staggering in a circle away from the river. Then, suddenly they killed
him and he dropped on to his face.
The gunfire stopped and in the silence the men in the river, bed began
to move around, and talk of trivial things, avoiding each other's eyes,
ashamed to have watched such a naked intimate thing as that man's
dying.
Sean's anger was gone, replaced by guilty thankfulness that it had not
been Saul out there in the open.
In the long period of stagnation that followed, Sean and Saul sat
together against the bank. Though they talked little, the old sense of
companionship was restored.
With a rush and rattle the first shell ripped the air above their
heads, and with everyone else Sean ducked instinctively. The shell
burst in a tall brownish, yellow spurt on the far slope. Consternation
bush fired along the river.
' Oh my! they've got a gun!'
'Book me on the next train, mate!'
'Nothing to worry about, boys,' Sean shouted reassuringly.
'They can't reach us with that piece. ' And the next shell burst on
the lip of the bank, showering them with earth and pebbles. One
startled second they stood dazed and coughing in the fumes, and the
next they fell on the bank like a band of competitive grave, diggers.
Dust from their exertions rose in a pale brown mist over the river to
puzzle the Boers on the ridge. Almost before the arrival of the next
shell, each man had hacked out a small earthen cupboard into which he
could squeeze himself.
The Boer gunners were alarmingly inconsistent. Two or three rounds
would fly wildly overhead and burst in the open veld.
The next would land squarely in the river spraying mud and water high
in the air. When this happened the sound of sustained cheering drifted
faintly down from the ridge, followed by a long pause, presumably while
the gunners received the congratulations of their fellows. Then the
bombardment would recommence with enthusiastic rapidity, which slowly
wound down into another long pause while everybody rested.
During one of these intervals Sean peered through his loophole.
From a dozen points along the ridge rose pale columns of smoke.
'Coffee break up there, Eccles.'
'The way they do things we can expect another white flag and a couple
of their lads coming down with coffee for us as well.
'I doubt it,' Sean grinned. 'But I think we can expect them to come
down though.' Sean pulled out his watch. ' Half, past four now.
Two hours to sundown. Leroux must try for a decision before dark.
' 'If they come, they'll come from behind,' Saul announced cheerfully
and pointed to the slope of ground that menaced their rear. 'To meet a
charge from there, we would have to line the far bank and expose our
backs to sniping from the ridge. ' Sean considered the problem for a
minute. 'Smoke! That's it!
'I beg yours, sir?
'Eccles, get the men to build fireplaces of stone along the bed and set
grass and branches ready to light,' Sean ordered.
