CHAPTER SIX
Captain Leo Frazer, age thirty and an Englishman, had a trick of
looking Fate between the eyes with those black-fringed blue eyes of
his, of accepting its gifts with gratitude, its occasional knocks
with cheery optimism. At Rugby he had ultimately been captain of the
school; at Oxford he had been of equal prowess in rowing and
football. Since taking his degree, he had been a successful doctor
in the intervals of time allowed him by his membership in one of the
crack regiments at home. He had never seriously contemplated the
possibility of active service; but Colenso had been too strong a
pull upon him. Leaving some scores of sorrowing patients to bemoan
him as already dead, he had promptly shipped for Cape Town. The year
of grace nineteen hundred had found him on the scene at most of its
exciting events. Where Fate refused to take him, he asserted his
strong hand and took Fate, until that weary lady was forced to go
hopping about the map of South Africa with the agility of a sand
flea.
In battle, Frazer was always in the thickest spatter of bullets,
where he bowed himself to the inevitable and lay prone, though with
his face turned to one side to give free passage to the chaff which
carried his comrades through so many grim hours.
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