. Then the truth dawned on him:
this was his baptism of fire--a long-range fire, to be sure, but none
the less deadly if the bullet found its billet!

He caught up a fragment of rock, and carried it to where the wall was
to be constructed. Men were hurrying to and fro all around him, and
yet suddenly he seemed to feel himself alone, the sole mark for the
enemy's fire; again that z--st overhead, and a cold chill ran down his
back. He shut his teeth, and, with a careless air, strode off for a
fresh load. He had not gone twenty yards when another shot ricochetted
off a stone, and flew up into the air with a shrill chirrup. Jack
winced and shivered. It was no good, however well he might conceal the
fact from others--the fear of death was on him; it was impossible to
deceive his own heart. A fresh terror now seized him, coupled with a
sense of shame. He was the fellow who had always expressed a wish to
be a soldier, and go on active service; and now, before the first
feeble spitting of the enemy's fire, all his courage was ebbing away.
What if his comrades should notice that his limbs trembled and his
voice was shaky? What if, when the advance was made, his nerve should
fail him altogether, and he should turn to run?

With dogged energy he pursued his task, hardly noticing what was going
on around him. For the fourth time he was approaching the zareba, when
a comrade, a dozen yards in front, stumbled forward and sank down upon
the ground. There was no cry, no frantic leap into the air, yet it was
sufficiently horrible. Jack felt sick, and his teeth chattered; he had
never before seen a man hit, and it was his first experience of the
sacrifice of human flesh and blood. At the same moment, like a clap of
thunder, one of the screw-guns was discharged; the droning whizz of the
shell grew fainter and fainter--a pause--and then the boom of its
explosion was returned in a muffled echo from the distant hillside.

A couple of men hurried forward and raised their wounded comrade. Jack
turned away his eyes, and immediately they encountered a rather
different spectacle.

A young subaltern, with a short brier pipe in his mouth, and without a
hair on his face, was making a playful pretence of dropping a huge
boulder on to the toes of the lieutenant of Jack's detachment.

"Hold the ball--no side!" said Mr. Lawson facetiously. "Look here,
Mostyn, you beggar! I've just spotted a fine rock, only it's too big
for one to ca