“Early this morning. I was out scouting,” he said. He spoke in a voice so well trained and modulated that I tried to see his shoulder-straps.
“Oh, you are an officer?” I said.
“No, sir, a trooper. First Life Guards.”
But in the moonlight I could see him smile, whether at my mistake or because it was not a mistake I could not guess. There are many gentlemen rankers in this war.
He made a lonely figure in the night, his helmet marking him as conspicuously as a man wearing a high hat in a church. From the billiard-room, where the American scouts were playing pool, came the click of the ivory and loud, light-hearted laughter; from the veranda the sputtering of many strange tongues and the deep, lazy voices of the Boers. There were Boers to the left of him, Boers to the right of him, pulling at their long, drooping pipes and sending up big rings of white smoke in the white moonlight.
He dismounted, and stood watching the crowd about him under half-lowered eyelids, but as unmoved as though he saw no one. He threw his arm over the pony’s neck and pulled its head down against his chest and began talking to it.
It was as though he wished to emphasize his loneliness.
“You are not tired, are you? No, you’re not,” he said. His voice was as kindly as though he were speaking to a child.
“Oh, but you can’t be tired. What?” he whispered. “A little hungry, perhaps. Yes?” He seemed to draw much comfort from his friend the pony, and the pony rubbed his head against the Englishman’s shoulder.
“The commandant says he will question you in the morning. You will come with us to the jail now,” his captor directed. “You will find three of your people there to talk to. I will go bring a blanket for you, it is getting cold.” And they rode off together into the night.