unities for viewing the surrounding
country, as for seeing without being seen, and hearing also all that took
place in the low-walled courtyard that was used as a cattle-kraal. You had
also a bird's-eye view of the lower end of the farm kitchen, where the
wall had cracked, and bulged, and spit out some of its stones.

To this eyrie Bough Van Busch retreated when the wall of dust to the
south-west gave up the dim shapes of the Advance, and the beat of many
iron-shod hoofs, and the roll of many iron-shod wheels made distant
thunder, coming nearer, always nearer....

Maar! How the trot of the squadron-columns, the roll of the oncoming
batteries, shook the crazy building. The Advance rode into the yard,
dismounted, and began to ask questions of the coloured man and the
slipshod woman. Neither knew anything. The woman cursed the Englishmen
freely, at which they laughed, and lighted fresh cigarettes. The man was
dumb as stone.

The Division snaked out of the dust presently, a huge brown centipede that
had been chopped in bits, and moved with intervals between its travelling
sections. There was no halt; it rolled on, a vision of innumerable moving
legs and tanned, wearied faces, over the greening veld to the north-east.
The dust grew hotter and thicker, and more stifling, as it rolled.

It drifted in through every chink and cranny in the great chimney, with
the smell of hot human flesh and sweating horsehide, and Bough Van Busch
longed to, but dared not sneeze. Bits of mortar fell about him, and
dislodged tarantulas galloped over his boots. He shook the loathsome,
hairy, bright-eyed insects off, shuddering at them with a horror somewhat
misplaced, considering the affinity between his own methods and theirs.

Roll, roll, roll! The English voices of the chatting men crouched upon
their beasts' withers or sprawling on the limbers, the trampling and
snorting of the horses, the sharp signal-whistles of the leaders, the curt
utterances of command, mingled with the stream of thought that raced
through the busy brain of Bough Van Busch. It had struck him when the
Colonel and his Staff rode up and halted by the gateway of the littered
courtyard, that here would be a chance for a nervy man, with a set
purpose, to venture back, cleverly disguised, to Gueldersdorp. He knew he
would be risking his neck, but the sting of desire galled him to
hardihood. She was there. Red mist gathered in his brain, red sparks
snapped before his eyes, th