A Shell Passes Over Them Like The Shaking Of
Many Telegraph Wires, And Neither Officer Nor Tommy Raises His Head
To Watch It Strike.
They are tired in body and in mind, with cramped
limbs and aching eyes.
They have had twelve nights and twelve days
of battle, and it has lost its power to amuse.
When the sergeants call the companies together, they are eager
enough. Anything is better than lying still looking up at the sunny,
inscrutable hills, or down into the plain crawling with black oxen.
Among the group of staff officers some one has lost a cigar-holder.
It has slipped from between his fingers, and, with the vindictiveness
of inanimate things, has slid and jumped under a pile of rocks. The
interest of all around is instantly centred on the lost cigar-holder.
The Tommies begin to roll the rocks away, endangering the limbs of
the men below them, and half the kopje is obliterated. They are as
keen as terriers after a rat. The officers sit above and give advice
and disagree as to where that cigar-holder hid itself. Over their
heads, not twenty feet above, the shells chase each other fiercely.
But the officers have become accustomed to shells; a search for a
lost cigar-holder, which is going on under their very eyes, is of
greater interest. And when at last a Tommy pounces upon it with a
laugh of triumph, the officers look their disappointment, and, with a
sigh of resignation, pick up their field-glasses.
It is all a question of familiarity. On Broadway, if a building is
going up where there is a chance of a loose brick falling on some
one's head, the contractor puts up red signs marked "Danger!" and you
dodge over to the other side. But if you had been in battle for
twelve days, as have the soldiers of Buller's column, passing shells
would interest you no more than do passing cable-cars. After twelve
days you would forget that shells are dangerous even as you forget
when crossing Broadway that cable-cars can kill and mangle.
Up on the highest hill, seated among the highest rocks, are General
Buller and his staff. The hill is all of rocks, sharp, brown rocks,
as clearly cut as foundation-stones. They are thrown about at
irregular angles, and are shaded only by stiff bayonet-like cacti.
Above is a blue glaring sky, into which the top of the kopje seems to
reach, and to draw and concentrate upon itself all of the sun's heat.
This little jagged point of blistering rocks holds the forces that
press the button which sets the struggling mass below, and the
thousands of men upon the surrounding hills, in motion. It is the
conning tower of the relief column, only, unlike a conning tower, it
offers no protection, no seclusion, no peace. To-day, commanding
generals, under the new conditions which this war has developed, do
not charge up hills waving flashing swords.
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