Charge! A Story of Briton and Boer

by George Manville Fenn

As they were so visible, I felt they must soon see me, and tried hard to efface myself as much as possible, knowing that my dusky-brownish, homespun breeches, flannel shirt, and tanned high boots must assimilate well with the coat of my chestnut horse, and this cheered me a little.

Then, suddenly, I knew I was seen, for one of the men drew rein, letting the others go on a few horse-lengths before; and, as if in answer to a summons from the man behind, the rest of the party halted and sat gazing in my direction.

The next minute the man who had halted by himself now dismounted, and I saw a gleaming light glance from where he stood and then dropped down. It was too far off for me to see distinctly; but knowledge supplied what my eyes failed to grasp, and I knew the gleam was from his rifle-barrel reflecting the sun’s rays, and the man’s attitude that of one about to try a long shot at the uncouth animal in view beyond the thorny scrub.

There is an old-fashioned saying about people’s feelings in critical moments: that their hearts stood still. Now, I don’t believe for a moment that mine ceased to beat; but it certainly felt as if it did, while I lay rising and falling, yielding to Sandho’s movements, and gazing straight back at the little hole which I knew must be pointed straight at me—invisible, of course; but the little puff of white smoke which suddenly jetted into the air was plain enough to my eyes, and so was the peculiar buzzing sound to my ears as the bullet passed over me like some strange bee in a violent hurry to reach its hive. Then came the sharp crack as of a sjambok wielded by a strong and well-accustomed arm.

“A miss, and no wonder!” I exclaimed; and I suppose I must have started and given Sandho a familiar pressure, or else it was the instinct of self-preservation at work in the sensible animal, for he suddenly made a bound forward so unexpectedly that I was nearly unseated; but my arms were now free, and, reaching down and getting tight hold of his leathern breastplate, I held on and let him go. The instinct of self-preservation was also strongly to the fore in me, and I lay fully expecting to hear the whizzing of half-a-dozen more bullets and the cracking of the rifles, since naturally I could see nothing then, my face lying against the horse’s neck, as he bounded on at an easy gallop.

Were the enemy in pursuit?

I strained my hearing, but I could make out nothing more than the regular beat of my horse’s hoofs; while, as no shots came, I felt certain they had made out my figure and were coming on in full chase.

“They’ll have a long one,” I thought; for, though I was in great pain, I found, to my intense delight, that I could accommodate myself to Sandho’s long swinging gallop as he spurned the soft loose earth behind him, the ascent being exceedingly slight; and we were progressing in a series of antelope-like bounds.

At last, after galloping for quite ten minutes, something in front made Sandho swerve round to the left; and, before raising my head to see what it was, I turned my face sidewise so as to get a glance back at my pursuers, and could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that no Boers were there. It was not until I raised my head a little to gaze back in the other direction that I could see them far away in the distance, evidently pursuing the course they had followed before the incidents of the halt and shot occurred.

Now I held on tightly and raised my head, endeavouring to make out why my horse had swerved. There it was plain enough: another of the stony kops which rose up to block our way had forced him to gallop along the unencumbered ground at the foot of a great line of hills, beyond which was the peak I had marked down as being in the neighbourhood of Echo Nek.