“He is right, I suppose,” said George; “we are bound not to interfere; but if the laws of civilised warfare are set aside, as it seems they are by these Boers, they cannot expect us to observe them so rigidly as giving these poor fellows up to be shot would amount to. Don’t you think so?”
“We have only their word that the Boers would give no quarter,” said Hardy, “and it may be that they didn’t understand what our fellows said. Still, I can’t blame Margetts, if that is what you mean. But we had better make our way to Dykeman’s Hollow, hadn’t we? I suppose your friends will have gone home by this time.”
“All right!” said Rivers; “come this way.”
They began climbing the steep path, and were nearly half-way up when they heard voices calling to them, and looking down saw a party of mounted Boers, who were levelling their rifles at them and shouting to them to descend.
“What do you want with us?” called out Hardy in Dutch. “We are not soldiers, and have nothing to do with this war!”
“You are English—I can tell that by your speech,” answered the man who had hailed them. “I want to ask some questions of you, to which I mean to have an answer. You had better come down at once, or we will send some bullets to fetch you.”
This was evidently no idle threat Half a dozen Boers had already taken their aim, and the path at the point at which the Englishmen had been stopped was without shelter of any kind. There was no help for it. They had to retrace their steps, and presently found themselves face to face with the leader of the Boers, who proved to be no other than Rivers’ old acquaintance, Rudolf Kransberg.
“Ha! it is you, Mynheer Rivers?” he remarked with a scowl. “You are an English soldier, I think, though your companion said you were not.”
“I was an English soldier in the Zulu war,” returned George; “but I left the army at its conclusion, and am now a clergyman of the Church of England.”
“I don’t care for that. I want to know whether you have seen some runaways from the battle that has been fought at Laing’s Nek. We are in pursuit of them, and they must, I think, have passed this way.”