"To play the game, Doctor. Perhaps I have my bone or two to pick with—several of the Institutions of my country. Possibly, but I mean to play the game. Fate has ridden me on a saddle-gall or two, and mixed too much chopped straw in proportion to the beans, but—there's the game, and I'm going to play it for all I'm worth. As an old University man, that way of looking at things ought to appeal to you."
Still no answer from the big, sullen, black-haired man in the shabby worn clothes. But his breathing was a little quickened, and a faint, smouldering glow of something not yet quenched in him showed in the haggard blue eyes.
"It's a confoundedly handicapped game, too, on the defending side. Doesn't that fact rather appeal to the sportsman in you, Doctor?"
The other said slowly:
"I gather that the struggle will be unequal. It was stated in my hearing yesterday afternoon that a considerable force of Boers were advancing on Gueldersdorp from the direction of Geitfontein, and, later, that another large body of them were on the march along the river-valley from the west. I did not attempt to verify what I had heard from my own observation. I was—otherwise engaged." The half-incredulous surprise that the other man could not keep out of his eyes stung him into adding: "Frankly, I did not care to trouble. It did not interest me."
The Colonel said, with a dry chuckle:
"No? But it will presently, though! And, seen through the glass even now, it's an instructive spectacle. Masses of Dutchmen, well-weaponed and thoroughly fed if insufficiently washed, gathering in all quarters—marching to the assembly points, dismounting, unlimbering, going into laager. Ten thousand Boers, at a rough estimate, not counting the blacks they have armed against us.... And, behind our railway-sleepers and sand-bags, eight hundred fighting European units, twenty per cent, of them raw civilians; and seven thousand neutral Barala and Kaffirs and Zulus in the native Stad—an element of danger lying dormant, waiting the spark that may hurry us all sky-high.... By God, Doctor, the game's worth playing, except by cowards and curs!"
The smouldering glow in the Dop Doctor's eyes had been fanned into a fire. The visitor saw the flame leap, and went on:
"There's a native proverb—I wonder whether you know it?—a kind of Zulu version of the regimental motto, Vestigia nulla retrorsum. It runs like this: 'If we go forward, we die; if we go backward, we die. Better go forward and die.'" He reached out a long, lean, brown right hand. "Come forward with us, Doctor. We can do with a man like you!"
The impassive face broke up. Saxham gripped the offered hand as a drowning man might have done. He cried out hoarsely: