Sean dragged himself after it. 'Look after him,' he shouted.
'For God's sake, look after Saul. ' But nobody heard that shout for
they were gone away amongst the trees, gone away in the dust with the
shellfire escorting them like a troop of brown demons.
Still Sean crawled after them, using one hand to reach ahead and claw
into the earth and inch his whole body belly down through the grass.
His other arm dragged at his side, and he could feel his right leg
slithering after him, until it caught and tethered him. He struggled
against it, but his toe had hooked in a tuft of coarse grass and he
could not free it. He wriggled on to [us side and doubled up with his
broken arm beneath him to look back at his leg.
There was much blood, a wet, slippery drag mark of it across the
flattened grass, and still it welled up out of his body. But there was
no pain, only a dizziness and a weariness in his head.
His leg twisted at a ridiculous angle from his trunk, and the spur on
his boot stood up jauntily. He wanted to laugh at the leg, but somehow
the effort was too great and he closed his eyes against the glare of
the sun.
Near him he heard somebody groaning and for a while he thought it must
be Saul. Then he remembered that Saul was safe, and it was the young
subaltern. With his eyes closed Sean lay and listened to him die. It
was an ugly sound.
Battle-General Jan Paulus Leroux stood upon the heights above the
Tugela and removed his Terai hat. His head was bald with a fringe of
ginger hair above the ears and thick around the back.
The skin of his pate was smooth and creamy white where the hat had
protected it from the sun, but his face had been weathered and
sculptured by the elements until it looked like a cliff of red-stone.
'Bring my pony, Hennie.' He spoke to the lad who stood beside him.
'Ja, Oorn Paul.' And he hurried away down the reverse slope to the
pony laager.
From the firing trench at Jan Paulus's feet one of his burghers looked
up at him.
'God has heard our prayers, Oom Paul. He has given us a great victory.
' Jan Paulus nodded heavily, and his voice as he replied was low and
humble, without any trace of jubilation.
'Ja, Fredevik. In God's name, a great victory.
But not as great as I had planned it, he thought.
Out of cannon shot, almost out of range of the naked eye, the last
tattered remnants of the British were dwindling into the brown
distance.
If only they could have waited, he thought with bitterness. So clearly
I explained it to them, and they did not heed me.
His whole strategy had revolved upon the bridge. If only his burghers
on the kopJe below the heights had held their fire and let them cross.
Then God would have delivered the enemy to them in thousands instead of
hundreds. Caught in the amphitheatre of the heights with the river at
their backs none of them would have escaped when his artillery
destroyed the bridge behind them. Sadly he looked down upon the trap
