Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

“I’ll pardon you anything for a report like that, Sergeant,” Jameson said with satisfaction. “That may teach them to argue with Maxims and machine guns. Poor bloody buggers didn’t know what hit them.” He turned and waved his arms in signals, indicating he wanted the troopers to spread into two parallel lines, prepared to ride over the ridge in a charge. Luckner, at his side, frowned at the unexpected maneuver. Jameson noted the frown. “Those running away will be spread out,” he said, giving Luckner the benefit of his greater military experience and knowledge. “I don’t want any of them to escape. Also, there may be some up there who are merely wounded and they would be scattered. We haven’t lost a man yet, and I don’t expect to lose one in a minor skirmish such as this. Besides,” he added, smiling, “the men could use the experience of the maneuver and the charge.”

He turned in his saddle to watch his men wheel their horses into position and then turn them to form the double line, proud of the easy manner in which both men and animals obeyed his orders. He could see that the men nearest him were drooping in their saddles, and that more than one horse stumbled slightly as it came into formation. Still, the charge would build up the adrenalin in the men, and a good meal for both men and horses was just a few miles away, just beyond the ridge, and they’d be there in half an hour at the most. He looked at his men, stretched out in the long double line, waiting, and felt a touch of pride, a recognition of his contribution to history. He raised his arm, his saber high.

The bugle blew.

The arm came down, the saber flashing in the sun.

“Charge!”

One of the Boers who had been faking death on top of the ridge rolled over, keeping his head down, and pulled his rifle to him slowly, making sure the grass did not ripple. “Damn hoer ’s horse near stepped on me, the one come up close,” he said in an undertone, complaining in Afrikaans to a companion, and brought his rifle into position, waiting for the orders to fire. “Could have hurt me!”

“Not if he stepped on your head,” the other replied with a grin, and also snaked his rifle to him, making sure no motion on his part could be seen from below. “Can you imagine! Not a drop of blood among the lot of us and the blind bastard goes off as if we were all dead. And the others just stand there looking lost.” He glanced around. “Did anyone get hit?”

“I doubt,” said the first, and watched the twin lines below splash across the swampy ground and start up the ridge, their horses toiling in almost total weariness, fighting for each step. The troopers could be seen in detail now as they came closer to the top of the ridge; they were urging their horses on with a combination of kind words and cruel rowels, but with little enthusiasm. Five hundred yards, four hundred yards, three hundred, two hundred. The Boers on top of the crest wondered at the delay; each of them could take down a fleeing wildbok at four hundred yards. One hundred and fifty yards, one hundred yards—

“Skiet!”

The shots rang out from the top of the ridge in almost perfect unison. “Some bloody charge, at a bloody walkin’ pace—” Trooper Parkinson had been saying sardonically to Trooper Watson, when a rifle ball took him through the forehead, flinging him from his horse, dead before he struck the ground. The charge faltered under the sudden, unexpected, withering fire. The troopers attempted to return the fire but there seemed to be nothing at which to aim, and the toll of the fire could be seen in the falling bodies and the terror of their inexperienced mounts. Horses and men twisted as the charge broke, the troopers wheeling their horses and trying to escape down the ridge and across the swampy ground to the safety of the other side, but there were Boers on both edges of the swamp, hidden in the tall reeds, having waited there for hours, patiently uncomplaining of the whining mosquitoes or the possibility of water moccasins, no move or sound on their part revealing their presence. Now their deadly fire into the mass of fleeing men and frightened horses turned the retreat into a complete rout. The horses, now come alive from their fatigue by the continuous sound of gunfire from all sides and further terrified by the high, piercing neighing, the shrieking of dying horses about them, bolted in terror back across the swamp with or without riders. Jameson, trying desperately with yells and arm-waving to bring some sort of order out of the chaos, now wished he had had the horses trained to gunfire during his long wait at Pitsani, rather than accepting whatever mounts could be obtained in the barren wastes of Bechuanaland and leaving it at that. The bugler, trying his best to bugle the calls that Jameson at his side kept telling him to bugle, changing his mind every few seconds, merely added to the confusion and the noise.

It was a complete disaster, and Jameson, staring about him, his mind in shocked confusion, knew it, especially when he saw a hand on his bridle and felt himself being led at a fast gallop back across the swamp to be released out of sight of the melee on the slopes and in the swamp. Luckner had pulled him from the calamity and now rode beside him in silence as they led the remains of their forces back along the trail. A mile or so from the scene of the fiasco they pulled up at a large expanse of open land that gave ample view in all directions so they could not be followed and attacked without warning, although there was no evidence of the Boers attempting to take advantage of the rout they had inflicted upon Jameson and his forces. Luckner set guards, put the surgeons and their helpers to work on the wounded who had escaped, put Lieutenant Willoughby to the task of determining their casualties, and then squatted down beside the silent and shaken Captain Jameson, and the equally silent but angry Lieutenant White. Major Thompson had not survived the battle. The troopers in the meantime had nearly fallen from their exhausted mounts and were lying on the ground, panting, their eyes closed in total collapse.

Luckner put away both the intriguing and intruding thought of Mrs. Varley’s Hotel and the meal they had missed, and tried to concentrate on the problems facing them. He looked at Jameson. “Well, Captain?”

Jameson merely stared back at him, still in shock from the unexpected rout of his men.

Lieutenant White broke into the silence, his voice bitter. “Our mistake was in not giving the men and the animals proper rest at our last camp,” he said, looking at Luckner accusingly. “Men can go without food for days, even without water, but they can’t fight without sleep—”

“Our mistake,” Luckner said, staring at White with no expression at all on his face, although he could feel the old fury rising in him and knew in his bones that one day he’d have to teach the lieutenant a lesson with his boots, “was in trusting the report of those lying scouts. Nothing more. They should be court-martialed and shot. Someone paid them to lead us into that ambush, and I guarantee I’ll find out who did!”

“You’re insane! They were trying to do their job without rest. They were at a point of exhaustion where they couldn’t properly report. They were blind for sleep,” White said angrily, “and with the sun in their eyes—”

“I agree with Luckner,” Jameson suddenly said, forcing himself to come out of the fog that seemed to have taken control of his brain, compelling himself to once more assume command. “Fatigue is no excuse for reporting lies. But what will happen to the scouts is a matter to be determined in the future after investigation. We don’t even know if they came out of the battle alive. At the moment our problem is in getting to Johannesburg, because it’s obvious we’re not going to get to Krugersdorp.” The mere act of speaking, of making decisions once again, seemed to help bring him from his hazy state, to bring back partial control of himself. “We’ll stay here until dusk, resting the men and the animals, and then bypass Krugersdorp in the darkness. We’re only about twenty miles from Jo’burg and we’ll just have to make it under forced conditions.” He looked at each man in turn. “Do either of you know the way around Krugersdorp and back on the road to Jo’burg?”