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go, but manages to escape. He gets to a place where his father has whispered to him would be where Joeboy was to wait for him. They meet up with a Light Horse unit of the British army, where Val meets an old friend, Denham, and they take part in various skirmishes against the Boers, in which they are injured and captured, but manage to escape with the help of Bob and John.
There is plenty of action, but one can't help feeling that the author has bitten off more than he can chew, as these skirmishes in real life became more than that, and the whole thing became a real, if pointless, war. NH
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CHARGE! A STORY OF BRITON AND BOER, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
HOME, SWEET HOME.
"Hi! Val! Come, quick!"
"What's the matter?" I said excitedly, for my brother Bob came tearing down to the enclosure, sending the long-legged young ostriches scampering away towards the other side; and I knew directly that something unusual must be on the way, or, after the warnings he had received about not startling the wild young coveys, he would not have dashed up like that.
"I dunno. Father sent me to fetch you while he got the guns ready. He said something about mounted men on the other side of the kopje, so it can't be Kaffirs. I say, do back me up, Val, and get father to let me have a gun."
"Ugh! you bloodthirsty young wretch!" I cried as I started with him for our place, now partly hidden by the orchard--apple and pear trees--I had helped to plant seven years before, when father really pitched his tent by the kopje, and he, Bob--a little, round-headed tot of a fellow then-- Aunt Jenny, and I lived in the canvas construction till we had built a house of stone.
The orchard was planted long before the tent was given up--all trees that father had ordered to be sent to us from a famous nursery in Her