for any experts back of the Royal British Artillery. Otherwise, the game
was mostly even. He'd lay out three or four of our commando, and we'd
gather in four or five of his once a week or thereon. One time, I
remember, long towards dusk we saw 'em burying five of their boys. They
stood pretty thick around the graves. We wasn't more than fifteen hundred
yards off, but old Van Zyl wouldn't fire. He just took off his hat at the
proper time. He said if you stretched a man at his prayers you'd have to
hump his bad luck before the Throne as well as your own. I am inclined to
agree with him. So we browsed along week in and week out. A war-sharp
might have judged it sort of docile, but for an inventor needing practice
one day and peace the next for checking his theories, it suited Laughton
O. Zigler.

"And friendly? Friendly was no word for it. We was brothers in arms.

"Why, I knew those two guns of the Royal British Artillery as well as I
used to know the old Fifth Avenoo stages. _They_ might have been brothers
too.

"They'd jolt into action, and wiggle around and skid and spit and cough
and prize 'emselves back again during our hours of bloody battle till I
could have wept, Sir, at the spectacle of modern white men chained up to
these old hand-power, back-number, flint-and-steel reaping machines. One
of 'em--I called her Baldy--she'd a long white scar all along her barrel--
I'd made sure of twenty times. I knew her crew by sight, but she'd come
switching and teturing out of the dust of my shells like--like a hen from
under a buggy--and she'd dip into a gully, and next thing I'd know 'ud be
her old nose peeking over the ridge sniffin' for us. Her runnin' mate had
two grey mules in the lead, and a natural wood wheel repainted, and a
whole raft of rope-ends trailin' around. 'Jever see Tom Reed with his vest