We make for a kopje on our
edge of the valley. The fire is too hot for the Boers to dare to show up
much and there is not much opposition. But I can assure you that a
charge of 1500 yards, even without the enemy's fire, is a serious thing
enough. Puffing and panting, I struggle on. Long-legged Colonials go
striding by land leave me gasping in the rear. When at last we reach the
kopje and look down into the sunken valley, the Seaforths are pouring in
their fire on the retreating Boers, our fellows are doing the same from
the kopje top, but I myself am too pumped out to care for anything and
can only lie on the ground and gasp.
I see in your last letter you want to know about the character of the
Guides, and whether there has been any cases of treachery among them. I
don't know what started these old yarns. They were invented about
Magersfontein time, probably to account for that awful mishap, and got
into the local press here and made a lot of fuss, but we have heard
nothing since on that score. There is such a lot of treachery put here
(owing to the intermingling of English and Dutch in their two
territories) that almost anything in that line seems credible, and there
are numbers of people about, loafers in bars and fifth-rate
boarding-houses, to whom anything base seems perfectly natural, and who
delight in starting and circulating such tales.
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