But add to your difficulties the continual presence of an enemy, outnumbering you incalculably, always on the alert for you to slacken discipline for a second, and remember you are not marching to safety, but from it.

The odds against you are increasing all the time, and that not for one or two days, but for eighty and a hundred.

I can assure you, one would hear a great deal less of the harmlessness of the black, if more people had experienced that grisly hour before daybreak, when they generally make their attacks.

Your whole force--it's a mere handful--stands under arms at attention in the dark--and it can be dark on the veld, even in the open, on a starlight night.

The veld seems to drink up and absorb the light, as though it was so much water trickling on the parched ground.
There you stand! You have thrown out scouts to search the country round you, but you know for certain that half of them are nodding asleep in their saddles.