No human being can have lived through that fire and the Vaal in flood." The two Boers ceased firing, and the Unicorn shook his head softly and remarked to his companion that the damned English people in the water could not be much wetter than they were on the bank.

It was a curious thing to say at such a moment, but probably the spirit which caused the remark was not so much callousness as that which animated Cromwell, who flipped the ink in his neighbour's face when he signed the death-warrant of his king.
The Vilderbeeste made no reply.

His conscience was oppressed; he had a touch of imagination.

He thought of the soft fingers which had bound up his head that morning: the handkerchief--her handkerchief!--was still around it.

Now those fingers would be gripping at the slippery stones of the Vaal in a struggle for life, or more probably they were already limp in death, with little grains of gravel sticking beneath the nails.
It was a painful thought, but he consoled himself by remembering the warrant, also by the reflection that whoever had shot the people he had not, for he had been careful to fire wide of the cart every time.
Muller was also thinking of the warrant which he had forged.