Do you suppose that if we heard the General's guns, and found that he was attacking the enemy, we should sit still here and look on ?" "Well, it wouldn't be right," I replied.
"Right?
Of course not.

As soon as the attack was made we should file out and begin to hover on the enemy's flank or rear, or somewhere else, waiting our time, and then go at them like a wedge and scatter them.
Oh, how I do long to begin!" "It seems to me," I said thoughtfully, "that the General ought to have sent some one to find us and bring us a despatch ordering the Colonel what to do." "I dare say he has--half-a-dozen by now--and the Boers have captured them; but it doesn't matter." "Doesn't matter ?" I said wonderingly.
"No; because, depend upon it, he'd have ordered us to sit fast till he came." "Well, but oughtn't the Colonel to have sent out a despatch or two telling the General how we are fixed ?" "Yes--no--I don't know," said Denham sourly.

"I'm only a subaltern--a bit of machinery that is wound up sometimes by my superior officers, and then I turn round till I'm stopped.

Subalterns are not expected to have any brains, or to think for themselves." "Now you are exaggerating," I said.
"Not a bit of it, my little man.

But I know what I should have done if I had been chief." "What's that ?" "Sent out a smart fellow who could track and ride." "With a despatch for the General ?" "No; a message that couldn't fall into the enemy's hands.