“That one over yonder.”
We ride forward, and pass through the open ranks of the Guards’ skirmishers. Behind us the two huge naval guns are coming majestically up, drawn by their thirty oxen, like great hock-bottles on wheels. In front a battery has unlimbered. We ride up to the side of it. Away in front lies a small, slate-roofed farm beside the kopje. The Mounted Infantry have coalesced into one body and are moving towards us. “Here’s the circus. There is going to be a battle,” was an infantry phrase in the American War. Our circus was coming in, and perhaps the other would follow.
The battery (84th R.F.A.) settles down to its work.
Bang! I saw the shell burst on a hillside far away. “3,500,” says somebody. Bang! “3,250,” says the voice. Bang! “3,300.” A puff shoots up from the distant grey roof as if their chimney were on fire. “Got him that time!”
The game seems to us rather one-sided, but who is that shooting in the distance?
“Wheeeeee”—what a hungry whine, and then a dull muffled “Ooof!” Up goes half a cartload of earth about one hundred yards ahead of the battery. The gunners take as much notice as if it were a potato.
“Wheeeeeee—ooof!” Fifty yards in front this time.
“Bang! Bang!” go the crisp English guns.
“Wheeeeee—ooof!” Fifty yards behind the battery. They’ll get it next time as sure as fate. Gunners go on unconcernedly. “Wheeeeee—ooof!” Right between the guns, by George! Two guns invisible for the dust. Good heavens, how many of our gunners are left? Dust settles, and they are all bending and straining and pulling the same as ever.
Another shell and another, and then a variety, for there comes a shell which breaks high up in the air—wheeeeee—tang—with a musical, resonant note, like the snapping of a huge banjo-string, and a quarter of an acre of ground spurted into little dust-clouds under the shrapnel. The gunners take no interest in it. Percussion or shrapnel, fire what you will, you must knock the gun off its wheels or the man off his pins before you settle the R.F.A.