'There! The burgher pointed.
Like a column of safari ants, tiny and insignificant in the immensity
of brown grass and open sky, still four or five miles distant, the
squadrons were strung out in extended order across the southern
hills.
'Not that way. We cannot go that way. We must go back.'
He swung round to the north. 'We must go that way. ' Then he saw the
dust in the north also and he felt his stomach slide quickly downwards.
The dust drifted low, so thin it might have been only heat haze or the
passing of a dust devil, but he knew it was not.
'They are there also,' he whispered. Acheson had thrown his column in
from four directions. There was no escape.
'Van der Bergh!' whispered Leroux bitterly. 'He has gone hands, up to
the English and betrayed us. , ' A moment longer he stared at the
dust, then quickly he adjusted to the problem of defence.
'The river is our one line,' he muttered. 'With the flanks anchored on
this kopJe and that one there.' He let his eyes run back up the little
valley of the Padda River, carefully memorizing the slope and lay of
the land, storing in his mind each of its salient features.
already siting the captured Maxims, picking the shelter of the hills
and river bank for the horses, deciding where the reserves should be
held.
'Five hundred men can hold the north kopje, but we will need a thousand
on the river.' He vaulted up on to the pony and called down to the
sentry,
'Stay here. I will send men up to you. They must build scharnzes
along the ridge, there, and there.'
Then he drove the pony down the slope, sliding on its haunches until it
reached the level ground.
'Where is Zietsmann? ' he demanded.
'In his wagon.
He galloped across to it and jerked open the canvas at the entrance.
'Menheer, ' he began and then stopped. Zietsmann sat on the wagon bed
with his wife beside him. A Bible was open on his lap.
'Menheer, there is little time. The enemy closes from all sides.
They will be upon us in two hours.
Zietsmann looked up at him, and from the soapy glaze of his eyes Leroux
knew he had not heard.
'Thou shalt not fear the arrow that flieth by day, nor the terror that
walketh by night,' he murmured.
'I am taking command, Menheer,' Leroux grunted. Zietsmann turned back
to the book and his wife placed an arm round his shoulders.
We can hold them for this day, and perhaps tomorrow, Leroux decided
from where he lay on the highest kopJe. They cannot charge their
cavalry against these hills, so they must come for us with the
bayonet.
It is the guns first that we must fear, and then the bayonet.
'Martinus Van der Bergh,' he said aloud. 'When next we meet I will
kill you for this. ' And he watched the batteries unlimbering out of
rifle, shot across the river, forming their precise geometrical
