“Oh for some water!” groaned Dickenson at last. “Poor Mr Lennox! How he must suffer!”
“Not he, sir. He’s in that state that when he wakes up he’ll know nothing about what has taken place. It’s you that ought to have the drink, to steady your hand for what is to come.”
Dickenson made no reply aloud, but he thought bitterly, “When he wakes up—when he wakes up! Where will it be: the Boer prison camp, or in the other world?”
The sergeant and the men now relapsed into a moody silence, as they lay, rifle in hand, with the sun beating down in increasing force, and a terrible thirst assailing them. Dickenson looked at their scowling faces, and a sudden impression attacked him that a feeling of resentment had arisen against him for not surrendering now that they were in such a hopeless condition. This increased till he could bear it no longer, and edging himself closer to the sergeant, he spoke to him upon the subject, with the result that the man broke into a harsh laugh.
“Don’t you go thinking anything of that sort, sir, because you’re wrong. Oh yes, they look savage enough, but it’s only because they feel ugly. We’re all three what you may call dangerous, sir. The lads want to get at the enemy to make them pay for what we’re suffering. Here, you ask them yourself what they think about surrendering.”
Dickenson did not hesitate, but left the sergeant, to crawl to the man beyond him, when just as he was close up a well-directed bullet struck up the sand and stones within a few inches of the man’s face, half-blinding him for a time and making him forget discipline and the proximity of his officer, as he raged out a torrent of expletives against the Boer who had fired that shot.
“Let me look at your face, my lad,” said Dickenson. “Are you much hurt?”
“Hurt, sir? No! It’s only just as if some one had chucked a handful of dust into my eyes.”
“Let me see.”
A few deft applications of a finger removed the trouble from the man’s eyes, and he smiled again, and then listened attentively to his officer’s questions.