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And then the six men departed also; and after much careful scouting, we rode victoriously over the kopje. If we had attacked on the right flank also, we should probably have caught them, as Lord Chesham would in a little longer have got round to their rear and cut them off. Of course, the whole difficulty in such cases arises from the invisible fire of smokeless powder.
He knelt low, tending a little to one side of the fire, with his gun ready. A stone half sheltered him from anyone coming up from the other side of the kopje, and the instant the figure appeared over the edge he intended to fire. Then, the thought flashed on him; what, and if it were one of his own comrades come in search of him, and no bare-footed enemy!
Then the children fell into silence, till Doss, the dog, growing uneasy at its long continuance, sniffed at one and the other, and his master broke forth suddenly: "If they could talk, if they could tell us now!" he said, moving his hand out over the surrounding objects "then we would know something. This kopje, if it could tell us how it came here!
But while the others were shooting at the enemy on the white kopje, one of our men went by himself to see if there really were any khakies left there. He kept under cover wherever he could behind the rocks and behind the walls of an old kraal and came close up to the kloof without being fired at.
The glory began to wane, and a freshness blew across the veldt. Somewhere on the very top of the kopje a bird uttered a twittering note. She turned her face, listening for the answer, and found Burke seated on another boulder not six yards away. So unexpected was the sight that she caught her breath in astonishment and a sharp instinctive sense of dismay.
"What do you want?" he cried out quiveringly. From the darkness at the edge of the kopje a figure stepped out into the full blaze of the firelight. Trooper Peter Halket looked up at it. It was the tall figure of a man, clad in one loose linen garment, reaching lower than his knees, and which clung close about him. His head, arms, and feet were bare.
The 'Physical Geography' says," he went on most rapidly and confusedly, "that what were dry lands now were once lakes; and what I think is this these low hills were once the shores of a lake; this kopje is some of the stones that were at the bottom, rolled together by the water. But there is this How did the water come to make one heap here alone, in the centre of the plain?"
Surprise Hill is a square-topped kopje, from 500 feet to 600 feet high, between Thornhill's Kopje and Nicholson's Nek. It overlooks Bell's Spruit and the scene of "Mournful Monday's" worst disaster. From Leicester Post, where two guns were always kept turned on it, the distance is 4,100 yards just the full range of our field guns. From Observation Hill it is hardly 2,500 yards.
On the twentieth day after my departure from Bella Vista, about an hour after we had inspanned for the day's trek, which was to end with our arrival home shortly before sunset, as we topped a slight rise the kopje or hill upon which the house stood swung into view for the first time since I had lost sight of it some three weeks earlier; but it was still at such a distance that, with the house turning its shadowed face to me, I could not distinguish it with the naked eye, and it happened that upon that particular occasion I had forgotten to put into the voorkissie, or wagon chest, upon which the driver generally sits, the telescope that I usually carried with me upon such excursions.
All he would think would be that a wagon-load of stores was being shifted, and let us pass. Then I should tell Joeboy to begin creeping out towards the east yonder, and keep on till we were out of bearing before striking away for the kopje here.
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