire if there is anything.”
“Oh, rubbish!” said Captain Roby contemptuously.
“No,” said his brother officer quietly. “It is worth trying.” Then turning to the two sergeants who bore the lanterns, he said, “When I say put out those lights, don’t do it; cover them sharply with greatcoats.”
Directly after he gave his first order, when the lanterns rattled, and all was dark.
Then followed the next orders, and tramp! tramp! tramp! the men marched away like a relieving guard, Lennox and Dickenson standing fast with their backs leaning against the rugged wall of rock, perfectly motionless in the black darkness, and looking outward and down at the faint light or two visible below in the camp.
As they drew back against the rock Lennox felt for his companion’s hand, which gripped his directly, and so they stood waiting.
To them the silence seemed quite appalling, for they felt as if they were on the eve of some discovery – what, neither could have said; but upon comparing notes afterwards each said he felt convinced that something was about to happen, but paradoxically, at the same time, as if it never would; and when a quarter of an hour must have passed, the excitement grew more intense, as the pressure of their hot, wet hands told, for they felt then that whatever was about to happen must befall them then, if they were not interrupted by the return of their officers.
Each tried to telegraph to his companion the intensity of feeling from which he suffered, and after a fashion one did communicate to the other something of his sensations.
But nothing came to break the intense silence, and they stood with strained ears, now gazing up at the glittering stars, and now down through the darkness at the two feeble lights that they felt must be those outside the colonel’s quarters in the market-square.
“I don’t know how it was,” said Lennox afterwards, “but just at the last I began somehow to think of being at the back of the colonel’s hut that night just after Sergeant James had put out the light upon discovering the train.”
“I felt that if the business went on much longer, something – some of my strings that were all on the strain – would crack,” interrupted Dickenson.
“Yes,” said Lennox; “I felt so too.”
And this was how he was feeling – strained – till something seemed to be urging him to cry out or move in the midst of that intense period, when all at once he turned cold all down the back, for a long-drawn, dismal, howling wail rose in the distance, making him shudder just as he had seen the sentry quiver in his horror and dread.
“Bah! Hyena,” he said to himself the next moment; and then a thrill ran through him as he felt Dickenson’s grip increase suddenly with quite a painful pressure.
He responded to it directly, every nerve in his body quivering with the greater strain placed upon it by what was happening, till every nerve and muscle seemed to harden into steel. For the long expected – whatever it might prove to be – the mystery was about to unfold itself, and in his intense feeling it seemed to Lennox as if the glittering stars were flashing out more light.
It was only a noise, but a noise such as Lennox felt that he must hear – a low, dull, harsh, grating noise as of stone passing over stone; and though he could see nothing with his eyes, mentally he knew that one of the great time-bleached and weathered blocks of granite that helped to form the cyclopean face of the kopje wall had begun to turn as on a pivot.
This grating sound lasted for a few seconds only, and it came apparently from a couple of yards away to his right, as he stood with his back pressed against the rugged natural stones.
Then the noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and he listened, now holding his breath in the vain hope that it would silence the heavy, dull beating of his heart, whose throbs seemed to echo painfully in his brain.
He pressed Dickenson’s hand again, to feel from the return grip how thoroughly his comrade was on the alert.
Then all was perfectly silent again, while a dull feeling of despair began to assert itself as he felt that they were going to hear no more.
At last, with head wrenched round to the right, his revolver feeling wet in his fingers and his eyes seeming to start with the strain of gazing along the shelf at the brilliant stars before him, his nerves literally jerked and he felt perfectly paralysed and unable to stir, for here, not six feet away, he could make out against the starry sky the dimly-marked silhouette of a heavily-built man.
