"I will not do that, Peter, unless you give me your solemn oath that you will not stay more than five minutes after I have gone. I am a good runner too."
"I will promise that, baas. I don't want the Boers to catch me, but if we were to stop firing they would guess at once that we had gone. I will fire very quick, sometimes out of one hole sometimes out of the other, so that they will think there are two of us. They would stop a minute or two after I had done firing, and then come up very slowly and cautiously. The only fear is from the mounted men, who will be out on the plain as soon as it is dark."
KIMBERLEY
The Boer fire slackened as the day went on, for the besiegers had learned that it was death to raise a head above a rock. There were originally a hundred Boers on the kopje, and of these eighteen had been killed and twelve wounded, the proportion of killed being so great in consequence of the majority of wounds being in the head. A messenger had been despatched to them from a hill on the other side of the road, but hearing that there were only two men in the hut no aid had been sent to them, and they were now lying waiting for night, for none dared ascend the hill again, exposed to the deadly fire from the defenders. One or other of them had remained at a loophole all day. Not a shot had entered, for the Boers had fired too hastily to take accurate aim, but the roof was riddled with bullets. It was getting dusk when Peter held up his hand and listened, and then threw himself down, putting his ear to the ground.
"What is it, Peter?"
"Horsemen coming, baas, many horsemen."
Yorke ran to the other side of the hut. He could see nothing at first, for the night was fast closing in, and he had just said that in another quarter of an hour it would be dark enough to make a start, but soon he saw a dark mass which was fast approaching. For a moment he stood irresolute, then he shouted, "Hurrah! they are friends. They are riding abreast; if they were Boers, they would be riding anyhow; pull the stones away from the door."
The mass halted as he spoke, then two horsemen galloped forward towards the hut.
"Who is there?" a voice shouted in English.