“Once there, I’ll bring the glass to bear again on our rear. Make a bee-line for it, as if you were going to take up new ground for your company. Once there, we can make for another and another, and if we are pursued each clump of rocks will make us breastworks or rifle-pits. Up! Forward!”
Gedge started on the instant, talking to himself, as he felt that he ought still to maintain a soldierly silence.
“Quarter of a mile—eh? That’s a good half, or I’ve failed in judging distance, after all, and turned out a reg’lar duller. Cheeky, though, to think I know better than my orficer. Dunno, though; I’ve done twice as much of it as he have.—Wonder whether them beggars have begun stalking us again. Dessay they have. Sure to. My! how I should like to look back! That’s the worst o’ being a swaddy on dooty. Your soul even don’t seem to be your own. Never mind; orders is orders, and I’m straight for them rocks; but natur’s natur’, even if it’s in a savage nigger with a firework-spark gun and a long knife. If those chaps don’t come sneaking after us for a shot as soon as they’ve seen us on the move, I’m a Dutchman.”
Bill Gedge was not a Dutchman, but East London to the backbone, and quite right; for, before he and the officer were a hundred yards on their way to take up new ground, first one and then another white-clothed figure came cautiously into the wide field of view, quite a mile away, but plainly seen in that wonderfully clear air, and came on in a half-stooping way, suggesting hungry wolves slinking steadily and surely along after their prey.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
A Question of Helmets.
Bracy felt quite sure that they were being tracked, but he did not look round till they were well within the shelter of the rocks for which they aimed. Then, as soon as he could feel that he was certain of being unobserved, he raised his head above one of the blocks, and took his glass to read more fully their position. For, in a long line, at intervals of some ten yards or so, the enemy was coming on, without a sign of haste, but in the quiet, determined way of those who know that they are following an absolute certainty, and that it is only a matter of time before their prey drops down at their mercy.
The day was gloriously bright, and the vast landscape of rock, forest, and gleaming water to their left, and the dazzling stretch of peak, snowfield, and glacier, with its many gradations of silver and delicious blue, on their right, presented a scene which the mind might have revelled in for hours. But Bracy saw nothing of Nature’s beauties, for his attention was centred in the long line of tribes-men coming slowly on, their movements being so full of suggestion and offering themselves for easy reading.