Dead and dying troopers were everywhere among terrified horses, some of them hit and screaming with pain. Dust rose in a red cloud, obliterating the field of fire. Equipment, including a scatter of long, useless lances, lay everywhere. A sergeant sat with his back to a rock, trying to staunch a spouting wound in his thigh, and his blood spattered Hugo as he stepped over his legs, making for a knot of unwounded men cowering behind a larger rock and emptying their magazines at nothing. He recognised none of them, and this was not surprising, for he had only joined the column the day before. The only man he could have identified was Montmorency, now lying dead, someone told him, a hundred yards higher up the pass. His informant, another sergeant, had something else to say about Montmorency. "Led us right into a rat-trap," he shouted, above the uproar. "Didn't even scout the bloody hills with a flank guard, and we'll not hold out here for long the way those fools are loosing off!" Then, ignoring Hugo, he darted among the marksmen bellowing, "Hold your bloody fire! Wait until the dust settles! Save your ammo! For Chrissake, save your ammo!"
The dust was a long time settling, and in the interval Hugo's horse rolled over, shot between the eyes and falling on its right flank where Hugo's carbine bucket was strapped. He only looked long enough to satisfy himself that the horse was dead before drawing his revolver and accosting the frantic sergeant again.
"Aren't there any officers left?" he demanded.
"Yessir," the man said, breathlessly. "Mr. Cookham over there. But he's plugged, I believe!" He pointed to another outcrop twenty yards higher up the slope where a group of about a dozen survivors were gathered round a young subaltern with a wispy moustache, who was supervising the erection of a barricade of loose rocks.
The rate of Boer fire had slackened somewhat by then, but it was still inviting certain death to venture on to open ground. Hugo decided to risk it and tore across the exposed patch, a bullet striking his spur and making a sound like a finger snapped on a wine-glass. He got there unscathed, however, and Mr. Cookham seemed relieved to see him. "You a regular?" he demanded, and Hugo said no, just a supernumerary who had joined the staff earlier in the week. The sergeant was right. Cookham had been hit in the upper arm and his left sleeve dripped blood.
"Well, here's a how-de-do," he said gaily. "It looks as if I've got my first command." He glanced around the circle where the dead and wounded outnumbered the living by two to one. "Don't think I'll have it long, however. What's your name, Supernumerary?"
Although he had been in Africa less than a month, Hugo was well aware that any regular, even a nineteen-year-old subaltern, would hold the Yeomanry and Local Volunteer units in contempt. He said, diffidently, "Swann, Mr. Cookham. Hugo Swann…"
The officer let out a whoop and said, "Swann, the runner?" and at once transferred his revolver to his left hand, grabbed Hugo's right, and shook it. "Heard you were around. A rare pleasure to have you here!" he said. "You'll set up a new record today, if we get out of here alive," and the joke seemed to remind him of his duty, for he turned away and issued a stream of orders concerning the barricade, rate of fire, transfer of badly wounded to the patch of shadow under the tallest rock, and several other instructions that Hugo did not catch, for a wounded horse, dragging itself round by its forelegs, struck him and sent him staggering off at a tangent as another bullet shattered his wrist-watch and grazed the skin along the joint of his thumb. It was no more than a scratch, but enough to project him the far side of the dying horse at a bound. He landed on a dead lancer, spreadeagled behind the barricade.
Gradually the dust began to settle, and the blue of the sky showed through the haze. A long outcrop of rocks some two hundred yards distant in the left foreground became visible, clearly the point of ambush, for intermittent flashes revealed where invisible marksmen were peppering them from two angles.
Cookham said, breathlessly, "Have to hump ourselves higher up. They'll pick us off one by one so long as we stay here!" And under his direction the ragged group of survivors began to claw their way up the slope in short, individual rushes, aiming for a bulkier outcrop thirty yards above their first position.
Most of them made it, although a trooper scrambling up beside Hugo spun round and went tumbling head over heels down the incline again, his carbine making a tremendous clatter among the loose stones. Up here it was possible, by risking a bullet between the eyes, to get a grasp of the battlefield as a whole: a shallow valley with larger outcrops clothed with scrub on the Boer side, and a long, steep ascent, bare of cover, at the rear of their own position. Cookham shouted, "How many of us, Supernumerary? Count 'em for me, will you?" Hugo, counting, said there were two dozen on the ledge and some lightly wounded still firing from below.
Cookham had his binoculars unslung now and used them to sweep the valley left to right at the price of losing his helmet that whipped from his head and sailed away like a clay pigeon. He said, "Well, it's better than I thought. They've only wiped out the head of the column. There's no firing forward. Murchison's lot have pulled back out of range, lucky devils! They'll have sent someone back for reinforcements and guns by now but that won't help us, frying up here." He paused, frowning with concentration, and Hugo was struck by the contrast between his outward immaturity and his calm acceptance of responsibility involving the lives of every man between the ridge they occupied and the floor of the valley. Images of two of his brothers presented themselves: Alex, a veteran soldier by the time he was Cookham's age (and very like Cookham now that he came to think about it), and Edward, at home beside the Thames, who was young enough to have been at school with Cookham. He thought, Either one of them could pull their weight in a show like this, but I'm not much use, damn it. I feel like a passenger in a ditched 'bus, waiting for someone to tell me what to do. The thought of those rows of silver cups, urns, and medals in the showcase at Tryst returned to him, as though heliographing their puerility and trashiness across thousands of miles of land and water. He said, ruefully, "I can't even hit 'em with this, Mr. Cookham. And my carbine's back there, under my horse."
"None of us can hit 'em," Cookham said, cheerfully. "I doubt if we could even if we could see 'em. The sun is at their backs, and their worst marksman could shoot the feathers out of our bonnets. Still, so long as they know we're here, they'll hold off, and that'll stop them moving south and laying another ambush for relieving troops. Something else too—they can't even guess at our numbers." He bobbed up again and took another quick squint through the binoculars. This time a flight of bullets passed over, the Boers firing high and overestimating the height of the ridge, for the bullets ricocheted from the rock face above.
"Checkmate," Cookham said. "We can't stir, but they dare not hold that position for long. By that time the batteries will be up, and they'll have to look lively getting away over that broken ground behind them." He sucked his teeth. "We're snug enough by that reckoning. There's no time for them to work around behind and fire down on us, but suppose… Pity you're a miler, Swann."
"Why?"
"If you were a champion sprinter, we might have a sporting chance to nab them… Remember that track, branching left two miles back?"
"I remember it."
"I'll lay a pound to a penny it passes behind that range of hills. If the relieving force sent cavalry and horse artillery down it, and they looked lively, they could cut the line of retreat before the Boer pulls out. Look…" and he whipped a pencil from his notebook and, propping the sheet against the rock face, sketched the manoeuvre, a narrow sweep behind the Boer position, masked by high ground at the junction of the tracks.
"Won't they have posted lookouts above that track?"
"If they're as smart as I think they are, but no more than two or three men. Murchison could pin them down if you got word to him."
"How far back is Murchison's column?"
"Under a mile. But to get down from here you'd have to move over the ground faster than you've ever covered it. Those chaps over there are the best shots in the world. I wouldn't order anyone to
take a chance like that."
"You don't have to order me."
"You'd try it?"
"I'm no use up here, with a six-shooter, Mr. Cookham."
Cookham considered him gravely. "You're game, Mr. Supernumerary. We'll give you covering fire, but for God's sake raise the dust the minute you reach level ground."
"They won't stop me."
He knew, somehow, that it was his moment. All the pounding over the Exmoor plateau as a boy, all those circuits of tracks over the years, all those cheers and trophies that had come his way in the last decade had led to this; a dash down a valley whipped by bullets from the rifles of the deadliest marksmen in the world, carrying a message from a wispy-moustached boy to a rearguard picquet. He knelt half upright, stripping off his spurs, tunic, and helmet.
"When you're ready, Mr. Cookham."
The boy said, slowly, "I saw you win the Stamford Bridge two thousand metres when I was on leave last year. You've got one hell of a stride, Swann. And more puff than a blacksmith's bellows. Good luck—sir."
He saw the "sir" as an accolade, a singularly graceful compliment from a professional to an amateur. It brought him more satisfaction than any victory in the sports arena. They shook hands and Cookham passed the word along to give covering fire at rapid rate the moment Hugo left cover. Then, with a single prodigious leap, he was off, bounding down the slope and swerving at every obstacle in his path—dead men, dead horses, jettisoned equipment, loose rocks, everything between him and the brown surface of the beaten path over which they had ridden not half-an-hour since.
He had no awareness of being a target on the way down. His concentration was centred wholly on his swerves and leaps and the placing of feet encumbered by heavy cavalry boots. Then he was running south, faster it seemed than over any straight stretch to the tape. Once on the level, he heard the impact of individual Mauser bullets striking the rocks in his path, but none struck him and gradually the fusillade reverted to the odd whining plop as a spent bullet ricocheted into the slab-sided hillside to his left.
He came upon Murchison's rearward picquet behind an outcrop on the Boer side of the path, a little short of the distance estimated by Cookham, for he had run, at a guess, a little over half-a-mile from the point where he reached level ground. A man stood up and called, making a trumpet of his hands, and he changed direction, breasting a slight slope and leaping the low parapet into a shallow depression where a few dismounted lancers were huddled, commanded, it seemed, by a middle-aged trooper. He said, between laboured breaths, "Thirty survivors still holding out a mile back. Orders from Lieutenant Cookham in command. Boers occupying high ground on this side of the valley. Mr. Cookham says to find Major Murchison and tell him to send cavalry and guns behind the range to cut 'em off."
"There's a Boer outpost overlooking that track, sir. That's why we daren't move back."
Hugo thought, glumly, He's waiting for orders, for a direct order, and there's no one else to give it. He said, "Take all three troopers. One of you will make it if you move fast. Give me your carbine and a bandolier. I'll climb higher and try to pin them down for a spell. I'll wait until they're firing on you before I move."
The man was an old sweat, conditioned by years of service to rely on an officer, even a volunteer. He called his three men by name, telling them briefly they were to make a run for it, one at a time. Anyone who got through was to pass the order on to Major Murchison. Then, his confidence restored, he turned back to Hugo. "Just how far for'ard is Captain Montmorency, sir?"
"Captain Montmorency is dead. Lieutenant Cookham's commanding all that's left of the column. Tell them that, too, if you make it."
"Can they hold out long, sir?"
"Indefinitely. But the Boers will pull out by the time reinforcements move up. Get going, man."
The man handed over his carbine and unslung his bandolier. "There's around twenty cartridges, sir. Good luck, sir."
"You too," Hugo said, and watched as, one by one, the four of them leaped from cover and ran a zig-zag course down the track. The old campaigner went last, in less of a hurry than the others and taking full advantage of the overhang of scrub this side of the path. One man fell but picked himself up again, and Hugo had no chance to watch their further progress, for he had to turn his back on them to scale the tumble of rocks screening him from the snipers' outpost on the crest.
The hill here was a series of small fissures and easily scaleable, partly on account of its milder gradient, but also because every cleft was sown with a prickly, toughstemmed growth sprouting leaves not unlike the umbrella plants that grew down by the ox-bow below Tryst. He went up very carefully, hugging the slope, for the crackle of shots from above and a short distance to the left, told him the Boers posted immediately above the fork were still trying to pot the troopers as they made their way to the rear.
He had expected to find the summit of the spur open ground, with no cover worth mentioning, but as soon as he reached it he saw that he was wrong. For some reason there was more scrub on this side of the valley and the umbrella-like plants had straggled all the way up a donga that might, at one time, have been a tiny watercourse. There was no advantage in him making his way along the ridge as far as the outpost snipers. Sooner or later—probably the moment they saw a sizeable body take the left hand branch at the fork behind the Boer position—they would withdraw, moving at the double all the way along the crest to warn the main body. He realised the logic of Cookham's assumptions. Damn it, he thought, that kid has more brains than Montmorency. If he'd been commanding the column, we should never have run our necks into the noose like this, and he opened the lowest pouch of his bandolier and found there five bullets, enough to fill the half-empty magazine of the carbine.
The sun was blisteringly hot and he lacked the protection of his helmet. By raising himself to his knees, he could just see the track down which he had run, two dead horses marking the southern limit of the battle and the seam where Cookham's survivors were still holding out judging by the occasional burst of fire from one side or the other. He could have seen a good deal more had he stood upright, but the tallest umbrella only grew to a height of about two feet, and if his presence here was so much as suspected, all his trouble would have gone for nothing. The outpost party would fan out and fire at him from several angles, rushing him if they failed to hit him because they would see a warning to the main body as worth the sacrifice of some of them. So he lay very still, carbine thrown forward and ear to the ground, listening for the scrape of a boot and trying to calculate how many Boers he would have to deal with. Presently, however, the outpost's rifles fell silent. Either they had accounted for the troopers or had reverted to their task of watching the ox-path a hundred feet below where Murchison or base reinforcements would soon be beginning the outflanking movement.
About twenty minutes passed in almost complete silence to the north and south, the cessation of fire implying that the main body to the north had already begun their withdrawal towards Stormberg. Then, quite close at hand, he heard guttural voices and the chink of metal on loose stones, but although the voices seemed to be approaching he could see no movement in the scrub when he raised his head above the cluster of parchment-like leaves at the top of the donga. He had just lowered it again when he heard someone shout an order in an urgent tone, and in the same second he saw his first man, a grey-bearded, thickset Boer, with a slouch hat and his rifle held at the trail, moving at a crouching run immediately to his front and already less than thirty yards from where he lay. He raised himself on one knee and took a snap shot, with no pretence of aiming, and the man stopped in his tracks, his legs set widely apart and his free hand stretched out, as though to ward off the bullet.
He remained in that curiously rigid position long enough for Hugo to get an unforgettable glimpse of his expression. Not so much startled as abstracted, the expression of a man who, quitting his front gate for work, suddenly remembers something he should have done before slamming the door. Then, quite sl
owly, the Boer toppled sideways, his rifle dropping soundlessly into the scrub, his body falling away down the incline out of sight and sound as it rolled down the western slope of the hill, and at that precise moment his following companion showed, hatless, beardless, and with Mauser in firing position. The face behind the levelled rifle was that of a boy, fourteen or younger.
He was obviously firing blind, for his shot went wide by yards and he had no time to work his bolt and press the trigger a second time. Hugo's second slug hit him squarely in the chest so that he staggered backwards, dropping his rifle and pressing his hands to the point of impact. Then he fell flat on his back in a small open patch so that Hugo, peering through the stalks, could see the upturned soles of his hobnailed boots.
A long silence followed, unbroken by the staccato crackle of fire higher up the valley, or by a rustle or boot-scrape further along the spur. The sun, now directly overhead, scourged his neck and sweat dripped in his eyes, blurring the sight of the upturned boots in a grey-green haze that undulated like a curtain in a draught.
The shot from the right and below almost did for him, ripping through the rucked-up folds of his shirt and cutting the shoulder strap of his bandolier so that it fell free and would have bounced into the donga had he not made a grab at it. He swung half-right and fired twice but whether he hit anything or not he had no means of knowing, for at that moment a fourth Boer fired from the left, the bullet coming close enough to slice the scrub six inches from his nose.
Give Us This Day Page 24
