It was still—still and quiet; a blue radiance of electric light burned here and there; at the Staff Office on the Market Square, and at other centres of purposeful activity. Aromatic-beer cellars and whisky-saloons gave out a yellow glare of gas-jets; the red lamp of an apothecary showed a wakeful eye. Gueldersdorp sprawled in the outline of a sleeping turtle on her squat hillock of gravelly earth and sand. In smoke-coloured folds, closely matching the lowering dim canopy of vapour brooding overhead, the prairie spread about her, deepening to a basined valley in the middle distances, sweeping to a rise beyond, so that the edges of the basin looked down upon the town. High on the hill-ranges in the South more chains of red sparks burned ... he knew them for the watch-fires of the Boer outposts, and the raised edges of the basin East and West were set thickly with similar twinkling jewels where the laagers were; while smaller groups shone nearer, marking the situation of isolated vedettes. The sickly taint upon the faint breeze told of massed and clustered humanity. 'Strewth, how they stunk, the brutes! He hoped there was enough of 'em, lying doggo up there, waiting the word to roll down and swallow the blooming dorp! His palate grew dry, as the sweat broke out upon his temples and trickled down the back of his neck, and the palms of his hands were moist and clammy. Also, under the buckle of the Sam Browne belt was a sinking, all-gone sensation excessively unpleasant to feel. Perhaps its wearer had a touch of fever! Then the stout tradesman on the other side of the Convent sneezed suddenly, and W. Keyse, with every nerve in his body jarring from the shock, knew that he was simply suffering from funk.
Staggering from the shock of the horrible self-revelation, he gritted his teeth. There was a Billy Keyse who was a blooming coward inside the other who was not. He told the sickening, white-gilled little skulker what he thought of him. He only wished—that is, one of him only wished—that a gang of the Dutchies would come along now!
He drew a lurid picture for the benefit of the trembler, and when the young soldier had fired into the brown of them and seen the whites of their eyes, and fallen, pierced by a hundred wounds, in the successful defence of the Convent, he was carried in, and laid on a sofa, and nobody could recognise him, along of all the blood, until She came, with her white little feet peeping from the hem of a snowy nightgown, and her unbraided pigtail swamping the white with gold, and knew that it was her lover, and knelt by the hero's side. Soft music from the Orchestra, please! as with his final breath W. Keyse implores a last, first kiss. Even as William No. 1 thrilled to the rapture of that imagined osculation, Billy No. 2 experienced a ghastly fright.
For out of the enfolding velvety darkness ahead of him, and looking towards those firefly sparks shining on the heights, came the sound of stealthy measured footsteps and muffled voices talking Dutch. The enemy had made a sortie. The defences had been rushed, the town surrounded! Yet there were only two of them—a big, slouching villain and a short thin one, who wore a giant hat. The chirping sound of a kiss damped the fierce martial ardour of William, and greatly reassured Billy. It was only a townsman taking a night walk with his girl!
Crushed and discouraged, W. Keyse relaxed his grip upon the trusty rifle, and slunk back into the shadow, as the tall and the short figures halted at the angle of the fence.
"'Ain't it a 'eavenly night?" came from the short figure, who leaned against the tall one affectionately. "An' me got to go in. A crooil shyme, I call it. 'Ain't it, deer? Leggo me wyste, there's a love. You've no notion 'ow I shall cop it for bein' lyte."
He sportively declined to release her. There was the sound of a soft slap, followed by the smack of a kiss. She was very angry.
"Leggo, I tell you! Where's your manners, 'orlin' me abart! If that's the way you be'ayve with your Dutch ones ...!"
He spat and asseverated:
"Neen! I no other girls but you heb got."