“His mouth hung open and his eyes were like a silly servant girl’s looking at a ghost.”  So said my informant.

Two more shots and two men fell.  Boyce still stood white and gasping, unable to move a muscle or utter a sound.  His face looked ghastly in the moonlight.  A shot pierced his helmet, and the shock caused him to stagger and lose his legs.  A corporal rushed up, thinking he was hit, and, finding him whole, rose, in order to leave him there, and, in rising, got a bullet through the neck.  Thus there were four men killed, and the Commanding Officer, of his own accord, put out of action.  It all happened in a few confused moments.  Then the remaining men did what Boyce should have commanded as soon as the first shot was fired—­they rushed the house.

It contained one solitary inmate, an old man with a couple of Mauser rifles, whom they had to shoot in self-defence.

Meanwhile Boyce, white and haggard-eyed, had picked himself up; revolver in hand he stood on the stoep.  His men came out, cursed him to his face while giving him their contemptuous reports brought the dead bodies of their comrades into the house and laid them out decently, together with the body of the white-bearded Boer.  After that they mounted their horses without a word to him and rode off.  And he let them ride; for his authority was gone; and he knew that they justly laid the deaths of their comrades at the door of his cowardice.

What he did during the next few awful hours is known only to God and to Boyce himself.  The four dead men, his companions, have told no tales.  But at last, one of his men—­Somers was his name—­came riding back at break-neck speed.  When he had left the moon rode high in the heavens; when he returned it was dawn—­and he had a bloody tunic and the face of a man who had escaped from hell.  He threw himself from his horse and found Boyce, sitting on the stoep with his head in his hands.  He shook him by the shoulder.  Boyce started to his feet.  At first he did not recognise Somers.  Then he did and read black tidings in the man’s eyes.

“What’s the matter?”

“They’re all wiped out, sir.  The whole blooming lot.”

He told a tale of heroic disaster.  The remnant of the section had ridden off in hot indignation and had missed their way.  They had gone in a direction opposite to safety, and after a couple of hours had fallen in with a straggling portion of a Boer Commando.  Refusing to surrender, they had all been killed save Somers, who, with a bullet through his shoulder, had prudently turned bridle and fled hell for leather.

Boyce put his hands up to his head and walked about the yard for a few moments.  Then he turned abruptly and stood toweringly over the scared survivor—­a tough, wizened little Cockney of five foot six.

“Well, what’s going to happen now?” he asked, in his soft, dangerous voice.

Somers replied, “I must leave that to you, sir.”