And who
were leaving just before the coffin was swallowed in the grave. Some
of them, for a long time after the greater number of the commando had
ridden away, sat upon the rocks staring down into the sunny valley
below them, talking together gravely, rising to take a last look at
the territory which was their own. The shells of the victorious
British sang triumphantly over the heads of their own artillery,
bursting impotently in white smoke or tearing up the veldt in
fountains of dust.
But they did not heed them. They did not even send a revengeful
bullet into the approaching masses. The sweetness of revenge could
not pay for what they had lost. They looked down upon the farm-
houses of men they knew; upon their own farm-houses rising in smoke;
they saw the Englishmen like a pest of locusts settling down around
gardens and farm-houses still nearer, and swallowing them up.
Their companions, already far on the way to safety, waved to them
from the veldt to follow; an excited doctor carrying a wounded man
warned us that the English were just below, storming the hill. "Our
artillery is aiming at five hundred yards," he shouted, but still the
remaining burghers stood immovable, leaning on their rifles, silent,
homeless, looking down without rage or show of feeling at the great
waves of khaki sweeping steadily toward them, and possessing their
land.
