Further conversation was stopped by the coming towards camp of a couple of Boers bearing a white flag; but they were only allowed to approach within the first line of defence.
“Want to have a look at the mischief they have done,” said Dickenson bitterly, “and they will not have a chance. My word, what they don’t deserve!”
The permission they had come to ask was given, and they were turned back at once, to signal for their ambulance-wagons to approach, these being busy for quite an hour picking up the dead and wounded; while the murdered sentry was the only loss suffered by the defenders of Groenfontein and the kopje.
As soon as suspicion was firmly fixed upon the party of non-combatant Boers who had departed upon their mission to obtain fresh supplies, one of the first orders issued by the colonel was for a patrol of mounted men to go in pursuit and, if possible, bring them back.
“There is not much chance of overtaking them,” he said to the officers present; “but with a couple of teams of slow-going oxen they cannot make their own pace. Then this is the last time I’ll trust a Boer.”
“The worst of it is,” said the major, “that we have let them carry off those two spans of bullocks. Tut, tut, tut! Forty of them; tough as leather, of course, but toothsome when you have nothing else.”
“Toothsome!” said Captain Roby, laughing. “A capital term, for the poor teeth of those who tried to eat them would have to work pretty hard—eh,—Dickenson?”
“Better than nothing,” said the young lieutenant—a decision with which all agreed.
That day passed off without further attack from the enemy, who seemed to have drawn off to a distance; and as night fell the colonel became very anxious about the patrol, which had not returned. Dickenson, who had the credit of being the longest-sighted man in the regiment, had spent the day on the highest point of the kopje, armed with a powerful telescope, and from his point of vantage, where he could command the country in that wonderfully clear atmosphere for miles round, had swept every bit of plain, and searched bush and pile of granite again and again, till the darkness of evening began to fill up the bush like a flood of something fluid. When he could do no more he left the crew of the gun and began to descend by what he considered the nearest way to headquarters, and soon found it the longest, for he had delayed his return too long.
“Hang it all!” he muttered. “What a pile of shin-breaking rocks it is! I’ve a jolly good mind to go back and take the regular path; seems so stupid, though, now.”