It was W. Keyse's fellow-sentry from the opposite flank of the Convent.

"And time you turned up, I don't think," commented W. Keyse. "Didn't you 'ear me sing out to you just now?"

"Come, now, what were you up to?" the Sergeant pressed. "Better up an' own it if you've bin asleep on guard."

The eager faces crowded round. The object of interest and comment, not at all sympathetic or polite, was a stout, respectable tradesman, with a large, round, ghastly face, who saluted his officer with a trembling hand.

"I--I have been the victim of an outrage, sir!"

"Sorry to hear it; what's your name?"

"Brooker, sir," volunteered W. Keyse's Corporal. "The other sentry we put on with Keyse here."

"Mr. Brooker, sir, General Stores, Market Square," babbled the citizen.

"Well, Private Brooker, what have you to say?"

"I have been drugged or hypnotised, sir, and robbed of my gun while in a state of insensibility, sir--upon my honour as an Alderman and Magistrate of this borough! Swear me, sir, if you have any doubt of my veracity!" He flapped his hands like fins, and his bandolier heaved above a labouring bosom.

The Commander of the picket looked preternaturally grave.

"Very sorry, Private Brooker, but unless the Sergeant has brought his Testament along, you'll have to give your information in the ordinary way.

So they drugged you or hypnotised you--or both, was it?--and took away your rifle. Of course you saw it done?"

"No, sir, I did not see it done. When I woke up ..."

"Ah, when you woke up! Please go on."

The crowding faces of B.S.A. men and Town Guardsmen were grinning now. The patrol-officer was rocking in his saddle.

"When I revived, sir, from the swoon or trance ..."

"Very good, Private Brooker; we'll hear the rest of that in the morning.

Sergeant, relieve these sentries, and bring Private Keyse and the hypnotic subject before me in the morning. Make this man Brooker a prisoner at large for the present, and fall in the picket."

The Sergeant saluted. "Very good, sir."

The bubbling Brooker boiled over frothily as the sentries were changing.

"A prisoner! Good G.o.d! do they take me for a traitor? A Magistrate ... an Alderman, the President of the Gas Committee ..."

"I should 'ave guessed you to be that if I 'adn't 'eard it, sonny," said the Sergeant dryly, the implied sarcasm provoking a subdued guffaw. He added, as the visiting patrol rode on and the picket marched back to the Cemetery: "Can't relieve you of your rifle, because you 'aven't got 'er.

What in 'Eaven's name are they goin' to do to you? Well, you'll find out to-morrow. Left face; quick march!"

Counting left-right, and keeping elbow-touch with the next man, W. Keyse got in a whisper:

"I say, Sergeant, am I in for it as well as Ole Bulgy Weskit? You might as well let me know and charnce it!"

The Sergeant answered with unfeeling indifference:

"Since you ask, I should say you was."

"That's a bit 'ard! Wot'll I git?"

"Ten to one, your skater."

"Wot is my skater?"

"Your Corporal's stripe, you suckin' innocent! Wot for? For takin' a Boer spy pris'ner--that's wot for!"

"Cripps!" said W. Keyse, enlightened, illuminated and glowing in the darkness. He added a moment later, in rather a depressed tone: "But it was 'im, the civilian bloke with the beard, 'oo downed the Dutchy, an' sat on 'im till the guard come up."

The Sergeant was ahead of the half-company, speaking to the officer in charge. It was the Corporal who answered, across the man who marched upon the left of W. Keyse:

"O' course it was. But you 'ad the Dopper fust, and," he cackled quietly, "the Colonel won't be jealous."

The eyes and mouth of W. Keyse became circular.

"The who?"

"The Colonel, didn't you 'ear me say?"

"That wasn't never ... _'im_"?

"All right, since you know best. But him, for all that!"

"Great Jiminy Cripps!" gasped W. Keyse.

XXIII

You are to imagine Dawn, trailing weary-footed over the interminable plain, to find Gueldersdorp, lonely before, and before threatened, now isolated like some undaunted coral rock in mid-Pacific, crested with screaming sea-birds, girt with roaring breakers, set in the midst of waters haunted by myriads of hungry sharks. Ringed with silent menace, she squatted on her low hill, doggedly waiting the event.

It was known that on the previous day the telegraph wires north of Beaton had been cut, and this day was to sever the last link with Cape Town at Maripo, some forty miles south. The railway bridge that crossed the Olopo River might go next. Staat's Engineers had been busy there overnight.

Rumour had it, Heaven knows how, that the armoured train that had been sent up from the Cape with two light guns of superseded pattern--a generous contribution towards the collection of obsolete engines now bristling from the sand-bagged ramparts--had been seized by a commando, with the officer and the men in charge. This was to be confirmed later by the arrival of an engine-driver minus five fingers and some faith in the omnipotence of British arms. But at the beginning of this chapter he was hiding in a sand-hole, chewing the cud of his experiences, in default of other pabulum, and did not get in before dark of the long blazing day.

Crowds gathered on the barely-reclaimed veld at the northern end of the town to see the Military Executive take over the Hospital. But that the streets were barricaded with waggons and every able-bodied male citizen carried a rifle, it might have been mistaken for an occasion of national rejoicing or civic festivity. The leaves of the pepper-trees fringing the thoroughfares and clumped in the Market Square rustled in the faint hot breeze. By-and-by they were to stand scorched and seared and naked under the iron hail that beat in blizzards upon them, and die in the noxious lyddite fumes dispersed by bursting sh.e.l.ls.

The variegated crowd cheered as the Staff dismounted at the white-painted iron gates of the railed-in Hospital grounds. It was not the acclamation of admiration, it was the cheer expectant. They wanted to know what the Officer in Command was going to do? Intolerable suspense racked them.

Wherever it was known that he would be, there they followed at this juncture--solid ma.s.ses of humanity, bored with innumerable ear-holes, and enamelled with patient, glittering, expectant eyes. His own keen, kindly glance swept over them as he touched his grey felt hat in acknowledgment of their dubious greeting, that half-hearted but well-meant cheer. He read the mute question written upon all the faces. Part of his answer to the interrogation was standing in the Railway-yard, but they would have to wait a little while longer yet--just a little longer. He whistled his pleasant melodious little tune as the porter hurried to open the gates.

One pair of pale, rather ugly eyes in the crowd were illumined with pure hero-worship. "That's 'im," explained their owner, nudging a big man in shabby white drill, who was shouldering a deliberate way through the press.