were
enemies, and that he was alone. A little hooliganism, a few street-fights,
one scuffle with the police, some rows in music-halls constituted all his
experience. In the midst of these men, burly, brutal, strong, used to shed
blood of beast and human, his cheap swagger failed him with his stock of
breath. He was no longer the hero in an East End melodrama; his heroic
mood had gone, and there was a feel of tragedy in the air. The Boers
waited sluggishly for the next move. It would come when there should be a
step forward on the part of the little Englishman. Then a clumsy foot in a
cow-leather boot or heavy wooden-pegged veldschoen would be thrust out,
and the boy would be tripped up and go down, and the crowd would
deliberately kick and trample the life out of him, and no one would be
able to say how or by whom the thing had been done. And, reading in the
hard eyes set in the stolid yellow and drab faces that he was "up against
it," and no mistake, W. Keyse felt singularly small and lonely.

Then something happened.

The drunken Englishman who had been lying in a hoggish stupor over the
little iron table in the corner of the saloon hiccoughed, and lifted a
crimson, puffy face, with bleary eyes in it that were startlingly blue. He
drew back the great arms that had been hanging over the edge of his
impromptu pillow, and heaved up his massive stooping shoulders, and got
slowly upon his feet. Then, lurching in his walk, but not stumbling, he
moved across the little space of saw-dusted, hard-beaten earth that
divided him from W. Keyse, and drew up beside that insignificant minority.
The action was not purposeless or unimpressive. The alcoholic wastrel had
suddenly become protagonist in the common little drama that was veering
towards tragedy. Beside the man, Billy Keyse dwindled to a stunted boy, a
steam-pinnace bobbing under the quarter of an armoured battle-ship, its
huge mailed bulk pregnant with possibilities of destruction, its barbettes
full of unseen, watchful eyes, and hands powerful to manipulate the levers
of Titanic death-machines.

Let it be understood that the intervener did not present the aspect of a
hero. He had been drunk, and would be again, unless some miraculous
quickening of the alcohol-drugged brain-centres should rouse and revivify
the dormant will. His square face, with the heavy smudge of bushy black
eyebrows over the fierce blue eyes, and the short, blunt, hooked nose, and
grim-lipped yet tende