Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-04-10

the Boer is always behind something,
and he is tired of trying to shoot and
being shot at by man whom he never
sees. Beside, If he lifts his rifle the
dust begins to jump again, and the
rifle barrel is scalding hot, the varnish
is sizzling on the stock as though it
stood before a fire, and to touch 1t
seems to quicken his unbearable thirst
He tries to guess at the hour as
the sun goes over and falls on his
left side. He writes words in the
sand with his fingers and rubs them
out, bewilders an ant which runs with
its bundle of food in front Of him;
does anything he can to keep from
thinking of the maddening drouth
within him. What he really thinks OF,
God knows. I lay there blarsting
them Beers as long as l can remem-
ber,' said one who had lost conscious
ness after eight hours of that kind OF
fighting, and his attitude was prob
ably characteristic. But cursing is not
cool work. and dries man already
drouthy, while still the crackle of fire
comes from the river and death stands
before drink. At last, while there
are still some three hours of daylight,
the patter of rifles along the dongas
on the further bank grows more and
more hurried, until it runs into con-
tinuous roll. A last determined, dis
astrous attempt is being made to push
back the enemys right The Sea-
forths, Cornwalls and Canadians mix
together, are clamboring, leaping,
laundering forward across the deep
intricate channels of the donga beds.
But the man on the other side of
the river only knows of what is going
forward by the swell and spread of the
fire. Five minutes and it has sunk
again at the snap, snap of solitary
rifles What has happened, whose are
the bodies in those pits of death,
where is the enemy and where the
friend, he has not the least idea. If
things have gone we'll, there will be
fresh orders probably, but no orders
come.
AT 6 o'clock he had been twelve
hours under fire; his last meal was a
biscuit, Is hours back, when he had
fallen in at in the morning. after
marching all the day before. But he
is aware neither of WEAKNESS nor hum
ger in the fever of his thirst. The
flesh of his face stained walnut-brown
by the sun has dry, twisted look
like the parched stem of a scrub,
though all the moisture has been rung
from it. One grows to know that look
out here. His fingers never leave the
water bottle, nor his eyes the green
fringe of bush along the river. An
other hour and the guns about him
cease firing and new fight seems to
be beginning far away on the right
The sun is going down, and he can
see nothing to the left of him but
not gold glare of dust.
Then out of it man leaps and
makes dash forward toward the riv-
er. There is sharp ring of an order
to stop him and almost with it the
quick stammer of a dozen shots, and
the man swings around and pitches
forward on his back. The battle
grows louder on the right, a
Howitzer battery has come into action
brownish puffs Of lyddite are bursting
around the kopje. But the man ly-
ing in the scrub pays no heed to it.
His arms are spread out fiat, his
fingers dug into the sand. He is pull
ing himself slowly forward, his eyes
glaring ahead through the scrub.
When a bullet strikes near him he
stops a moment, but goes on again.
So in half an hour he covers about
fifty yards. He can see the cool hol-
low of the river, but there is only
brown grass along it's banks and his
one chance lies in a dash. He is on
all tours for a spring, but he gets no
further. A rife has been following the
faint trail of dust above him and he
sinks down in lump with a bullet
through the head"