, an' sat on
'im till the guard come up."

The Sergeant was ahead of the half-company, speaking to the officer in
charge. It was the Corporal who answered, across the man who marched upon
the left of W. Keyse:

"O' course it was. But you 'ad the Dopper fust, and," he cackled quietly,
"the Colonel won't be jealous."

The eyes and mouth of W. Keyse became circular.

"The who?"

"The Colonel, didn't you 'ear me say?"

"That wasn't never ... _'im_"?

"All right, since you know best. But him, for all that!"

"Great Jiminy Cripps!" gasped W. Keyse.

XXIII

You are to imagine Dawn, trailing weary-footed over the interminable
plain, to find Gueldersdorp, lonely before, and before threatened, now
isolated like some undaunted coral rock in mid-Pacific, crested with
screaming sea-birds, girt with roaring breakers, set in the midst of
waters haunted by myriads of hungry sharks. Ringed with silent menace, she
squatted on her low hill, doggedly waiting the event.

It was known that on the previous day the telegraph wires north of Beaton
had been cut, and this day was to sever the last link with Cape Town at
Maripo, some forty miles south. The railway bridge that crossed the Olopo
River might go next. Staat's Engineers had been busy there overnight.
Rumour had it, Heaven knows how, that the armoured train that had been
sent up from the Cape with two light guns of superseded pattern--a
generous contribution towards the collection of obsolete engines now
bristling from the sand-bagged ramparts--had been seized by a commando,
with the officer and the men in charge. This was to be confirmed later by
the arrival of an engine-driver minus five fingers and some faith in the
omnipotence of British arms. But at the beginning of this chapter he was
hiding in a sand-hole, chewing the cud of his experiences, in default of
other pabulum, and did not get in before dark of the long blazing day.

Crowds gathered on the barely-reclaimed veld at the northern end of the
town to see the Military Executive take over the Hospital. But that the
streets were barricaded with waggons and every able-bodied male citizen
carried a rifle, it might have been mistaken for an occasion of national
rejoicing or civic festivity. The leaves of the pepper-trees fringing the
thoroughfares and clumped in the Market Square rustled in the faint hot
breeze. By-and-by they were to stand scorched and seared and naked under
the iron hail that beat in blizza