"Did ye ever know a Dutch boss av any kind clane-shaved an' not hairy-faced?" was Kildare's just retort, "or see a crowd av Doppers gathered together that the blue smoke av the Blessed Creature was not curlin' out av their mouths an' ears an' noses, an' Old Square Face or Van der Hump makin' the rounds?"

"You thought the blokes on the metals was a workin' gang of our chaps at the fust go off," complained the guard, "an' you opened the whistle to warn 'em!"

"He did that for sure," put in the Cardiff stoker. "But he was tipping me the wink while he did it, so he was; as much as to say he knew they were Boers all the time."

"Would they have stopped where they was, well widin range, av I had let on I knew they was a parcel av unwashed Dutchmen?" demanded Kildare hotly.

"Would they have hung on as I pushed her towards thim--would they have stopped to watch me uncouplin' the two thrucks, smilin' wid simple interest in their haythen faces, av they had not taken me for a suckin'

lamb in oily overalls that took themselves for sheep av the same fold?"

"They got a bit suspicious when we steamed orf," said the guard; "more than a bit suspicious, they did."

"They took the thrucks for the Armoured Thrain," recounted Kildare, with a radiant smile illuminating a countenance of surpa.s.sing griminess, "an'

they rode to widin range, an' got off their hairies, an' dhropped in a volley just to insinse them they took to be squattin' down inside them insijious divizes, into what they would be gettin' if they put up the heads av them." He mopped his br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes with a handful of cotton waste, not innocent of lubricating fluid. "Tower av Ivory! 'twas grand to see the contimpt av thim when the cowards widin did not reply. 'Donder!'

says the gaffer in the tay-thray hat and the beard like the grandfather av all the billygoats. 'Is this,' he says, 'the British pluck they talk about? Show thim verdant English a Dutchman behind a geweer,' he says, an'

that's what they call a gun in their dirty lingo--'an' they lie down wid all four legs in the air like a puppy that sees the whip. Plug thim again, my sons,' says he, 'an' wid the blessin' av Heaven, we'll stiffen the lot!'"

"You could never hear him, so you could not, not at all that distance,"

the Cardiff stoker objected.

"Could I not see him, ye blind harper, swearin' in dumb show, an' urgin'

thim to shoot sthraight for the honour av the Republics an' give the rooi batchers Jimmy O! Ga-_lant_-ly they respondid, battherin' the sides av the mysterious locomotive containin' the b.l.o.o.d.y an' rapacious soldiery av threacherous England wid nickel-plated Mauser bullets, ontil she hiccoughs indacintly, an' wid a bellow to bate St. Fin Barr's bull, kicks herself to pieces!"

"She did so, surely," affirmed the Cardiff stoker. "Surely she did so."

"Tell the Colonel 'ow the engine jumped right off the metals," advised the guard.

"Clane she did," went on Kildare jubilantly, "an' rattled Davis an' me inside the cab like pays in an iron pod. See the funny-bone I sthripped agin' the side av her!" He exhibited a raw elbow for the inspection of the Chief. "An' when Davis gets the betther av the rest av the black that's on him wid soft soap an' hot wather, there's an oi he'll not wash off."

"The brake-handle did that, it did so," said Davis, touching the optic tenderly. But Kildare was answering a question of the Chiefs.

"Killed! Wisha, yarra! av I'd left a dozen an twenty to the back av that sthretched on the bog behind me, it's a glad man I'd be to have it to tell ye, sorr. But barrin' they wor' blown to smithereens entirely, not a livin' man or horse av thim did I see dead at all, at all. But the Sergeant an' the Reconnoithrin' Party will asy know the place--asy--by the thundherin' big hole that's knocked in the permanent way there, sizable enough to bury...." He paused, for once at a loss.

"Korah, Dathan, and Abiram," suggested Davis, who, as a Bible Baptist, had a fund of Scripture knowledge upon which he occasionally drew, "with their families and their pavilions and all their substance...."

"Av Cora was there," said Kildare, "she was disguised as a Dutchman, for sorrow an' oi I clapped on any human baste that was not a square-b.u.t.tocked Boer in tan-cord throusers. Thank you, sorr, your Honour, an' good luck to yourself an' all av us! An' we'll dhrink your Honour's health wid it."

"We will so!" agreed Davis, as the sovereign, dropped into his own twice-greased palm, vanished in the recesses of his black and oleaginous overalls.

"Thankee, sir. You're a gentleman, sir!" the guard acknowledged, touching his cap and concealing the gold coin slid into his own ready hand with professional celerity.

"Begob! an' you might have tould the Colonel somethin' that was news,"

commented Kildare, as the tall, active figure stepped lightly over the metals and pa.s.sed up the ramp, and 123 trundled on, and backed into the engine-shed amidst a salvo of cheers and hand-clapping.

The Colonel whistled his pleasant little tune quite through as, the Reconnoitring Party despatched to the scene of the explosion, he went contentedly back to luncheon at Nixey's. True, Kildare had said, and as the Sergeant in command regretfully testified later, said correctly, that neither Boer nor beast had been put out of action by the flying debris. A poor reprisal had been made, in the opinion of some malcontents, for the act of War committed by the forces of the Republics in crossing the Border, in cutting the telegraph lines, and destroying the railway-bridge.

But the moral result was anything but trifling, in its effect upon the Boer mind. The "new square gun" became a proverb of dread, inspiring a salutary fear of more traps of the same kind, "set by that slim duyvel, the English Commandant," and threw over the innocent stretch of veld outside those trivial sand-bagged defences the glamour of the Mysterious and the Unknown. No solid Dutchman welcomed the idea of soaring skywards in a mult.i.tude of infinitesimal fragments, in company with other Free Staters or sons of the Transvaal Republic similarly reduced.

No more boasts on the part of Brounckers, General in command of those ma.s.sed, menacing, united laagers on the Border, seven miles from Gueldersdorp as the crow flew. No more imaginative promises with reference to the taking of the small, defiant hamlet before breakfast, wiping out the garrison to a rooinek, and starting on the homeward march refreshed with coffee and biltong, and driving the towns-people before them as prisoners of War. The desperate perils presented by the conjectural and largely non-existent mine were thenceforth to loom largely and luridly in the telegrams that went up to Pretoria.

"There's a lot in bluff, you know," that "slim duyvel," the Commandant of the rooineks, said long afterwards. "And we bluffed about the Mines, real and dummy, for all we were worth!"

So, possibly with premonition of the telegram that was even then clicking out its message at Pretoria, there was a note of satisfaction in his whistle out of keeping with the execution actually done, as Nixey's Hotel came in sight with the Union Jack floating over it, denoting that all was well. That flagstaff, with its changing signals, was to dominate the popular pulse ere long. But in these days it merely denoted Staff Quarters, and War, with its grim accompanying horrors, seemed a long way off.

A white-gowned European nursemaid on the opposite street-corner waved and shrieked to her deserting elder charges, and the Chief's quick eye noted that the small, sunburned, active, bare legs of the boy and girl in cool sailor-suits of blue-and-white linen twill, were scampering in his direction. He knew his fascination for children, and instinctively slackened his stride as they came up, abreast now, and shyly hand in hand:

"Mister Colonel ...?" The speaker touched the expansive brim of a straw sailor hat with a fine a.s.sumption of adult coolness.

"Quite right, and who are you?"

The small boy hesitated, plainly at a nonplus. The round-eyed girl tugged at the boy's sailor jumper, whispering:

"I _saided_ he wouldn't know you!"

"I fought he would. Because Mummy said he wemembered our names ve uvver night at ve Hotel ... when he promised ... about ve animals from Wodesia ... all made of mud, an' feavers, and bits of fur ..."

Memory gave up the missing names, helped by those boyish replicas of the candid clear grey eyes of the Mayor's wife, shining under the drooping plume of fair hair.

"Mummy was quite right, Hammy, and Berta was wrong, because I remember your names quite well, you see. And the birds and beasts and insects are in a box at my quarters. Come and get them."

"If Anne doesn't kick up a wow?" hesitated Hammy, his small brown hand already in the larger one.

"We'll arrange it with Anne." He waited for the arrival of the white-canopied perambulator and its fluttering-ribboned guardian to say, with a tone and smile that won her instant suffrages: "I'm going to borrow these children for a minute or so. Will you come into the shade and rest?

I promise not to keep you long."

Beauvayse and Lady Hannah's Captain Bingo, relieved from lookout duty, and descending in quest of food from the Chief's particular eyrie on the roof of Nixey's Hotel, heard shrieks of infant laughter coming from the coffee-room. Knives, forks, and gla.s.ses had been ruthlessly swept from the upper end of one of the tables laid for the Staff luncheon, and across the fair expanse of linen, pounded into whiteness and occasional holes by the vigorous thumpers of the Kaffir laundry-women, meandered a marvellous procession of quagga and koodoo, rhino and hartebeest, lion and giraffe, ostrich and elephant, modelled by the skilful hands of Matabele toy-makers. Tarantula, with wicked bright eyes of shining berries, brought up the rear, with the bee, and the mole-cricket, and, with bulgy brown, white-striped body and long wings importantly crossed behind its back, a tsetse of appallingly gigantic size....

"Oh, fank you, Mister Colonel," Hammy was saying, with shining eyes of rapture fixed upon the glorious ones; "and is they weally my own, my vewy own, for good?"

"Yours and Berta's, really and for good."

"And won't you"--Hammy's magnificent effort at disinterestedness brought the tears into his eyes--"won't you want vem to play wif, _ever_ yourself?"

The deft hands swept the birds and beasts, with tarantula and tsetse, into the wooden box, and lifted the children from their chairs, as Captain Bingo and Beauvayse, following the D.A.A.G., came in, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with various versions of what had happened out there on the veld....

"I have other things to play with just now, Hammy. Run along with Berta now. You'll find your nurse in the hall."

Berta put up her face confidently to be kissed. Hammy, in manly fashion, offered a hand--the left--the right arm being occupied with the box of toys. As Berta's little legs scampered through the door, he delayed to ask:

"What are your playfings, Mister Colonel?"

"Live men and big guns, just now, Hammy; and chances and issues, and results and risks."

The plume of fair hair fell back, clearing the candid grey eyes as Hammy lifted up his face, confidently lisping:

"I don't quite fink I know what wesults and wisks are, but I'd like to play wif the live men an' the big guns too sometimes ... if you didn't want vem always?"

"We'll see about it, Hammy, when you're grown up."