but I could not meet and hold them with three hundred.
Two days I have waited in agony for my columns to cover the twenty
miles from Colenso. TWo days while the cannon bogged down in the
mud.
Two days while I watched their cavalry, foot soldiers and wagons
crossing the drift and I could not stop them.
Now they are ready. Tomorrow they will come up to us. they will come,
to try at any other place is madness, a stupidity far beyond any they
have shown before They cannot try the right, for to reach it they must
march across our front. With little cover and the river fencing them
in they would expose their flank to us at two thousand yards. No, they
cannot try the right-not even Buller will try the right.
Slowly he turned his head and looked out to the left where the tall
peaks rose sheer out of the heights. The formation of the ground
resembled the bak of a gigantic fish. Jan Paulus stood upon its head,
on the relatively smooth slope of Tabanyana. but on his left rose the
dorsal fin of the fish. This was a series of peaks, Vaalkrans,
Brakfontein, Twin Peaks, Conical Hill and, the highest and the most
imposing of all, Spion KOP.
Once again, he experienced the nagging prickle of doubt.
Surely no man, not even Buller, would throw any army against that line
of natural fortresses. It would be senseless as the sea hurling its
surf at a line of granite cliffs. Yet the doubt remained.
perhaps Buller, that pedestrian and completely predictable man, Buller
who seemed eternally committed to the theory of frontal assault,
perhaps this time he would know that the slopes of Tabanyama were too
logically the only point at which he could break through. Perhaps he
would know that the whole of the Boer Army waited for him there with
all their guns Perhaps he would guess that only twenty burghers guarded
each of the peaks on the left flank-that Jan Paulus had not dared to
spread his line so thin, and had risked everything on Tabanyarna.
Jan Paulus sighed. Now it was past the time for doubt. He had made
the choice and tomorrow they would know. Tomorrow, van more.
Heavily he turned away and started down towards the laager.
The moon was setting behind the black massif of Spion Kop, and its
shadow hid the path. Loose rock rolled under his feet.
Jan Paulus stumbled and almost fell.
'Wies Door? ' The challenge from an outcrop of granite beside the
path.
'A friend.' Jan Paulus saw the man now, he leaned against the rock
with a Mauser held low across his hips.
'Tell me-what commando are you with?'
'The Wynbergers under Leroux.
'So! Do you know Leroux?' the sentry asked.
'Yes.
'What colour is his beard?'
'Red-red as the flames of hell.
The sentry laughed.
'Tell Oom Paul from me I'll tie a knot in it next time I see him.
'Best you shave before you try-he might do the same for you,' Jan
