bullied and driven men up the slopes of Spion Kop. And now ground him
the mountain rustled and murmured with five thousand waiting burghers,
and in an arc of 120 degrees behind it stood his guns. From Green Hill
in the northwest to the reverse slopes of the Twin Peaks in the east,
his gunners crouched beside their creusots and their Nordenfeldts,
ready to range in upon the crest of Spion Kop.
All things are ready and now I must earn the right to wear this hat. He
grinned and settled the homburg more firmly over his ears.
'Hennie, take, my horse back to the laager.
The boy led it away and he started up the last slope towards the
summit. The light strengthened as he climbed and the burghers among
the rocks recognized the flaming beacon of his beard.
' Goeie Jag, Oom Paul,' and,
'Kom saam om die Rooi Nekke te ski et ' they called. Then two burghers
ran down to meet him.
'Oom Paul. We've just been forward to Aloe Knoll. There are no
English on it!'
'Are you sure?' It seemed too generous a gift of fortune
'Ja, man. They are all on the back of the mountain. We heard them
digging and talking there.'
'What commando are you?' Jan Paulus demanded of the men massed around
him in the mist.
'The Carolina commando' voices answered.
'Come,' ordered Jan Paulus. 'Come, all of you. We are going to Aloe
Knoll.'
They followed. Skirting the summit, with the brush, brush, brush of
hundreds of feet through the grass, hurrying so that their breathing
steamed in the moist air. Until abruptly ahead of them humped the dark
mound of Aloe Knoll and they swarmed over it and disappeared among the
rocks and crevices like a column of ants returning to their nest.
Lying on his belly Jan Paulus lit his pipe and tamped down on the
glowing tobacco with a fire-calloused thumb, sucked the smoke into his
mouth and peered into the solid white curtain of mist. In the eerie
silence that had fallen upon the mountain his stomach rumbled loudly
and he remembered that he had not eaten since the previous noon. There
was a stick of biltong in his coat pocket.
A lion hunts best on an empty stomach, he thought and drew again on his
pipe.
'Here comes the wind,' a voice whispered near him, and he heard the
rising sibilance of it through the aloes above his head.
The aloes stood tall as a man, multi-headed, green candelabra tipped in
crimson and gold, nodding slightly in the morning wind.
'Ja. ' Jan Paulus felt it stirring deep in his chest, that blend of
fear and exhilaration that drowned his fatigue. 'Here it comes.'
He knocked out his pipe, stuffed it still hot into his pocket and
lifted his rifle from the rock in front of him.
Dramatically, as though unveiling a monument, the wind stripped the
mists away. Beneath a sky of cobalt blue, soft golden brown in the
early sunshine, lay the rounded peak of Spion Kop.
A long uneven scar of red earth five hundred yards long was slashed
