Jack accepted the invitation, and much enjoyed it, for it was the first time he had had a repast out of hospital since he came to Ladysmith. After lunch he was given a big chair and a large cigar, and ordered to tell the story of the defence of the farmhouse near Kimberley.
He obeyed the order, and had to put up with a good deal of good-natured chaff. Then he drove off with Guy and Rawlings to the football ground.
It was an exciting and fast game, and was closely contested, there being little to choose between the smart riflemen and the brawny Highlanders. The whole camp was there to look on, and evidently the Boers were also watching through their field-glasses, for in the midst of a severe tussle, and when the two sides were grouped close together, there was a screaming noise overhead, and a huge Creuzot shell plunged into the middle of them, narrowly missing one man’s head, and buried itself deep in the ground.
Instantly the umpire’s whistle sounded, and he shouted: “Half-time, boys!”
A roar of laughter followed, and all the players decamped hastily and threw themselves on the ground. A second later there was a muffled roar, sand and earth were driven in all directions, and a large fragment of shell whizzed across the ground, passed close to Jack’s head, and tore a huge rent in a galvanised-iron shed behind him.
Then the umpire’s whistle sounded again, and the game was proceeded with, one and all treating the matter as a joke.
That evening when Jack got back to his tent he was tired out, but by the dim light from a lantern he perused, with many a chuckle, the pages of one of the two papers published in the camp. It was The Lyre, and purported to contain nothing but untruths.
On the evening of January 5th, as Jack was reclining on his chair looking round the camp with his field-glasses, he noticed that amongst the men passing to Ladysmith from Intombi Spruit, or “Funkemburg”, were three whose movements were suspicious. They were dressed like colonial volunteers, and carried rifles. Passing separately across the open ground, they pushed forward without hesitation, and, once inside the camp of Ladysmith, walked in the direction of Wagon Hill, where each in turn disappeared into a hut which had been almost smashed to pieces by one of the enemy’s shells.
Jack watched them, curiously at first, wondering why they did not come across from the neutral ground together, and what business they had to be out of the camp; and then suspiciously, for their movements were peculiar. They looked about them cautiously, and one by one dived into the hut. Here they remained, and though he fixed his glasses in that direction for half an hour there was no sign of them, and they did not even appear when the bugle sounded the “Fall in!” all over the camp, and the garrison turned out of their tents and formed up for the evening inspection.
“That is queer!” he muttered suspiciously. “Who can they be? Not civilians, I am sure, for they have no business over in this direction. I don’t like the look of things, and I’ll keep my eyes upon those beggars.”