“Chamboks! no indeed; they’re the Caffre emblems of royalty.”
Towards noon the division reached Burns Hill, and encamped near the mission station, and shortly afterwards Major Sutton’s “commando” marched up, and formed a separate camp on the other side of the Keiskamma River. So when the tired soldiers lay down to rest that night it was pretty well understood that there would probably be warm work on the morrow.
Chapter Fifteen.
Tom receives an unexpected invitation—With the Cape Rifles—Mountain warfare—Formidable odds—The effects of shell.
Shortly before daylight on the 17th April, the trumpets of the 7th Dragoon Guards and of the Cape Mounted Rifles, and the shrill bugles of the infantry corps, sounding the “reveillé,” roused Tom Flinders from his slumbers; and hardly had he finished a very hasty toilet, and made a hastier breakfast (consisting of a piece of biltong, a handful of “moss-biscuit,” and a draught of icy-cold water from a neighbouring spruit), when the clear notes of the “assembly,” quickly followed by those of “boot and saddle,” rang through the still morning air.
“Now, old chap,” cried Frank Jamieson, who was already in the saddle, “look alive! Sergeant Keown is calling the roll; and—why, here comes the governor looking very down on his luck! What’s the matter, father?” he added as Captain Jamieson cantered up.
“Matter enough,” growled the old gentleman—“matter enough! We’re to remain in camp instead of marching with the column of attack. Where’s that boy Tom Flinders?”
“Here am I, sir,” replied our hero from under the saddle-flap; for he was tugging away at the girths. “Bother these buckles! they’re as stiff as—”