gged
waterproof and an additional piece of tarpaulin. So is a mounted officer
of the Staff, in whom Saxham mechanically recognises Captain Bingo
Wrynche, as he goes by at a furious gallop, spurring, and jagging savagely
at the mouth of the handsome if attenuated brown charger, who sends stones
and mud and water flying from his furious iron-shod hoofs. So is the
Barala on guard by the wattled palisade of the native village--a
muddy-legged and goose-fleshy warrior, in a plumed, brimless bowler and
leopard-skin kaross, whose teeth can be heard chattering as he stands to
attention and brings his gaspipe rifle to the slope. The Chinamen working
in the patches of market-garden, where the scant supply of vegetables that
command such famine-prices are raised, are certainly sheltered from the
wet by their colossal umbrella-hats, but the splashed-up red gruel has
imbrued them to the eyes. Yet they continue to labour cheerfully, hoeing
scattered shell-fragments out of their potato-drills and removing
incrusted masses of bullets that incommode the young kidney-beans, and
arranging this ironmongery and metal-ware in tidy piles, possibly with a
view to future commerce. And so, with another challenge from a picket,
posted between the Barala village and the south trenches, where many of
the loyal natives are doing duty, Saxham finds himself on the perilous
tongue of land that lies behind Maxim Kopje South, and where the Staff
Bombproof is situated.

As the long, low mound comes into view, a dazzling white flash leaps from
a fold of the misty grey hills beyond, and one of Meisje's great shells
goes screaming and winnowing westwards. Then a sentry of the Irregulars, a
battered, shaggy, berry-brown trooper, standing knee-deep in a hole,
burrowed in the lee of a segment of stone-dyke that is his shelter,
challenges for the last time.

"'Alt! I know you well enough, Doctor." It is a man whose wounded arm was
dressed, one blazing day last January, outside the Convent bombproof. "But
you'll 'ave to give the countersign. Pass Honour and all's well. But"--the
sentry's nostrils twitch as the savour of Saxham's pipe reaches them, and
his whisper of appeal is as piercing as a yell--"if you left a pipeful
be'ind you, it wouldn't do no 'arm. Don't pull your pouch out, sir; the
lookout officer 'as 'is eye on you. Open it by the feel, an' drop a pinch
by the stone near your toe. I'll get it when they relieve me."

Saxham complies, leaving the sentry