'Bunch up!' roared Sean. 'Bunch on me!' And his line shortened so
they charged knee to knee in a solid wall of men and horses and gunfire
before which the Boers fled in wild despair.
Directly in Sean's path lay a struggling, badly wounded horse with its
rider pinned underneath it. Jammed into the charge he could not
swerve.
'Up, Boy!' he shouted and lifted his horse with his knees and his
hands, clearing the tangle and stumbling as they landed.
Then forward again in the urgent, jostling clamour of the charge.
'We're gaining!' yelled Saul. 'This time we've got them.'
The horse beside him hit a hole and went down with its leg breaking
like a pistol, shot. The trooper was thrown from it high and clear,
turning in the air as he feLL. The line closed to fiLL the gap, and
pounded on over the grassland.
'There's a kopje ahead,' Sean shouted as he saw the ragged loom of it
against the dawn sky. 'Don't let them reach it! ' And he raked his
spurs along his horse's ribs.
'We won't catch them,' warned Saul. 'They'll get into the rocks.
'Damn it! God damn it!' groaned Sean. In the past few minutes the
light had strengthened. Dawn in Africa comes quickly once it starts.
Clearly he could see the leading Boers ride into the rocks, throw
themselves from their ponies and duck into cover.
'Faster!' shouted Sean in agony. 'Faster!' as he saw the chance of
quick success slip from his grasp. Already Mausers were talking back
from the lower slopes of the kopie, and the last burghers were down and
scurrying into the rocks. Loose ponies turned wildly into his line,
empty stirrups flapping, eyes wide with terror, forcing his men to
swerve into each other, dissipating the force of the charge. A loose
pack, mule with a small leather pack upon its back climbed up through
the rocks until a stray bullet killed it and it rolled into a deep
crevice. But nobody saw it fall, Sean felt the horse between his legs
jerk and he was thrown with such violence that the stirrup leathers
snapped like cotton and he went up and out, hung for a sickening moment
and then swooped down to hit the ground with his chest and shoulder AND
the side of his face.
While he lay in the grass the charge spent itself like a wave on the
kopJe, then eddied and swirled into confusion. Dimly Sean was aware of
the hooves that trampled about his head, of the sound of the Mausers
and the shouts of the men who were swept by them.
'Dismount! Get down and follow them.' Saul's voice and the tone of it
roused Sean. With his hands under his chest he pushed himself into a
sitting position. The side of his face burned where the skin had been
smeared away, his nose was bleeding and the blood turned the earth in
his mouth to a gritty paste.
His left arm was numb to the shoulder and he had lost his rifle.
Dully he tried to spit the filth from his mouth while he peered at the
chaos about him, trying to make sense of it. He shook his head, to
joggle the apathy from his brain, while all around him men were being
cut down at point, blank range by the Mausers.
'Dismount! Dismount! ' The urgency of Saul's voice brought Sean
