“Look at the gold.”
“I like looking at a good golden furzy common in Surrey. It’s of no use, Drew, my lad; it’s a dismal, burning, freezing place.”
“Why don’t you throw it up and go home, then?”
“What! before we’ve beaten the Boers into a state of decency? No!”
Bob Dickenson’s “No!” was emphatic enough for anything, and brought the conversation between the two young men to an end; for it was close upon the time for the mess dinner, which, whatever its shortcomings, as Bob Dickenson said, was jolly punctual, even if there was no tablecloth.
So they descended from where they had perched themselves close up to the big gun, where their commanding position gave them the opportunity for making a wide sweep round over the karoo, taking in, too, the wooded course of the river and the open country beyond in the possession of the Boers.
But they had seen no sign of an enemy or grazing horse; though they well knew that if a company of their men set off in any direction, before they had gone a quarter of a mile they would be pelted with bullets by an unseen foe.
They had seen the walls and rifle-pits which guarded the great gun so often that they hardly took their attention. All the same, though, soldier-like, Drew Lennox could not help thinking how naturally strong the kopje was, how easy it would be for two or three companies of infantry to hold it against a force of ten times their number, and what tremendous advantages the Boers had possessed in the nature of their country. For they had only had to sit down behind the natural fortifications and set an enemy at defiance.
“It’s our turn now,” Lennox said to himself, “and we could laugh at them for months if only we had a supply of food.”
“Let’s try this way,” said Dickenson, bearing off to his left.