eir wages.

[Footnote 1: This chapter has been deliberately included in this volume
notwithstanding its obviously fragmentary nature. The swift picture
which it gives of flying events is the excuse for this decision.]

V.

LOYAL ALIWAL: A TRAGI-COMEDY.

THE CAPE POLICE--A GARRISON OF SIX MEN--MERRY-GO-ROUNDS AND NAPHTHA
FLARES--A CLAMANT WANT OF FIFTY MEN--WHERE ARE THE TROOPS?--"IT'LL
BE JUST THE SAME AS IT WAS IN '81."

ALIWAL NORTH, _Oct. 15._

"Halt! Who goes there?" The trim figure, black in the moonlight, in
breeches and putties, with a broad-brimmed hat looped up at the side,
brought up his carbine and barred the entrance to the bridge. Twenty
yards beyond a second trim black figure with a carbine stamped to and
fro over the planking. They were of the Cape Police, and there were four
more of them somewhere in reserve; across the bridge was the Orange Free
State; behind us was the little frontier town of Aliwal North, and
these were its sole garrison.

The river shone silver under its high banks. Beyond it, in the enemy's
country, the veldt too was silvered over with moonlight and was blotted
inkily with shadow from the kopjes. Three miles to the right, over a
rise and down in a dip, they said there lay the Rouxville commando of
350 men. That night they were to receive 700 or 800 more from
Smithfield, and thereon would ride through Aliwal on their way to eat up
the British half-battalion at Stormberg. On our side of the bridge
slouched a score of Boers--waiting, they said, to join and conduct their
kinsmen. In the very middle of these twirled a battered
merry-go-round--an island of garish naphtha light in the silver, a jarr
of wheeze and squeak in the swishing of trees and river. Up the hill,
through the town, in the bar of the ultra-English hotel, proceeded this
dialogue.

_A fat man_ (_thunderously, nursing a Lee-Metford sporting rifle_).
Well, you've yourselves to blame. I've done my best. With fifty men I'd
have held this place against a thousand Boers, and not ten men'd join.

_A thin-faced man_ (_piping_). We haven't got the rifles. Every
Dutchman's armed, and how many rifles will you find among the English?

_Fat man_ (_shooting home bolt of Lee-Metford_). And who's fault's that?
I've left my property in the Free State, and odds are I shall lose every
penny I've got--what part? all over--and come here on to British soil,
and what do I find? With fifty men I'd hold this pla