continuous metallic rattle of breech bolts reloading.
'You must signal to the guns, Oom Paul,' the burgher next to him
reminded him.
'Ja, ' Jan Paulus removed the homburg from his head and waved with it
at the fat mound at Aloe Knoll behind them. He saw his signal briefly
acknowledged and knew that the order to cease fire was being flashed by
heliograph to the batteries.
They waited, tensed to charge, a long line of men. Jan Paulus glanced
along them and saw that each man stared ahead fixedly.
Most of their faces masked by beards of fifty different hues, but here
and there a lad too young for this work, too young to hide his fear.
Thank God my eldest is not yet twelve, or he would be here.
He stopped that train of thought guiltily, and concentrated his whole
attention on the volume of shell-fire that raged just ahead of them.
Abruptly it ceased, and in the comparative silence the rifle-fire
sounded strangely subdued. Jan Paulus let the slow seconds pass,
counting silently to ten, before he filled his lungs and roared:
Vrystaat! Come on the Free Staters!'
Echoing his cry, yelling wildly, his burghers surged forward over the
crest on to the English flank. They came from so close in, seeming to
appear as a solid wall from under the English parapet, that the
momentum of their charge carried them instantly into the depleted line
of shell-shocked, thirst-tormented and dazed Lancashires. Hardly a
shot was fired, and though a few individual scuffles rippled the smooth
onward flow of the charge-most of the English responded immediately to
the shouts of
'Hands Op! Hands Op! ' by throwing down their rifles and climbing
wearily to their feet with hands held high. They were surrounded by
jubilant burghers and hustled over the parapet and down the slope
towards Aloe Knoll. A great milling throng of burghers, and soldiers
spread over fifty yards of the trench.
'Quickly!' Jan Paulus shouted above the hubbub. 'Catch them and take
them away.' He was well aware that this was only a very localized
victory, involving perhaps a tenth of the enemy.
Already cries of
'The Lanes are giving in!' 'Where are the officers?'' 'Back, you men,'
were spreading along the English line. He had planted the gerni of
defeat among them, now he must spread it through them before he could
carry the entire position. Frantically he signalled for reinforcements
from the Boer positions along the crest, hundreds of his burghers were
already running forward from Aloe Knoll.
Another five minutes and complete victory would emerge from the
confusion.
'Damn you, sir! What do you think you're doing!' The voice behind him
was impregnated with authority, unmistakably that of a high-ranking
officer. Jan Paulus wheeled to face a tall and enraged old gentleman,
whose pointed grey whiskers quivered with fury. The apoplectic crimson
of his countenance clashed horribly with its coating of red dust.
'I am taking your men hands-up away. ' Jan Paulus struggled gumnally
