A QUEER DUEL.

Evening Post, Volume LXIII, Issue 87, 12 April 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

A QUEER DUEL.

"During the armistice of the 26th, an* old iwhite-bearded burgher, ridiculously attired in. black trousers and a low evening •waistcoat, was observed by two officers to bo secretly and dishonourably (considering the terms of truce) erecting a little shelter for himself away to the fight front, from which he would be able to more or lees enfilade one of our Hangars. His mode of work was amusing and typically Dutch 1 How bland and absent-minded was his demeanour as he quietly loosened a big stone with his foot, and edged it towards the site selected ! How pathetically weary ■ his sinking to the ground beside it, how pitiably senile the manner in which he rolled it about, until it stood like a child's castle on the beach at Hastings, upon the top of another stone made ready to receive- it I Poor old fellow I His nerves were shattered ; would no one take him away and cherish him? No one of all those heartless thousands, and the old galfer worked on at his doddering task; until his old face beamed foolishly at quite a respectable little wall of stones, orected in exactly tho right position, with a loophole pointing from it exactly in tho right direction. Then the aged builder tired of his play, moved away, and was lost in the crowd of. mooning, moody, fighting men, who wero stretching their limbs in the blessed peace of that day of rest from killing and being killed. The two officers looked at each other and laughed. 'Balbus murum aodificavit,' murmured one. ' Hodie 1' prophesied tho other, grimly)*' with singular- aptness, seeing that it nearly all of his Harrow Latin that had stuck in his mind. Then the two retired to their own shelter, to which they built on n little flank piece, with a loophole which looked ou the old man's loophole. Then with an empty rifle a little aiming practice at the small orifice in front of them, through which four square inches of blue sky were plainly seen, like a turquoise in a sotting of reddish stono, a little subdued argument as to distance, a few adjustments of the stiff Bliding sight, and tho two good-looking English faces looked at ouch other with a twinkle in the honest English eyes, and a smile under the trim moustaches. ' Jam satis,' murmured tho better Latinist ; ' Hodio,' reaffirmed tho worse ; and both subsided satisfied into an hour's sleep, the first for ninety hours of perilous, ageing wakefulness. . . . " Next day at dawn no turquoise was to be seen through tho square hole across the flat hilltop, only a patch of white — the old man's beard, with a little blue dot in the middle of it — the old man's rifle muzzle! Atid then the venerable marksman began to shoot, steadily, deadly, only once in three minutes or so, but every shot a work of art, flicking hot lead-shavings through tho soldiers' loopholes in front of him, taking them one by one as far as he could see them down tho ragged line of shelters. Not a man of the British firing lino but hall to wince in turn at the amxck of his bullet within un inch of his face, though only the two officers know whence the one regularly recurring little peril of all the thousands spitting and spluttering- on the stones was coining. As they wa^eh the jump of that blue dot againßt thefrftnowy patch, the crack of the old Boeife riile which accompanied it sounded plainly to them above the roar of musketry echoing •around. And one of them, lying flat, with a pile of cartridges beside, him, gave shot for shot, whilst the other 'marked' for him with a pair of field-glasses through a tiny crack in the wall close by. It was not long before the Dutchman became aware that he .was spotted, and he stppped shooting for a time, squinting carefully, only the corner of one eye exposed, to see in what corner of the brown confusion of stones his stalkers lufked. Then the white patch and blue dot filled the hole again, with the cobalt sky visible through it. Then another apparition, and another bullet. 'He's spotted you,' muttered he with the field-glasses; 'be careful !' The other roplied with an exclamation, as a bullet, ragged and torn by the impact, snarled along tho left-Hand stone of the loophole, and whined past his head down tho slope behind. So the tactics of Boer and Briton became the same — hasty snaps through the loopholes, dropping flat to the ground again immediately trigger was pressed, whilst the little bullets rapped out their vicious answers to each othor with' smacking metallic j blows on the protecting stones. All the morning the duel went on ; so intent i were the duellists that tho Jtremendous combat roared and sang around them unheard and unnoticed. It was as if that British youth and the old Boer sharpshooter faced each, other in a deserted world, until suddenly the end came. After a shot, and the ensuing flop down by the officer, there was a-pause, no answering shot whistling from tho little sangar opposite. The 'marker' stared earnestly through his glasses, with screwed-up eyes, and one end of hiu moustache drawn tightly into his mouth. Still no bullet, though hundreds were wailing and pinging overhead and along the shelters, the ordinary line-of-battle bullets, coming from and striking anywhere. ' You've got him 1' said tho marker, in a .gravo, quiet voice, and put the glasses on the ground beside his prone comrade, rubbing his tirsd eyes, and yawning. The other took them and levelled them through the loophole. The little orifice opposite was filled with .-white now, as if a patch of paper had been pasted over it; it was the old man's facel And in tho middlo of the white the glasses showed a ruddy blotch, like an over-ripe nectarine flung against a wall ; it was the old man's mouth shattered by thei last bullet. He had fallen forward at the blow, and his face lay pressed against the loophole, as if it were staring through it. For a moment longer it showed, while as parchment, then* slid slowly sideways out of sight, letting in the turquoise sky as it disappeared.