In the Roar of the Battle.
It was beginning to get rather exciting. The big gun, just below, had roared forth its message, and the spectators on the kopje had their field-glasses glued to their eyes, as they watched the progress of the great projectile. Splash! there it was. A cloud of dust flew up from the red-brown veldt, away in the distance, but harmlessly. Then, hard by where it had fallen, a British gun barked, and, immediately, a huge mass of the earth’s surface, bitten into, leaped in mid-air on the further side of the river, falling back in great chunks—clods and stones—and gyrations of dust. Further along the line, another gun spoke, then another and another, as though passing the word along the vast length, until the farthest voices, miles away, sounded quite faintly. Then ever and again would arise the crackling roll of rifle-fire.
The sun was now well up over the eastern horizon, sweeping his joyous morning rays in golden warmth over this warring drama of blood and of wounds and of death. Cleaving the great expanse of red-brown veldt the river bed, bush-fringed, with high muddy banks, yawned; and away further down, the clustering buildings of the little township, and the straight thread of the railway line tailing away on either side. Beyond the said banks, lines of trenches, where lay the Boer riflemen, grim and earnest, awaiting their turn, which would soon come.
Again the big gun below loosed off, with a tremendous reverberation. Those on the kopje, watching the missile, descried a certain amount of confusion where it struck, a scurrying or scattering behind its redoubt. Heads went up eagerly from behind the Boer earthworks to watch the result, but little or no remark escaped the lips of the stolid burghers. Then the English battery barked in return, and the vast thud of the lyddite shell striking one end of the earthwork, blowing up the same great cloud of dust and fragments, reached the spectators with something like the tremor of an earthquake. At the same time the latter could see that, where it had fallen, several forms were lying, while others bending over them were trying to draw them out of the dust and débris.
Colvin Kershaw’s hand shook slightly as he lowered his glasses, and his face wore the look of one who has gazed upon a peculiarly horrifying sight. And well might it, for the projectile had done its work with fell and awful completeness, and the powerful lens afforded him a view of every detail, of writhings and agony and terrible mutilation.
“Guess you’re not used to it, Kershaw,” said a voice at his side. “Made me look sick, too, first time I saw it. You ever see a fight before?”
The speaker was an American war-correspondent “doing” the battle from within the Boer lines.
“Yes, I served in Matabeleland,” answered Colvin. “But with niggers it’s different. Then, you see, we hated the brutes so because they’d butchered a lot of women and children at the outbreak of the rebellion. Even with them, though, you didn’t see such a wholesale bust-up as that. Faugh!”
“Well, there’s worse to come yet. Here, you take a draw at this”—tendering him a large field flask. Colvin accepted, and the nip of excellent Boer brandy just steadied his nerves, which had been momentarily shaken.
“You try a little, Commandant,” went on the owner of the flask.