“I always thought you liked to eat hard,” said Lennox.
“Dear me: a joke!” said Dickenson. “Very bad one, but it’s better than going into the dumps. As I was about to say, we’ve got trouble enough without your playing at being in low spirits.”
“Go on. What were you going to say?”
“I was going to remark that the best of fighting the Boers is, that they won’t stir towards coming at us without they’ve got the daylight to help them to shoot. We ought to do more in the way of night surprises. I like the mystery and excitement of that sort of thing.”
“I don’t,” said Lennox shortly. “It always seems to me cowardly and un-English to steal upon sleeping people, rifle and bayonet in hand.”
“Well, ’pon my word, we’ve got into a nice line of conversation,” said Dickenson. “Here we are, back in the market-square, brilliantly lighted by two of the dimmest lanterns that were ever made, and sentries galore to take care of us. Wonder whether Blackbeard has finished his confab with the chief?”
“Let’s go and see,” said Lennox, and he walked straight across, answering the sentry’s challenge, and finding the Boer back in his former place, seated upon the wagon-box, and conversing in a low tone with the men within.
He did not start when Lennox spoke to him this time, but swung himself deliberately round to face his questioner.
“Well,” said the latter, “what did the colonel say?”
“He said it was a good thing, and that we should take our wagons, inspan, and be passed through the lines to-night.”