The Boer pony he rode, nor
the moonlight, nor the veldt behind him, could disguise his seat and
pose. It was as though I had been suddenly thrown back into London
and was passing the cuirassed, gauntleted guardsman, motionless on
his black charger in the sentry gate in Whitehall. Only now, instead
of a steel breastplate, he shivered through his thin khaki, and
instead of the high boots, his legs were wrapped in twisted putties.
"When did they take you?" I asked.
"Early this morning. I was out scouting," he said. He spoke in a
voice so well trained and modulated that I tried to see his shoulder-
straps.
"Oh, you are an officer?" I said.
"No, sir, a trooper. First Life Guards."
But in the moonlight I could see him smile, whether at my mistake or
because it was not a mistake I could not guess. There are many
gentlemen rankers in this war.
He made a lonely figure in the night, his helmet marking him as
conspicuously as a man wearing a high hat in a church. From the
billiard-room, where the American scouts were playing pool, came the
click of the ivory and loud, light-hearted laughter; from the veranda
the sputtering of many strange tongues and the deep, lazy voices of
the Boers.
