“Ugh!” said West, with a shudder, after he and Ingleborough had deposited a terribly-injured Boer before one of the regimental surgeons; “let’s get down to the spruit and wash some of this horror away.”
“Yes,” said Ingleborough, after a glance at his own hands; “we couldn’t look worse if we had been in the fight! Horrible!”
“It’s one thing to be in the wild excitement of a battle, I suppose,” said West; “but this business after seems to turn my blood cold.”
Ingleborough made no reply, and the pair had enough to do afterwards in descending the well-wooded, almost perpendicular bank to where the little river ran bubbling and foaming along, clear and bright.
“Ha!” sighed West; “that’s better! It was horrible, though, to see those poor wretches shot down.”
“Um!” murmured Ingleborough dubiously. “Not very! They killed the sentries first with their own bayonets!”
“In a desperate struggle for freedom, though! But there, I’m not going to try and defend them!”
“No, don’t, please!” said Ingleborough. “I can’t get away from the fact that they began the war, that the Free State had no excuse whatever, and that the enemy have behaved in the most cruel and merciless way to the people of the towns they have besieged.”
“All right! I suppose you are right; but I can’t help feeling sorry for the beaten.”
“Feel sorry for our own party then!” said Ingleborough, laughing. “Why, Noll, lad, we must not holloa till we are out of the wood. This last is a pretty bit of success; but so far we have been horribly beaten all round.”