“Steady, my lad,” said the veteran, “we’ll have none of that; I’ve got a Fingo at the quarter-guard here that’ll take us over dry-shod. I’ve explained to him what I mean, and if he don’t understand it now he will to-morrow morning. A ‘Light-Bob’ on each side, with his arms sloped, directly the water comes in at the rent in these old boots,” holding up at the same time a much-damaged pair of Wellingtons, “down goes the Fingo, poor devil, and out go my skirmishers, till we reach the cattle-ford at Vandryburgh.”
“I don’t think the beggar will throw us over,” replied the subaltern. “I suppose I’d better get them under arms before daybreak; the nights are infernally dark, though, in this beastly country, but my fellows all turn out smartest now when they’ve no light.”
“Before daybreak, certainly,” replied “Old Swipes”; “no whist here, Kettering, to keep us up very late. Well,” he added, resuming his directions to his subaltern, “we’ll have the detachment under arms by four. Take Sergeant Macintosh and the best of the ‘flankers’ to form an advanced guard. Bid him make every yard of ground good, particularly where there’s bush; but on no account to fire unless he’s attacked. We’ll advance in column of sections—mind that—they’re handier that way for the ground; and Harry—where’s Harry?” “Here, sir!” said a voice, and a pale, sickly-looking boy, apparently about seventeen years of age, emerged from under the cloaks and blankets in the corner, where he had been lying half asleep, and thoroughly exhausted with the hardships of a life which it requires the constitution of manhood to undergo. Poor Harry! with what sickening eagerness his mother, the clergyman’s widow, grasps at the daily paper, when the African mail is due. How she shudders to see the great black capitals, with “Important News from the Cape!” What a hero his sisters think Harry! and how mamma alone turns pale at the very name of war, and prays for him night and morning on her knees till the pale face and wasted form of her darling stand betwixt her and her Maker. And Harry, too, thinks sometimes of his mother; but oh! how different is the child’s divided affection from the all-engrossing tenderness of the mother’s love! The boy is fond of “soldiering,” and his heart swells as “Old Swipes” gives him his orders in a paternal tone of kindness. “Harry, I shall entrust you with the rear-guard, and you must keep up your communications with the sergeant’s guard I shall leave here. He will probably be relieved by the Rifles, and you can then join us in the front. If they don’t show before twelve o’clock, fall back here; pack up the baggage, right-about-face, and join ‘the levies,’ they’re exactly five miles in our rear; if you’re in difficulties, ask Sergeant File what is best to be done, only don’t club ’em, my boy, as you did at Limerick.”
“Well, sir,” said the handsome lieutenant, “we’ve all got our orders now, except Kettering; what are we to do with him?”
“Give him some supper first,” replied the jolly commandant; “but how to get him back I don’t know; we’ve had a fine stud of oxen for the last ten days, but as for a horse, I have not seen one since I left Cape Town.”
“We’re doing nothing at head-quarters, sir,” exclaimed Charlie, with flashing eyes; “will you allow me to join the attack to-morrow, with your people?”
The three officers looked at him approvingly, and the ensign muttered, “By gad, he’s a trump, and no mistake!” but “Old Swipes” shook his grey head with a half-melancholy smile as he scanned the boy’s handsome face and shapely figure, set off by his blue lancer uniform, muddy and travel-stained as it was. “I’ve seen many a fine fellow go down,” thought the veteran, “and I like it less and less—this lad’s too good for the Kaffirs; d—n me, I shall never get used to it;” however, he did not quite know how to refuse so soldier-like a request, so he only coughed, and said, “Well—I don’t approve of volunteering—we old soldiers go where we’re ordered, but we never volunteer. Still, I suppose you won’t stay here, with fighting in the front. ’Gad, you shall go—you’re a real good one, and I like you for it.” So the fine old fellow seized Charlie’s hand and wrung it hard, with the tears in his eyes.
And now our three friends prepared to make themselves comfortable. The old captain’s tent was the largest, but it was not water-tight, and consequently stood in a swamp. His supper, therefore, was added to the joint stock, and the four gentlemen who, at the best club in London, would have turned up their noses at turtle because it was thick, or champagne because it was sweet, sat down quite contentedly to half-raw lumps of stringy beef and a tin mug only half filled with the muddiest of water, glad to get even that.
How they laughed and chatted and joked about their fare! To have heard them talk one would have supposed that they were at dinner within a day’s march of Pall Mall, London—the opera, the turf, the ring, each and all had their turn; and when the sergeant on duty came to report the “lights out,” said lights consisting of two lanterns for the whole detachment, Charlie had just proposed “fox-hunting” as a toast with which to finish the last sip of brandy, and treated his entertainers to a “view-holloa” in a whisper, that he might not alarm the camp, which, save for the lowing of certain oxen in the rear, was ere long hushed in the most profound repose.
Now, these oxen were a constant source of confusion and annoyance to the “old captain” and his myrmidons, whose orderly, soldier-like habits were continually broken through by their perverse charge. Of all the contradictory, self-willed, hair-brained brutes on the face of the earth, commend us to an ox in Kaffirland. He is troublesome enough when first driven off by his black despoilers, but when recaptured by British troops he is worse than ever, as though he brought back with him, from his sojourn in the bush, some of the devilry of his temporary owners, and was determined to resent upon his preservers all the injuries he had undergone during his unwilling peregrinations. Fortunately, those now remaining with the detachment were but a small number, destined to become most execrable beef, large herds retaken from the savages having already been sent to the rear; but even this handful were perpetually running riot, breaking out of their “kraal” on the most causeless and imaginary alarms when in the camp, and on the march making a point of “knocking up” invariably at the most critical moment. Imagine the difficulties of a commander when, in addition to ground of which he knows comparatively nothing, of an enemy outnumbering him hundreds to one, lurking besides in an impenetrable bush, where he can neither be reached nor seen—of an extended line of operation in a country where the roads are either impassable or there are none at all—and, above all, of a trying climate, with a sad deficiency of water—he has to weaken his already small force by furnishing a cattle-guard, and to prepare himself for the contingency of some thousands of frantic animals breaking loose (which they assuredly will should his position be forced), and the inevitable confusion which must be the result of such an untoward liberation. The Kaffirs have a knack of driving these refractory brutes in a manner which seems unattainable to a white man. It is an interesting sight to watch a couple of tall, dark savages, almost naked, and with long staves in their hands, manœuvring several hundred head of cattle with apparently but little trouble. Even the Hottentots seem to have a certain mysterious influence over the horned troop; but for an English soldier, although goaded by his bayonet, they appear to entertain the most profound contempt.