A Sweating, Dirty Tommy Turns His Back On A Hill A
Mile Away And Slaps The Air With His Signal Flag; Another Tommy, With
The Front Visor Of His Helmet Cocked Over The Back Of His Neck,
Watches An Answering Bit Of Bunting Through A Glass.
The bit of
bunting, a mile away, flashes impatiently, once to the right and once
to the left, and
The Tommy with the glass says, "They understand,
sir," and the other Tommy, who has not as yet cast even an interested
glance at the regiment he has ordered into action, folds his flag and
curls up against a hot rock and instantly sleeps.
Stuck on the crest, twenty feet from where General Buller is seated,
are two iron rods, like those in the putting-green of a golf course.
They mark the line of direction which a shell must take, in order to
seek out the enemy. Back of the kopje, where they cannot see the
enemy, where they cannot even see the hill upon which he is
intrenched, are the howitzers. Their duty is to aim at the iron
rods, and vary their aim to either side of them as they are directed
to do by an officer on the crest. Their shells pass a few yards over
the heads of the staff, but the staff has confidence. Those three
yards are as safe a margin as a hundred. Their confidence is that of
the lady in spangles at a music-hall, who permits her husband in
buckskin to shoot apples from the top of her head.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 114 of 202
Words from 31143 to 31406
of 55169
