cries; the jackal and the meerkat, the springbok and the
rheebok, trembled where they stood, with heads uplifted, vaguely trying
to realize the Thing which was breaking the peace of their world;
useless horses which had been turned out of the armies of Boers and
British galloped and stumbled and plunged into space in alarm; for they
knew what was darkening the morning. They had suffered the madness of
battle, and they realized it at its native first value.

There was a battle forward on the left flank of the Boer Army. Behind
Hetmeyer's Kopje were the horses of the men whom Rudyard Byng had
brought to take a position and hold it till support came and this flank
of the Farmer's Army was turned; but the men themselves were at work on
the kopjes--the grim work of dislodging the voortrekker people from the
places where they burrowed like conies among the rocks.

Just before dawn broke Byng's men were rushing the outer trenches.
These they cleared with the wild cries of warriors whose blood was in a
tempest. Bayonets dripped red, rifles were fired at hand-to-hand range,
men clubbed their guns and fought as men fought in the days when the
only fighting was man to man, or one man to many men. Here every
"Boojer" and Rooinek was a champion. The Boer fell back because he was
forced back by men who were men of the veld like himself; and the
Briton pressed forward because he would not be denied; because he was
sick of reverses; of going forward and falling back; of taking a
position with staggering loss and then abandoning it; of gaining a
victory and then not following it up; of having the foe in the hollow
of the hand and hesitating to close it with a death-grip; of promising
relief to besieged men, and marking time when you had gained a
foothold, instead of gaining a foothold farther on.

Byng's men were mostly South-Africans born, who had lived and worked
below the Zambesi all their lives; or else those whose blood was in a
fever at the thought that a colony over which the British flag flew
should be trod by the feet of an invader, who had had his own liberty
and independence secured by that flag, but who refused to white men the
status given to "niggers" in civilized states. These fighters under
Byng had had their fill of tactics and strategy which led nowhere
forward; and at Wortmann's Drift the day before they had done a big
thing for the army with a handful of men. They could ride like
Cossacks, they could shoot like Wi