The English traitors sent up their hats in the air, and cheered the leader, and all the young Boers did the same. Our convict had taken care that not a youth should leave the force; within a circle of two miles behind the strong ridge there were four hundred good men and true, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty; the whole force amounted to eight hundred, and few of the oldest had reached the age of fifty.
Lyle turned to congratulate Madame Vander Roey on her husband’s decision; the curtains of her wagon were closed—he lifted a corner, her head, covered with her scarlet handkerchief, was almost buried in the cushions of her bed; by the light of the lantern he could see her whole frame was shaking with emotion, and stifled groans issued from her lips.
He dropped the screen with a sneer; “She will come to her senses by-and-by,” muttered he; and he was right. At dawn, in spite of a wind which cut like razors, she was busied with Hermanus and others at the stores hidden in the rocks.
Lyle and Brennard took charge of the “Cape Smoke,” and served out to every man his sopie. The spirits of the bivouac were never suffered to flag.
The horsemen had been sent on with all speed to the larger encampment of Boers, Vander Roey’s party being in front, to defend and keep possession of the strong ridge, along which, at intervals, the few guns the rebels possessed had been ranged. To the guns were attached the number of men necessary to work them. Gray had yielded passively enough to Lyle’s orders on the subject, but that very apathy made the latter more suspicious of his victim. Unnoticed by the deserter, he watched him narrowly, and, all-daring and subtle as he was, felt baffled in his conjectures as to the probable issue of Gray’s forced enlistment in the rebels’ cause.
The position taken up by Vander Roey was the strongest in the whole country, being a succession of hills covered with large loose stones. In his front rose the ridge, surmounted by a natural rampart, rendered more complete by the art of deserters from the corps of Sappers and Miners. In the rear was a stream, lined with rushes and long reeds, fordable to those well acquainted with its depths, but offering no easy passage to British infantry. The line of fire extended a full mile.
At dawn of day, the videttes reported the appearance of a mounted reconnoitring party from the enemy’s force, and within half an hour every man was at his post; Gray taking his place at the gun he was to serve.
Lift aside the curtain of that wagon, reader, and see within, a woman kneeling and praying in an agony. Ah! how many there are, who dare unseen dangers, who even meet the reality of peril with flashing eye, a fevered cheek, and brow unblenched, but who, in the dread pause between plan and action, quail at the loud beating of their own hearts!
For months, Madame Vander Roey had looked forward to some such moment as this—she was accustomed to scenes of danger, she had been present at those strifes in cattle-lifting which are the common occurrences of a South African settler’s life; but this sudden call to arms against men, whom her father had been wont to term his “white brethren,” rang on her ear like a knell, and a presentiment of evil overpowered her for the moment.
Still she was persuaded that her husband was right, and she knelt down and implored help and mercy from Him who is “the Father of the oppressed.”