Part 46 (1/2)
”Pooh! They're n.o.body. I mean the officers. The chief's leg's pretty nearly right again, and he was saying at mess only yesterday that it was a most unnatural state of affairs for British officers to be forced by a set of low-bred Dutch Boers, no better than farm-labourers, to eat their beef without either mustard, horse-radish, or salt.”
”Horrible state of dest.i.tution,” I said quietly.
”None of your sneers, Farmer Val,” he cried. ”He's right, and I'm getting sick of it myself. He says it is such an ign.o.ble position for a mounted corps to suffer themselves to be shut up here, and not to make another dash for freedom.”
”Well, I shall be glad if we make another attempt to get through their lines,” I said thoughtfully.
”That's what the Major said, when, hang me! if the chief didn't turn suddenly round like a weatherc.o.c.k, and say that what we were doing was quite right, because we held this great force of Boers occupied so that the General might carry out his plans without being hara.s.sed by so large a body of men.”
”That's right enough,” I said.
”Don't you get blowing hot and cold,” cried Denham, with impatience. ”Then some one else sided with the Colonel. It was the doctor, I think. He said the General must know when, where, and how we were situated, and that sooner or later he would attack the Boers, rout them, and set us at liberty.”
”That sounds wise,” I hazarded.
”No, it doesn't,” said my companion; ”because we shouldn't want setting at liberty then. Do you suppose that if we heard the General's guns, and found that he was attacking the enemy, we should sit still here and look on?”
”Well, it wouldn't be right,” I replied.
”Right? Of course not. As soon as the attack was made we should file out and begin to hover on the enemy's flank or rear, or somewhere else, waiting our time, and then go at them like a wedge and scatter them. Oh, how I do long to begin!”
”It seems to me,” I said thoughtfully, ”that the General ought to have sent some one to find us and bring us a despatch ordering the Colonel what to do.”
”I dare say he has-half-a-dozen by now-and the Boers have captured them; but it doesn't matter.”
”Doesn't matter?” I said wonderingly.
”No; because, depend upon it, he'd have ordered us to sit fast till he came.”
”Well, but oughtn't the Colonel to have sent out a despatch or two telling the General how we are fixed?”
”Yes-no-I don't know,” said Denham sourly. ”I'm only a subaltern-a bit of machinery that is wound up sometimes by my superior officers, and then I turn round till I'm stopped. Subalterns are not expected to have any brains, or to think for themselves.”
”Now you are exaggerating,” I said.
”Not a bit of it, my little man. But I know what I should have done if I had been chief.”
”What's that?”
”Sent out a smart fellow who could track and ride.”
”With a despatch for the General?”
”No; a message that couldn't fall into the enemy's hands. I'd have gone like a shot.”
”You couldn't send yourself,” I said dryly.
”Eh? What do you mean?”
”You were telling me what you would have done if you had been chief.”