Between Snow and Fire — page 98: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

eee: Pee, go ‘TWEEN SNOW AND FIRE. — ‘ a Fingo levy, garrisoned the place. Kreli’s principal kraal on the Xora River had been carried by assault and burnt to the ground,—the Gcaléka chieftain, with his sons and councillors, narrowly escaping falling into the hands of the Colonial forces—and several other minor engagements had been fought. But the powerful Gaika and Hlambi tribes located throughout British Kaffraria, though believed to be restléss and plotting, continued to “ sit still,” as if watching the turn of events, and night after night upon the distant hills the signal fires of the savages gleamed beneath the midnight sky in flashing, lurid tongues, speaking their mys- terious, awesome messages from the Amatola to the Bashi. Hoste—who, with other of his neighbours, was occupied with the armed tending of his stock in /aagery—was growing daily more restless and discontented. It was cruelly rough on him, he declared, to be pinned down like that. He wanted to go and have his share of the fun. The war might be brought to an end any day, and he would have seen nothing of it. He would try and make some satisfac- tory arrangement and then get away to the front at once, he vowed. In which resolution he met with but lukewarm encouragement from his wife. “You should just see the yarn that friend of Payne's wrote him about the fight at Kreli’s kraal, Ada,” he re- marked one day, having just ridden in. ‘‘ He says it was the greatest sport he ever had. Eh, Payne?” That worthy, who had accompanied him, nodded oracu- larly—a nod which might mean anything. Taught wisdom by the possession of a partner of his own joys and sorrows, he was not going to put himself in active opposition to what he termed the Feminine Controller-General’s Depart- ment, But he and Hoste had hatched out between them a little plan which should leave them free, in a day or two, to start off in search of the death or glory coveted by their martial souls, The cottage which Hoste had taken for his family was a tiny pill-box of a place onthe outer fringe of the settlement, fronting upon the ve/d¢, which situation rendered the ladies a little nervous at night, notwithstanding an elaborate sys- tem of outposts and pickets by which the village was sup- posed to be protected. At such a time the presence of Eanswyth, of whom they were very fond, was a perfect god- send to Mrs. Hoste and her daughters. The latter were a EOMIIEDoOoO <Si (EC) m