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The women were much alarmed; they collected together in wrathful groups to enquire where the matter was to end, and with peculiar unanimity, not to say satisfaction, to prophesy a revolution. This bound in the cost of living brought us nearer to a state of panic than ever did the sharp practice of the Boer artillery. The Colonel heard of it what did he not hear?
In these, with nothing visible but their peering eyes and the barrels of their rifles, the Boer marksmen crouched, and munched their biltong and their mealies as the day broke upon the morning of the 23rd. With the light their enemy was upon them. It was a soldiers' battle in the good old primeval British style, an Alma on a small scale and against deadlier weapons.
As it chances, since then I passed the place where the Temple stood, though at a little distance. I had the curiosity, however, at some inconvenience, to ride round and examine the spot. I suppose that Heda had sold the property, for a back-veld Boer, who was absent at the time, had turned what used to be Rodd's hospital into his house.
One was that the Boer percussion-shells were useless in soft ground, as hardly any of them exploded; the other that the Boer guns could outrange our ordinary fifteen-pounder field gun, which had been the one thing perhaps in the whole British equipment upon which we were prepared to pin our faith.
It was a good, solid blow, and the young Boer did not move for a minute, but when he rose he had fully decided that he would gladly carry the ammunition to the top of the kopje. After General Botha demonstrated that he was a capable military leader he became the idol of all the Boers.
They are notorious for two things their pluck and their awful bad bushcraft. They would ride up to the mouth of a foeman's guns coolly and gamely enough, but they can't find their way home on the veldt after dark to save their souls, and so fall into Boer traps with a regularity that is becoming monotonous.
I suppose also that the Fabians among ourselves would support the foreign domination, just as their leaders supported the overthrow of the Boer republics, on the ground that larger states bring the Fabian the very Fabian revolution nearer.
It was under this officer that we marched away from the railway line across country known to be hostile to us. Almost due east we moved to Reddersburg, about twelve and a half miles. We had to move slowly and cautiously, because no living man can tell when, where, or how a Boer force will attack.
W. A. Roberts, a resident of South Africa, whom the Boer war did not prevent from keeping up a watch of the southern sky, which has resulted in greatly increasing our knowledge of variable stars. There are also quite a number of astronomers in Europe and America who make this particular study their specialty.
When they almost touched the summit they paused, formed their broken lines, and carefully and wisely topped the black brow; and as they did so the Boer rifles spoke from a line of kopjes that lay behind the first. Then our fellows dropped to cover, and sent an answer back that a duller foe than the Boers would not have failed to understand.
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