The guns were close now. He could make sense of the shouting, see the
features of the men and even recognize his own feelings in their
faces.
Close, perhaps too close. Uneasily Sean glanced back at the forbidding
heights beyond the river and gauged the range. Two thousand yards
perhaps, long rifle shot. And still the guns came on.
'Jesus Christ! Are they mad?' Sean asked aloud.
'They must engage now. ' Saul also saw the danger. 'They can't come
closer. ' And still the guns came on. The sound of their charge was
low thunder; dust from the dew-damp earth rose reluctantly behind them;
horses with wide mouths ffuming froth as they drove against the
traces.
'They're in range now. They must stop, they must! ' groaned Sean.
Then at last the column splayed open, alternate guns wheeling left and
right still at full gallop. Swinging broadside to the waiting Boer
rifles.
'My God! My God!' Sean mouthed the blasphemy in agony as he watched.
'They'll be massacred. ' Gunners rising in the stirrups, leaning back
to check the car rages The Gun-Captains jumping from their mounts,
letting them gallop free as they ran to begin the unhitching and the
pointing. In this helpless moment while men swarmed over the guns,
man-handling them to train upon the heights; while the horses still
reared and whinnied in hysterical excitement; before the shells could
be unloaded and stacked beside their pieces-in that moment the Boer
rifles opened together. It was a sound that lacked violence, strangely
un warlike muted by distance to the popping of a hundred strings of
fireworks, and at first there was no effect. The grass was thick
enough to hide the strike of the bullets, the dust too lazy with dew to
jump and mark their fall.
Then a horse was hit and fell kicking, dragging its mate on to its
knees also. TWo men ran to cut it loose, but one of them never reached
it. He sat down suddenly in the grass with his head bowed. Two more
horses dropped, another red and pawed wildly at the air with one front
leg flapping loosely where a bullet had broken the bone above the
knee.
-Get out!' roared Sean. 'Pull back while there's still time,'
but his voice did not carry to the gun crews, could not carry above the
shouting and the screaming of wounded horses There was a new sound now
which Sean could not identify, a sound like hail on a tin roof,
isolated at first then more frequent until it was a hundred hammers
clanging together in broken rhythm-and he knew it was the sound of
bullets striking the metal of the guns.
He saw: A gunner fall forward and jam the breech of the piece until he
was dragged clear, A loader drop the shell he was carrying and stumble
on with his legs fbi ding until he subsided and lay still; One of the
horses break loose and gallop away across the plain dragging a tangle
of torn traces behind it; A covey of wild pheasant rise together out of
the grass near the batteries and curve away along the river before
dropping on stiff wings back into cover; And behind the guns the
infantry in neat lines advancing placidly towards the huddle of
