"Has Macgreg returned, Bela Moshi?" asked Wilmshurst, stretching his cramped limbs, for he had not removed his boots during the last forty-eight hours, and with the exception of a brief interval had been on his feet practically the whole of that time.
"MacGregor?" exclaimed Laxdale, who happened to overhear his brother-officer's question. "Yes—rather. It seems that he struck our main camp about an hour or so ago. The colonel's sent to say that we are to attempt an enveloping movement. The Boches are in force on a kopje about five miles on our right front—about eight hundred of 'em according to MacGregor's report."
"That's good," declared Wilmshurst. All the same he felt rather sceptical. The spoor of the right-hand column of the retiring Huns hardly bore out the Rhodesian's statement, but evidently the scout knew his business.
"Is MacGregor accompanying us?" he asked, as the three subalterns prepared to rejoin their respective platoons.
"Fancy not," replied Danvers. "He's pretty well done up, I imagine. The scrub's a bit thick out there, and a fellow can't crawl far without picking up a few thorns. Plucky blighter, what?"
"A" Company was to work round to the right of the hostile position, "B" operating to the left, both having two hours' start of the remainder of the battalion, which was to deliver a frontal attack simultaneously with the flanking movement.
With the night-mists still hanging in dense patches over the scrub tactics were resumed. Wilmshurst had good reason to be delighted with his men as the scouts and advance guards slipped off to their detailed positions. At a hundred yards they were lost to sight and sound, threading their way with the utmost caution through the long grass like experienced hunters stalking their prey, while the various units kept well in touch with each other by means of reliable runners. Other methods of communication were out of the question. Flag-waving and heliograph would have "given the show away" with the utmost certainty.
All feelings of physical tiredness vanishing under the magic spell of impending action, Wilmshurst led his extended platoon toward their allotted positions. It was slow work. The ground was difficult; every spot likely to afford concealment to a hostile sniper had to be carefully examined. The absence of bird life was ominous. It meant that either the returning Huns had disturbed the feathered denizens or else the advance of the Haussas had driven them over the enemy position, in which case the wily Hun would "smell a rat."
It was noon before Wilmshurst gained his preliminary objective. The tropical sun was beating down with terrific violence, the scrub offering scant shelter from its scorching rays. Already the previously-dew-sodden ground was baked stone-hard, the radiating heat imparting an appearance of motion to every object within sight.
Literally stewing, the subaltern threw himself flat on the ground under the slight shadow of a dried thorn bush, and waited, at intervals sweeping the bare outlines of the kopje with his prismatic glasses.