The Captain, thinking furiously, found his mind turn to a camp in the
Karroo, months before; an engine that had halted in that waste, and a
woman with brown hair, early grizzled—an extraordinary woman.... Yes,
but as soon as they had dropped the flat-topped kopje behind its
neighbour he must hurry back and report.... A woman with grey eyes and
black eyelashes.... The Boers would probably be massed on those two
kopjes. How soon dare he break into a canter?... A woman with a queer
cadence in her speech.... It was not more than five miles home by the
straight road—
“_Even when we were children we learned not to go back by the way we had
come._”
The sentence came back to him, self-shouted, so clearly that he almost
turned to see if the scouts had heard. The two flat-topped kopjes behind
him were covered by a long ridge. The camp lay due south. He had only to
follow the road to the Nek—a notch, unscouted as he recalled now,
between the two hills.
He wheeled his men up a long valley.
“Excuse me, sir, that ain’t our road!” said the sergeant. “Once we get
over this rise, straight on, we come into direct touch with the ’elio,
on that flat bit o’ road there they ’elioed us goin’ out.”
“But we aren’t going to get in touch with them just now. Come along, and
come quick.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” said a private in the rear. “What’s ’e
doin’ this detour for? We shan’t get in for hours an’ hours.”
“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.
“As a matter of fact,” said he, “I didn’t know for sure that there were
any Boers on the Nek, but I went round it in case it was so. But I _do_
know that the kopjes beyond the Nek are simply crawling with Boers.”
“Nonsense. We can see the whole lot of ’em retreating out yonder.”
“Of course you can. That’s part of their game, sir. I saw ’em lying on
the top of a couple of kopjes commanding the road, where it goes into
the plain on the far side. They let us come in to see, and they let us
go out to report the country clear and bring you up. Now they are
waiting for _you_. The whole thing is a trap.”
“D’you expect any officer of my experience to believe that?”
“As you please, sir,” said the Captain hopelessly. “My responsibility
ends with my report.”