Gueldersdorp from the direction of Geitfontein, and, later, that another
large body of them were on the march along the river-valley from the west.
I did not attempt to verify what I had heard from my own observation. I
was--otherwise engaged." The half-incredulous surprise that the other man
could not keep out of his eyes stung him into adding: "Frankly, I did not
care to trouble. It did not interest me."

The Colonel said, with a dry chuckle:

"No? But it will presently, though! And, seen through the glass even now,
it's an instructive spectacle. Masses of Dutchmen, well-weaponed and
thoroughly fed if insufficiently washed, gathering in all
quarters--marching to the assembly points, dismounting, unlimbering, going
into laager. Ten thousand Boers, at a rough estimate, not counting the
blacks they have armed against us.... And, behind our railway-sleepers and
sand-bags, eight hundred fighting European units, twenty per cent, of them
raw civilians; and seven thousand neutral Barala and Kaffirs and Zulus in
the native Stad--an element of danger lying dormant, waiting the spark
that may hurry us all sky-high.... By God, Doctor, the game's worth
playing, except by cowards and curs!"

The smouldering glow in the Dop Doctor's eyes had been fanned into a fire.
The visitor saw the flame leap, and went on:

"There's a native proverb--I wonder whether you know it?--a kind of Zulu
version of the regimental motto, _Vestigia nulla retrorsum_. It runs like
this: '_If we go forward, we die; if we go backward, we die. Better go
forward and die._'" He reached out a long, lean, brown right hand. "Come
forward with us, Doctor. We can do with a man like you!"

The impassive face broke up. Saxham gripped the offered hand as a drowning
man might have done. He cried out hoarsely:

"You don't know the sort of man I am, Colonel. But everybody else in this
cursed place knows, or should know. They call me the Dop Doctor. You
understand what that nickname implies?" He held out his shaking hands.
"Look at these! They would tell you the truth, even if I lied. What use
can a man like me be to you, or men like you? I am a drunkard, sir. I have
not gone to bed sober one night in the last five years!"

There was a pause before the Colonel answered, filled up in the odd way
characteristic of the man by a softly-whistled repetition of the opening
bars of the pleasant little tune. Then he said quietly and dryly:

"There is another proverb, not Latin