Excerpt from The Gentleman Ranker: And Other Plays A corrugated Kroonsdorp on the border of German South West Africa. There is a window at the back, which shows a typical African Market Square, and in the distance an old Dutch farm, partly in ruins from artillery fire. The barn itself is in fairly good preservation, except for a ragged shell hole on the left side near the roof - about five feet by two. Its sole furniture consists of two wooden benches, a rough wooden table, and two or three wooden chairs. There is a door right and a door left. At the rise of the curtain, Major Haseldene, of the transportation staff, is discovered seated at the table, on which are scattered numerous military documents. Standing left of him is Captain Crane - orderly officer for the day, and looking out of the window, with his back to the audience is 2 Nd Lieu Tenant Brett. A bugle is heard in the distance, followed by the boom of a big gun. Then for a moment there is silence, broken only by the scratching of the Major's pen. Presently he looks up and addresses the Captain. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.