“I have come from our general with a message,” said the Boer officer shortly. “He knows that you are all nearly starved, and that the kopje is covered with sick and wounded. He tells me to say he does not wish to attack and shoot you all down, though you deserve it. He says he will be merciful, and gives you ten minutes to consider whether you will haul down and surrender. What am I to tell him?”
“Tell the officer who sent you that we do not want ten seconds to consider, and that we do not know how to haul down the British colours. Let him come here and drag them down himself.”
“What do you mean?” said the man roughly, and opening his eyes wider than was his wont in wonder.
“War!” cried the colonel sternly, and he signalled to those who had brought the messenger to re-tie the bandage across his eyes and lead him back through the lines.
Two hours later a heavy gun began the attack, one which was to be no night surprise entailing a heavy loss to the assailants, but a slow, deliberate shelling of the gallantly defended place to destruction; while now the difficulty was felt by the garrison for the first time of how to reply, for the new guns which had come upon the scene were served with smokeless powder, and the best glasses failed to show whence the bursting shells had come.
The officers had nothing to do on the kopje but keep going about among their men in the trenches and behind the walls, to say a few encouraging words and insist upon them not exposing themselves, for it was waste of cartridges to use a rifle; while the firing from the big gun and its smaller brothers too was infrequent for the reasons above given. Hence it fell about that more than once the officers paid what may be called visits from time to time, just to exchange a few words, and on one of these occasions Captain Roby, who walked fairly well with a stick, joined Lennox and Dickenson.
“This is cheerful,” he said. “Did you over know anything more exasperating?”
“Horrible!” said the two young men in a breath. “What’s the chief going to do?” added Dickenson.
“I’ve just come from him,” replied Roby. “Nothing. What can he do but hold the dogs of war in leash until the Boers think they have shelled us enough, and come on?”
“Nothing, of course,” said Dickenson, carrying on the captain’s simile; “but the dogs are grinding their teeth, and when the enemy does come, by Jingo! he’ll find them pretty sharp.”