‘Nonsense,’ said Curzon. All his training, both military and social, had been directed against his showing any loss of composure before his inferiors in rank, even if those inferiors should actually be voicing his own fears. He stepped once more to the side of the hollow and stared out over the rolling plain. There was nothing to be seen except the white shrapnel bursts.
‘Our orders was to find their flank,’ said Brown, fidgeting with his sword hilt. ‘Looks to me more like as if they’ve found ours.’
‘Nonsense,’ repeated Curzon. But just exactly where the Boer firing-line was to be found was more than he could say. Those infernal kopjes all looked alike to him. He looked once more along the line of skirmishers crouching among the rocks, and as he looked he saw, here and there faces turned towards him. That was a bad sign, for men to be looking over their shoulders in the heat of action. The men must be getting anxious. He could hardly blame them, seeing that they had been trained for years to look upon a battle as a series of charges knee to knee and lance in hand against a serried enemy. This lying down to be shot at by hidden enemies a mile off was foreign to their nature. It was his duty to steady them.
‘Stay here, sergeant-major,’ he said. ‘You will take command if I’m hit.’
He stepped out from the hollow, his sword at his side, his uniform spick and span, and walked in leisurely fashion along the firing-line. He spoke to the men by name, steadily and unemotionally, as he reached each in turn. He felt vaguely as he walked that a joke or two, something to raise a laugh, would be the most effective method of address, but he never was able to joke, and as it was his mere presence and unruffled demeanour acted as a tonic on the men. Twice he spoke harshly. Once was when he found Trooper Haynes cowering behind rocks without making any attempt to return the fire, and once was when he found Trooper Maguire drinking from his water-bottle. Water out here in the veldt was a most precious possession, to be hoarded like a miser’s gold, for when there was no more water there would be no fight left in the men.
He walked down the line to one end; he walked back to the other. Sergeant-Major Brown, peeping out from his hollow, watched his officer’s fearless passage, and, with the contrariness of human nature, found himself wishing he was with him. Then, when Curzon was nearly back in safety again, Brown saw him suddenly swing right round. But next instant he was walking steadily down to the hollow, and only when he was out of sight of the men did he sit down sharply.
‘Are you hit, sir?’ asked Brown, all anxiety.
‘Yes. Don’t let the men know. I’m still in command.’
Brown hastily called the squadron first-aid corporal with his haversack of dressings. They ripped open Curzon’s coat and bound up the entrance and exit wounds. The destiny which directs the course of bullets had sent this one clean through the fleshy part of the shoulder without touching bone or artery or nerve.
‘I’m all right,’ said Curzon manfully, getting to his feet and pulling his torn coat about him. The arrival of a crawling trooper interrupted Sergeant-Major Brown’s protests.
‘Message from Sergeant Hancock, sir,’ said the trooper. ‘Ammunition’s running short.’
‘Um,’ said Curzon thoughtfully, and a pause ensued while he digested the information.
‘There ain’t fifty rounds left in our troop, sir,’ supplemented the trooper, with the insistence of his class upon harrowing detail.
‘All right,’ blazed Curzon irritably. ‘All right. Get back to the line.’
‘’Ave to do somethink now, sir,’ said Sergeant-Major Brown as the trooper crawled away.
‘Shut up and be quiet,’ snapped Curzon.
He was perfectly well aware that he must do something. As long as his men had cartridges to fire they would remain in good heart, but once ammunition failed he might expect any ugly incident to occur. There might be panic, or someone might show a white flag.
‘Trumpeter!’ called Curzon, and the trumpeter leaped up to attention to receive his orders.
The squadron came trailing back to the gully where the horses were waiting. The wounded were being assisted by their friends, but they were all depressed and ominously quiet. A few were swearing, using words of meaningless filth, under their breath.
‘What about the dead, sir?’ asked Sergeant Hancock, saluting. ‘The captain, sir?’
The regiment was still so unversed in war as to feel anxiety in the heat of action about the disposal of the dead – a reminiscence of the warfare against savage enemies which constituted the British Army’s sole recent experience. This new worry on top of all the others nearly broke Curzon down. He was on the point of blazing out with ‘Blast the dead,’ but he managed to check himself. Such a violation of the Army’s recent etiquette would mean trouble with the men.
‘I’ll see about that later. Get back into your place,’ he said. ‘Prepare to mount!’
The squadron followed him down the ravine, the useless lances cocked up at each man’s elbow, amid a squeaking of leather and a clashing of iron hoofs on the rocks. Curzon’s head was beginning to swim, what with the loss of blood, and the pain of his wound, and the strain he had undergone, and the heat of this gully. He had small enough idea of what he wanted to do – or at least he would not admit to himself that what he wanted was to make his way back to some area where the squadron would not be under fire and he might receive orders. The sense of isolation in the presence of an enemy of diabolical cunning and strength was overwhelming. He knew that he must not expose the squadron to fire while in retreat. The men would begin to quicken their horses’ pace in that event – the walk would become a trot, the trot a gallop, and his professional reputation would be blasted. The gully they were in constituted at least a shelter from the deadly hail of bullets.
The gully changed direction more than once. Soon Curzon had no idea where he was, nor whither he was going, but he was too tired and in too much pain to think clearly. The distant gun-fire seemed to roll about inside his skull. He drooped in his saddle and with difficulty straightened himself up. The fortunate gully continued a long way instead of coming to a rapid indefinite end as most gullies did in that parched plain, and the men – and Sergeant-Major Brown – were content to follow him without question. The sun was by now well down towards the horizon, and they were in the shade.
It was in fact the sight of the blaze of light which was reflected from the level plain in front which roused Curzon to the realization that the gully was about to end beyond the tangle of rocks just in front. He turned in his saddle and held up his hand to the column of men behind; they came sleepily to a halt, the horses cannoning into the hind-quarters of the horses in front, and then Curzon urged his horse cautiously forward, his trumpeter close behind.
Peering from the shelter of the rocks, Curzon beheld the finest spectacle which could gladden the eyes of a cavalry officer. The gully had led him, all unaware, actually behind the flank of the Boer position. Half a mile in front of him, sited with Boer cunning on the reverse slope of a fold in the ground, was a battery of field guns sunk in shallow pits, the guns’ crews clearly visible round them. There were groups of tethered ponies. There was a hint of rifle trenches far in front of the guns, and behind the guns were wagons and mounted staffs. There was all the vulnerable exposed confusion always to be found behind a firing-line, and he and his squadron was within easy charging distance of it all, their presence unsuspected.
Curzon fought down the nightmare feeling of unreality which was stealing over him. He filed the squadron out of the gully and brought it up into line before any Boer had noticed them. Then, forgetting to draw his sword, he set his spurs into his horse and rode steadily, three lengths in front of his charging line, straight at the guns. The trumpeters pealed the charge as the pace quickened.
No undisciplined militia force could withstand the shock of an unexpected attack from the flank, however small the force which delivered it. The Boer defence which had all day held up the English attack collapsed like a pricked balloon. The whole space was black with men running for their ponies. Out