Soon after this the colonel was called up to the brigadier, and when he returned he communicated what he had been told to his officers. The low hills being found clear of the enemy, it was intended to occupy them at once, and then if possible to advance upon the camp and the wells, and carry that position before nightfall. But this depended on what daylight they had, for rather than risk being overtaken by darkness in an unfavourable position, it was determined to form a zereba and wait for the advance till next day.
“It is just four o’clock,” said Strachan, looking at his watch as he returned to his company; “and surely there must be a fair chance of carrying the wells before sunset, for I see a lot of the enemy on the hills beyond. Therefore I shall risk a drink,” and he put his water-bottle to his lips accordingly.
“Hurrah! So will I,” said Green.
“I have been fighting down the feeling of thirst for the last two hours. Do you know,” he added, after a refreshing and yet a tantalising irrigation of the mouth and throat, “I have been haunted by a sort of waking dream while plodding on in silence this afternoon. There was an old man who used to bring fruit and ginger-beer to the cricket-field at my school, and he has kept rising up in my memory so vividly that I could see every wrinkle in his face, and the strings which kept down the corks of his brown stone bottles as vividly as if they were before me.”
“I wish they were!” cried Tom. “By Jove, what a trade the man might drive if he could be transported here just now.”
“Oh! And I have often scorned that nectarial fluid,” groaned Edwards, “or only considered it as a tolerable ingredient of shandy—”
“Silence!” cried Strachan.
“Don’t utter that word, or I shall simply go mad. It is quite bad enough of the exasperating Green to allude to the homely pop, though one bore with it in consideration of the tender reminiscences of his childhood; but human endurance has its limits.”
Those who reckoned on carrying the wells that night were over sanguine; when the rising ground was reached the progress of the guns was very slow; indeed, it was wonderful how the sailors managed to drag them on at all.
The atmosphere had now for some time become perfectly clear; and when the infantry had surmounted the first hill they saw the broad valley of Tamai, and on the hills bounding it on the further side, corresponding with the somewhat lower range, where they stood, the enemy’s lines were plainly discernible.