"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. There were Boers to the left of him, Boers to the right
of him, pulling at their long, drooping pipes and sending up big
rings of white smoke in the white moonlight.
He dismounted, and stood watching the crowd about him under half-
lowered eyelids, but as unmoved as though he saw no one. He threw
his arm over the pony's neck and pulled its head down against his
chest and began talking to it.
It was as though he wished to emphasize his loneliness.
"You are not tired, are you? No, you're not," he said. His voice
was as kindly as though he were speaking to a child.
"Oh, but you can't be tired. What?" he whispered. "A little hungry,
perhaps. Yes?" He seemed to draw much comfort from his friend the
pony, and the pony rubbed his head against the Englishman's shoulder.
"The commandant says he will question you in the morning. You will
come with us to the jail now," his captor directed. "You will find
three of your people there to talk to. I will go bring a blanket for
you, it is getting cold." And they rode off together into the night.
Two days later he would have heard through the windows of Jones's
Hotel the billiard balls still clicking joyously, but the men who
held the cues then would have worn helmets like his own.
The original Jones, the proprietor of Jones's Hotel, had fled. The
man who succeeded him was also a refugee, and the present manager was
an American from Cincinnati. He had never before kept a hotel, but
he confided to me that it was not a bad business, as he found that on
each drink sold he made a profit of a hundred per cent. The
proprietress was a lady from Brooklyn, her husband, another American,
was a prisoner with Cronje at St. Helena. She was in considerable
doubt as to whether she ought to run before the British arrived, or
wait and chance being made a prisoner. She said she would prefer to
escape, but what with standing on her feet all day in the kitchen
preparing meals for hungry burghers and foreign volunteers, she was
too tired to get away.
