Part 11

He was obscure enough now, and were his Chief allowed to carry out his present intention of returning, a failure self-confessed, the cloud that, in the future, would assuredly overhang Bradford's name, would also serve to blot out altogether that of the failure's personal staff officer. No, this was his chance, the last he would have, and take it he would. His eyes shone, his jaw set, and, clambering down from the rock, he regained the sheep-track, and set off at a run for the bivouac.

* * * * *

"Where the dickens has the fellow got to, d'you think, Godwin?" said Bradford, laying down the battered-looking novel he was reading by the light of a camp-lantern.

Dinner was long since over in the Headquarter Mess, and the two were sitting there alone, the rest of the party having retired to bed.

"Goodness knows, sir," answered the other, a long-nosed individual with a high forehead, who was generally supposed to be the ugliest man in South Africa: "he's nowhere in camp, for I've sent all round to see. Must have got through the sentries and been captured, or shot, or something. That jacket of his would be rather a prize for a Dutch lady, make her a nice combing-jacket."

"I particularly ordered him to keep within the boundaries," said Bradford irritably. "Damn the fellow, he's been more trouble to me than the whole of the rest of the column. But never mind about him now; about those orders, you understand, that we remain here to-morrow to rest, and the next day start back?"

"You think it's no further use, sir?"

"None, I---- Hullo, who's this? Why it's--where the dickens have you been, Graeme? We've been hunting all over the bivouac for you, disobeying my orders again, I suppose, and----"

"I've found Van der Tann, Colonel," panted Graeme.

"What!"

"He's in a valley about seven miles away; his whole commando's there, I saw it."

"North, south, east, or west?" asked Godwin, his green eyes fixed on Hector's face.

"Oh, over there," pointing into the darkness.

"That's west," said the Chief of the Staff, "in which case we passed within a few miles of him to-day. Sure you saw him, Graeme?"

"Positive. I was quite close, crept down the mountain-side--almost a precipice it was, too--and got within a hundred yards of them; there were about five hundred, I should say."

"That coat of yours make you invisible, Graeme?" resumed Godwin, glancing at Bradford. "You must have gone through their sentries as you did ours. Van der Tann's commando, sir," to Bradford, "is, as you know, a thousand strong, at least."

"Major Godwin, do you mean that I'm a liar?"

"Oh, be quiet, Graeme," said Bradford wearily. "remember to whom you're talking. Do you mean seriously to tell me you have seen Van der Tann's commando?"

"I do."

"You're quite sure you weren't deceived by the darkness, didn't mistake cattle for horses, for instance? It's a thing anybody might do, you know."

"I'm quite sure, sir."

Bradford stared hard at him for a moment, and then looked towards his Chief of the Staff.

"What do you make of it, Godwin?" he said.

For a few seconds the long-nosed man made no answer; his green eyes were fixed upon Hector.

"I think, sir," he said after a pause, and a rather curious quaver was in his voice, "I think it might be worth trying."

Another pause followed, and Bradford rose, and taking a map from his haversack spread it on the table.

"Now, Graeme," he said, "show us as nearly as you can where this fellow lies."

"There," said Graeme, putting his finger on the map.

"Could you guide a column to the place, do you think?"

"Yes, blindfold."

Another pause, then Bradford spoke, with restored confidence in his voice--here was something tangible to fight, not an atmosphere--"Send to commanding officers at once, please, Major Godwin," he said, "and tell them to come here."

Godwin left, returning a few minutes afterwards.

"We shall want three columns," continued Bradford, "one here, one there, and another where Graeme was standing. You'll take one, Godwin, I another, and--and Carthew, I suppose, the third."

"For heaven's sake not him, sir," put in Graeme quickly.

"Kindly hold your tongue, sir, and don't interfere," answered Bradford, his assurance growing.

"But he won't get there, sir; it's a beast of a road, and he'll turn back for certain. It's courting failure to send him. Let me have the third column, sir, I found the man."

"You, a Captain, utterly impossible," Bradford was beginning, when Hector received quite unlooked-for support.

"With all respect, sir," said Godwin, "I think, if it could be managed, Graeme's wish should be indulged. As he says, sir, he found the man, and----" but here once more the odd quaver sounded in the speaker's voice; he paused, and then continued, "Apart from everything else, he alone knows the track."

"But how the dickens can I? He'd be junior to the leader."

"I think I could arrange that, sir. Keep Colonel Carthew with you, and give Graeme the Colonial troops. There are less than a hundred of them, quite enough for the third column, if what he says is right about the ground. He said, didn't you, Graeme?" turning to the latter, "that you were standing on the edge of a precipice, so they're hardly likely to break that way. Let him have Rufford's lot, sir; he's only a Captain too, and won't mind, I know."

"He's a Major by now, though his name is not in the 'Gazette' yet; besides, even as a Captain, he's senior to Graeme."

Godwin, however, stuck to his point.

"Send him a note, sir, telling him to act under _Major_ Graeme's orders to-night. You can rectify the mistake to-morrow."

"Oh, damn it, Godwin, what for?"

"Because," burst in Hector, "Major Godwin knows that I can carry this thing through. I'll have my lot in position, sir, at any hour you like, if I have to carry them there. I don't think you know me, sir," he added quietly, and Godwin, watching his face, suddenly realised that this statement was possibly correct.

Between the two, Colonel Bradford gave way.

"Very well," he said slowly, "I'll write the order, though I don't like doing it. You give it, Godwin, or, better still, as he might ask questions, you take it yourself, Graeme, to Rufford. If you like to lie about it you can, I won't, nor shall my staff officer."

"Here's the order," writing it out as he spoke and handing it to Hector. "Now be off and make your arrangements. You must be in position overlooking that valley before dawn. Understand?"

"Perfectly, sir," answered Graeme, and hurried away through the darkness to where the Colonial troops were lying. Here he found Rufford, and to him handed the order.

"What's the game now?" said the latter, opening the envelope and reading its contents. "Oh, command my beggars, is it? All right, you're welcome to, if you can, though it's pretty hard cases you'll find 'em. Sit down, and tell us about it. Have a fill," handing him his pouch; "got no whiskey to offer you, only baccy, and that mostly dust."

"Call up your officers at once, please, Captain Rufford, and rout out the men."

"Oho! coming the old soldier, are you? Can't be done, old chap; you'll hear something if you try it. They're all dossed down and asleep by now."

"Rout 'em out, I say. Oh, damn it, man, don't sit gaping there, here, give me that lantern, now, where are they? The officers first, please," and, followed by the grinning Rufford, Hector hurried away to where a row of blanket-covered figures were lying close by, and thereupon proceeded to rouse the slumberers, with an energy and flow of words, which speedily changed their feelings of wrath at the awakening into respect and desire to be up and doing. This achieved, he flew down the men's line, cursing, exhorting, joking as he went, till all were astir and busy with bridle and saddle. Then, leaving them to their work, he hurried away to Headquarters, where his own horse was now waiting. This he mounted, galloped back, and, quickly marshalling his small force, was away, at their head, on his mission, a good half-hour before the other two columns had begun to turn out.

Through the black night he drove them on; now dismounting to lead up some steep boulder-strewn hillock, now plunging down into the depths at a pace which made even the careless Colonials hold their breath.

"The devil's in the fellow," muttered Rufford, from his post in rear, whither he had been despatched to whip up stragglers. "Slack, casual beggar I always thought him, and here he is hustling my crowd along as I'd never dare, well as I know 'em. Damme. They seem to like it too, rum thing. Wonder what he's after? Choked me off to rights when I asked him, thought for a moment he meant braining me with that old knobkerrie of his. Well, I don't care, let him run his own show; he seem to know all about it. Now then, close up, will you, what the hell are you hanging back for? Oh, 'halt,' is it? What's that? Pass it on, confound you--oh, 'officers.'" And thereupon Rufford hurried up to the front, where he found Graeme surrounded by the rest of the officers.

"Keep back from me, will you," he was saying, "now then, listen," whereupon, in quick sharp sentences, clear as daylight, though couched in somewhat unmilitary phraseology, Hector proceeded to give out his orders. "Now, be off," he concluded, and the group broke up and hurried away.

The tramp of feet followed soon after, and then, in single file, up came the men, rifle at the trail; two columns of them, one on each side of the track. Arrived at where Hector was standing, the leading files of each column wheeled off to the right and left respectively, followed by those in rear, till all were gone, swallowed up in the darkness. Now and again the clatter of loose stones was heard, a stifled oath in answer, and then these sounds, too, ceased, and all was still and silent as before.

For a few minutes Hector stood, his heart swelling with exultation at the good work accomplished. In less than two hours he had brought his force eight miles through the heart of the mountains--and this on a pitch-dark night--exactly to the spot desired.

They were not men of his own regiment either, but Colonials, who were notoriously independent and difficult to manage, and yet without the slightest difficulty he had managed them. From the time when, in face of their own commander's warnings, he had roused them from their beds, there had not only been no murmuring, but, on the contrary, a willing obedience and confidence in his leadership. And to-morrow, or rather to-day, when the fighting began...

Suddenly realisation came to Hector, and from the heights he fell headlong to the depths, the certainty of disappointment upon him. Fool that he was to have forgotten; fighting, there would be no fighting; there was, there could be, no one in that valley below. No, the darkness would lift, the emptiness be revealed, and all his labour would be gone or nothing--worse still, unrecognised.

Hector did not fear the consequences to himself once the fraud was discovered, for that was the gamble, and if he lost, he was prepared to pay, but to know himself a leader of men, and for that knowledge to go unshared by all save him, that to Graeme was bitterer than death. A dreary laugh broke from his lips as the realisation of the giant hoax he had played upon all, himself included, came home to him. He pictured Bradford and the long-nosed Godwin struggling over the mountains; their cautious injunctions for silence in the ranks, the eager anticipation of the officers as they posted their men, and impressed upon them the necessity of straight-shooting. God! how absurd it all was, how damnably absurd.

Then, as hope never dies in human hearts, a thrill of excitement ran through him, as he became aware that the solid blackness was loosening and the hour of revelation close at hand. With heart wildly beating, he watched the shapeless masses around him take form and become the tops of mountains, blurred at first, and then sharply defined against a sky fading from violet to green. And suddenly it was light, and a still grey world stood revealed.

Straining his eyes downwards, he lay till the last patch of shadow clothing the valley below had melted away, when, with a sudden cry of exultation, Graeme flung his helmet into the air, and rolled over and over on the grass, laughing hysterically at what he had seen. In the centre of the valley, or, rather, horseshoe-shaped indentation in the mountains, stood a rough farmhouse, with a cluster of large cattle kraals close by, and around the house and filling the kraals were dark masses of horses. It was Van der Tann's commando beyond a doubt.

No sooner had one hope been realised, and anxiety relieved, than another equally insistent took its place--the fear of the escape of the quarry lying so unsuspectingly below. True, the main entrance, that on the side farthest away from him, and leading into the open veldt beyond, would be certainly held and barred by now; nor was flight possible up the mountains on either side, for these rose sheer from the valley's level. No, it was not there that the danger lay, but at his end; for Graeme had made a mistake, and a bad one, the previous night. He was not standing at the edge of a precipice, as he had imagined, but on a neck or depression between two hilltops, whence the ground sloped gently to the farmhouse, forming a natural causeway at least two hundred yards across, and easily accessible to Boer ponies and horsemen, who, finding other exit barred, would assuredly turn about and make straight for where he stood. And to stop them, to block that two hundred yards, he had but seventy-five men all told--a weak obstacle, truly, to the rush of desperate fugitives.

Thinking hard, he lay there, but no solution of the problem came, and then through the still morning air a shot rang out from the far end of the valley, and at the sound the dark figures below awoke to instant life. From the ground they sprang up, out of farmhouse and kraal they poured, swarming in and among the crowd of horses some few fevered minutes, and then, mounting, streamed off at a gallop, heading for the entrance to the open veldt.

Immediately the roar of musketry arose in greeting, and from the rocks on either side a sleet of lead beat in their faces, but for a moment they held on, till, recognising the impossible, they rushed headlong back the way they had come, straight to where Graeme, with his seventy-five men, was lying.

"Bang!" went a rifle close beside him, and at the sound seventy-four others also began to speak, disjointedly; and then were suddenly silent, for their leader was up and running down the line, shouting for the fire to cease and the men to rise and fix bayonets.

"The fellow's mad," muttered Rufford, "never mind, I'll follow you, old chap, and, God! see, the men, after him like hounds," and Rufford sprang up and ran, wildly shouting, after Hector, who was bounding over the stones, swinging his knobkerrie as he went.

Onward rushed the opposing forces, the one a galloping mass of horsemen a thousand strong, the other a weak ragged line of khaki and steel. And well ahead of the advancing commando a man on a white horse led the way, a big, bearded man, white-faced and shifty-eyed; and on those shifty eyes Hector's own were fixed unwaveringly, his pace increasing as the distance between them lessened. Either he or the Dutchman must give in a moment, he knew, and the giving of the one meant the giving of his followers. They were nothing: it was between the leaders the issue lay.

Not twenty-five yards divided them, and still the big man came thundering on, his followers and Hector's checking themselves involuntarily to watch--and then suddenly the end came. The white horse, obeying his rider's mind, and not the merciless lash, swerved, reared and then began to rein back. Up went the big man's hands, "I surrender," he said, his shifty eyes roving from side to side. "I surr----" And then with a choked scream he fell forward, his face a red, featureless mask from the smash of the knobkerrie; a second time the club rose and fell, a dull crushing sound was heard, and Cornelius Van der Tann rolled sideways from his horse and fell on the ground dead.

"On, men, on," shouted Hector, "now's the time to drive it home," and he rushed on, waving the bloody knobkerrie as he went, "Ah!" and a shout of exultation burst from his lips, for again the horsemen had turned, and were galloping back to the farmhouse and kraals, where they lay for a while undisturbed.

Only for a time, for, on the mountain overlooking them, figures soon began to appear, cautiously picking their way among the rocks. A burst of firing from the buildings below greeted them, whereupon, crouching low, they came forward at a run, dodging from stone to stone, and then suddenly sank to earth and were gone. A moment's pause followed, and then came the sharp sound of shots directed straight down into the crowded kraals. It swelled to a roar, was answered by a burst of screams, and then up went the white flag. Bugles rang the "Cease fire," and silence once more.

From the far end of the valley a knot of horsemen came galloping, a red triangular flag waving in their midst. At the sight the mountain slopes around awoke to life, and brown figures started up from the ground, their white faces glaring in the morning sunlight. A ripple of movement went through their ranks, helmets flew off, and were raised aloft on rifle-barrels; a murmur arose, which swelled and grew until it merged into a roar of triumphant cheering.

* * * * *

"I have sent for you, gentlemen," said Colonel Bradford, addressing the assembled officers some two hours later, "to thank you all for the loyal support and assistance you have given me this morning. There is one thing, however, I should like to say, there is one great lesson I hope all of you have learnt in the campaign, which has just been so successfully brought to a conclusion, and that, gentlemen, is the necessity of never yielding to despondency. I am aware--I must say it, though I regret to--that amongst both officers and men there has been of late a certain tone of discouragement. That, gentlemen, was wrong and unsoldierlike, where, I ask you, should we be now had I too showed those feelings? Back home, gentlemen, back home, in disgraceful retreat.

"No, gentlemen, a soldier's motto must always be _Nil desperandum_, for, as you know, 'the blackest hour is always that preceding the dawn.'" He paused, puffing out his chest. "That is all, I think," he added, "except to ask you to convey my thanks to your respective commands, though, of course, I shall publish an order on the subject. And now, Godwin," turning to that officer, "for breakfast. Graeme, where the deuce has that fellow got to? What, breakfast not here? Oh, damn it, man. Ah, I forgot though, you were guiding Rufford's column, and devilish well you did it too. By the way, that was a nasty rush you stopped, killed Van der Tann too, I hear, how did you do it? I couldn't see clearly from where I was."

"Went for them with the bayonet, sir; didn't wait for them to come to us, but attacked. They couldn't stick it, and went."

Bradford whistled, his face grown suddenly disapproving.

"Gad, but that was a risky thing to do, Graeme, why, you had but a hundred men."

"Seventy-five, sir, to be exact."

"And you charged them with that. You're a very lucky officer, Graeme, that's all I can say. Still, it turned out all right, though I'm hanged if I can understand how. And now for breakfast, we'll draw the Rutlands, I think, Godwin," and Bradford, humming a tune, walked gaily away.

"And that's just one of those things you never will understand," muttered Hector, looking after him. "They don't teach that at the Staff College. Oh, Godwin, I didn't see you. Do you want me?"

"I do, rather," answered the long-nosed man, and then was silent, staring at Hector until he grew restive.

"What is it?" he asked sullenly.

"I should like to say, Graeme," replied Godwin, still staring, "that I consider you one of the pluckiest officers I've ever met."

"You--you mean that charge, sir?" said Hector, his face lighting up.

"I don't mean anything of the kind," was the unexpected answer. "I am alluding to the information you brought in last night, and on which we--providentially acted."

"I don't understand you, sir."

"Oh yes, you do, and so did I all the time, and that's what I mean when I say you're the pluckiest man I've ever met. And on that pluck I congratulate you, Graeme, only, if I were you, I shouldn't try it again, it mightn't come off a second time, you see. About that charge of yours, though, that's a different matter, and, speaking unofficially, of course, I say do _that_ again; by _that_ I mean attack whenever and wherever you can." He stopped, looked at Graeme, and burst out laughing. Then suddenly holding out his hand, wrung Hector's in its clammy grasp, and hurried away, leaving the other staring after him.

*CHAPTER XI*

Laden with trophies, bright-faced and triumphant, the column started on its way back to civilisation, and in ten days' time, to the strains of the local band, sent forward to meet it, was marching proudly through the poplar-lined street of Gethsemane. This town is inhabited mostly by Colonial Dutch, whose loyalty or the reverse rose or fell according as the fortunes of war inclined to one or the other contending party.

The death of Van der Tann and capture of his commando having brought about a fall in Dutch stock, they were now loyal British subjects, and consequently from every hotel, private dwelling-place, and shop the gay bunting streamed. Functionaries, in civic robes, came forward to greet their preservers with hands outstretched in welcome, as they bade them enter and feast themselves on the good things made ready in their honour.

Nor were the prisoners forgotten, a forbidding wire-enclosed zeriba having been prepared in their honour, and here, the whole town turning out to watch the operation, they were speedily deposited, and left till such time as the authorities saw fit to arrange for their removal to Cape Town.

A time of relaxation ensued, the officers revelling in late hours, clean shirts, and the social delights of tennis, croquet party, and dance; the men in unlimited beer, tobacco, and well-nigh nightly "sing-songs."

Colonel Bradford made speeches, roared lion-like at social entertainments, and spoke of the British flag, and the well-known loyalty of Gethsemane inhabitants, sentiments greeted with loud and unanimous applause by his hearers.

On all faces were smiles, in all hearts joy, save in the case of Hector Graeme, who was, as usual, in antagonism with his fellows. "Confound it, man," said Bradford to him one morning, Hector having been more than usually unresponsive to his Chief's good-humour, "what an ungracious fellow you are, one would think, by Gad, you were sorry instead of glad at our recent success, why, last night at dinner you were infernally rude to the Mayor. I tell you I don't like it, Graeme, and, what's more, I won't have it," and Bradford stalked away in dudgeon, another black mark registered in his mind against his unsatisfactory A.D.C.

Had it not been for Major Godwin, events would long before this have come to a head between the two, for, since the capture of the commando, Hector had once more relapsed into his former irritating ways of slackness and inattention; and had, moreover, recently added another fault to the list, that of almost continual absence, passing his days, to the neglect of his Chief, in long solitary rides about the surrounding country.