Away on our right flank we can just make out the skeletons of what a few
hours before had been a cluster of smiling farmhouses. They do not smile
now; they grin horribly in the sunlight, grin as the fleshless skulls of
dead men grin on a battlefield after those sextons of the veldt the
grey-hooded, curved-beaked vultures have screamed their final farewell to
the charnel-houses of war--noble war, splendid war, pastime of potentates
and princes, invented in hell and patented in all the temples of sorrow.

As we look on those grim relics of this dreary time we catch the maddening
sound of distant guns. The chargers prick their ears, and quiver from
muzzle to coronet. The khaki-clad figures on the plain throw up their heads
and turn their eyes towards the sound; the tired shoulders square
themselves, each foot seems to tread the blackened plain with firmer,
prouder tread. The sound of guns is like the rush of wine through sluggish
veins, and men forget that they are faint with hunger, weary to the verge
of wretchedness with ceaseless marching. The sound of guns bespeaks the
presence of the foe, and those gaunt soldiers of the Queen are galvanised
to life and lust of battle by the very breath of war. A ripple runs along
the line, the farthest flanks catch the gleam of the sun on distant rifle
barrels. An order rings out sharp and crisp; the column stands as if each
man and horse were carved in rock.

The infantry lean lightly on their guns, the cavalry crane forward in their
saddles. We pause and wait until we see the green badge of O'Driscoll's
scouts on the hats of the advancing riders. O'Driscoll rides towards the
staff with loosened rein, and every spur in all his gallant little troop
shows how the scouts had ridden. We strain our ears to catch the news the
Irish scout has brought. It comes at last Clements has met the foe, and
death is busy in those distant hills.