suggested,
so that things might be enlivened a bit, that a race meeting or a
football match might be got up between teams from each army on the
neutral ground at Intombi. The younger men received the idea of a
football match with acclamation. "Ya, goot," said a young giant beside
me, rubbing his big hands enthusiastically, "it will be the greatest
football match that ever was played;" but an old burgher, with his
left hand in a sling, bound up in dirty-looking bandages, interposed:
"No; the only game we like to play now is the one with cannon-balls."
No; these dour, stolid men take their fighting sadly and sternly;
there is none of the "frolic welcome" with which our Irish Tommies,
for instance, enjoy their fighting or endure the waiting for it. When
I was a prisoner in Pretoria they used to keep us awake at night with
fireworks after news such as that of Colenso and Magersfontein, but,
except amongst the young boys, they were not given to exultation over
what they had done or to any boasting. Then they talked about lyddite,
and it was quite clear that it had been a terrible bogy in their
minds, and that they had imagined it was to have an effect like
throwing earthquakes at them, and it was equally evident that the
result of actual experience had fallen short of their apprehensions.

We went out from the stuffy hot tent into the clear sharp air of a
starlight night on the hills, and from a lighted tent, high above us
on the slope of Lombard's Kop, came the chant of a psalm taken up by
many voices outside. "Let God arise, and let His enemies be
scattered," they sang, like Cromwell's soldiers at Dunbar. As I laid
down in the field cornet's tent, with his son, a boy of fifteen, at
one side of me, and a man over sixty on the other, I could not help
thinking of the great tragedy of all that was yet before these people
when they would begin to realise that they called in vain on their
God, that they had no monopoly of the Almighty, that the God of their
fathers fights no longer on the side of the Boers, but on that of the
big battalions. This will be the desolation of downfall.

VI

THE FELLOW THAT FELT AFRAID

He was just a common or garden ordinary sort of chap. He was lying on
hot, pointed, uncomfortable stones through which long tufts of coarse
grass protruded. Drops of sweat were trickling down his face, and his
hands left wet marks where they came into contact with the stock or
barrel of his rifle. With el