Rundle sits silently, hard pressed in his saddle--a gallant figure, with
soldier and leader written all over him. We wait his verdict anxiously, for
on his word our fate may hinge. We have not long to wait--Clements can hold
his own; Brabant will outflank the Boers. Forward, march! The men droop as
wheat fields droop in the sultry air of a seething day. They are tired,
deadly tired; not too tired to fight, but weary of the endless marching
from point to point to keep the enemy from breaking through their lines and
striking southward.

Away in front of us we note the snow-crowned hills which girdle Basutoland,
snow crowned and sun kissed; every hilltop sparkling like a giant gem, and
over all a pale blue sky, curtained by flimsy clouds of gauzy whiteness,
through which the sun laughs rosily, the handiwork of the Eternal. And
underfoot only the deep dead blackness of the blistered veldt, ravished of
its wondrous wealth of living green, the rude, rough footprint of the god
of war--sweet war; kind, Christian war!

Now, overhead, betwixt the smoking earth and smiling sky, flocks of
vultures come and go, fluttering their great pinions noiselessly. To them
the sound of guns is merriest music; it is their summons to the banquet
board. Foul things they look as the float over us, silent as souls that
have slipped from some ash heap in Hades, grey with the greyness that grows
on the wolf's hide; their feathers hang upon them in ridges, unkempt,
unlovely, soiled with blood and offal. They float above our heads, they
wheel upon our flanks.

A horse drops wearily upon its knees, looks round dumbly on the wilderness
of blackness, then turns its piteous eyes upward towards the skies that
seem so full of laughing loveliness; then, with a sob which is almost human