“Come on, men. Flog a canter out of your brutes, somehow,” the Captain called back.
For two throat-parched hours he held west by south, away from the Nek, puzzling over a compass already demented by the ironstone in the hills, and then turned southeast through an eruption of low hills that ran far into the re-entering bend of the river that circled the left bank of the camp.
Eight miles to eastward that student from Stellenbosch had wriggled out on the rocks above the Nek to have a word with Vrooman of Emmaus. The bottom seemed to have dropped out of at least one portion of their programme; for the scouting party were not to be seen.
“Jan is a clever man,” he said to his companion, “but he does not think that even rooineks may learn. Perhaps those scouts will have seen Jan’s commando, and perhaps they will come back to warn the rooineks. That is why I think he should have shot them before they came to the Nek, and made quite sure that only one or two got away. It would have made the English angry, and they would have come out across the open in hundreds to be shot. Then when we ran away they would have come after us without thinking. If you can make the English hurry, they never think. Jan is wrong this time.”
“Lie down, and pray you have not shown yourself to their helio-station,” growled Vrooman of Emmaus. “You throw with your arms and kick with your legs like a rooinek. When we get back I will tell Jan and he will sjambok you. All will yet come right. They will go and warn the rest, and the rest will hurry out by this very nek. Then we can shoot. Now you lie still and wait.”
“’Ere’s a rummy picnic. We left camp, as it were, by the front door. ’E ’as given us a giddy-go-round, an’ no mistake,” said a dripping private as he dismounted behind the infantry lines.
“Did you see our helio?” This was the Colonel, hot from racing down from the helio-station. “There were a lot of Boers waiting for you on the Nek. We saw ’em. We tried to get at you with the helio, and tell you we were coming out to help you. Then we saw you didn’t come over that flat bit of road where we had signalled you going out, and we wondered why. We didn’t hear any shots.”
“I turned off, sir, and came in by another road,” said the Captain.
“By another road!” The Colonel lifted his eyebrows. “Perhaps you’re not aware, sir, that the Boers have been in full retreat for the last three hours, and that those men on the Nek were simply a rear-guard put out to delay us for a little. We could see that much from here. Your duty, sir, was to have taken them in the rear, and then we could have brushed them aside. The Boer retreat has been going on all morning, sir—all morning. You were despatched to see the front clear and to return at once. The whole camp has been under arms for three hours; and instead of doing your work you wander all about Africa with your scouts to avoid a handful of skulking Boers! You should have sent a man back at once—you should have——”
The Captain got off his horse stiffly.