"You crept up so quietly," grumbled the Boer, recovering himself, and calling gently to his companions to return. "Quietly? Of course. You didn't want us to send a trumpeter before us to say we were coming, did you?" "H'm! No. What were you doing? Listening to find out whether we were going to run away?" "Psh! No!" cried Dickenson. "Here, Mr Lennox wants to say something to you." "What about?" said the man huskily. "I have been thinking that, as you are going on a foraging expedition," said Lennox, "you ought to go at once. It's a very dark night, and the enemy is completely demoralised by to-day's fight." "Demoralised?" said the Boer. "Well, scared--beaten--all in disorder." "Oh," said the Boer, nodding his head like an elephant. "But what difference does that make?" "They would not be so likely to notice your wagons going through their lines." "Oh?" said the Boer. "We think it would be a good chance for you." "Does your general say so?" "No; our _colonel_ does not know that we have come." "So! Yes, I see," said the Boer softly. "We think you ought to take advantage of their disorder and get through to-night." "Hah! Yes." "You have only to go and see what the colonel says." "Why don't you go?" said the Boer suspiciously. "Because we think it would be better for you to go." "And fall into the Boers' hands and be shot?" "Bother!" cried Dickenson. "Why, you are as suspicious as--as--well, as some one I know. Now, my good fellow, don't you know that we've eaten the sheep?" "Yes, I know that," said the Boer. "Finished the last side of the last ox?" "Yes, I know that too," replied the Boer, nodding his head slowly and sagely. "And come down to the last ten sacks of the Indian corn?" "Mealies? Yes, I know that too." "Well, in the name of all that's sensible, why should we want to get you taken by your own people?" "To be sure; I see now," said the cornet. "Better for us to get the wagons full again, and drive in some more sheep and oxen." "Of course." "Well, I don't know," said the man thoughtfully. "They will be all on the lookout, thinking that you will attack them in the night, and twice as watchful. I don't know, though. There is no moon to-night, and it will be black darkness." "It is already," said Dickenson. "Ha! Yes," said the Boer quietly, and he puffed at his pipe, which, after dropping in his fright, he had picked up, refilled, and relit at the lantern door. "Yes, that is a very good way. I shall go and tell the colonel that we will go to-night. You will come with me?" "No," said Lennox; "the colonel does not like his young officers to interfere. It would be better for you to go."