“His stomach and his arm.” I pull up his shirt, and there is the Mauser bullet lying obvious under the skin. It has gone round instead of penetrating. A slit with a pen-knife would extract it, but that had better be left for chloroform and the field hospital. Nice clean wound in the arm.
“You will do very well. What is your name?”
“Private Smith, sir. New Zealander.” I mention my name and the Langman Hospital at Bloemfontein.
“I’ve read your books,” says he, and is carried onwards.
There has been a lull in the firing and the sun is very low. Then after a long interval comes a last Boer shell. It is an obvious insult, aimed at nothing, a derisive good-night and good-bye. The two naval guns put up their long necks and both roared together. It was the last word of the Empire—the mighty angry voice calling over the veldt. The red rim had sunk and all was purple and crimson, with the white moon high in the west. What had happened? Who had won? Were other columns engaged? No one knew anything or seemed to care. But late at night as I lay under the stars I saw on the left front signal flashes from over the river, and I knew that Hutton was there.
So it proved, for in the morning it was over the camp in an instant that the enemy had gone. But the troops were early afoot. Long before dawn came the weird, muffled tapping of the drums and the crackling of sticks as the camp-kettles were heated for breakfast. Then with the first light we saw a strange sight. A monstrous blister was rising slowly from the veldt. It was the balloon being inflated—our answer to the lurking guns. We would throw away no chances now, but play every card in our hand—another lesson which the war has driven into our proud hearts. The army moved on, with the absurd windbag flapping over the heads of the column. We climbed the kopjes where the enemy had crouched, and saw the litter of empty Mauser cases and the sangars so cunningly built. Among the stones lay a packet of the venomous-looking green cartridges still unfired. They talk of poison, but I doubt it. Verdigris would be an antiseptic rather than a poison in a wound. It is more likely that it is some decomposition of the wax in which the bullets are dipped. Brother Boer is not a Bushman after all. He is a tough, stubborn fighter, who plays a close game, but does not cheat.
We say good-bye to the army, for our duty lies behind us and theirs in front. For them the bullets, for us the microbes, and both for the honour of the flag. Scattered trails of wagons, ambulance carts, private buggies, impedimenta of all kinds, radiate out from the army. It is a bad drift, and it will be nightfall before they are all over. We pass the last of them, and it seems strange to emerge from that great concourse and see the twenty miles of broad, lonely plain which lies between us and Brandfort. We shall look rather foolish if any Boer horsemen are hanging about the skirts of the army.
We passed the battlefield of last night, and stopped to examine the holes made by the shells. Three had fallen within ten yards, but the ant-heaps round had not been struck, showing how harmless the most severe shell fire must be to prostrate infantry. From the marks in the clay the shells were large ones—forty-pounders, in all probability. In a little heap lay the complete kit of a Guardsman—his canteen, water-bottle, cup, even his putties. He had stripped for action with a vengeance. Poor devil, how uncomfortable he must be to-day!
A Kaffir on horseback is rounding up horses on the plain. He gallops towards us—a picturesque, black figure on his shaggy Basuto mount. He waves his hand excitedly towards the east.
“Englishman there—on veldt—hurt—Dutchman shoot him.” He delivers his message clearly enough.