All the way up the hill, guiding the newly-arrived light horsemen to a high trench in the terrifying darkness, the few times he’d spoken, there’d been a quack of laughter: “You’ll come under fire, so don’t wet your jodhpurs — drift left — talk and you’ll lose your teeth.” The mouth that issued the warnings itself spluttered toothlessly, counting each man with a thump on his pack: “This way. Follow the string. The heathen can’t reach us now …” At last someone found a candle. Its flame curved through the air behind the smoking man and puttered into a nook of hollowed-out earth, where it grew enormous. “Small chaps are as good as giants,” he drawled reassuringly to Carl Peters, whose nickname was Lizzie. Then he stood upright, the only man in the chamber able to do so without banging his head. “It’s not the constitution,” he observed, “but Mr Colt makes all men equal.” The closest face was still Lizzie’s, a nodding freckled thistle. “I’ve seen big men crumble,”
