“You’re saying that to humour me,” said Lennox, with his glass to his eyes; “but I’m not half-delirious from sunstroke. Get out your glass and look. The Boers are coming on in a long extended line, and they must be driving in our scouts.”
“You don’t mean it, do you, old chap?” cried Dickenson, dragging out his glass.
“Yes; there’s no mistake about it.”
Crack! went a rifle from behind the projection, a few yards away; and directly after, as the two officers began scurrying down, the bugles were ringing out in the market-square, and the colonel gave his orders for supports to go out, check the Boer advance, and bring the scouting party or parties in.
Chapter Thirteen.
Something in the Head.
It was a narrow escape, but the nine men got safely back to quarters, but minus two of their horses. For the Boers had in every case been well upon the alert; their lines had not been pierced, and they followed up the retreating scouts till the searching fire from the kopje began to tell upon their long line of skirmishers, and then they sullenly drew back, but not before they had learnt that there were marksmen in the regiment at Groenfontein as well as in their own ranks.
“That’s something, Drew,” said Dickenson as he watched the slow movement of a light wagon drawn by mules. “But only to think of it: all that trouble for nothing—worse than nothing, for they have shot those two horses. Yes, worse than nothing,” he continued, “for they would have been something for the pot.”