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Updated: May 10, 2025
They, however, seemed to be a great distance off, as I did not overtake them, and I did not succeed in tracing them in the direction that the wounded buck had led them, as the track in the grass was invisible to my inexperienced eye. I rode back to the donga, and deliberated on the course to take. In all directions I heard shots, right and left, but I stood irresolute.
We found ourselves at a distance of about 700 paces from the Rooirandjes, and we had to cross an open space if we still wished to storm the position. The enemy's watch already began shooting at us. The corporals let their men advance in groups of four from the donga to the kopje, using the ant-hills as cover when they lay down.
Macpherson and Hordern had found themselves in a particularly warm corner. Some fifteen men of the Gloucesters, with an officer, were in a donga which provided hardly any cover, and the two chaplains going out to the Field Hospital had perforce to share with their comrades the dangers of the terrible position.
He paused; and the silence was so intense that the crackling of Zikali's fire, which kept on burning brightly although I saw no fuel added to it, sounded quite loud. Presently it was broken, first by a dog near at hand, howling horribly at the moon, and next by the hooting of a great owl that flitted across the donga, the shadow of its wide wings falling for a moment on the king.
Forget them and give me food, White Man," she added in a piteous tone, "give me food, for I starve." "There is scant fare here," answered Leonard, "but you are welcome to it. Follow me, mother," and he led the way across the donga to the cave, the woman limping after him painfully. There Otter gave her meat, and she ate as one eats who has gone hungry for long, greedily and yet with effort.
I remember the man next me being killed by a shell with all his team, and the tangle of flying harness, torn horseflesh, and crimson khaki, that we left behind us on the veldt; also that a small red flag, ludicrously like those used to indicate a putting-green, marked the single sloping entrance to the otherwise precipitous donga, which I for one was duly thankful to reach alive.
Arriving at a spot where there was a slight depression running down towards the river, he said, "We may as well follow it, Sankey. It will deepen into a donga presently, no doubt, and we can leave our horses there and go on on foot. It looks to me as if this had been used as a path. Of course it may only have been made by cattle going down to the water, but it may lead to a drift.
But Raffles paid no attention to their fire; he was pointing downward through the bushes to where Corporal Connal stood with his back to us, shooing a last charger out of the mouth of the donga towards the Boer trenches. "That's his third," whispered Raffles, "but it's the first I've seen distinctly, for he waited for the blind spot before the dawn.
But in spite of the obvious there WERE Boers upon the plain, so placed that they must either bring off a remarkable surprise or be themselves cut off to a man. Across the veld, some miles from the waterworks, there runs a deep donga or watercourse one of many, but the largest. It cuts the rough road at right angles.
The Royal Artillery guns appear to have been exposed to a very severe fire, and the losses were so heavy that for a time they could not be served. The escort was inadequate, insufficiently advanced, and badly handled, for the Boer riflemen were able, by creeping up a donga, to get right into the 38th battery, and the gallant major, with Lieutenant Belcher, was killed in the defence of the guns.
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