Charge! | Page 9

the first part of our ride, and he cast his eye over my bonds and gave the Boer who had the leading-rein a sharp order or two about keeping a good lookout. To this the dull, heavy fellow responded with a surly growl. After this the Irishman banteringly asked me if I was comfortable.
My answer was an angry glare--at least, I meant it to be--but the only effect was to make him laugh.
"Ye've got a bad seat in the saddle, and it will be a good lesson to ye in riding, bhoy. Make ye sit up. I hate to see a military man with his showlders up and his nose down close to his charrger's mane. Faith, I'm half-disposed to make ye throw the stirrups over the nag's neck, and I would if we'd toime. But we've none to spare for picking ye up when ye came off.--Here," he cried to the two men next behind, for we now rode two and two; "why are your carbines not full-cocked--rifles, I mane? That's right. Fire at wanst if he tries to bowlt; don't wait for ordhers."
I listened to the sharp clicking of the rifle-locks as the men cocked their pieces; but somehow I did not feel scared, for a feeling of desperation was upon me, and I was strung-up to dare anything to get my liberty; and, besides, my father's orders were that I should make a dash.
"They can't hit me," I said to myself; and wherever the track was fair going we went on at a canter, drawing rein wherever the ground grew bad. At these latter times the captain began talking loudly in a highly-pitched and half-contemptuous way to the leading men; and when his words reached my ears I made out that his subject was either about military evolutions and a man's bearing in the saddle, or else, in a harsh and bitter tone, about the brutal Saxon who was at last going to receive his dues for his long years of evil-doing and tyranny towards the oppressed. Hearing such talk, I rode on half-wondering what England had been doing towards the Irish at home and the Boers abroad, for this was all news to me, and I had never noticed among the Dutch settlers on the veldt anything but a stolid kind of contentment with their prosperous lot; there not being a single case of poverty, as far as I knew, within a hundred miles of our pleasant home.
At the thought of home a strange swelling came in my throat, and the wide, open veldt before me looked dim as I pictured all I had left behind; for, happy as had been the life I led, and lovely as everything around had always seemed, home had never seemed so beautiful as now. However, I set my teeth hard, knit my brows, and with an effort seemed to swallow down that swelling lump in my throat, at the same time nipping Sandho's sides so sharply that he gathered himself up to bound off; but he was checked by a savage snatch at the rein, and received a blow with the barrel of my escort's rifle, as the surly and scowling brute beside me growled out a fierce oath in Dutch.
The plunge Sandho gave nearly unseated me, and in another moment he would have been rearing and kicking to get free; but a few gentle words from my lips soothed the poor beast down, and he settled into his canter once more, while I fell to wondering whether my poor horse could think and would understand that the brutal treatment did not come from his master.
On and on we rode over ground familiar to me, for many a long journey from home had I been in every direction--hunting, shooting, or with our wagon and oxen and Joeboy as foreloper, on journeys of many days through the wilderness, to fetch stores for home use or to dispose of game or stock. So beautiful it all seemed; now it was so wretched for me to leave it all, and to be forced to go and fight against my brothers, so to speak, in a cause that I felt I must hate. As I rode on, thinking thus, I could see that there was no such oppression and tyranny as the Irish captain spoke of; nothing but a bitter and contemptible race-hatred, fostered by idle and discontented men.
"But I shan't have to fight," I said to myself. "They talk about freedom, and drag me away as a slave; but I too mean to be free."
From that moment the gloomy lookout ahead seemed to pass away, the veldt seeming glorious in the afternoon sunshine; and, cantering through the invigorating air, I could have enjoyed my ride but for the constrained position in which