"Then he hardly can have been sent to spy out our position and strength," the man said. "If he had been, he would not have kept to the road. Why, he is quite a boy!"
"He says he is not a spy, mynheer, but has been sent out to carry a message to the British on the Modder. He claims to be in uniform, and so to be treated as a prisoner of war."
A STRONG PARTY OF BOERS WERE SITTING ROUND. SOME SMOKING, OTHERS EATING THEIR SUPPER.
The conversation had been in Dutch, and the field cornet then said in English to the prisoner, "Have you any papers about you?"
"I have only this little scrap," Yorke said. "It is written in a cipher, and I suppose the English general will understand. It is only a lot of figures."
The Boer opened it and held it so that the light of the fires would fall upon it. "3104, 8660, 241. It is like that all the way down. Do you understand the cipher?" he asked.
"As it is a military cipher, it is only the generals who would know it. These things are kept very secret, and no cipher would be told to a young officer like myself."
"Why should they choose you to carry it?"