the curse of the Christ will rest on the heads of those who have
made this war for ambition's sake or the greed of gold, and the good God
will not let the widow and the orphan child go unavenged; blood will yet
speak for blood, and it must rest either on the heads of Kruger and Steyn,
or Chamberlain and Rhodes."

"Tell me, comrade, of the Australians who fell. They were my countrymen."

"It was a cruel fight," he said. "We had ambushed a lot of the British
troops--the Worcesters, I think, they called them. They could neither
advance nor retire; we had penned them in like sheep, and our field cornet,
Van Leyden, was beseeching them to throw down their rifles to save being
slaughtered, for they had no chance. Just then we saw about a hundred
Australians come bounding over the rocks in the gully behind us. There were
two great big men in front cheering them on. We turned and gave them a
volley, but it did not stop them. They rushed over everything, firing as
they came, not wildly, but as men who know the use of a rifle, with the
quick, sharp, upward jerk to the shoulder, the rapid sight, and then the
shot. They knocked over a lot of our men, but we had a splendid position.
They had to expose themselves to get to us, and we shot them as they came
at us. They were rushing to the rescue of the English. It was splendid, but
it was madness. On they came, and we lay behind the boulders, and our
rifles snapped and snapped again at pistol range, but we did not stop those
wild men until they charged right into a little basin which was fringed
around all its edges by rocks covered with bushes. Our men lay there as
thick as locusts, and the Australians were fairly trapped. They were far
worse off than the Worcesters, up high in the ravine.

"Our field cornet gave the order to cease firing, and called on them to
throw down their rifles or die. Then one of the big officers--a, great,
rough-looking man, with a voice like a bull--roared out, 'Forward
Australia!--no surrender!' Those were the last words he ever uttered, for a
man on my right put a bullet clean between his eyes, and he fell forward
dead. We found later that his name was Major Eddy, of the Victorian Rifles.
He was as brave as a lion, but a Mauser bullet will stop the bravest. His
men dashed at the rocks like wolves; it was awful to see them. They smashed
at our heads with clubbed rifles, or thrust their rifles up against us
through the rocks and fired. One after another the