playing the fool at a time like this. If I hear more of this matter, or if I find that Private Morgan has laid his hands on an unauthorised rum-ration again, he and you will be visited as if by the Wrath of God. Is that plain?”
“Sir,” said Tindal smartly.
“Very well, sar’ major. Dismiss!”
Pulleine was still standing in the opening of the tent as the bugles blew “Column Call” and the regimental NCOs prepared to call the names of the men who had fallen in by companies. The colonel shouted across to one of his subalterns.
“Mr. Spencer!”
As he watched them casually, the hunter identified Spencer as the fair-skinned young captain who went everywhere with a pet terrier running at his heels. Spencer now crossed to the colonel’s tent and saluted self-consciously, the fair skin colouring a little under the trim line of his ginger moustaches.
“Mr. Spencer, as orderly officer last night, please explain to me this report of the removal of Owain Glyndwr from the guard-tent!”
“Sar’ Major Tindal is investigating it, sir. Someone seems to have taken the head from the mess trophy-case in the small hours of this morning.”
“I am aware of that, Mr. Spencer.” Pulleine rested his hand on his sword-hilt in the brightness of the African sun. “Be so good as to find the culprit, put him in close arrest, and bring him to me at defaulters’ parade tomorrow morning. Understood?”
Spencer hesitated. Unlike his brother captains, he seemed a diffident young man who took awkwardly to the self-assurance of professional soldiering.
“With respect, sir.”
“Well?” Pulleine released the hilt and adjusted the angle of the scabbard again.
“The men suspect an intruder in the camp last night, near ‘B’ Company lines.”
“The devil they do, Mr. Spencer! Then why, in God’s name, was something not done at the time?”
“Morgan reported a wide-brimmed hat. Whoever he was, he was close to the wagons and the guard-tents.”
“Mr. Spencer,” said Pulleine softly, “almost every Natal Volunteer wears a patrol-jacket and a wide-awake hat. How could one of them—or more—fail to be in the area? You must do better than that, sir.”
Spencer was not so easily defeated.
“Mr. Pope’s men saw something as well.”
“Mr. Pope is now out on picket-guard. You may speak to him when he’s relieved. Meantime, let me have no more cock-and-bull stories. This is regimental mischief, you may be sure of that. Find the culprit and put him in detention. I have no doubt that he can be named easily enough.”
Spencer saluted, called his terrier to heel, and marched back to the waiting lines of the parade square.
The hunter’s curiosity was satisfied. He promised the world that it had not seen the last of “Owain Glyndwr.” Across the camp ground, bugles finished blowing and the NCOs began to call the names of the men who had fallen in by companies. The sun rose higher in the burning-mirror of the sky, its heat shimmering distantly from the stone ridges that overlooked the plain on all sides.
Presently, a trail of dust drifted from the west, where the Buffalo River marked the frontier dividing Natal from Cetewayo’s Zulu Kingdom. Across this rough terrain moved a column of mounted detachments, a further company of infantry, and a rocket-battery with its strange launching-troughs drawn on limber wheels. The scarlet tunic’d foot-soldiers and the monocled cavalry officers in dark blue were preceded by a regimental band playing Men of Harlech in march time. The sun fired the silver instruments of the bandsmen, giving this support column of Durnford, the junior colonel, the air of a bank holiday carnival.
Among the horsemen, Durnford was easily picked out by the sleeve of his withered left arm pinned to his tunic. Presently he dismounted on the garrison ground at the centre of the camp and strode across to report his arrival to Pulleine. The patient onlooker waited until he saw Durnford leave Pulleine’s tent twenty minutes later, after a delayed breakfast of beef and porter. The horsemen of the column were formed up again for a sweep across the plain from west to east, to root out any forward positions of the tribes in the foothills.
Pulleine had every reason to feel confident. The battalions of the tribes carried no arms beyond their shields of animal skin stretched over light wooden frames and their metal-tipped spears or assegais. Looking about him, the colonel saw a park of British wagons holding half a million rounds of ammunition and enough of the latest quick-firing Martini-Henry rifles to equip two thousand infantry. There was a rocket-battery,