deserted cottages that was Colenso.
Then, with a crash that made the earth jump, and with sixteen long
spurts of blue smoke, the guns came into action.
Sean focused his glasses on the ridge in time to see the first shells
burst along the crest. The evil blossoms of greenish-yellow lyddite
fumes bloomed quickly in the sunlight, then drifted oily thick on the
wind.
Again the guns crashed, and again---each salvo more ragged -than the
last until it became a continuous stuttering, hammering roar.
Until the stark outline of the ridge was blurred and indefinite in the
dust and lyddite fumes. There was smoke also, a fine greyish mist of
it banked along the heights-the smoke of thousands of rifles.
Quickly Sean set the rear sight of his Lee-Metford at a thousand yards,
wriggled forward on his elbows, hunched down over his rifle and began
shooting blindly into the smoke on the heights. Beside him Saul was
firing also.
TWice Sean emptied his magazine before looking back at the guns.
The tempo of their fire had slackened. Most of the horses were down in
the grass. Dead men were dragged across the gun carriages, others
badly wounded crouched for cover behind the mountings, and where six
men had served each piece before, now four or only three carried shell
and loaded and fired.
'The fools, the bloody fools,' Sean whispered, and began to shoot
again, concentrating his whole attention on the routine of jerking the
bolt back, sliding it forward in the same motion, sighting up into the
mist of gun smoke, and firing. He did not count the shots and each
time the weapon clicked empty he groped for another clip from his
bandolier and re-loaded. He was starting to sweat now, could feel it
trickling down his armpits, his ears buzzed from the concussion of the
rifle and his shoulder was beginning to throb.
Gradually a sense of unreality induced by the clamour of the guns and
the smell of burnt powder came over him. It seemed that all he would
ever do was lie and shoot at nothing, shoot at smoke. Then reality
faded further so that all of existence was the vee and dot of a rifle
sight, standing solid in mist. And the mist had no shape. In his ears
was the vast buzzing silence that drowned all the other sounds of
battle. He was alone and tranquil, heavy and dulled by the hypnotic
drift of smoke and the repetitive act of loading and firing.
Abruptly the mood was broken. Over them passed a rustle like giant
wings, then a crack as though Satan had slammed the door of hell.
Startled he looked up and saw a ball of shimmering white smoke standing
in the air above the guns, spinning and spreading, growing in the sky
like a flower.
'What the .
'Shrapnel,' grunted Saul. 'Now they're finished.'
Then crack and crack again as the Boer Nordenfeldts planted their
cotton flowers of smoke above the plain, flailing the guns and the men
who still worked them with a buzzing, hissing storm of steel.
Then there were voices. Confused and dazed by the gunfire, it took
