sounds of movement on his flanks confirmed his misgivings. But now it
was too late to retreat on the river, for already the mountains were
showing stark silhouettes against the dawn sky. They seemed very
close, as close and unfriendly as the unseen multitude of the enemy
waiting out there for the light to come.
Sean stood up. 'Take the gun,' he whispered to the man beside him as
he relinquished the Maxim.
All night he had fought with that wicked clumsy weapon and now his
hands were claws shaped to the firing grips, and his shoulders ached
intolerably. He flexed them as he moved down the line, stopping to
chat with the men who lay belly, down behind the scharnz, trying to
make his words of encouragement sound convincing, In their replies he
sensed the respect they were fbrining for him as a fighting man. It
was more than respect, closer to a tolerant affection. The same
feeling old General Buller had evoked amongst his men. He made
mistakes, a lot of men died when he led, but they liked him and
followed cheerfully. Sean reached the end of the line.
'How's it going?' he asked Saul softly.
'Fair enough.
'Any sign of the old Boer?'
'They're pretty close, we heard them talking a few minutes ago. My
guess is they're as ready as we are.
'How's your ammunition?'
'We've got enough to finish this business.'
To finish this business! That would be his decision. When the
massacre began, how much must he make them endure before he called for
quarter, and they stood up with arms raised in the most shameful of all
attitudes?
'You'd better get under cover, Sean. Light's coming fast.
'Who the hell is looking after whom, ' Sean grinned at him.
'I want no more heroics from you,' he said, and walked quickly to his
station on the other flank.
The night lifted quickly from the land, and morning came as abruptly as
it does only in Africa. The Boer laagers were gone.
The Hotchkiss gun was gone. Sean knew that the gun and the Boer horses
had been moved back behind the new ridge which now faced their
position. He knew also that the rocky ground below him was crawling
with the enemy, that they were on his flanks and probably in his rear
as well.
Slowly, the way a man looks at a place before he begins a long journey,
Sean looked around him at the mountains and the sky and the valley. In
the soft light it was very beautiful.
He looked down the gut of the valley towards the grass plains of the
high veld His head jerked with surprise. He felt excitement lift the
hair on his forearms. The mouth of the valley was blocked by a dark
mass. In the uncertain light it could have been a plantation of wattle
trees, oblong and regular and black against the pale grass. But this
plantation was moving, changing shape, elongating. Bimarn Wood to
Dunsinane.
The first rays of the sun slanted in across the crest of the ridge and
