The Kopje Garrison: A Story of the Boer War
“Oh, here you are,” said the captain of the company. “You can go back to quarters, and be ready to appear before the colonel in the morning.”
“One moment, Captain Edwards,” said Lennox gravely. “You’ll excuse me for speaking. This man is only just off the sick list; he is evidently very ill.”
“Oh yes, I know that, Mr Lennox,” said the officer coldly; “he has a very bad complaint for a soldier. Look at him. Has he told you that he has seen a couple of ghosts?”
“Yes. He is weak from sickness and fasting, and imagined all that; but I feel perfectly certain that he has seen some one prowling about here.”
“Ghosts?” said the captain mockingly.
“No; spies.”
“Psh! It’s a disease the men have got. Fancy. Every fellow on duty will be seeing the same thing now. There, that’s enough of it.”
“Look out!” cried Lennox angrily; and then in the same breath, “What’s that?”
For there was a sharp, grating sound as of stone against stone, and then silence.
“Stand fast, every man,” cried Lennox excitedly, seizing his revolver and looking along the broad, rugged shelf upon which they stood in the direction from which the sound had come.
“A lantern here,” cried the captain as a sharp movement was heard, and half-a-dozen men at a word from their officer doubled along the shelf for a couple of dozen yards and then stood fast, while the other end of the path was blocked in the same way.
Lennox’s heart was beating hard with excitement, and he started as he felt Dickenson grip his arm firmly.
Then all stood fast, listening, as they waited for the lantern to be brought. Quite ten minutes of painful silence elapsed before a couple of dim lights were seen approaching, the bearers having to come down from the gun-platform; and when the two non-commissioned officers who bore them approached, and in obedience to orders held them up, they displayed nothing but swarthy, eager-looking faces, and the piled-up rugged and weathered rocks on one side, the black darkness on the other.
“Come this way, sergeant,” said Captain Edwards, and he, as officer in command of the detachment that night, led on, followed closely by Captain Roby and the two subalterns.
They went along in perfect silence, the lanterns here being alternately held up and down so that the rugged shelf and the piled-up masses of rock which formed the nearly perpendicular side of the kopje in that part might be carefully examined.
This was done twice over, the party passing each time where their men were blocking the ends of the shelf which had been selected for one of the posts.
“It’s strange,” said Captain Roby at last. “I can see no loose stone.”
“No,” said Captain Edwards. “It was just as if a good-sized block had slipped down from above. Let’s have another look.”
This was done, with no better result, and once more the party stood fast in the dim light, gazing in a puzzled way.
“Can any one suggest anything?” said Captain Roby.
There was silence for a few moments, and then Lennox caught hold of Dickenson’s arm and gave it a meaning pressure as he turned to the two captains, who were close together.
“I have an idea,” he whispered. “Give the orders loudly for the men to march off. Take them round to the south, and wait.”
“What for?” said Captain Roby snappishly.
“I should like Dickenson and me to be left behind. I’ll fire if there is anything.”
“Oh, rubbish!” said Captain Roby contemptuously.
“No,” said his brother officer quietly. “It is worth trying.” Then turning to the two sergeants who bore the lanterns, he said, “When I say put out those lights, don’t do it; cover them sharply with greatcoats.”
Directly after he gave his first order, when the lanterns rattled, and all was dark.
Then followed the next orders, and tramp! tramp! tramp! the men marched away like a relieving guard, Lennox and Dickenson standing fast with their backs leaning against the rugged wall of rock, perfectly motionless in the black darkness, and looking outward and down at the faint light or two visible below in the camp.
As they drew back against the rock Lennox felt for his companion’s hand, which gripped his directly, and so they stood waiting.
To them the silence seemed quite appalling, for they felt as if they were on the eve of some discovery – what, neither could have said; but upon comparing notes afterwards each said he felt convinced that something was about to happen, but paradoxically, at the same time, as if it never would; and when a quarter of an hour must have passed, the excitement grew more intense, as the pressure of their hot, wet hands told, for they felt then that whatever was about to happen must befall them then, if they were not interrupted by the return of their officers.
Each tried to telegraph to his companion the intensity of feeling from which he suffered, and after a fashion one did communicate to the other something of his sensations.
But nothing came to break the intense silence, and they stood with strained ears, now gazing up at the glittering stars, and now down through the darkness at the two feeble lights that they felt must be those outside the colonel’s quarters in the market-square.
“I don’t know how it was,” said Lennox afterwards, “but just at the last I began somehow to think of being at the back of the colonel’s hut that night just after Sergeant James had put out the light upon discovering the train.”
“I felt that if the business went on much longer, something – some of my strings that were all on the strain – would crack,” interrupted Dickenson.
“Yes,” said Lennox; “I felt so too.”
And this was how he was feeling – strained – till something seemed to be urging him to cry out or move in the midst of that intense period, when all at once he turned cold all down the back, for a long-drawn, dismal, howling wail rose in the distance, making him shudder just as he had seen the sentry quiver in his horror and dread.
“Bah! Hyena,” he said to himself the next moment; and then a thrill ran through him as he felt Dickenson’s grip increase suddenly with quite a painful pressure.
He responded to it directly, every nerve in his body quivering with the greater strain placed upon it by what was happening, till every nerve and muscle seemed to harden into steel. For the long expected – whatever it might prove to be – the mystery was about to unfold itself, and in his intense feeling it seemed to Lennox as if the glittering stars were flashing out more light.
It was only a noise, but a noise such as Lennox felt that he must hear – a low, dull, harsh, grating noise as of stone passing over stone; and though he could see nothing with his eyes, mentally he knew that one of the great time-bleached and weathered blocks of granite that helped to form the cyclopean face of the kopje wall had begun to turn as on a pivot.
This grating sound lasted for a few seconds only, and it came apparently from a couple of yards away to his right, as he stood with his back pressed against the rugged natural stones.
Then the noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and he listened, now holding his breath in the vain hope that it would silence the heavy, dull beating of his heart, whose throbs seemed to echo painfully in his brain.
He pressed Dickenson’s hand again, to feel from the return grip how thoroughly his comrade was on the alert.
Then all was perfectly silent again, while a dull feeling of despair began to assert itself as he felt that they were going to hear no more.
At last, with head wrenched round to the right, his revolver feeling wet in his fingers and his eyes seeming to start with the strain of gazing along the shelf at the brilliant stars before him, his nerves literally jerked and he felt perfectly paralysed and unable to stir, for here, not six feet away, he could make out against the starry sky the dimly-marked silhouette of a heavily-built man.
Chapter Fourteen.
A Strange Find
It seemed to Drew Lennox that he was staring helplessly at the dark shadowy shape for quite a minute – but it was only a matter of a few seconds – before, snatching his left hand from his companion’s grasp, he let his revolver drop to the full extent of its lanyard, and sprang open-handed at the man.
The movement warned the latter of his danger, and turning sharply round from where he was watching the direction taken by the detachment, he made a desperate effort to catch the young officer by the throat.
But Lennox was springing at him, and the weight of his impact drove the man back for a yard or two; but he recovered himself, got a grip, and then a desperate struggle commenced at the edge of the rugged shelf of rock just where the kopje went down for some fifty feet almost perpendicularly, while a pile of heaped-up fragments which had lodged after falling from above stood out ready to receive the unfortunate who fell.
Neither spoke as they gripped, but stood panting heavily as if gathering breath for the terrible struggle that threatened death to one if not both combatants. They were not well matched. Lennox seemed to be slightly the taller, but he was young, slight, and not fully knit; while his adversary was broad-shouldered, and possessed limbs that were heavily coated with hardened muscles, so that in spite of the weight brought to bear in the young officer’s sprint he recovered himself where a weaker man must have been driven backward to the ground.
Dickenson sprang forward to his comrade’s help, but stopped short as he realised that in that narrow space there was only room for a struggle between two, and by interfering he would be more likely to hinder his friend than help. Hence it was that he stood waiting for his opportunity, listening to the hoarse breathing of the wrestlers and watching the faintly seen struggle – for capture on the one part, for ridding himself of his adversary by pushing him off the shelf on the other.
In a very few moments Lennox had recognised the fact that he was overmatched; but this only roused the stubborn bull-dog nature of the young Englishman, and setting his teeth hard, he brought to bear every feint and manoeuvre he had learnt at his old Devon school, where wrestling was popular, and in the struggles of the football field.
But all in vain: his adversary was far too heavy for him, and, to his rage and discomfiture, in spite of all his efforts he found one great arm tightening about his ribs with crushing pressure, while the man was bending down to lift him from the shelf, evidently to hurl him off into space.
The position was desperate, and in its brief moments Lennox did all that was in his power, tightening his grasp in the desperate resolve that if so savage a plan was carried out he would not go alone.
It might have been supposed that in his emergency-he would have called to Dickenson for help, but the fact was that his adversary so filled his thoughts that there was no room for his comrade’s presence, and he struggled on, straining every muscle and nerve.
But, to repeat the previous assertion, he was completely overmatched by a desperate man; and, unless Dickenson could have interfered and saved him, Lennox’s fate was to be thrown from the rocky ledge out into the black shadowy air, to fall heavily, crushed and broken, upon the stones below.
But fate favoured him at the last pinch, for as his enemy by sheer weight and pressure bore him back and then lifted him from the shelf preparatory to hurling him outward, Lennox suddenly gave up resisting, loosening his grasp so as to take fast hold round his enemy’s neck, when the sudden cessation of resistance had the effect of throwing the latter off his balance just when he was very near the edge where he intended to plant his foot down and check his farther progress. The result was that he put his foot down a few inches too far, his heel pressing down upon the rock where his toes should have been, and before he could recover himself his foot was down over the side, while by a frantic wrench Lennox flung himself sidewise inward.
They fell sidewise upon the shelf, Lennox uppermost, his enemy half over the edge and gliding rapidly down, his weight drawing his adversary after him slowly, inch by inch, for the hitter’s position debarred his making any successful effort to escape. For the enemy not only had him tightly clasped, but, feeling his disadvantage, had wrenched his face round so that he could savagely seize hold of the young officer’s khaki jacket with his teeth. And there he hung on, doubtless intending to speak and declare that if he was to fall his enemy should share his fate. But no coherent words were uttered; nothing was to be made out but a savage growling as of some fierce wild beast.
The action took less time than the telling, and, fortunately for all, now was Dickenson’s opportunity.
The darkness had prevented his seeing the whole of the varying phases of the struggle; but the latter part was plain enough, and fully grasping the position and the emergency of the case, he sprang upon the contending couple just at the right moment, adding his weight, which from his position of vantage completely checked the gradual gliding movement in which Lennox was being drawn onward to his death.
“Give up, you brute!” roared Dickenson now. “Surrender!”
For response the prostrate man, who was vainly striving to find foothold below the edge of the shelf, let go with one hand and quick as thought flung it over the speaker so that he got hold tightly by the tunic, growling fiercely the while.
“Yah! That’s flesh!” roared Dickenson, and in his rage and pain he struck down heavily with his doubled fist. “You brute!” he cried. “Give up, or I’ll shove you down.”
The prisoner gave up struggling for a moment or two, and seemed to be trying to get a hold of some projecting stone.
“There,” cried Dickenson, “let go. Give up; you’re a prisoner. Leave off struggling, and I’ll haul you back on to the shelf. It’s no good to fight any more. That’s right. You surrender, then? Mind, if you try any of your confounded Boer treachery I’ll send a bullet through your skull.”
Crack!
“Oh!”
The shot from a revolver, and a cry of pain from Dickenson, who at the same moment realised the fact that the prisoner’s last movements had meant not giving up or getting a safer position on the ledge, but an effort to get at his revolver and fire at so close quarters that the condensed flame from the pistol’s muzzle burned the young man’s cheek, the bullet barely touching the skin as it flew off into space.
“Beast!” cried Dickenson savagely, and he struck wildly at the revolver as it was fired again, and fortunately diverted the clumsy attempt at an aim, but at the expense of his knuckles, two of which were cut against the chambers of the revolver.
As he uttered the word the young officer was recalling the fact that this made two shots, and he felt that in all probability there were four more to come. His hand was busy as well as his head, for he struck out again and again in an effort to get hold of the pistol; but he could not prevent the firing of another shot, which struck the rock beside him with a loud pat.
“Ha!” cried Dickenson in a tone full of satisfaction; “got you!” For his efforts in the darkness had been at last rewarded by his fingers coming in contact with the barrel of the little weapon, which he clasped tightly and held on to, in spite of jerk and snatch, feeling the barrel heat as it was fired again, and again, and again, but with the muzzle forced upward so that the bullets flew harmlessly away.
“That’s better,” growled Dickenson. “Now, you spiteful savage, will you give up – will you surrender?”
A savage growling was the only answer.
“You brute!” muttered Dickenson. “’Pon my word, if it wasn’t for poor old Drew I believe I should let you go over, and see how you liked that. – Here, Drew,” he cried aloud, “how is it? What are you doing?”
“Holding his left hand down. He has got hold of my revolver.”
“Bless him for a beauty! Can you stop him?”
“I don’t know yet; I’m so awkwardly situated. Can you keep us from going over?”
“Oh yes, I can do that. Here, I’ve got at my six-shooter now; hold still, and I’ll put something through his head.”
“No, no; we must take him alive,” cried Lennox.
“It’s all very fine, but he’s going to take us dead. Better let me cripple him. Shall I light a match?”
“No, no. I’ve got tight hold of his wrist now, so that he can’t use my revolver. Ha! Look out!”
“I shall have to shoot him,” cried Dickenson; for, foiled in his effort to get hold of the fresh weapon, the man began to struggle again fiercely, heaving himself up and wrenching himself to right and left in a way that threatened to result in the whole party going over into the black gulf below.
Lennox uttered another warning cry.
“Take care?” growled Dickenson. “Who’s to take care in the dark? Here, tell the brute in Dutch that if he doesn’t give up I’ll send a bullet through his head. He doesn’t seem to understand plain English.”
“Yes, he does, for he spoke in English just now.”
This was too true, for just then the prisoner suddenly yelled out, “Dirck! Dirck! Help! The cursed rooineks have got me down.”
“Oho! Then there are more than one of you, my beauty!” cried Dickenson. “Now then, this is a gag; hold still or I’ll pull the trigger.”
There was a clinking sound caused by the rattling of the desperate prisoner’s teeth against the barrel of the pistol which Dickenson thrust into his mouth just as he was about to speak. But he wrenched his head round and began to struggle again so desperately that Lennox’s temper got the upper hand and he began to grow merciless to a degree that tempted him to bid his comrade fire.
“Look here,” roared Dickenson at the same moment, “I’ve had enough of this, my fine fellow. Surrender, or I’ll fire without mercy.”
“Ha!” ejaculated Lennox in a sigh of relief, for those six shots had not been fired in vain. The prisoner had unconsciously summoned assistance to complete his capture, and Lennox’s sigh had been produced by the sight of a flash of light and the sound of hurrying feet, the two sergeants with their lanterns reaching the spot first, closely followed by the officers and men, who gazed down in wonder at the human knot composed of the wondrously tied up three lying at the edge of the precipice.
“Come on,” shouted Dickenson. “We’ve caught the ghost. Don’t let him go.”
“Here, hold these, some one,” cried Sergeant James, and as soon as he had got rid of his lantern he made fast, as a sailor would say, to the prisoner and held on; while, to use his words, his mate pulled out the prisoner’s stings, for he had three – two revolvers (one of course discharged) and a keen-bladed sheath-knife, something like an American bowie.
Five minutes later the light of the held-up lanterns fell upon a fierce-looking, much bruised and battered, black-bearded Boer, lying upon the rocky shelf, tied hand and foot, his face so smeared and disfigured by blood that it acted like a mask.
“Carry him down at once,” said Captain Roby; “he is evidently badly wounded.”
“Not he,” growled Dickenson savagely. “He hurt me more than I hurt him. He used pistol; I only used fist and punched him in the nose.”
Sergeant James smiled grimly, and drawing a roll of bandage from his wallet, tore off a bit and wiped the blood from the prisoner’s face.
“Hullo!” he cried. – “Hooray, Captain Roby, sir! This is our Boer friend who tried to blow us up.”
Lennox stopped forward eagerly, and signed for the lantern to be lowered.
“Yes,” he cried wonderingly; “that is the man.”
“And no mistake,” said Dickenson. “Come, I call this a good catch.”
The other officers looked down at the dark eyes scowling up at them.
“Yes,” he growled fiercely, “I am the man; and I’ll do it yet.”
“Perhaps your precious game may be stopped now, my good fellow,” said Captain Roby meaningly.
“Yes,” said Captain Edwards sternly. “You were treated well and generously the first time; this time you may find that the English officers can be stern as well as generous to a beaten enemy. – Well, Captain Roby,” he continued, “there was no mistake, you see, about the alarm.”
“So I see,” said the latter officer coldly.
“The thing is, what was he doing here?”
“Playing the spy, or hiding and waiting for a chance to get away, I suppose.”
“Well, you will take him down with you, and report to the colonel,” said Captain Edwards.
“Stop a bit,” cried Dickenson. “You haven’t got the other.”
“What other?” cried the two captains in a breath.
“This fellow’s comrade.”
“Has he one?”
“You heard what the private said about seeing two,” cried Dickenson.
“Oh, the words of a man in a scare go for nothing,” said Captain Roby contemptuously.
“Perhaps not; but this fellow was in no scare when he called for his companion – Dirck, did he call him, Lennox?”
“Yes, Dirck; and he must be somewhere close at hand. Look, Bob.”
He touched his comrade’s arm to draw his attention to the sneering smile on the prisoner’s face.
“And where do you think his friend is?” said Captain Edwards.
“In the same place as this man came from. They have a hiding-place somewhere close by.”
“Yes,” cried Dickenson; “one that enables them to play a regular Jack-in-the-box trick.”
“But how? Where?” said Captain Edwards.
“I don’t know how, and I don’t know where it is,” replied Lennox; “but I do know that they have a hiding-place somewhere here amongst the rocks. This Boer was not here one minute; then we heard the creaking and grinding of a stone door close at hand, and he was standing out against the sky.”
“Whereabouts?” said Captain Roby.
“About here,” said Lennox, stepping to the rock close at hand. – “Bring the lantern, quick.”
Sergeant James stepped forward with his and held it up for his officer, who began to examine the rock; but Dickenson paid no heed. He employed himself in watching the prostrate Boer attentively, and noticed that his eyes were being blinked violently, as if the man were in a great state of excitement. But he seemed to calm down rapidly as the young subaltern walked to and fro, holding the light up, then down, and always coming back to the starting-place.
“Well, can’t you find it?” said Captain Roby, with a sneer.
“No,” replied Lennox frankly. “I can see no signs of it.”
“And are not likely to,” replied Captain Roby, with a grunt indicative of the contempt he felt. “It’s all absurd. What did you expect to find? A hidden Aladdin’s cave, with genii keeping the door? – Here, Dickenson, you are a gentleman of fine imagination. Go and help him. Expand your lungs, and cry Open Sesame!”
“Why don’t you,” said Dickenson, “as you know Persian, or whatever it is, so well?”
Captain Roby was about to make an angry retort, but Captain Edwards now interfered.
“I don’t think there is any hiding-place along here,” he said. “There may be a rift or cave somewhere about the kopje, but certainly there does not seem to be one in this part.”
“I am not satisfied,” said Lennox, who was busy still directing the light in and out among the crevices of the rocks. “It hardly seems possible, but the natural form of the granite is in blocks which look as if they had been piled-up by the hand of man. Could any one of these be a rough door?”
“No; absurd,” said Captain Roby. “There, we have captured our prisoner; let’s get him down to the colonel.”
“But what about his calling for Dirck to help him?” said Lennox eagerly.
“I did not hear him call for Dirck to help him,” said Roby contemptuously.
“No, but we did,” cried Lennox, as he went on tapping the granite blocks with the butt of his revolver, curiously watched the while by the prisoner, who was in complete ignorance of the fact that Dickenson, who stood half behind, was intently watching him in turn.
“Give it up, Lennox,” said Captain Roby. “You are doing no good there.”
“Burning!” cried Dickenson so suddenly that every one turned and stared.
“What is burning?” cried Captain Edwards.
“Drew Lennox is.”
“Burning?”
“Hang it all, sir! have you forgotten all your childish games?” cried Dickenson impatiently. “‘Hot boiled beans,’ you know. Lennox is seeking, and he’s burning.”
“Am I?” cried Lennox excitedly, and the grim faces of the men thrown up by the lanterns grew eager and excited too.
