Then I began thinking about home again, and wondered what they were all doing there, and whether the Boers had interfered with my father because he was an Englishman.

This brought up the thought that if the war went against the Boers they might go so far as to commandeer both my father and Bob.
The thought was horrible.
"It doesn't matter so much about me," I meditated; "but for them to be dragged off, perhaps to fight against us--oh! it would be terrible." There had until now been a sad feeling of restfulness about my position; but as I drew a mental picture of two forces drawn up against each other, with my father and brother forced to fight on one side, and myself a volunteer on the other, the rock upon which I was seated began to feel horribly hard, and I changed my position, to lie down on the soft sand at my feet.
Well, I had been very hard at work all day; and Nature intended the lying-down position to be accompanied by sleep.

In less than a minute, I suppose--in spite of home troubles, risks in the future, and, above all, that one so very close at hand--my eyes closed for what seemed to be about a moment.

Then some one was shaking my shoulder, and the some one's voice announced that it was Sergeant Briggs going round to all the men of his troop.
"Come, rouse up, my lad! rouse up!" he whispered.

"We're off in less than half-an-hour." I sprang to my feet, just as Denham came up.