“Tchah! Not he. It was all true, but the captain wouldn’t hold to it. They hang together, these officers, and make things up, so that when their turn comes to be in trouble the others back them. I was out here the other day, and old Roby came doing the civil and asking me how I was, so I rounded upon him about giving up saying Mr Lennox was a coward. What do you think he says?”
“Said you were cracked.”
“Yes; only he said mad. What do you think of that?”
“That he ought to have said you were a sneak and a cur,” said the man, getting up and walking away, but only to stop and turn round. “Look here, corporal,” he said; “take a bit of advice. Drop that altogether, or some day the chaps may turn upon you and forget that you’re a crippled man, and give you what you don’t like.”
“Why?” cried Corporal May wrathfully.
“Because every one of us thinks Mr Lennox is about the pluckiest fellow in the regiment, and would follow him into the hottest fire the enemy could get up.”
Affairs, after gliding sluggishly along for months, began to move swiftly now. Two weeks after there was an announcement that a Kaffir, a despatch-runner, had reached the kopje, and he was hurried before the officers, to prove to be the Zulu who had brought in the warning of the last attack. He had fresh news now—that once more the Boers had been reinforced, and that they had received three heavy guns. Preparations were again made for the reception of the enemy, but the men moved about looking grave and stern. The old hopeful elasticity seemed gone. Dickenson noted this, and called Lennox’s attention to it.
“Yes,” he said; “but the first shouts will rouse them, and they’ll fight as well as ever.”
“Of course,” said Dickenson. “Still, one can’t help feeling dull.”
There was no attack that night; but the scouts had reports to make of the advance of the enemy from all the laagers, and the next morning soon after sunrise half-a-dozen Boers rode up under the white flag—their leader being blindfolded and led into the colonel’s presence, with the other officers gathered round.