An hour later we start; four of us. Chester Master, myself, May, and a
black boy. It is a twenty-three mile ride. A full moon is in the sky but
clouds obscure it, which is a good thing, as the country is being
traversed by stragglers of theirs, leaving the hills and in retreat
eastward. We hear of several such fugitive bodies from our pickets for
the first few miles. Then we are in absolute solitude. The plain lies
bare and blanched around us. A thorn bush or two sticks up on it, or,
now and then, the ghastly shape of a dead horse lying in puffed up
relief with legs sticking out stiff and straight and an awful stench
blowing from it. Kimberley's search-light at stated intervals still
swings its spoke over our head.
Six or seven miles out from Kimberley my pony gives out, and Chester
Master and May on fresh horses ride on, leaving me the boy. We plod on,
an interesting, delicious ride. I get off and walk. A little wind
rustles over the dry earth and bushes, but otherwise there is not a
whisper of sound. The landscape at one moment lies white before us as if
it had been washed in milk, and the next is blotted out with clouds. Now
and again we pause to listen, and the boy stands like a bronze image of
Attention with bent head and held breath, the whites only of his eyes
moving as he rolls them from one object to another. At last from a low
kopje top by the path comes the first loud and welcome "Halt! Who goes
there?" of an English picket.
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