A CONQUERING COWARD
I dismounted....full cock! Now, then....Lightning! The sky-line they’d stood out upon
Sharp again, round again,—empty! Why, where were they gone?
There, yonder heap....taking cover....No! horse must be crushing him....What?....
Goodness knows how I got over to where they were—where they were Not.
Blaze, as I started; dense Black as I stumbled, and pretty near fell,
Upon—what?....Ah, the horrible softness! Good God! and—the smell!
Horse and man? No! In a second, two lumps of charr’d clay on the veld....
Struck by the lightning! It slash’d out again, as beside them I knelt....
And down again, scourging, stupendously surging, that tyrannous roll
Roar’d thro’ my flesh and my blood, thro’ my brain and my soul.
Everywhere, everywhere! pitiless, murderous, mysterious, immense
POWER—and, of what It might do, here beside me, the dumb evidence!
Shot, I could jest amid: hurts, I was used to: dead men, I had made:
But this—O my God, this was different—and I was afraid!
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