“Yes, yes; don’t talk about it,” said West sharply; “but look over there. We needn’t have been at the trouble of scrambling down this almost perpendicular place, for there must be a much easier spot where that fellow is walking up.”
“Never mind; we’ll find that slope next time, for we shall have to come down again if we want a wash.”
They sat down chatting together about the beautifully peaceful look of the stream, while Ingleborough lit his pipe and began to smoke.
“It does seem a pity,” said Ingleborough thoughtfully, exhaling a cloud of smoke: “this gully looks as calm and peaceful as a stream on old Dartmoor at home. My word! I wish I had a rod, a line, and some flies! There must be fish here. I should like to throw in that pool and forget all about despatch-bearing and guns and rifles and men using lances. It would be a treat!”
“It looks deep and black too in there,” said West. “Yes, a good day’s fishing in such a peaceful—Ugh! Come away. Let’s get back to the camp.”
“Why? What’s the matter?” cried Ingleborough, starting up, in the full expectation of seeing a party of the enemy making their way down the farther bank to get a shot at them.
But West was only pointing with averted head down at the deep black pool, and Ingleborough’s face contracted as his eyes took in all that had excited West’s horror and disgust.
For there, slowly sailing round and round just beneath the surface, were the white faces of some half-dozen Boers, wounded to the death or drowned in their efforts to escape the British cavalry, and washed down from higher up by the swift stream, to go on gliding round and round the pool till a sudden rising of the waters from some storm should give the stream sufficient power to sweep them out.