Title: The Relief of Mafeking - How it Was Accomplished by Mahon's Flying Column; with an Account of Some Earlier Episodes in the Boer War of 1899-1900
Author: Young, Filson, 1876-1938
Language: English
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THE RELIEF OF MAFEKING

How It Was Accomplished by Mahon's Flying Column; with
an Account of Some Earlier Episodes in the Boer War of
1899-1900

by

FILSON YOUNG

With Portraits and Plans



Methuen & Co.
36 Essex Street W.C.
London
1900



[Illustration: FIELD-MARSHALL LORD ROBERTS, K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I.,
G.C.I.E., V.C.]



TO

M. C. D.



PREFACE



The proprietors of the _Manchester Guardian_ have kindly allowed me to
make use of their copyright in the letters written by me to that
newspaper during the first half of the year. The substance of the
letters has been reproduced in the hope that home-staying folk may find
in them something of the atmosphere that surrounds the collision of
armed forces. It is a strange and rude atmosphere; yet it pleases me at
this moment to remember not so much the strangeness and rudeness as the
kindness and good-fellowship that made a dreadful business tolerable and
the memory of it pleasant. Many friends of these brave days I may not
see again, but if their eyes should ever light on this page I would have
them know that it contains a greeting.


FILSON YOUNG

LONDON, _July 31st, 1900_



CONTENTS


PART I.

ENGLAND IN TIME OF WAR
                                                                  PAGE

       I. How the Reserves came up                                   3

      II. How the Army left England                                 12

     III. How the Wounded came Home                                 40


PART II.

IN THE WAKE OF THE ARMY


      IV. The Long Sea Road                                         51

       V. Scenes at Cape Town                                       61

      VI. In the Eddies of a Great Whirl                            72

     VII. Magersfontein and Kimberley                               85

    VIII. Paardeberg                                                97


PART III.

LORD ROBERTS'S ADVANCE TO BLOEMFONTEIN


      IX. The Boer Panic at Osfontein                              105

       X. The March on Dreifontein                                 115

      XI. The Battle of Dreifontein and the March on Bloemfontein  123

     XII. Retracing the Steps of the Army                          132


PART IV.

AN EXPEDITION WITH LORD METHUEN


    XIII. In the Field again                                       147

     XIV. The Capture of Boers at Tweefontein                      156

      XV. An Elusive Enemy                                         164

     XVI. A Surprise on the March                                  179

    XVII. Under the Red Cross Flag                                 188


PART V.

WITH THE FLYING COLUMN TO MAFEKING


   XVIII. A Strategic Secret                                       205

     XIX. The Departure from Kimberley                             209

      XX. From Taungs to Vryburg                                   221

     XXI. Nearing the Goal                                         230

    XXII. We Repel an Attack and Join Forces with Plumer           238

   XXIII. The Fighting on the Molopo                               248

    XXIV. Mafeking at Last                                         260

     XXV. A Memorial of the Siege                                  271

    XXVI. Good-bye to Mafeking                                     277



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


FIELD-MARSHAL LORD ROBERTS OF KANDAHAR,
K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., V.C.                _Frontispiece_

MR. G. LENTHAL CHEATLE, F.R.C.S., CONSULTING
SURGEON TO HER MAJESTY'S FORCES
IN SOUTH AFRICA                             _To face page_      72

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL P.S. LORD METHUEN,
K.C.V.O., C.B., C.M.G.                         "               156

BRIGADIER-GENERAL BRYAN MAHON, D.S.O.          "               210

MAP OF MAHON'S MARCH                           "               230

PLAN OF THE BATTLE ON THE MOLOPO ON
MAY 16TH                                       "               248

FACSIMILE OF SIGNED MENU OF THE RELIEF
DINNER AT MAFEKING                             "               267



PART I

ENGLAND IN TIME OF WAR



I

HOW THE RESERVES CAME UP


From a seat in the paymaster's office of the depôt barracks at Bury one
afternoon in November, 1899, I could look either into the barrack yard
or out along the Bolton Road. A four-wheeler clove its way through the
crowd surrounding the gates, and the sentries presented arms to it. It
contained my friend, the paymaster, who presently came upstairs carrying
a bag in which were several hundred pounds sterling--the real sinews of
war. This was the man whose business it was to call up the Reservists,
and he had a very simple way of doing it. He had several books
containing large forms divided by perforation into four parts. The first
was a counterfoil on which was written the Reservist's name and the date
of posting the order; the second was a railway warrant requesting the
railway company to furnish him with a ticket available by the most
direct route from his place of residence to the depôt; the third was the
order requiring him to present himself at the barracks on or before a
certain date; and the fourth was a money-order for three shillings,
officially called an advance, but virtually a present from a considerate
Government. On the 11th of the month the paymaster at Bury had signed
about six hundred of these notices, and had seen them posted; on Sunday
and Monday they had begun to fall like bombs on the breakfast tables of
prosperous civilians all over the country; and soon the pieces of blue
paper had made a sad disturbance in several hundreds of cottage homes,
and added several hundred men to the strength of the 2nd Battalion of
the Lancashire Fusiliers. The business of the pay office, or at least my
friend's part of it--a few subalterns rushing up in a hurry to get money
for their various companies; eighty pounds for A, a hundred pounds for
D, and so on--was soon over, and then he told me something of how the
Reserve system works.

All the men in the Reserve have put in at least seven years' service.
They go into the Reserve first for a term of five years at sixpence a
day, and then (if they wish) for a term of four years at fourpence a
day. Of course when the Reserves are called out they receive the same
pay as regular soldiers, and their wives have separation allowances. As
everyone knows, this was the first time that any considerable number of
the Reserves had been called up, and the system has worked admirably.
About 98 per cent, in some districts presented themselves, the small
remainder being either ill or in gaol. A small proportion of those who
came up were rejected by the doctor, but on the whole the men were tough
and fit. In this district they were allowed eight days in which to
settle their affairs and present themselves at the depôt, but most of
them did not come until the last minute, and several not until after the
last minute of the time allowed by the order.

The crowd outside the barrack gates was composed chiefly of women and
loafers, but every now and then it opened to admit a handful of
reluctant-looking men, who had probably stayed outside until their money
was exhausted. And many of them were hanging about outside the gates
having nothing to do and no money to spend, but deferring to the last
moment the final step of self-submission to the iron hand of discipline.
For once the Reservist was inside the barrack yard he could have no more
liberty, probably, for many a long month--unless, indeed, he gained an
endless liberty on the battlefield. The scene through the opposite
window looking on to the barrack yard was very different from the
rather sombre picture without. The yard was gay with the wonderful red
that has done so much to make the army popular. For movement there were
a few squads of Militia recruits being drilled by the trumpet-voiced
sergeants; and for music there was the ring of a hundred rifle-butts
striking the ground together, the tramp and click of many feet, and the
clatter of the colonel's horse as he rode across the yard.

But the most interesting people were the Reservists and their friends,
who dotted the yard in many-coloured groups. Here was a party of girls
and women taking a farewell of some engaging blade whose course of
gallantry had been suddenly interrupted. There was a father standing
with his wife and small family grouped round him, no one saying very
much, but everyone feeling a good deal. And another group would be
laughing and singing, not quite recovered from the means they had taken
to drown regrets.

Sitting in the window, one could trace the Reservist's progress from his
entrance at the gate to his disappearance into quarters. The square was
filled with little processions containing six or eight men each; first
from the orderly-room to the hospital, in all kinds of civilian raiment:
black, grey, brown, green, blue, drab--anything but red; hatless,
capless, black-hatted, cloth-capped, shabby, spruce, dirty, soiled,
clean, pretty clean, white-faced, red-faced, unkempt, well-groomed,
hungry, well-fed, thin, fat--every class between clerks and tramps;
every condition between prosperity and destitution. A procession was
also constantly flowing from the hospital to the quartermaster's
stores--the same procession, with one military touch; for this time the
men did not straggle, but were marched single file in charge of a
sergeant. The next procession was from the stores to the men's quarters;
but now each man had a great bundle under his arms containing his entire
kit wrapped up in an overcoat.

The quartermaster, not without pardonable pride, took me over the stores
in which the men's kits are prepared. There were hundreds of racks
containing bundles so cunningly rolled that you could see at a glance
what was in each. And beside each bundle was a valise already packed
with everything that a campaigner could need; indeed, when I read the
printed list showing what was in each my heart warmed with the same joy
that I felt when I first read _Robinson Crusoe_. Government, who is
rigorous and unyielding as a disciplinarian to her soldiers, is a mother
to them in her provision for their wants. Each bag contained a knife,
fork, spoon, tin canteen, shaving brush, soap, razor, boot brushes,
clothes brush, hair brush, pipeclay, button polisher, cleaning paste,
and a dozen other things just as interesting and as useful. Out of
curiosity I opened a housewife, and my heart was touched with the almost
feminine consideration that it indicated; for there, cunningly folded
up, were skeins of wool and cotton in many different shades, as well as
half a dozen sizes of needles. Surely the War Office is human, and not
the strange machine that some of us esteem it, for how else could it
provide that Tommy shall not have to darn his socks with scarlet, nor
his tunic with grey, nor his trousers with white wool? As the men came
into the stores each one received his share of these excellent things,
and the quartermaster's sergeants displayed quite a genius in estimating
and fitting the various proportions of the men. And the men's eyes
brightened at the sight of the glorious new red cloth; I believe that,
although they wore it for a few days only, it did much to reconcile
them with the inconvenience and hardship that some of them endured in
rejoining. Khaki uniforms were served out later.

All round the barrack square the men stood in groups as I have
described, and in one corner were clusters of men arrayed in their new
garments. One could read pretty easily in their faces the story of the
last few days. One saw several men who had evidently risen in the world
since they had left the army. They had an air of sleekness and delicacy
that made them seem out of place. Others had evidently been going down
in the social scale, and wore their new clothes like fine feathers. Some
were evidently glad at the prospect of action and excitement, and fell
back into the regimental routine as a man sits down in a comfortable
chair. To others, not a few, all this hustle was an act in a domestic
tragedy. Sometimes it was a comedy, as in the case of one man who had
built up a "nice little butchering business," snatching his profits from
the niggard hand of competition; and now he must go forth to kill men,
leaving his rival master in the field of domestic butchery. But the
comedies were few, or else I did not come across them, for it was the
serious side of this business that impressed me the most. Men caught
away from new-found family joys, not for personal advancement or glory,
but to take their places as units in the huge war-machine that is fed
with human bodies. It is so easy to speak and think of "losses" when we
count them by the hundred; it is so hard and bitter to think of one
death and all that it means when one stands and speaks to a soldier. I
found one man standing apart by himself--a young man, with a good,
clean, hardy face--and there were tears in his eyes. As I was passing he
asked me what time it was, and in a few minutes he told me his story. He
had been married two years; he had one little child; he had left his
wife dying of pneumonia. That was all; but I think one can hardly
realise how much it meant. I should like some civilians who do their
soldiering in an armchair, and who really seem to like a war for the
spice with which it flavours their newspaper, to have seen that man and
heard his short tale of misery.[1] He is, of course, one of the few on
whom an admirable system inflicts a fearful wound; but he is an example
(if one were needed) of the matchless discipline that can teach a man
to obey without question or complaint a command that has two edges for
death. I am glad to say that I met no other man in half so dreadful a
plight as his, but there were dozens of men to whom the order came as an
ending of happiness, and of course one knew, although the thought was
not dwelt upon, that many of the little homes of which these men had
been the centre and support would have that support no more. Yet of one
thing I am very sure. Not one of the men to whom I spoke but was willing
and anxious to serve his country; not one but looked proud to be wearing
the old uniform again. The sadness and trouble was all in the
retrospect, not in the outlook. Tommy Atkins, with his great, simple,
conspicuous vices and his obscure, surprising, and enduring virtues was
unconsciously putting into practice the precept of a certain Old
Buccaneer: _No regrets; they unman the heart we want for to-morrow._

[Footnote 1: This man's wife died a week after he had sailed.]



II

HOW THE ARMY LEFT ENGLAND


The few days that elapsed between rejoining and embarkation were spent
by the Reservist at the depôt barracks of his regiment, where he
received his kit and underwent the small amount of drill necessary to
remove the rust of civilian life. After that, the sound of reveille in
the depth of a winter night; the sudden awakening; the hasty breakfast,
eaten like a Passover feast; the long and noisy railway journey; the
faint, salt smell of the sea, and the first sight of it through the
rainy dawn. In the early days of the war I was present at many
embarkations at Liverpool and Southampton, and they left an impression
on my mind which will not easily be effaced. For, even to an onlooker,
the embarkation of troops, with its sights and sounds of tragedy, is an
affair that burns itself into the memory; one is dazzled and confounded
by the number and variety of the small dramas that are enacted before
one's eyes; and the whole is framed in a setting of military system and
circumstance that lends dignity, if that were needed, to the humble
tragedies of the moment.

Only a few of the thousands who came to watch the departure of the
_Canada_ from Liverpool one December morning were allowed inside the
dock shed; nearly all of those within the gate were sweethearts and
wives and children of soldiers who had contrived to procure passes for
them. Even in the shed the scene was one of extraordinary confusion. At
intervals of about half an hour detachments were marched in and formed
up at one end of the shed, where they left their bundles and heavy kit,
and whence they were marched in single file up the gangway of the ship.
With the exception of the Manchesters, all the troops were in khaki, and
were easily distinguishable from the dark-coloured mass of civilians.
Thus there was always a yellow pool of colour in the midst of the black
mass, and all the morning a thin yellow line flowed from the pool to the
ship's gangway. As often as one looked, during the whole morning, there
was a line of men in the act of ascending the gangway. One felt as
though one had fallen asleep for a moment and dreamed, and waked again
to find the same men in the same position, so little did the appearance
of things change. It was really a picture that one looked at, for the
colours and bold outlines remained constant; the eye at times grew used
to the minute movement, and refused to notice that the picture was
preserved only because the same things were being done over and over
again by hundreds of different people. The same greetings as friends
recognised the newly-arrived man, the same hurried words, the same
faltering voices, the same desperate embraces, the same endless tramp
from the formed ranks to the ship, the same tears. The absorption of so
many acute personal emotions into one revolving routine was the most
amazing part of it; the stream of discipline and system ran swift and
deep here, drawing into its flood even the most sacred and intimate of
human experiences, and turning into a pattern the parting of husband
from wife and father from child. When at length one became used to the
picture one began to notice the elements of its composition, and only in
watching them could one gain relief from the overburdening sense of
personality submerged in a system. The little dramas were very strange
and very affecting. I can only give a few examples out of dozens that I
watched.

As the troops came in at the door, marching four deep, the crowd formed
on each side, and those who had friends in the detachment tried to get a
prominent place in the front rank of the crowd, where they could attract
the attention of the soldiers as they passed. The men were not hurried,
and they were marching at ease, so there was generally time for a few
words and a kiss or a hand-clasp before they were moved on. One wife,
who was little more than a girl, had taken a good place on the edge of
the crowd when her husband's detachment began to file in. I heard her
telling a friend that she had not said good-bye to "her lad," as she
wanted to see the last of him; it had been arranged that she was to be
near when he passed so that he could give her a parting kiss. Oh, how
anxiously she scanned the faces of the men as they swung into sight,
throwing all her soul into her eyes!

Presently, "There he is!" she cried; "here, Jim, I'm here!"

The young man's fine honest face had a look no less intent than hers,
but it was turned away from her; he was searching as eagerly as she, but
on the wrong side of the lane of people; and by one of those impish
tricks that Fate plays upon us in acute moments, he never saw her, nor
heard her voice above the cheers of the people and the blare of the
band. It was a cruel thing; she was fast wedged in the crowd. Someone
ran after the man and told him where she was, but before the sympathiser
could reach him his company had been drawn up and he could not be
allowed to fall out. And long before she was clear of the tightly packed
throng he had passed on to the ship, where she could not follow him.

Another incident of another kind. The North Lancashires were marching
in, and an old man in the crowd was on the look-out for his son. He
explained to everybody near him what a fine boy his son was, and how
keen a soldier; how it had nearly broken the old man's heart that his
boy should leave him and go to the war, but how it would "do un good and
make a mon of un." Presently two soldiers appeared, half-carrying and
half-dragging between them a young man who was so drunk that he could
neither stand nor walk. His helmet was jammed over his eyes, but as he
was dragged past us it fell off and rolled to the old man's feet. I
heard him draw in his breath sharply and murmur something as his face
flushed; and then all the people round began to point and say, "That's
his son there, him that's being carried"; and some--God forgive
them!--laughed and joked at the old man. And he who had a moment ago
filled our ears with the praises of his boy gazed after him with a look
of bitter amazement and then went silently away. Another man who had
missed seeing his wife before he had embarked caught sight of her from
the ship's deck as she stood upon the quay with tears in her eyes. There
was no chance of his being allowed to pass down the gangway. But the
husband in him knew no obedience to the stern order, and he dived clean
off the stern of the steamer into the filthy water and swam, khaki and
all, to the steps at the side of the dock. And you may be sure his wife
was there to help him out, and she forgot her grief in her pride at his
daring. So he held her in his arm for a moment (and had three ringing
cheers from his mates into the bargain) before he was collared and
marched back to restraint, dirty but glorious.

Here and there one saw men much the worse for liquor; and I have no
words to describe the folly of those friends who thrust bottles of
spirits into the soldiers' hands as they passed through the streets.
They did them a double cruelty, for the poor fellows, all unstrung by
their partings, gulped the raw spirit thinking they drank courage; and
so once or twice I saw poor women saying good-bye to staggering
maniacs--grim mockeries of the husbands they might never see again, the
poor fools themselves at present oblivious indeed, but doomed to I know
not what horrors of remorse on awaking. Happily, however, there were not
many in this sad condition. Most of the men behaved with a fortitude and
gentleness that was most touching. Indeed I find it hard to express my
admiration of their bearing. There was none of the bluster of the
armchair Jingo, none of the loud hectoring and swaggering and bravado
that distinguish the carpet warrior. On the contrary, when they were
talking of the war amongst themselves they had an air of quiet
determination, of good-humoured banter, and of easy, serious confidence
far more ominous for an enemy than any amount of fluent rant. After the
world of politics, with its hair-splitting and word-mincing, it was good
to be with soldiers--the men who do the work. They knew no fine
political shades, they bandied no epithets; England was at war and they
were going to fight--that was enough. And the spirit in which they
fought all the world knows: every day during the war one read tales of
devotion and heroism that became almost commonplace; it is even a
commonplace to praise them. Yet one could not see the soldiers in this
most trying duty of all, the laying down of home ties and interests (for
I think the heroism of mere fighting is nothing to it), without feeling
a pride in the moral discipline that makes it all possible, and under
the authority of which Tommy is content to be as a child. And this
childlike submission to discipline has its pathetic side, as when one
saw the little family of mother and children grouped to see the last of
its head. The children stood in wide-eyed amazement to see daddy the
Reservist, who in the little household had been the emblem of all
authority, now in the place of obedience, and taking directions from
another man (not so big and strong as he) as to how he should stand and
into what hole he should put the buckle of his strap. Thus even the
father and the husband are absorbed in the soldier. It is a great price;
and the way in which it was paid by so many was perhaps our firmest
assurance of the stuff that is in our soldiers.

Early on the morning of departure a few hundred people--mostly
women--stood on the pierhead of Canada Dock, watching the transport as
she lay a short distance off in the stream with the Blue Peter at her
fore and the St. George's ensign hanging astern. The rain beat steadily
down, loading the raw wind that blew out of the morning twilight, and
the brown water broke sullenly to the send of a setting flood tide. The
faces of nearly all the women were worn with weeping; now they wept no
longer, but looked dully out to sea, while the rain ran down their
soaking garments and splashed on the ground. A drunken soldier who had
somehow got ashore the night before reeled helplessly on his wife's arm,
his head bruised and cut and his new uniform torn and filthy. But in the
woman's face there was a kind of fearful joy; she had rescued him from
his pot-house satellites, and she thought she could keep him. Presently
a tug came off from the transport with a picket to collect deserters--he
had to go. She sobbed and wailed, imploring the sergeant in vain; and
she clung to her poor senseless husband as though she would never leave
him. He hardly knew her; he laughed vacantly in her face when with
streaming eyes she begged him to speak her name; then they took him away
from her. As the tug steamed out I heard him singing.

A little while afterwards the _Canada's_ siren began to wail and squeal
with a horrible mockery of painful cries. The tugs backed clear of her,
and lent their shrill voices to the discordant concert. Presently the
water astern of the transport turned from brown to foaming white, and
her masts began to move past the farther shore. There was a faint sound
of cheering from her, but she was soon out of sound and sight, and still
the women stared into the mist that had enfolded her, as though their
wishes might draw her back again. But in a little while they turned
towards home and a world that had changed its face.

       *       *       *       *       *

On another day I went down to Liverpool to see the _Majestic_ depart
with troops for the front. The weather was consistently unkind. The
_Canada_ had sailed in a whirl of rainy fog, and the departing
passengers of the _Majestic_ looked across a little inky strip of water
to a land that was cloaked with snow. It was bitterly cold on the
landing-stage, and all the interest of the scene could not keep the
bitter wind from whipping one's face and numbing the feet. The wooden
planks resounded not more with the tramp of marching feet than with the
hard stampings of people who were trying to restore circulation. There
were no very poor people on the stage. The space opposite to the ship
was occupied chiefly by the friends of officers and by the troops
themselves, and certainly it seemed kinder to the men to prevent the
dreadful scrambling for farewells that took place when the _Canada_
sailed. But a sea of anxious faces pressed against the barriers at
either end of the reserved space, and no doubt there was much bitter
envy of us in the enclosure, who had so much better an opportunity, and
perhaps so much less reasonable a claim to the front places.

Outwardly this departure seemed very different from that of the
_Canada_. It was not so sordid, if one may use the term; the vessel did
not slip away furtively from a dock in the small hours of the morning,
but departed in open day from the more accessible landing-stage; and
although the weather was chill and bitter, it had not that infinitely
dreary effect upon the spirits that one associates with a soaking
downpour. Here were all the pomps and circumstances of farewell--the
blowing of bands and wavings of caps and great shouts of a multitude
that must give vent to acute emotions. Yet, different though the
outward circumstances were, they only accentuated the likeness that lay
beneath. Good-bye is good-bye, whether we say it at a carriage window or
shout it across a strip of harbour water; whether a crowd sings "Auld
Lang Syne" or a mother whispers "Don't forget me." And at the sailing of
the _Majestic_, with all its dignity, one saw the same tragedies
repeated over and over again, until one's heart sickened of it all, and
one would gladly have come away. Of course it was not among the officers
and their wives that one saw these things; people used to self-control
keep their griefs to themselves, and perhaps a very inexperienced person
would have been deceived by the smiles on women's faces and the cheery
chaff of men. Even here there were things to be seen at the last moment,
but I confess that I turned my back when the saloon gangway was about to
be removed; some things are sacred even from the man whose business it
is to describe what he sees.

It was after the two thousand troops had all been embarked that the
friends of the men were admitted to the stage, and the dismal, though
enthusiastic, part of the affair began. Before that everything was
business and order. As the men arrived they were provided with hot
coffee and meat pies, which they drank and ate with every sign of
pleasure. Some of us who were very cold envied them for that moment. The
forward gangway was for about an hour occupied by men who did nothing
but pass rifles from the quay to the ship; it was a formidable sight,
this stream of deadly weapons that flowed on board. Up another gangway
enough cordite to blow up the whole of Liverpool was being gingerly
carried in small cases. But this hour or two of embarkation, in which so
much really happened, left little impression on my mind. It simply was
one more illustration of the admirable efficiency of discipline for
which our army is famous. It was when the gangways were removed and the
crowd began to pour on to the stage that the affair became human; and
the half-hour that elapsed between that time and the moment when the
mist finally hid the ship wrote itself much more deeply on my memory.

One gangway was left open, and stragglers and men who at the last moment
had stayed away for an hour with their wives and children were hunted
out and hurried up it. At the shore end there were many painful scenes,
which people with a little imagination may picture for themselves.
Fortunately a farewell is a brief thing, and leaves only aching hearts;
people could not stand a sustained agony like that of the last moment.
It is the price we pay for our powers of memory and forethought; the
charger, going perhaps to a bloody and cruel death, steps willingly
enough up plank; the drunken man sings his good-bye; only the sober and
alert taste the fearful sting of parting. Even the people who had kept
up a great show of callousness had the mask suddenly and for the moment
plucked from their faces; young subalterns with rather watery eyes and
very loud voices ran swiftly up the plank, and brave women who had a
smile even to the last for their husbands turned a different face
shorewards. One could not help contrasting the weight of the burden for
those who went away and those who stayed behind; for the men and for the
women; for those who were going to fight, to die perhaps, but still to
_do_ something, and for those who had nothing but their thoughts to be
busy with. Pessimistic as this view may seem, it is the true one; the
event described as an "enthusiastic send-off" is essentially a
melancholy function, and the relief afforded by the antics of a few
intoxicated men does not make it less so. It is strange, indeed, how
important a part is played by the whisky-bottle in the farewells of the
poor. I have seen it passed round family circles at the last moment like
some grotesque sacrament; have even overheard husband and wife almost
quarrelling in their desire to press the comforter each upon the other.
"Here, take it with you, Sam." "No, Missus, you 'ave it; I can get some
off Tom." "No, lad, take it--I'll throw it after you if you don't."
Chance generally stepped in to kill the ghost in the bottle, throwing it
to the ground and spilling the contents. I saw one little boy, aged
about four, run up to his daddy at the last moment with a gorgeous
present in the shape of a glass pistol (a delicate reference to his
profession) full of spirits; it had a cork in the barrel, and I suppose
you fired it down your throat. Amid all these scenes the officers
displayed an unvarying tact, coaxing the men on board and not unduly
hastening their farewells; but for all that there were many violent and
tragic scenes.

Just before the last gangway was run ashore a little woman came up,
crying and almost breathless, and begging to be allowed to say good-bye
to her husband, who was at the other end of the gangway, not allowed to
come down. The orders were absolute--no one must go up to the ship. Then
the woman broke out into a great wailing and sobbing, praying the
quartermaster on her knees that he would let her go half-way up the
gangway; but he was as firm as a rock. Then she came to the edge of the
landing-stage and cried quietly, all alone in that vast crowd, now and
then calling broken words of endearment to the man who stood a dozen
yards away from her across the strip of black water. Discipline is
heavy, and crushes; it is also sharp, and sometimes cuts cruelly and
deeply. But in the midst of her amazing grief she found time to call
some cheering words across to her husband: "Keep your heart up, lad, and
think of me and the children as loves you." He, poor soul, looked
thunder at his sergeant, and raged and swore; but he was a unit in a
mass--he kicked against the pricks, and he knew it.

At last the gangway was removed, and a kind of quietness fell upon the
crowd, waiting for the next harrowing sensation. It came in a
succession of those minute incidents that burn themselves into the
memory of people whose nerves are on the rack. The splash of a hawser
into the dock; the deep notes of the engine-room telegraph, and the
clicking reply upon the bridge; the spinning of the wheel as a
quartermaster tests the steering engine; the clack and spit of winches,
and finally the thrilling shout of the foghorn, whose echo leaves you
trembling--all these things have a painful significance, and they bite
and grip into the heart. As the ship began to move a band on the
shade-deck struck up "Auld Lang Syne," and immediately the floodgates
were unlocked. Tears started again into bitterly dry eyes, handkerchiefs
were waved, people shouted, sang snatches of song--everyone made a sound
of some kind, and contributed to the great unrestrained noise of human
beings in distress and excitement. Above it all rose the hooting of
foghorns and sirens, while the band made its noise too--thump and throb
of drums, scream of pipes, and red-hot flare of brass instruments.
Sea-birds, seeing the ship about to depart, flapped and hovered about it
by the score, adding their shrill cries to the tumult; and high on his
flying-bridge stood the captain, shifting his telegraph from "stand by"
to "ahead," holding up or moving his hand, but not uttering his voice.
It was a striking picture, in which he stood as an image of a Fate by
which all men were for the moment helplessly crushed down.

It was at this moment that something happened which I, for one, had been
expecting. One of the many men who were perched in the rigging or
outside the rails lost his hold, and in the same second was wriggling in
the water. It conveys some idea of the pitch to which the crowd was
strung up to say that the noise did not increase and hardly changed its
character. I suppose people turned from cheering to shouting, but the
big sound was still the same, and since the bands-men were high up and
in the middle of the deck they saw and knew nothing and went on playing.
But something else impressed me far more deeply; indeed, I think that I
can never forget it. Quite close to me was standing the man's wife
holding a baby, and as the man's face turned towards us in his
floundering she said calmly, "God, it's my George." And the little boy,
not understanding, repeated gleefully and senselessly, "It's dadda; it's
dadda."

I looked at the woman's face; her cup had been full before; she had
drunk her fill of grief; and this new horror, her husband struggling
like a mouse in the bitter cold water, could not add a pang to her
torture. All that I have described happened, of course, in a few
seconds; the man had barely gone under before one of the ship's
butchers, in his white clothes, was in after him. Let no one belittle
the race of butchers. The life-taker knew how to save life, and Master
Butcher had his man in a moment, turned him on his back, and began to
swim ashore; indeed, there was no fear of the man's drowning, for there
were half a dozen men in the water within half a minute of the accident.
The man was brought ashore, and his wife helped to rub him down; only to
go through her parting again on the deck of a tender a few minutes
afterwards. But there was a cheerier note in the cheering that broke out
when the ship again began to move, and when the band struck up "God Save
the Queen" everyone who had a croak in him or her joined with a will.
The shape of the ship grew dim in the mist, but still the sea-birds
cried and hovered like winged prayers and wishes between her and the
shore.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the Thames and at Southampton similar scenes were enacted almost
daily. Here is an account of a "Specimen Day" at Southampton--one of the
busiest that had been known there since the beginning of the war, for
Lord Roberts's grand army was being hurried out to repair the fortunes
shattered at Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Colenso.

All day long crowded troop-trains had been steaming into the station,
where small pilot engines waited to receive them and drag them, groaning
and squealing, round the curves and across the points that lead to the
docks. The first train arrived at about nine, and the last at two.
Between those hours there was a constant succession of trains. Three
steamers were waiting to receive the troops; the Peninsular and Oriental
liner _Assaye_, the Union Steamship Company's _Goorkha_, and the Castle
liner _Braemar Castle_. The _Assaye_ was a new boat, and this was her
maiden voyage. She carried two regiments, the 2nd Norfolk and the 2nd
Hampshire, and the fact that the Hampshire is the territorial regiment
of the port, accounted for the unusually large crowd that assembled on
the wharf beside which the _Assaye_ lay. The business of despatching
transports had become so commonplace at Southampton that unless there
was some special interest attached to the embarkation there was no crowd
at all. Only the town loafers would assemble in any strength. But many
of the Southampton people had friends in the Hampshire Regiment, so
there were some thousands pressing round the barriers that surrounded
the dock shed into which the trains on arriving were drawn.

It was on board the _Assaye_ that I spent the greater part of the
morning and afternoon, piloted by a naval lieutenant who was in charge
of the embarkation. I perched myself high up on the flying-bridge and
watched the busy scene below. In the next dock was the _Goorkha_, into
whose commodious maw were pouring the 2nd Lincolnshire Regiment, the 9th
Field Company Royal Engineers, the 14th Brigade Staff, the Cavalry
Brigade Field Hospital, the Fifth Division Field Hospital, and No. 12
Company Army Medical Corps. Further away, alongside the dock extension
jetty, the _Braemar Castle_ was receiving the 1st King's Own Scottish
Borderers, No. 7 Bearer Company, and No. 19 Company Army Medical Corps.
In the _Assaye_, however, were men of only two colours, the Norfolks and
the Hampshires. The Norfolks arrived first, and were promptly embarked.
The 'tween-decks of the _Assaye_, having been constructed specially for
the purpose, were more commodious than those on most other transports,
and certainly they were better ventilated, for a great open shaft ran
right up from the bottom of the ship to the upper deck, and round this
were grouped the tables at which the men, in messes of sixteen, were to
be accommodated. The men seemed pleased with their quarters and with the
general arrangements made for their comfort, but they were almost
laughably critical. The fact was that the soldiers were in great danger
of being spoiled by the fuss that had been made of them before they
embarked. It is well that we should cheer the soldiers up by our
enthusiasm, but, as everyone knows, the British public did much more
than that. "Tommy Atkins" was the rage for the moment, and what may be
called "Absent-minded Beggarism" was rampant. Unfortunately, this
enthusiasm found a vent too often in silly and thoughtless squandering
of money on the soldiers. They were banqueted before they started; their
friends used to ply them with drink; mayors were waiting upon them at
every turn with pipes and tobacco, and total strangers showered money
on them quite recklessly. For example, while I was on the _Assaye's_
bridge I saw a civilian, standing quite apart from the crowd, with his
hat full of copper and small silver coins. No one seemed to be watching
him. He could have no thought of making an impression. But in an ecstasy
of enthusiasm he kept throwing showers of money to the troops on deck.
It is an excellent thing that the people at home should be touched with
such gratitude to the men who fight for them, but, like all great public
movements which have more heart than head in them, this kind of thing
was sometimes overdone, and failed in its object. One saw the men
sometimes arriving drunken, grumbling, and impudent; criticising the
quality or quantity of the refreshments which the steamship company had
thoughtfully provided for them, and generally behaving in a way most
unlike what one would expect. No one seemed to lack money, although so
much was spent in drink. Several times that day I heard men at the
canteen calling for whisky and soda or brandy and potash, and grumbling
heartily when they were not supplied.

With regard to the way in which men got drink one or two things fall to
be said. Every effort was made by the authorities to prevent
drunkenness. One of the naval embarkation officers told me that drink
was not supplied to the men at the canteen, that they were forbidden to
bring any on board, and that they were forbidden to buy or receive any
from civilians; yet it had been found that certain tradesmen at
Southampton had deliberately smuggled whisky on board by heavily bribing
some of the crew. In the face of this kind of thing the officers could
do little. They spoke very bitterly of the cruelty to the men involved
in such practices, for the soldiers are necessarily packed pretty close
together when hammocks are slung, and when the effects of drunkenness
are added to the horrors of sea-sickness the result is awful, and almost
unendurable by a man who cherishes any self-respect. I mention this at
some length because, although it was not prominent on the day of which I
am writing, it had happened terribly often, and on the day before it had
made the scene at the embarkation of an Irish regiment a really horrible
one. The two regiments which embarked on the _Assaye_ happened to be the
soberest I had yet seen. Indeed, there was hardly one case of
drunkenness amongst them. I think this was partly because the outside
public was not allowed near the ship. The men passed from the train
directly on board, and did not come in contact with their friends. It
was kinder to the friends too. I saw none of those heartrending tragic
scenes of parting, none of the wild grief that grows so much wilder for
being indulged. From the officers' deck the picture of embarkation
appeared in outline rather than in detail. The constant movement of
people far below, the orderly disorder, the shouts and cries of officers
and stevedores, the waving arms of cranes and the general excitement
produced in a mere onlooker a strange sense of isolation. One felt like
Gulliver observing the Liliputians in some great effort of maritime
preparation, and the longer one looked the smaller and more like toy
soldiers seemed the men. Such an endless stream of them poured from the
dock shed to the ship. I heard their cries faintly. "Bring back old
Kroojer's whiskers" was the burden of them, and this was indeed the
chief trophy, the chief spoil of war which the average soldier pictured
for himself. It was strange to think that this army of Liliput which
tramped and cried down there conceived its mission so vaguely and
imperfectly that it could depart light-heartedly.

The deep note of the _Goorkha's_ foghorn sounded close at hand. The tops
of her masts glided past the roof of the dock shed; in five minutes she
was out of sight, and her departure seemed to have been almost
uncelebrated. She got away at about two, and an hour later the _Braemar
Castle_ also departed.

The only thing which now delayed the departure of the _Assaye_ was the
embarkation of the horses. There were eight chargers belonging to
officers of the two regiments, and they made the utmost objection to
being enclosed in narrow boxes and swung in mid-air. In particular a
magnificent grey belonging to the colonel of the Hampshire Regiment gave
any amount of trouble. It took her groom ten minutes to coax her into
the box, and as soon as it began to move upwards she snorted and
trembled with fear, and finally sat down on her haunches, with her neck
hanging over the door. The colonel, who was standing near, seemed rather
proud of this exhibition, but when the mare was almost beside herself
with terror, and while she was yet swinging in mid-air, he spoke
reassuring words--"Woa, Bunny! Steady, old girl!" The beast could not
see him, but she heard the voice in the air, and became suddenly quiet.
May she live to need the same assurance on her homeward journey, was
one's involuntary thought. The sight of these fine horses was very
pitiful, in the light of their possible destiny. One looked at the
glossy coats and saw them torn and bloody. One watched the nervous wild
eye and the twitching ears, and heard the whistling bullets and the
shells bursting round them, who know no reason for the commotion,
holding themselves bravely in check until the steadying voice behind
them ceases and the load suddenly lightens, or until a stray bullet ends
both fears and endeavours.

After many delays the last horse was on board. And now there remained
only the inspection by the naval embarkation officers, an interval for
the crowd of half an hour, which the band on the quay did its best to
pass agreeably. There were many false alarms of departure. Every
patriotic song and tune had been played and cheered, but after "Auld
Lang Syne" had been hammered out for the third time the ship began to
move. As she left the quay the younger men at one end of the ship made a
great commotion. One held up a flag which he proposed to plant on
"Kroojer's Hill." (Some authorities might read Majuba.) These men,
recruits for the most part, made in their ignorance of war a joyful
noise, but the Reservists and old hands looked grave and sad, and hardly
joined in the singing or cheering. They were thinking.



III

HOW THE WOUNDED CAME HOME


Going down Southampton Water on January 5th to meet the _Aurania_ with
her company of sick and wounded, one enjoyed a wonderful study of sober
tints in land and sea under a winter sky. The little steamer clove light
green waters that were hardly rippled by the breeze. This green sea she
divided in two long curling lines that seemed to reach the shore on
either hand, merging their light colour with a dark green of fields
waiting for spring. The fields in their turn faded into the bluish black
of leafless trees, and the trees bounded a sky of soft banks shading
from blue to grey. The waters seemed almost deserted, except for a ship
that now and then might meet us, stealing up on the tide and gently
heeling to the breeze. Sometimes a yacht would pass us, sometimes a
fishing-smack; but it was a lonely journey. The air was soft and
sweet--not like that of spring, but like that of a world which lives in
the promise of a coming spring and can wait. There were no sounds but
one sweet and familiar--the whisper, swelling and diminishing but never
dying, of foam at the cutwater.

Little Hythe seemed to have retired into itself for the winter. Its pier
was deserted by boats and men when we passed. Lower down on the other
side was Netley Hospital, with how many pains and agonies hidden behind
its long, imposing front. Opposite Netley the sea eats and bites like an
acid into a kind of mossy grass of rare and vivid green, making a
wonderful coast-line on a small scale, with bays and channels and
sounds.

We made for West Cowes, where the sea brims up to the streets and the
spray sometimes sprinkles the shop windows. Here the telegraph was set
in motion, asking Hurst Castle for news of the _Aurania_. But there was
no news, so, as it would take her two hours to reach Southampton after
passing the Castle, we went on past green promontories that dip into the
sea, right up to where the trees clothe them, past the towers of
Osborne, to Ryde. Again the telegraph asked the question, and again
there was a negative answer. Then we cut across the Solent towards
Southsea, watching the weird evolutions of a 35-knot torpedo-boat. It
darted about, annihilating the small distances of the Solent and making
a strange, buzzing noise like some foul fly. Vomiting flames and sparks,
it trailed a cloud in the air and snow upon the water. While we were
crawling across the river it had made a dozen journeys. Now it would be
down near Cowes, and now half-way up Southampton Water, and when one
looked again a few minutes afterwards it would be close astern,
overtaking us with the speed of a nightmare. I escaped from it at
Southsea, for there the wires told me something that sent me doubling to
the railway station, and thanking my stars that I was in time for a fast
train to Southampton. It arrived at half-past three, and at four the
_Aurania_ showed her nose round the corner of a dock shed. Ten minutes
later she was alongside and berthed, and the disembarkation began.

The total absence of any kind of popular demonstration was most
impressive. There was no crowd at all, and the barriers that had been
provided were not needed. This neglect of a welcome seemed sadly to
discount the value of the great hysterical demonstrations made when the
troops departed. They were men who were perhaps going to suffer for
their country. These invalids had suffered for it, and no one came to
cheer them up. Of course some of the men's own friends were there, and
the few strangers who were present shook hands with the men as they came
limping and hopping and stumbling down the gangway. But it was all very
quiet, very sad, very tame from a spectator's point of view, but deeply
significant. One could hardly imagine a greater contrast than was
presented by the same shed on a day of departure and on a day of arrival
like this. In the one case great crowds hurrahing and shouting and
cheering, bands playing, and bottles going busily round. In the other a
great quietness, a few people standing in little knots and speaking
almost in undertones. And the men themselves were very different. No
excitement, of course; no drunkenness; no yelling for "Kroojer's
whiskers." Oh, no!--something very different from that. About a hundred
men with pain-worn faces, bandaged arms and legs, slings and splints
everywhere, and talking, when they talked at all, of the horrors of the
war, of the death of comrades, and of the seriousness of the news we
gave them, in the light of their own experiences at the front. The men
were speedily disembarked and taken into the dock shed where a train
with some ambulance coaches was waiting, but they preferred to stand and
talk for a little while before taking their seats. A really kind and
useful work was done by members of the Southampton branch of the
"Absent-minded Beggars" relief corps, who provided hot coffee and buns
for the men, and in addition provided each with a stamped telegraph
form, so that he might reassure his friends at home.

Of course there was another beside the serious aspect of this scene.
Nothing could exceed the interest in their ailments displayed by the men
who had partly recovered from them, and those whose wounds had healed
could not tire of giving demonstrations to their friends and relations,
or even to strangers. An illness or a wound is often the first view an
ignorant man gets of Nature's ingenuity displayed in the construction of
his own person, and when one of these invalids got hold of some medical
or surgical word he would cherish and roll it on his tongue like a man
tasting wine. One of them--a man who looked as strong as a horse--was
explaining to an admiring group how he came to be alive at all. A bullet
had passed through the rim of his helmet, entered his left temple,
passed behind his nose, through the roof of his mouth, and out through
the lower part of his right cheek. First he would show us the dent in
his temple; then describe, with many strange words, the inward passage
of the bullet; and then, emerging into the sphere of common things, wind
up with, "and came out of my blooming cheek." Then he would show the
dent in his cheek, and pass his helmet round for all to see, as a
conjurer does. I moved round with this man and heard him recite his tale
three times, and every time he used just the same form of words, which
he repeated pat like a lesson. His corruption of "cerebral" was amusing.
"Nearly scattered the cerveral nerve, so help me!" he said. One could
have understood it if he had been in the Spanish-American war. Another
soldier used a word which I cannot explain. He was showing a mate how a
bullet had entered his shoulder, "and," said he, "it penetrated me
agamemnon." What is an agamemnon? It has been puzzling me ever since.

Only a few of the more robust men were going on in this way, and there
was enough of the pathetic even in the man with the "cerveral" nerve and
him with the "agamemnon." The men looked tired and serious, and seemed
to lack interest in anything but their own afflictions. It is almost a
pity that the public will not witness such scenes as this, for I fear
that it is still sadly in need of having even the most elementary fruits
of war brought home to it. One might, of course, easily overdraw the
picture of the men's condition; it is difficult to describe it
faithfully. Many of them seemed happy and contented to be home again,
and forgot past pains in present joy. As I turned away from the carriage
window I heard a confused drone of conversation, in which such terms as
"ligature," "suppuration," "cavity of the hear'ole," "styptic," and
"prelatic" were prominent. The last thing I heard was--"He hadn't got no
fraxur at all, leastways only a simple un. Mine was a compound fraxur."
One can understand these things. But what is an "agamemnon"?

It was dark when the train went away, and there was nothing more for me
to see on that day, but I had another sensation and a memorable one.
After dinner a little group, composed mainly of naval and military
officers on embarkation duty, was established round the smoke-room fire
in the South Western Hotel. We were all talking about the war, and all
wishing that we were out in the thick of it. In the midst of this chorus
of aspiration a telegram was handed to me inviting me to go to South
Africa as a war correspondent for the _Manchester Guardian_. The chorus
continued while I read, but it sounded far away; I was trying to realise
what acquiescence in the request contained on the pink paper might mean.
When I had decided I handed the telegram to my neighbour, and in a
moment it had made the circuit of the group, trailing exclamations in
its wake and changing the melancholy chorus to one of whole-hearted
envy. I went to bed in some doubt as to whether I had received
congratulations or condolences. In a few hours I was on my way to
London; in a few days the flying wheels had carried me back to
Southampton; but I thought that the busy docks wore a different face.



PART II

IN THE WAKE OF THE ARMY



IV

THE LONG SEA ROAD


In the terms of the street, you make for Madeira from the Needles as
straight as Ushant and Finisterre will permit, keep to the left until
you catch the flare of the solitary light on Cape Verde, go on past that
for about ten days, and Cape Town is the last place on the left. In the
terms of the sea, your course is west-south-west until the Bay is open,
then south-south-west, then south, and then south by east a half-east
for the long stretch. But for most of us the way to the war lay through
a stranger region than that. Years ago (as it seems) on a rainy winter
evening, we watched the buoys of the Solent Channel streaming past us
all aslope on the strong ebb-tide, and as the Trinity Brothers began to
open their eyes for an all-night watch on the south coast, we closed
ours to the world behind.

A day and night of dust and tumble in the Bay, and we awoke on a summer
morning to find the wind blowing softly through the open ports and the
water chiming on the ship's side. After that we lived in a world all our
own; ourselves the sum and centre of it; a blue world that slid through
degrees of latitude and longitude, but held us, its inhabitants, at ever
the same distance from realities. The past was miles away at the end of
the white path astern; the future did not yet so much as smudge the
forward horizon; we were adrift, lost in the present.

Since we were, for the most part, Englishmen, we played games. At first
we had walked about eyeing one another mistrustfully; but Time, the
surest of teachers, soon convinced us of the essential harmlessness of
our fellows. And then we played quoits, and danced and listened to the
band, forgetting the things which were behind and disregarding (for the
moment) the things which were before. Disregarding, but not quite
forgetting. When the last game was over and the last pipe lighted, and
the good, cool hours drew on, men used to sit in little groups watching
the flash of waves tripping and spilling over smooth black furrows; and
then they talked. The C.I.V. officers talked of Lee-Enfields,
trajectories, mass and volley firing; the Indian Staff Corps men, who
were going out on special service, spoke of commissariat and transport,
of standing patrols and Cossack posts, of bivouacks, entrenchments,
vedettes, contact squadrons, tactical sub-units, demolitions and
entanglements. In those dark hours, while alien stars were rising and
swinging westward over the masthead, hard, fit, clear-headed young men
talked coolly and with common sense of the big business before them. The
evening consultations were all that we gave to the future. The past was
even less openly recognised; but it proclaimed itself eloquently in the
withered bunches of flowers on this and that cabin table, in the demand
for the ship's notepaper, in the women's trinkets worn by men who, under
ordinary circumstances, would rather wear sack-cloth than jewellery:
emblems, all of them, of thoughts that travelled the white road between
the rudder and the horizon.

In that strange detached world of ours, energy alone was unsuspended. It
was even stimulated, and in a race and class of men not accustomed to
look inward for recreative resources manifested itself in a violent and
unresting pursuit of artificial amusements. In this pursuit all our days
were passed. The morning sun streams into the port-cabins, the diligent
quartermaster brings our toys on deck and gravely arranges them;
throughout the day we play with them until we are tired, when they are
flung aside untidily; again the quartermaster returns, and, like a kind
nurse, puts them away. The sun slants through the starboard windows and
is quenched in the waters; a little talking, a little dancing, a little
music, and we are all asleep. Such were our days. And ever before,
behind, around and beneath us the moving, mysterious sea, wrinkled and
old as the world, but blowing airs of eternal youth from its crumbling
ridges. Down below iron floors stokers and trimmers were sweating,
engineers were watching and nursing and feeding the great steel
bondagers that drove us along; but how many of the light-hearted
passengers ever thought of them? They were out of sight and mind, hidden
away in their stifling holes, where in their relation to us they
completed the satire of our miniature society.

I might give you a dozen pictures of our life, and yet mislead you as to
its uncommonness; it was really commonplace life in strange and
unfamiliar circumstances. Here is an example. At the first concert it
was noticed, not without surprise, that the Captain's name was down for
a song. Now for days the Captain had tramped alone up and down the
deck--a large man, with a heavy face and drooping eye, and a head set
forward on the shoulders by reason of long hours of staring into the
sea dust; a man past middle-age, silent and (as we thought) surly.
Therefore something like a sensation was produced when it was announced
that the Captain would sing "Mary." I think I see and hear it now. The
saloon filled with people; the windows framing faces of deck hands and
firemen, with a background of moving blue; the heavy central figure, the
kindly (we saw that now) Scotch face; the worn voice, unused to
sustained utterance, gasping for breath in the middle of a line, and
sometimes failing to be ready in time ("I lost the run of it," he
explained to us in the middle of a temporary breakdown); the quaint
simplicity of the words, "Kind, kind and gentle is she, kind is ma
Ma-ary"; the thunder of applause that greeted the close; the immediate
and unassailable popularity of the Captain. If I have described it as I
saw it, you will understand why I shall always like to remember that
scene. Here is another glimpse.

On a Sunday, when the church bells at home were jangling and the streets
were (for a guess) streaming with rain and mud, it was Sunday with us
also, three thousand miles away. The sun was lighting the lazy sea until
it shone like a big blue diamond, the whales were spouting, the
porpoises plunging and blowing, and here and there a shark lay basking
near the surface with a wicked, wriggling, black fin exposed. It was
very hot and still; the great sea people seemed to be revelling in some
sort of Sabbath of their own, and the waters lay quiet and shining under
the eye of Heaven. Here and there a drove of small flying-fishes rose
and skimmed over the surface like swallows, but they too soon plunged
into the blue and sought below that the cool green depths. Into this
tranquil scene steamed the _Kinfauns Castle_ in a triangle of snow, a
big porpoise rolling and rollicking along beside her, now rising on this
side, now on that. When he came very close he could see into the saloon
windows, and presently he saw the Captain standing at the end of a table
spread with the Union Jack and a great crowd of people sitting round the
tables.

"Dearly beloved brethren," began the Captain, and then the porpoise's
tail came up and his head went down with a "pflough!"

When he came up again near enough to see, all the people were muttering
and gobbling over the Psalms, the Captain rolling out his short
alternate verses as though he were directing his own quartermaster on a
course. While the porpoise was very close to the ship and listening hard
the ash-shoot was emptied almost on his head, which scared him so badly
that he dived deep, and did not come up again for a long time. When he
did rise the people were singing, "On, then, Christian soldiers, on to
victory"; again he dived, and again came up with a snort, to hear them
singing with equal vigour, "Make wars to cease and give us peace." But
just then the third engineer opened the exhaust of the waste condenser
water, and my black friend got such a shock when the cloud of steam and
hot water burst from the ship's side that he altered his course three
points, and I saw him plunging and rolling away to the west of south.
One thing the porpoise did not hear, for he was below at the time. In
his course through the Liturgy the Captain had reached the Collect for
the day. I will warrant he was trained in a sterner school of theology
than the Anglican; his voice and tones were never meant for the smooth
diction of the Prayer-book; but that is neither here nor there. The
"Coallect for the fourth Sunday after 'Pithany" rolled from his tongue.
I never hope to hear it in a more appropriate time or place; there was
something almost startling in the coincidence that brought it round on
such a day, and there was significance in the words--"_O God, Who
knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers that by
reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright;
grant to us such strength and protection as may support us in all
dangers and carry us through, all temptations._" Thus prayed the
Captain, the Chief Officer standing beside him; and none knew so well as
those two how many and great were the dangers that lurked in our smiling
environment.

As we drew nearer to our journey's end the desire for news became acute.
At Madeira, on the 24th of January, we heard that the situation in Natal
was practically unchanged, and up to February 3rd we had not seen
another ship pass nearer than five miles. But then it was thought
probable that we should meet the _Dunottar Castle_ on her way home, and
a bright look-out was kept. In the afternoon I was up on the bridge
discussing celestial angles with the Chief Officer; we were snoring into
the south-east trade, and the strong sun-warmed wind was a thing to
bathe in; the bridge binoculars diligently swept the sharp blue line of
horizon. Presently the Third Officer put his glass down. "There she
is," said he, "two points on the starboard bow." We all looked, and we
saw the tiny smear of smoke on the line. How strange it was; both of us
coming up from nowhere and meeting on this roadless waste! In a quarter
of an hour we raised her masts and funnel, and then we perceived it was
not the _Dunottar_. Our course was altered two points, and the three of
us stood up there in the wind and sun watching the growing speck. Down
below they had just seen her, and glasses were levelled by the hundred.
In a little while we could see a red cross on her bow, and we made her
out to be a hospital ship carrying home wounded--Buller's wounded, we
said, from the Tugela fight.

"BWF, HLF, WBQ," fluttered out our signal flags in a bravery of scarlet
and blue and white, which is, being interpreted, "What news since the
24th?"

She was abeam now, a mile away; how slow they were in running up an
answer! We pictured their signal quartermaster racking the pigeon-holes
to spell "Ladysmith," and expected a gaudy display. Presently the
coloured stream blew out from her main topmast stay. Only four flags!

"DFPC," reported the Third Officer, and there was a scramble for the
Code-book. "Nothing important since last accounts."

Could anything be more exasperating? We ran up another question, I do
not know what, but we waited in vain for the answering flutter, and the
hospital ship _Princess of Wales_ rolled along on the blue swell.

"South by east-a-half-east," snapped the Chief Officer; the wheel spun
and the steering engine hissed, and the _Kinfauns Castle_ drove her stem
into it again, while from the promenade deck rose the sound of many
voices.

And so we went driving along again through a wonderful sea of deep blue
rollers jousting on a grey ground. It did not yet appear where we should
go or what would be our lot; to-night or to-morrow we should know; but
to-day it was enough that the sun shone and that the waters were wide.



V

SCENES AT CAPE TOWN


When at last the _Kinfauns Castle_ carried us on a sunny evening out of
blue emptiness into Cape Town harbour and dumped us down on dry land,
about thirty of us who were on our way to the front took elaborate
farewells--only to meet again twelve hours later in the vestibule at
headquarters.

No one was in the least excited by our arrival. If we were special
service men, we were told that there were no instructions for us, and
that we had better turn up three or four times a day and look at the
order-board. If we were correspondents, heads were shaken, and
smooth-spoken people with stars and crowns on their shoulder-straps said
they doubted very much whether Lord Roberts would grant any more passes.
If we were nobodies who had come out (with more or less direct
encouragement from the officials) in the hope of getting commissions, we
were turned away like tramps, and told that there was "nothing for us."
It was all rather flattening and dispiriting.

When we turned up again at headquarters next morning we found the place
empty but for a Kaffir charwoman snuffling over her brushes: Lord
Roberts gone, Lord Kitchener gone, all the staff gone, stolen away like
thieves in the night, gone "to the front." No one was left in authority,
no one knew anything about us; so we went to the barracks and worried
irresponsible officers who would have moved heaven and earth for us if
they could, but they "had no instructions." At last, in a remote corner
of the barrack buildings, someone discovered a major who was in charge
of the Intelligence Department. Didn't we all fall upon him like birds
of prey! In half an hour the telegraph that connected Cape Town with the
Commander-in-Chief was thrilling all our wants northward; in six hours
half the special service men were flying about the town collecting
sardines and whisky and ink; in twenty-four hours only a few of us were
left, still worrying the unfortunate major. Then the wires began to come
back from Lord Roberts saying that no licence must be granted to this
man and that; that there were more than enough correspondents at the
front; and at this news some of us began to quake. At this critical
point, when I was wandering in the corridor of the post office, I found
the Press Censor, all alone and unguarded; so I fastened upon him and
drove him, the kindest and most amiable of men, into his office, and
stood over him while he wrote a long telegram to the chief, in which
many reasons were given why I should go to the front. The result was
that I received the desired privilege, but when I left Cape Town many
men were still haunting the barracks and the post office.

My week of waiting was a busy time, but in the intervals between
sitting down before staff officers, interviewing possible--and
impossible--servants, and trying horses, I contrived to see a little
of the Cape Town life in those martial days.

One seemed to be no nearer the war there than in London or Manchester.
Troops marched to the station and disappeared into the night; so they
did at home. There were hospitals there, filled with wounded men; none
so large or so full as Netley. There was a big camp there; not so big a
camp as Aldershot. And the place was full of officers, coming and going,
even as Southampton had been crowded with officers pausing on their way
to or from the war. Then there was at Cape Town something like a famine
of news; by far the latest and most trustworthy came from London. Things
that thrilled us out there and were cabled home in hot haste were found
to be stale news in England. As the storm blows over the cliff far out
to sea, but leaves the hamlet on the shore in absolute peace, so Cape
Town seemed to be sheltered by the big, dominating mountain from all the
home-going news, and to abide in peaceful ignorance while the
telegraph-rooms resounded to the talk of the needles.

I rather dreaded the hospitals, but they were magnificent. To see so
many men bearing pain bravely and cheerfully were privilege enough; but
to find men who had undergone the most dreadful tortures soberly begging
and hoping to be sent back to the front showed one what can be
accomplished by discipline and an ideal of conduct. Here is an example.
Two men lay side by side in the Wynberg hospital. One had five holes in
his body, made during a charge by as many bullets. He had nearly
recovered. The other had been shot while lying down, and the bullet had
passed along his back and touched the base of his spine, paralysing him
for ever. Both men were almost weeping; the first with joy because there
was a chance of his returning to the front, the second with grief
because he was powerless to help his comrades any more. I could cite a
hundred examples of the astounding spirit that such men displayed. I do
not think that we at home ever doubted their bravery on the field, but
the kind of endurance that is seldom bred but by long habit and early
training was to be found no less universally in these hospital beds. The
people of Cape Town had done well in the matter of hospitals, and fully
half the accommodation was provided by public subscription. But
Government hospitals were far from efficient in their equipment, as well
as far from sufficient in their accommodation. Many things that would be
regarded as necessaries in a pauper hospital at home had to be provided
at Cape Town for the Government hospitals by private bounty.

I walked over to the infantry camp at Sea Point one morning with Mr.
Rudyard Kipling. As we neared the camp we overtook a private carrying in
his hand a large pair of boots. Mr. Rudyard Kipling asked if we were on
the right road, and the man said--

"Yes; are yer goin' there? Then yer can tike these boots. I 'av to
entrine at twelve o'clock, and I ain't goin' ter miss it fer no blessed
boots. 'Ere, tike 'old," he continued, thrusting the boots into Mr.
Kipling's hand, "and give 'em to Private Dickson, B Company; and mind,
if yer cawn't find 'im, jest tike 'em back ter Williams, opposite the
White 'Orse."

Mr. Kipling promised faithfully, and gave a receipt, which he signed;
but the man did not notice the name.

"My friend," said Mr. Kipling, "you'll get your head chaffed off when
you get back to the guard-room."

"What for?" vainly asked the man, and departed, while we continued our
way towards the camp.

No sooner were we inside the railings than Mr. Kipling was accosted by a
military policeman.

"What are you doing here? You must get out of here, you know, sharp!"

"I'm taking these boots to Private Dickson," said Mr. Kipling.

"Well, you ought to take them to the guard tent, and not go wandering
about the camp like this. Out of it, now!"

Now Mr. Kipling had a pass from the Commander-in-Chief to go wherever he
pleased in South Africa, and, besides that, he is Rudyard Kipling, whom
private soldiers call their brother and father; so the situation was
amusing.

Just then a police sergeant rode up and said, "Please, sir, I lived ten
years with the man as you get your tobacco from in Brighton; anything I
can do for you?"

"Yes," said Mr. Kipling, "I want this man taken away and killed!"

The youth was much confused, but he had done his duty; so Private
Dickson had his boots, and great was the mirth and loud the cheering
about the tents of B Company.

This police protection of the camps was surprisingly close, but one
learned the reason when one had moved about for a little while among the
military authorities. For here, even in the heart of British territory,
the Boer spy was feared; he was thought to be the servant of an agency
hardly less invisible and powerful than the Open Eye of the Mormons; and
one was told that his machinations were as patent as his secrecy was
perfect. One morning a section of the railings surrounding picketed
horses would be found demolished; on another the whole milk supply of a
camp would be infected by some poisonous bacillus. It seems almost
incredible, but it is true that all such mishaps were attributed to Boer
treachery. In the popular imagination the Boer agent moved undiscovered
amid the daily life of Cape Town; at noon in the busy street; in the
club smoke-room; in the hotel dining-room--a woman this time, arrayed in
frocks from Paris, and keeping a table charmed by her conversation. And
yet the objects of this superstitious dread were allowed to have
qualities that made some of our officers dislike their business. An
English officer said to me one night:

"One can't say it here without being misunderstood, but I love the
Boers, even though I am fighting them. My father was a colonist, and
these men were like brothers of his. I have been in houses here where I
knew there were guns stored for the enemy, and where the sons would
probably be fighting me in the field, and the people have almost cried
when I have been going away; neither of us talked about it, but each
knew what was in the other's mind. People say they're like animals, and
perhaps they are; at least they're like animals in this, that once you
make them distrust you, you'll never win their confidence again. And
they don't trust us."

That officer is well enough known, and universally admired as a smart
soldier; but not everyone who sees the keen soldier, anxious above all
things for his own country's success, realises with what conflicting
emotions he goes to the fight.

I was anxious to see a real live Boer, as I thought it quite improbable
that I should see one at the front; half the officers and men who had
been wounded had never seen one of the enemy. So, having heard that our
Boer prisoners--450 in number--had been landed from Her Majesty's ship
_Penelope_ and encamped at Simonstown, I went there to visit them.

From Cape Town the land stretches an arm southward to the Cape of Good
Hope and Bellows Rock, where it divides the Atlantic from the Indian
Ocean. The mainland runs about as far southward, so that the arm partly
encloses the waters of False Bay; and in the hollow of its elbow nestles
Simonstown. This is a cluster of white houses on the sea-beat foot of a
hill that sweeps upward to the giddy white clouds. All day long at that
season the hill is steeped in sunshine; all day long its lower slopes
reverberate to the assault of the rollers while the summit is folded in
the silence of the upper air. Close in-shore half a dozen cruisers were
lying like rocks among the deep moving waters; the St. George's ensign
floated from the shore flagstaffs, and an air of whiteness and tidiness
proclaimed the naval station.

The railway from Cape Town runs so close to the shore of the bay that
you cannot hear yourself speak for the noise of bursting surf. It
brought me to Simonstown in the full glare and heat of the afternoon.
The prisoners were encamped about a hundred yards out of the town, and
as we walked through the street we spoke with pity of men imprisoned on
such a day. What we expected I do not quite know--dungeons perhaps, or
cells hewn out of the rock--but it was with something like a shock of
disappointment or relief (according to our notions of appropriate
treatment for prisoners) that we caught our first view of the
encampment. Just beyond the town the hillside takes a gentler slope,
dipping a lawn of sea-grass into the water; and it was upon this
charming spot, enclosed with a double fence, that the prisoners were
quartered. We pressed our faces against the wires and stared, much as
one stares in the Zoo at a cageful of newly-arrived animals that have
cost a great deal of money and maybe a life or two. Fine, big men,
stalwart and burned brown by the sun; stern-looking, but with that air
of large contentment they wear who live much alone and out of doors;
massive of jaw and forehead, moulded after a grand pattern. They were
lying on the grass, standing in little groups, sauntering up and down
in the hot sunshine, playing cricket with ponderous energy, bathing and
sporting in the clear apple-green water. It was not their contentment
that surprised me, but the perfection of their circumstances. They were
encamped on such a spot as people pay large sums for the privilege of
pitching tents upon; they were numerous enough to make themselves
independent of alien company; the sun was shining, the sea breeze
blowing; they had food and drink, and tobacco to smoke; where they
bathed an eight-oar gig from the _Powerful_ swung on the swell, not so
much to prevent escape as to render assistance to tired swimmers.

So our prisoners blinked in the sun and listened to the organ-note of
the surf, and brooded on the most beautiful picture I have ever seen:
masses of bare rock towering into the bright sky, and an endless pageant
of seas rolling grandly homeward from the south, from the infinite
purple and blue of the Indian Ocean, grounding at the edge of the green
lawn and showering snow upon the hot rocks.



VI

IN THE EDDIES OF A GREAT WHIRL


When I arrived at Modder River Camp, on February 17th, the guns were
being hauled back from the hills into camp, tents were being struck, and
waggon transport organised. The plain was a cloud of hot, whirling sand
that shrouded near objects as closely as a fog, but, instead of the damp
coldness of a fog, the plain was radiating heat that sent the
thermometer inside one's tent up to 135 degrees. The place that a few
days before had been resounding with artillery was now silent and (by
comparison) deserted; buck waggons took the place of gun carriages, and
the ambulance cart carried mails from home. One thought of Modder River
as being surely at "the front," but here was the place, here were the
troops, the guns, the hospitals, the sand-enveloped cemetery, and yet
one seemed to be no nearer than before to actual war. As for news, there
was less even than at Cape Town. A few telegrams, days old, fluttered
from the notice-board, and in at headquarters I found that we who had
been sixty hours on the journey from Cape Town were hailed as
newsbearers. There was a press censor, yet one could not send press
telegrams; headquarters had moved on to Jacobsdaal; telegrams must go
through headquarters, and the wire to Jacobsdaal was only to be used for
military purposes. This was something like a block, so Mr. Amery, of the
_Times_, and I, resolved to ride over to Jacobsdaal and see if we could
get any news.

[Illustration: MR. G. LENTHAL CHEATLE, F.R.C.S.

_Consulting Surgeon to Her Majesty's Forces in South Africa_]

We crossed the Riet and Modder drifts, and passed over the island where
the shells and bullets had been singing so shrilly on the day of the big
fight. When we passed the birds were singing instead, sending down with
the cooing pigeons a chorus from the trees. No one could tell us whether
or not the twelve miles to Jacobsdaal were free from the enemy; people
thought so, but they were not quite sure. So we rode along, observing
the dry veldt not without interest, but the lonely road heaved up and
down over the plain and revealed little sign of human occupation. Once
we passed a convoy carrying stores to the front, and at about the eighth
mile a little Boer camp of about a dozen tents, all deserted, and
apparently in haste, for there were half-emptied tins of provisions and
a few cooking utensils scattered about, and a dead horse lay by the
roadside. The heat was very great, and was only supportable when one
kept a drenched handkerchief under one's hat. Indeed, officers who had
come straight out from India protested that they never felt there
anything like the heat of that South African drought.

Jacobsdaal, a little white town or village near the river, appeared at
last from a ridge of the plain. It contained an inn, and the inn
contained cups of tea--a fact in connection with Jacobsdaal that I shall
long remember. In about an hour we were ready to look about a little,
but at headquarters we could only learn that the front had again moved
forward. We could not advance without transport, and we could get no
quarters, so we lay down in a stony field under the stars, and made a
poor shift at sleeping through a concert of complaining oxen and cocks
cheering all night long, with an undertone of rumbling wheels on the
distant road.

Next morning early I rode back to Modder, where I collected with
difficulty two sorry but useful nags and a Cape cart. On my way out I
passed a sentry, who brought me up with the usual cry, "Halt! who goes
there?"

"Friend," said I.

"Advance, friend, and give the countersign."

Now I did not know the countersign, and I had to tell him so. The
private soldier is sometimes zealous and often stupid, and occasionally
both; and in the pause that followed my answer I heard the click of his
rifle. In that second of time I remembered a story which I had heard the
day before of a sentry at Modder, who, when the guard came up in the
dark to relieve him, made the usual challenge. "It's only us, old man,"
said the sergeant. "None of your blooming us," said the sentry, and shot
the sergeant dead.

However the sentry was soon persuaded, and when I passed the outpost,
the sentry who should really have stopped me and examined my passport
treated me as a field-officer and presented arms, so I rode away back to
the dust of Modder. There I collected as much forage as possible, and
the next day rode back with my caravan to Jacobsdaal. Once more there
was a block. The front forty miles away; no more forage, no rations
even; and I starved officially, but was entertained privately by the
commandant. The front was reaching away forward along the road to
Bloemfontein; and as telegrams had to be censored there and handed in at
Modder River, fifty miles away, and as I had no despatch riders, I
decided that the game was up on this line. A dose of fever helped my
decision, and held me afterwards at Modder when great things were
happening at Paardeberg. But for the day during which I stayed in
Jacobsdaal I studied the little town and its alien inhabitants.

Jacobsdaal stands four-square on the northern bank of the Riet River,
eleven miles east-south-east from Modder; and the manner of its
occupation, as described to me by General Wavell (who captured it on the
15th of February and remained in it as commandant), seems to have been
surprisingly neat and effectual. General Chermside, commanding the 14th
Brigade, left Enslin on the 11th and marched to Ramdam, where he was
joined by General Wavell, commanding the 15th Brigade, who had moved
from Graspan. From Ramdam the two brigades marched almost due east to
Dekiel's Drift, which they were delayed in crossing during the whole of
the 13th. They started again on the next evening and made a night march
to Wegdraai, where they arrived at four o'clock on the morning of the
15th. An officer of the North Staffordshire Regiment told me that he
never saw anything so impressive as that night march. The horizon was
level all round like the sea, and all night long it was alive with
streams of lightning that lighted up the plain with the brigade crawling
across it through the thunder. On the 15th General Wavell's brigade was
detached, and at midday started to march upon Jacobsdaal. The brigade
was strengthened by about seventy men of the C.I.V. (who acted as
scouts) and by a battery of artillery. The North Staffordshires acted as
advance guard, the South Wales Borderers and the Cheshire Regiment
formed the main body, and the East Lancashires brought up the rear--half
a battalion as reserves and half as rear-guard with the baggage.

The position was an admirable one for the enemy. General Wavell had the
town ahead and the river on the left parallel with his line of march;
and as he approached, the Boers (about 400 strong) opened a brisk fire
on his flank from the river-bed. The fire was directed at the C.I.V.'s,
who were advancing on the right bank of the river; but it had a double
objective, since what missed the C.I.V.'s had a fair chance of finding
the Staffordshires, who were advancing on a parallel ridge still further
to the right. The C.I.V.'s had a good many horses killed, and many of
the men were wounded and "dropped," but I believe only one was killed.
Finding the attack was coming from the left, the General showed his
force on that side, at the same time shelling the south-east corner of
the town. He would do no more because of the women and children in the
place; and, considering his disadvantage, the Boers with a little more
determination might have held the town. After showing on the left
General Wavell swept round on the right, sending the North
Staffordshires towards the north side. There they entered, and the place
was, so to speak, nipped between the two arms of the brigade, with the
artillery in the middle ready to speak. The Boers now broke and fled
south-west and north-west, followed by showers of shrapnel. "It was an
awfully pretty sight," the General remarked to me, "to see the shrapnel
bursting all round in showers; one of the prettiest things I have ever
seen." The enemy had open country and soon got away, but in the meantime
the Union Jack was blowing bravely over Jacobsdaal, and we were in
possession of a most important square on the big chessboard of the
Orange Free State.

Of course the chief importance of the position was that it formed a
depôt for stores and a halting-place for convoys on the way to the
front. The General, with Captain Carleton (brigade-major) and Captain
Davidson (A.D.C.), was under fire during the whole of this brisk little
action; and Captain Carleton told me that the bullets were whizzing past
as briskly at two thousand yards as at two hundred. It need hardly be
said that since there were only three staff-officers, whose lives were
of the utmost value to the expedition, they spent most of their time in
and about the front firing lines. As soon as the General had occupied
the square he turned his men out and bivouacked them on the plain round
the village. They were exhausted after an eight-mile march, with this
action at the end of it; hot and thirsty too, suffering from such heat
and thirst as is only known in dusty deserts like the Karoo in time of
drought. There was a certain amount of looting--chiefly of cloth and
stuffs from the shops; but it was suddenly brought to an end by Lord
Roberts's startling order that any man found in the act of looting, or
any man against whom acts of looting could be proved, would be hanged,
and his battalion sent down to the base. There was no more looting.
"There _were_ three ducks found with their necks wrung," the General
admitted, "but we paid for them!"

The occupation of Jacobsdaal was, of course, only an incident in the
great whirl of operations which began on the 3rd of February, when
General Macdonald with the Highland Brigade moved westward from Modder
River and seized Koodoesberg. Hitherto we had been waging a very
straightforward kind of war, and Lord Roberts's masterly tactics between
Modder River and Paardeberg were the first hint we had given our enemy
that we also could be cunning. When I arrived at Modder River the wheels
of this great operation were spinning, but Modder itself was in an eddy,
where there was no movement and little news of any. French was racing to
head Cronje off on the north of the Modder River, and the main body of
the army was advancing in his rear, but we at Modder River knew next to
nothing of these movements.

It is worth while to recall the principal events in Lord Roberts's
operations near Modder River. The seizing of Koodoesberg was, of course,
intended to divert the attention of the Boers from the points at which
the real movement was taking place. On the 8th of the month General
Macdonald was recalled to Modder River; on the 9th Lord Roberts arrived
there and assumed command; on the 12th General French marched from
Ramdam, where he had been collecting a big cavalry force, seized
Dekiel's Drift and Klip Drift on the Modder, and the next day occupied a
commanding position on the north of the river, capturing three of the
enemy's laagers. On the 15th, having traversed Cronje's communications,
French reached Kimberley and dislodged the enemy from the southern side
of the town; they evacuated Magersfontein and Spytfontein, and retreated
to Koodoesrand, contriving in their turn to slip through our containing
lines. Jacobsdaal was captured on the same day, and on the 16th of
February began the fighting at Paardeberg, which was only brought to an
end by Cronje's surrender on the 27th.

However, one was only (as I have said) in the stagnant middle of things
at Jacobsdaal, and the outer currents did not reach us. From our point
of view Jacobsdaal was not an important station on the war-path to
Bloemfontein; it was simply a place of insufficient food, bad smells,
choking dust, and many hospitals. The Red Cross flag flew from all the
churches and every available house; furniture was piled in verandahs,
and pews were stacked in churchyards.

Enteric was rife there; but could a man, officer or private, who had
been out for twelve hours on foraging or convoy duty, sit down and boil
his water and then wait for a drink until it cooled? Because the water
looked clear and innocent they drank it by the quart, and therefore the
hospitals were full. Jacobsdaal is responsible for many of the
inglorious deaths of "active service."

Early one morning, while the air was yet fresh and cool, General Wavell
took me round with him on his hospital inspection. He is one of the
small, keen, kind-eyed men who emerge in the senior ranks of the army.
One never meets them as subalterns, and they represent the army's best
workmanship in the matter of moulding and finishing. We were still
talking about the "pretty" little action when we entered the first
hospital--a small Dutch church. I should have said that besides our own
field hospitals at Jacobsdaal there was a Boer hospital and one of the
German Red Cross Society.

This first was the Boer hospital, and even at this early hour the air
was pungent with the reek of strong tobacco. The General spoke to all
the patients, and had a kind word for everyone, and they all greeted him
with gratitude and cordiality. Their one cry was, "We've had as much as
we want. If we could only get back to our farms!" Most of those to whom
I spoke said that they had never wanted to fight us, never hoped to beat
us, and were heartily sick of the whole affair. "I wish I could send you
back to your homes, men," said the General; "but I must obey orders."
They chatted away to us, and said they hoped the General would come in
often. It was much the same in the German and English houses, only here
Boers and Englishmen lay side by side, sharing pipes and papers and talk
with each other. Truly, animosity ceases at the hospital door; and the
attitude of these men who had been menacing each other's lives and now
lay stricken together was not unlike the shame-faced amity of children
who have been caught fighting, and are made to share a punishment.

And no one was more concerned and depressed by the whole business than
the brisk little General, who had been speaking almost caressingly of
his shells and shrapnel. He is surely a good soldier who fights at as
small a cost as possible, disregards that cost while he fights, and
afterwards so behaves that his enemies like to take him by the hand.

Hospitals, where so many virtues too tender for the airs of the outside
world have time to bloom, are generally attractive rather than repulsive
places, and I was on that account the more surprised to find myself
repelled by these field-hospitals. To see men lying about distorted,
impotent, disfigured by all kinds of fantastic deformities, their wounds
still new, themselves lying near the spot where they fell; and to
remember the cause of it all, and how vague that cause really was to the
men who were suffering for it; the grossness and brutality of
mutilation--here a man with lead in his bowels, there a man with his
face obliterated, one man groaning and spitting from bleeding lungs,
another, struck by a great piece of flying iron, silent under the shock
of news that his sight was gone for ever; the feeling that these men
were suffering on our account, and the realisation that every one of us
has had his share in the responsibility for the whole, makes a load that
one cannot, or should not, slough away in a moment.



VII

MAGERSFONTEIN AND KIMBERLEY


There was a train going to Kimberley with cattle and forage on the
afternoon of Thursday, February 22nd, and the stagnation of everything
except dust at Modder being complete, I jumped on the twenty-ninth truck
as the engine was taking up the slack of the couplings and was
immediately jerked forward on the newly-mended road to the north. I had
nothing with me except what I stood in and a waterproof; but as the
journey of twenty-four miles occupied four hours, and as the heavens
poured down a deluge during three hours and twenty-five minutes of the
time I was glad to have even that. The line passes beside Magersfontein
and through gaps in six ridges behind it, affording an excellent view of
the whole position. That position seemed to me practically impregnable.
To have won a way to Kimberley upon this road would probably have meant
six bloody battles, always with the likelihood of a reverse after each
for the attacking army. Imagine a wide and perfectly level plain with a
ridge standing straight across it like a great railway embankment, but
with arms at each end curving towards the front as the arms of a trench
are curved; behind the ridge, and higher, two or three kopjes which
command it; behind the kopjes another ridge like the first, with more
kopjes to command it; the same thing repeated half a dozen times,
without another eminence within fifteen miles. Imagine this, and you see
the country between Modder River and Kimberley. And throughout the
position every piece of open ground was slashed and seamed by trenches
and works, constructed as though for the inspection of an examiner in
engineering--beautiful, artistic, formidable work that filled the mind
of every British officer who saw it with envy and admiration. Behind the
hills were little huts and hiding-places contrived within the shadow of
the low, thick trees that grow there, so that not a soul lived out of
cover. Captain Austin, R.A., who shared the humidity of my truck, and
who had been in charge of a 6-inch field-gun trained on Magersfontein at
eight thousand yards, told me that he could see through his glasses the
whole working of the enemy's admirable system. They had a look-out man
sitting at the far end of a long tunnel of rock and stone; when we fired
he gave the signal, and the Boers got into cover; and twenty seconds
afterwards, when our shell, beautifully aimed and timed, arrived on the
hill, it spent itself upon the flinty rock. Then the Boers showed their
heads and fired; and their shell swept through its arc and exploded,
generally finding its mark.

The battle of Magersfontein has been the subject of more prolonged
discussion than any other single event in the war. Coming on the day
after our reverse at Stormberg, it completed the momentary
demoralisation of a great mass of people at home who had expected the
campaign to resolve itself into a sweeping march on Pretoria. Like the
affair of Majuba, it has been sentimentally magnified out of all
proportion to its military importance. On the strength of the emotions
roused by our disaster, thousands graduated as military critics and
cried aloud for the recall of Lord Methuen. Private soldiers with
shattered nerves wrote home hysterical narratives and criticisms which
were published and commented upon, and treated as valuable evidence. We
lost our heads for the moment; there is no doubt of that; but people who
are thus betrayed into panic will not be appeased until they have made a
scapegoat of someone. Lord Methuen was, of course, the obvious
sacrifice. Why did he make a frontal attack? Why did he fail?

It is well to remember that Lord Methuen was being pressed to relieve
Kimberley, which represented its case as extreme. He must do something.
Naturally he designed the kind of attack which the forces at his
disposal were best suited to deliver. A long turning movement was out of
the question since he had not the mounted men for it. As for the
"frontal attack" at Magersfontein, of which we have heard so much, Lord
Methuen never designed and did not deliver a direct frontal attack. His
plan was to surprise the extreme left of Cronje's position, and at the
same time contain the whole of his front with a strong force. And no
competent critic has ventured to suggest any better disposal of the
forces then available for the purposes of attack. No, Lord Methuen has
not been criticised and abused because he used his force in one way
rather than in another, but simply because he failed.

There is very often more to be learned from a failure than a success,
and this particular failure is worthy of a little study. Everyone knows
that the reason why the attack on Magersfontein failed was, first,
because the Highland Brigade lost its way and came unexpectedly into
contact with the enemy's position, and, secondly, because they failed to
rally after the first confusion, when (in the opinion of many experts
who were present) a little confidence would probably have saved the day.
If any single precaution was neglected, if any pains were spared in the
reconnoitring of the position or in securing the proper conduct of the
troops towards the place from which their attack was to be delivered,
then Lord Methuen was absolutely to blame. But the more that is known
about this unfortunate affair the more clearly it will be seen that Lord
Methuen neglected no precaution and spared no pains. The rain and pitch
darkness were the act of God, and no general in the world can prevail
when Nature is so completely in league with the enemy as she was on the
night of Magersfontein.

I do not care to dwell on the malice and cruel unfairness of many of the
attacks on Lord Methuen, because, for my country's sake, I hope they
will soon be forgotten; but if anyone should still suppose that these
great hysterical waves of public feeling select their victims
impartially, I would ask him to compare the battle of Magersfontein
with the fruitless attack delivered by Lord Kitchener on the Paardeberg
laager on February 18th. In one case time was working against Lord
Methuen, and threatening to exhaust the endurance of Kimberley; in the
other case time was working with Lord Kitchener, limiting the resistance
of Cronje to a calculable number of days and hours. In one case there
was a small force which, owing to the nature of its composition, could
only be used in one way; in the other case there was a large and
splendidly-assorted force, which gave opportunity for an infinite
variety of combinations. In one case the attack was turned by
circumstances which no human being could have prevented into a frontal
contact; in the other case that form of attack was deliberately chosen.
In one case the casualties were about nine hundred; in the other, about
sixteen hundred. And in one case the general officer commanding has been
insulted and attacked and defamed, while the officer responsible for the
second affair is still regarded by the masses as a consummate master of
field operations.

This is a long digression; I have made it here because the subject of
it is inseparable from my memory of the dark and stony ranges which I
saw closely for the first time through the pitiless rain of that
February day. Miserable as the journey was, its passage through the
country occupied so lately by the enemy made it interesting. The way in
which our sappers had toiled to repair the line was beyond praise. Every
telegraph post had been blasted in two pieces by dynamite; every culvert
had been blown up; nearly every insulator smashed; the wires (about
seven in number) had been cut every few hundred yards; yet within four
days from the relief of Kimberley trains had begun to go up the whole
distance and telegraphic communication had been restored. I saw the work
that had been done, and the difficulty of it, and was proud of the way
in which it was accomplished. Not that there is little to be proud of in
the work of the army. On the contrary, one is amazed to see what is
accomplished in spite of the system, amazed to find what can be done by
able men against the most determined opposition from their own side; but
the great fact that was brought out by the earlier part of this campaign
is that the man of intelligence and initiative and ability and energy
was fast in the clutches of the Red Tape spider, which fussed round him
until he was enveloped in the scarlet web and impotent to use brains or
energy. Engineering is one of the few things of which corporate bodies
admit their ignorance; therefore the sappers got through much admirable
work quietly and quickly.

The approach to Kimberley with its mine shafts and hills of blue dust
reminded me of the Black Country. What one noticed first with regard to
the town was the number of holes and shelters and warrens into which
people had crept for safety. Hundreds of them, like human anthills; and
one thought, What strange place is this, where men fear to walk upright?
The menu at the principal hotel, where I dined, would (if it had been
printed) have consisted of one item--horseflesh. I noticed that the
residents ate it eagerly, and even talked about it; but most of us
strangers arose hungry and went quickly into the fresh air.

That night and the next morning I walked through the town and talked to
people who had been living there; and it was when I talked to the people
that I began to realise what had been happening. The few ruined
buildings and riddled walls conveyed little to me. But when one found
man after man thin, listless, and (in spite of the joy of salvation)
dispirited; talking with a tired voice and hopeless air, and with a
queer, shifty, nervous, scared look in the eye, one began to understand.

The thing was scarcely human, scarcely of this world. These men were not
like oneself. If you threaten an inexperienced boxer with a quick play
of fists on every side of his head, even though you never touch him, you
may completely demoralise him; he shies at every feint and every
movement. And these people had been in a situation comparable with that
of the poor boxer. Think of it. The signal from the conning tower, the
clamour of bells and whistles, the sudden silence amongst the people,
the rush for shelter, and then the hum and roar, like wind in a chimney,
of the huge iron cylinder flying through the air, potent for death. And
then, perhaps, the noise of a falling building, or the scream of some
human creature who is nothing but a mass of offence when you come up
five seconds later. Think of this repeated six or seven--sometimes sixty
or seventy--times during the daylight hours, and can you wonder that men
should lose their placid manners and scuttle like rats into their holes
at the dreaded sound? And all this fear and horror to be borne upon an
empty stomach, for the horrors of partial starvation were added to the
constant fear of a violent death. Mothers had to see their babies die
because there was no milk or other suitable nourishment; a baby cannot
live on horse and mule flesh. There was hardly a coloured baby left
alive; and that one statement accounts for whole lifetimes of misery and
suffering.

It was not until the Boers had mounted their 6-inch gun on the 8th of
February that the panic began. People had got used to the smaller
shells, which could often be dodged; besides, the enemy did not fire so
many of them. But when the big gun began its seventy rounds a day people
lost their self-command and began to dig and scratch in the earth for
shelter. Thousands went down the mines and sat all day in the bowels of
the earth. Men walking in the streets jumped if a mule kicked an iron
plate; they screamed when the signal was given; they broke and ran and
burrowed into shelter. Yet so fast do some men anchor themselves to
routine that many kept their offices open and did business--all the
while, however, with one eye on the paper and the other glancing through
the door or window; ever with one ear turned to the speaker and the
other noting the rustle of paper stirred by the breeze and the hum of
wind under the door.

That only twenty people were killed is no fact at all in connection with
the panic; what really matters is that seventy times a day something
happened which might have killed a dozen people.

I have only to add, in case I am accused of exaggerating the state of
terror, that the people who went through this ordeal have not
necessarily the clearest conception of it. I came out of the safe outer
world and saw their faces and eyes, and, if I had not heard a word, I
should have known.

One other thing. A despatch sent by me to _The Manchester Guardian_
contained this sentence complimentary to the De Beers Company: "The
condition of the town would have been deplorable but for the relief
administration of the De Beers Company."

That sentence was not made, but suggested by my good friend the censor;
and it will serve to indicate how great was the bowing down before the
house of De Beers. I wish to disavow any compliment I may have appeared
to pay that company in my telegram, for I think they did their bare
duty. What they did was to provide a ration of soup for the inhabitants
as long as some bullock meat which they possessed lasted; to organise
relief works by making roads and fences in a town which belongs chiefly
to themselves; and to allow people to shelter in their mines. Perhaps
they could do no more. Considering everything, and remembering some
facts in connection with this and other political troubles, I ask, Could
they well have done less?



VIII

PAARDEBERG


From Modder River to Paardeberg the road rolls over a bare yet beautiful
plain, brown and dry before the rain, but after a heavy rain bursting
into endless stretches of purple and scarlet flowers of the karoo. I
went by Jacobsdaal. Early on Wednesday morning, February 28th, I rode
out from the little town with General Wavell, who put me a couple of
miles on the road. You are to understand that this was something of an
adventure. I had nothing but a Cape cart and a couple of horses to draw
it--a thing that holds, with one's kit, about three hundred pounds of
forage. I was going to a camp where I could get no forage and hardly any
food; there was not a despatch-rider to be had at Modder; my telegrams
must be ridden back from the front, now thirty and soon to be ninety
miles away. Sickness had tethered me to Modder River camp throughout the
exciting week that had ended with Cronje's surrender; and now on
February 28th I was following the army, feeling like one who should
enter a theatre as the curtain was falling on the first act.

The thirty-mile ride through the lonely country would have been
delightful but for the dismal trail left by the war--carcases of horses
and oxen lining the road, a carcase every few hundred yards surrounded
by a gorged flock of aasvögels, the foulest of the vulture tribe. With a
nervous horse the passage of these pestilential spots was made difficult
as well as revolting, and it was with a feeling of relief that one saw
the tents and waggons of the Paardeberg camp by the river trees.

Along the road, I should have said, the trail was one of devastation. In
the midst of the dry veldt one sometimes came upon a farmhouse with its
grove of trees, and spring, and pleasant fields; but always the farm was
derelict, windows broken, rooms gutted, stock destroyed, with often some
poor abandoned creature tethered to a tree, and waiting, in the midst of
the dead silence of the empty country, to be fed and watered.

At Paardeberg I found the headquarters camp situated on the river bank,
a place pretty to look at but horrible to be near. The only water to
drink was that from a well by the river--water of a dark and strange
colour; and even while one drank it one sat and watched the carcases of
horses floating down the brown stream from the deserted Boer laager a
mile above. For Cronje and his men had surrendered, not only because of
losses or lack of ammunition, but chiefly, it was said, because the same
conditions that made our camp almost unbearable made his laager in the
river-bed impossible for human accommodation. So he surrendered, after a
resistance that will live in history as one of the bravest pieces of
human endurance.

On my way down I had met a great company of men moving over the plain
surrounded by mounted infantry. These were our prisoners--a noble bag of
more than four thousand. But now that they had gone there was no reason
why the camp should be maintained at Paardeberg, and at noon we
proceeded to thread our way eastward--a long procession of men and
horses and waggons--to the farm of Osfontein, where the force was being
concentrated for the final advance. The delay was fortunate for the
correspondents, for those of us who had only a scanty stock of
provisions and forage could send our carts back once more to Modder for
a supply. In the meantime nothing was likely to happen until a
fortnight's stock of provisions and forage for the army had been
collected.

Before leaving Paardeberg, and in the intervals of arranging the mere
details of living--which on this line of advance were harassing and
formidable--I rode over to the deserted Boer laager, or as near to it as
was safe. The scene was strange and significant. Imagine the river, deep
down between steep terraced banks, flowing through the level plain. On
the left side our position, well entrenched, with a few kopjes about two
thousand yards from the bank. On the right was the enemy's position,
which extended further down the banks of the river and up to the very
edge of our side. On the far bank I saw a line of hundreds of transport
waggons and carts, all empty, many of them smashed and broken by our
shell fire. But it was the river-bed itself that was most interesting.
The water was very low, and there was any amount of cover on the steep
banks, and this was increased by a number of small pits or trenches--not
long trenches like ours, but simple little holes or graves dug in the
banks, with room enough for a couple of men. Graves they proved to be in
many cases, for where the Boers were shot in them the trenches were
simply filled in and the bodies thus rudely buried. But how independent
they were! No bulky commissariat department, no army of cooks and
butchers--every man with his own kettle and biltong or canned beef, his
own rug or sleeping bag, his own water-bottle; so that when he came into
such a position as this he could remain in it for days together. One saw
many pathetic things in these trenches--garments and personal belongings
evidently made by hands that did not work for hire.

In two trenches I found Dutch Bibles; in one a diary of the last few
weeks; in almost all some sign that human beings and not machines had
been at work there; and on all sides spent shells and shrapnel cases and
cartridges, to remind one of the nature of their work. When one
followed, as I had followed so far, in the shadow of the war and not in
the midst of it, in the track of the Red Cross and the wayside cemetery
instead of within sound and sight of the thing itself, one saw a very
dark and unrelieved side of it--the shadow without the substance, the
effect without the cause.



PART III

LORD ROBERTS'S ADVANCE TO BLOEMFONTEIN



IX

THE BOER PANIC AT OSFONTEIN


The carefully prepared attack of Lord Roberts on the Boer position at
Osfontein was delivered on Wednesday, March 7th, with the result that
the enemy fled without attempting to defend his extremely strong
position. To understand the gravity of the attack you must have been
there during the last few days of preparation, when hills and ridges,
subsequently abandoned in a moment, were being strengthened and armed
with trenches and guns. On Sunday and Monday, the 4th and 5th of March,
I rode round the whole position, and, like everyone else, was led to
expect a very severe struggle. The position was roughly this. The great
plain through which the river winds is broken five miles east of
Osfontein by a long range of kopjes extending about fourteen miles north
and south. All these kopjes were until the day of our attack occupied by
a force of 7,000 Boers, but to the west of them were a few lower hills
and ridges which we held. We did not know exactly how far to the east
the Boer kopjes extended; that is to say, we did not know how broad
might be the line of their defences; all we knew was that there were
other kopjes to the eastward, and that the enemy probably held them. Our
force, 30,000 strong, was disposed over a square of perhaps eight miles;
yet if you had ridden all day in circles round the farm of Osfontein,
which was Lord Roberts's headquarters, you might have wondered whether
there were even 5,000 men, so scattered were our camps. The whole air of
the place was that of almost pastoral quietness, and the only sound to
be heard was the lowing of oxen.

Out in the advanced pickets the silence was deeper, but it was not
pastoral. I rode out on the Monday to a little kopje, our most advanced
post--a place within rifle range of the opposite Boer position, about
2,000 yards away. Over the plain, here green and sweet with the smell of
tiny flowers newly burst out by the heavy rains, I rode out from under
the shelter of a big kopje held by Kitchener's Horse. Between it and the
little hill held by the picket the ground was exposed, but a man and a
horse make a poor target at extreme range, and the danger was small.

We cantered along in the midst of the great harmonious silence of
populous fields; the locusts waltzed in the sun, the little mere-cats
stood and watched us for a moment and then scampered into their holes;
the ants were toiling busily beneath a thousand heaps. The plain
stretched to the horizon, with the stone-covered kopjes standing out
like larger ant-heaps.

Something sang in the sunny air above my head, and I flicked with my
whip to drive the locust away. Immediately afterwards I heard the sharp
double report of a Mauser, like a postman's knock, and after that again
the shrill moan, infinitely melancholy, of a flying bullet; and away to
my left, about two hundred yards, the sand rose in a fountain. It was my
first experience under fire, and I confess that for ten seconds I gave
myself up. During those ten seconds I was altogether absorbed in
watching a mere-cat trying to roll something into his house; then I
began to see that I was not in any particular danger at so extreme a
range, and I lost my interest in the mere-cat. But for all that my pony
had to do his best over the space that separated us from the picket.
There were a few more shots, and always the shrill moan, but in two
minutes we were behind the shelter of the little hill.

I climbed up its steep side and found the handful of men, with an
officer, lying among the stones on the windy height. There is no
comfort in picket work. This officer and his men had to lie for
twenty-four hours at a time without shelter from sun or rain, and with
nothing to eat but bully beef and hard-tack biscuits. Always their
glasses were sweeping the enemy's position, as the officer on a ship's
bridge examines the horizon; every little movement of men or cattle was
carefully noted.

Presently I had an illustration of the spirit in which lives are taken
in war, a demonstration of what had been happening to myself a few
minutes before. Out of the shoulder of a hill three Boers came on
ponies, and began to walk leisurely across to the next kopje. Now
immediately in front of our hill was another and smaller one, too
inconsiderable to be occupied permanently, but useful for commanding the
Boer front at rifle range. As we lay watching the three specks crossing
the field, "Sergeant," said the officer, "take a few men down to that
kopje, and see if you can't get a shot at the fellows." And off went the
sergeant and a dozen men, as pleased as Punch.

Some time elapsed before they reached the hillock, and still the three
Boers moved slowly and unsuspectingly across our view. After an anxious
pause the rifles cracked out, one after another, like a rip-rap, and at
the same time the Boers seemed to fly instead of to crawl. I then saw
through my glasses that one of the men pitched backwards from his horse,
which still fled, riderless now, beside the others, who were soon out of
range. The men beside me cheered, but ten minutes ago I had been in a
position exactly similar to that of the Boers; we are all egoists in
such a case; it was myself that I saw out in the plain, my own pony
rushing away scared; and I did not join in the acclamations. But all is
changed in war-time; men are no more than game; the excitement is the
old savage one--the lust of blood and the chase.

Late on the Tuesday night we heard that the attack was to be made early
on the morrow. So we rose at three and rode out in the starlight through
the busy camp, where the flashlights were talking and the fires blazing.
I rode round to the south about eight miles, and presently the whole
Boer position stood out black before the fires of dawn, and when the sun
came up it showed one division of our troops--the Sixth--creeping round
to the south where the enemy's position terminated in seven small
kopjes. It was beautiful to see the division advance down the slope with
the screen of mounted infantry opening out in front like a fan, with
another and more slender screen, like another fan, in front of them
again.

The sun was well up, but I had not yet heard a gun go off. Presently
there was a report, and the sand rose in a column before the kopjes.
This was a 4.7 naval gun finding its range with common shell. Again the
invisible gun behind me boomed, again the weird, prolonged whirtling
overhead; the long wait--perhaps for fifteen seconds; then a cloud of
hideous vapour right on the kopje; then the report of the exploding
shell. This happened perhaps half a dozen times; the well-aimed shells
dropped now behind, now on the hills; there was no reply; and in half an
hour the mounted infantry were riding over the kopjes. The enemy had
simply broken and fled towards their central position.

From the north side, where the Ninth and Seventh Divisions were, one
could hear the same sounds, but no rifle fire. After our guns had
cleared the seven kopjes a kind of Sabbath stillness fell upon the land.

Lying in the grass, listening to the droning flies, I tried to tell
myself that I was watching a momentous battle; that matters of life and
death were on hand: but the wind laughed through the grasses at the very
notion, and the timid steinbuck leaped up quite close to me, as if to
say, "Who's afraid?"

Behind me a brigade was winding to the south with a movement almost
lyrical; but no man seemed to be doing anything that could be called
fighting. I decided that nothing more was to be seen on the south, and
started to cross northward between the positions. My path was in what
ought to have been the hottest zone of fire; but the hares leapt in the
sun and the grasshoppers hummed with delight. While crossing northward I
met the advance scouts of a regiment of mounted infantry advancing
where, according to all ordinary laws, no mounted infantry could or
ought to have been--advancing directly on the central Boer position.

"Come along," said the Colonel; "I believe the whole position is empty;
we're going to scale those ridges."

Now these very ridges were the ones to which I had seen the Boers
retreat, about a thousand of them, half an hour ago, and I told the
Colonel so. "But they must have gone," he said, "or else they would be
firing at us now."

It was perfectly true. The whole company was halted, while we chatted,
within easy fire of the enemy's position; a few pom-poms would have made
a shocking mess amongst the men and horses. But the hills were clothed
with silence as with a garment.

"Anyhow, I'm going to see," said the Colonel. "Come along."

So we cantered on up to the foot of the hill, up the slope, over the
hill, and not a shot was fired at us. The excitement was tremendous; we
were riding slap into what looked like a hornets' nest. There were
kopjes flanking us now on both sides; I wished that I hadn't come. I
expected every moment to hear the rattle of Mausers. Someone's horse
kicked a tin can, and we ducked our heads like one man. But we rode up
to and into and through and over the central position of the enemy that
he had been strengthening for days; and he never fired a shot to prevent
us. It was glorious luck, thus to be in the very front of an advancing
force, to be on the very horns of the advance, and to be absolutely out
of danger, for what little opposition there was was encountered later by
the main body.

When I thought that I had advanced far enough into what ought to have
been the jaws of death, I drew on one side and let the brigade go past,
and then I saw what little firing there was. Behind the mounted infantry
came the field-guns, galloping alone over the smooth ground; and
presently we heard the report of a gun from the other side of the next
eastward ridge over which the enemy had retired. It is very
uncomfortable waiting for a shell to arrive. One has only the sound to
guide one as to where it has come from, and one has no notion at all as
to where it is going to strike. This one burst right amongst the
galloping artillery, which at once opened out on both sides of a smoking
patch. Not a man or horse was down. And here the Boers lost their big
chance of the day. All the brigade had to advance through this one
narrow pass between the kopjes; the Boers had got the range of it
absolutely; if they had fired a dozen shells in quick succession they
would have done a dismal amount of mischief. But they only fired two
other shells, and, marvellously, no one was hit. The reason I believe to
have been that the dust of their own retreat, which hung like a haze
over the ridge, hid our advancing troops from the Boers, and they did
not know whether or not anyone was under their fire.

In the meantime the Ninth Brigade had been doing just the same kind of
thing on the north river bank; and when the attack (such as it was--a
gentle shelling) was being pressed there, General French came up from
the south-east and drove the enemy northward across the river. If French
had been a little earlier we should have cut off the Boers at the river,
for that was their only line of retreat. As it was, he came in time to
chase them; and when we heard of him again he was in full cry on the
road to Bloemfontein.

It was a strange engagement; an almost bloodless battle; a great
spectacle like an Aldershot Field Day; a demonstration of forces far
stronger than the mere force of arms--confidence on the one hand, and on
the other demoralisation and a broken spirit.



X

THE MARCH ON DREIFONTEIN


Early on the morning after the Osfontein engagement the army was again
upon the march, and towards afternoon reached a farm called Poplar
Grove, the point on which our left flank had rested on the day before.
That was only a ten-mile journey, but men and beasts were tired, and a
longer distance would have tried them severely. We rested a whole day at
Poplar Grove, and many of us bathed in the river. It is strange indeed
to find how comparative are all our standards of luxury; on that day you
could have seen what Mr. Dooley might call the "flowers of the British
aristocracy" splashing and rejoicing in filthy, muddy water beside
Kaffirs and drinking mules; and no one who bathed on that day, after
many days of wearing the same clothes and being impregnated with sand
and sun, is likely to forget the luxury of the bath.

The discomforts of a hurried march are many, and the feeling of
uncleanness is not the least of them; yet one recalls with pleasure the
long days spent dozing along on one's horse at the head of a marching
column that stretched seven miles over the plain and hills behind. Let
me try to describe some of the circumstances of the march from Poplar
Grove to Dreifontein. It must be remembered that these are but the names
of farms, and that a farm means often nothing more than a mud house, a
few trees, and a well of water.

Long before it was light we were awakened by the cries of Kaffirs
collecting their ox teams and by the almost human complaints of many
mules; and while we breakfasted by lamplight in the dim grove where our
camp was pitched a stream of transport was already flowing out of the
mass surrounding us on all sides. We started later, when the line along
the east, crimson at first, had changed from saffron to bright gold, and
the head of the column was already out of sight, melting towards the
sunrise in a cloud of dust. The mounted infantry brigade, which
furnished the patrols and screens, was already away scouring the plain
in advance of the column, but the thin line of waggons was broken now by
the broad shape of infantry brigades, marching fifty deep across the
grass.

Our own small convoy was not got under weigh without many pains. The two
newspapers which it represented were the proprietors of many and
various beasts. Six riding ponies for the three correspondents, two
horses for the despatch-rider, six horses to draw an American waggon and
two Cape carts, and six oxen to draw an ox cart laden with forage. No
tongue can tell the anxiety caused by those fourteen horses. No more
could be bought, and if anything happened to them our usefulness would
be at an end. I have often arisen during the night and walked down what
we called our "lines," counting the beasts, and feeling like Abraham. To
be sure, one of the horses cost but thirty shillings; we bought him from
a Kaffir whose honesty I should be sorry to vouch for, but he could
pull, and he lived more than a fortnight. For another one I paid a
sovereign at Osfontein, but observing that he did not eat his supper one
night I gently pushed him away a good hundred yards so that he should
not die close to us.

By the time breakfast had been eaten, the oxen caught, the horses
counted, the differences of six jealous servants adjusted, and the carts
packed, we were ready to move off. Then the sun came up and the day
began, and one could canter up to the front of the column, clear of the
dust. On some days one rode up and down, visiting different regiments
or finding out friends who were trudging beside their companies; but on
the day of this march my pony was tired, and I let him amble along in
front of the Guards for the whole eighteen miles.

I wish I could describe for people who have never seen it the grand and
majestic march of 30,000 men with their guns and baggage across a large
country; the slow dignity of a vast seven-mile column winding over the
face of a plain, all the units diverging to pass the same ant-heap or to
avoid the same rough place. After the first few miles it is silent, and
one hears behind one only the sweep of many feet upon the grass. It is
like Fate, or, say, Time with his scythe held steady; the thing comes
and passes and is gone; but ride backward and you shall see the traces
of its passage. Grass downtrodden that shall rise again, little flowers
bruised that shall renew their blossoms; and still the birds singing
peacefully, the hares leaping, the manifold petty life of the veldt
resuming its routine and circumstance. One passes on through the quaking
air as in a dream, and as though impelled by the great force behind; and
to eyes gazing long on the ground the affairs of tiny creatures become
conspicuous and important. The mere-cats sit listening, and wonder what
the new sound in the grass means, not like wind or rain. Little lizards
basking on the sand suddenly wake up and wriggle away to avoid the thing
against which the shelter of a leaf will not avail them. And always in
front hares and buck by the hundred stream away like the shadows of
clouds over grass. Then someone looks at his watch and shouts "Halt!"
and the welcome word is shouted and repeated down the line until the
sound is lost in the distance, while the tired men throw themselves down
between the burning sun and the sand.

It is like sailing on a wide sea after a storm, when the short and high
waves have died away beneath the tread of smooth rollers. The veldt
undulates from sky to sky, a plain rising and falling about the base of
rocks and island kopjes. One reaches the crest, hoping for a new view,
searching for the clump of trees that means a farm and fresh water; and
one sinks down again into the furrow, while the wave of disappointment
runs backward along the seven miles of column as each man rises to the
barren view. Now an ox, now a mule or a horse falls out and lies down to
die; now a man stumbles and falls, and lies down to wait for the cool
hours.

To men who find this kind of monotony irksome the march is a dreary
business, while to others its bare outline is filled with the interest
of a thousand little happenings. The tired, dusty, shabby "Tommy" is a
man much more agreeable to talk with than his ancestor of the
barrack-room at home; the youngest subaltern has forgotten all about his
swagger mess-kit and the "style" of his regiment, and shows himself as
the good fellow he is; even the Brigadier forgets the scarlet on his
khaki collar, and remembers that he too is a frail mortal. And always,
when other interest failed, one could fall back on that of one's own
sometimes troublesome affairs. On the afternoon of the Dreifontein march
our advance cart with the luncheon had not outspanned fifteen minutes
before it was discovered that one of the horses was gone. There was no
doubt as to why, of course--a soldier had "snaffled" it. I am sorry to
say that in the matter of horse property the average Tommy holds vague
moral views. That cart had to be brought into camp by night, and there
was only one way in which it could be done. I rode about for ten
minutes, and found an old framework so thin and so dejected that I
blushed when I put the halter on it; it had been abandoned on account
of lameness, from which it had recovered, and had since been starving.
They harnessed it up and it brought in the cart; and that night, being
given a good feed of oats, it died from shock. Another skeleton was
found in the morning to take its place; but this skeleton grew fat. We
used to laugh at these misfortunes, but the poor horses had a cruel
time, especially the English ones; no one would have recognised the
Horse Artillery, although the tragic skeletons that drew the guns still
affected some imitation of their old dash. All the way from Modder to
Bloemfontein was strewn with the bodies of horses; if all other marks
had been gone, these melancholy quarter-mile posts would have guided you
unerringly.

It was night as a rule before the column reached its camp, and there
were some gorgeous pictures in the great outspanning commotion seen
through dust clouds and the red sunset, and by light of many camp fires.
But on this bit of the march we found our quarters sooner than we
expected; and it was early in the afternoon when, climbing the ridge of
undulating plain, I saw the smoke of a shell bursting on the hillside
five miles away, and knew that our day's march, though not our day's
work, was at an end.



XI

THE BATTLE OF DREIFONTEIN AND THE MARCH ON BLOEMFONTEIN


A great chain of kopjes barred the horizon ahead of us, and we came to
the usual conclusion that the Boers were opposing our advance. It is
well to remember that Lord Roberts's army was not marching in a single
column, but in three separate columns, of which the Cavalry Division was
marching on a road about six miles to the north, and the Seventh
Division by a road about four miles to the south of the main body.
General French was a day's march ahead of the main army, and on this
morning he reached Abraham's Kraal (the most northerly hill of the chain
held by the Boers) at ten o'clock, while the Ninth Division did not
arrive until four o'clock. It will thus be seen that one end of the
position was a couple of hours' ride distant from the other and far out
of sight of it.

No one saw the whole of the battle of Dreifontein. General French, when
he arrived at ten in the morning, came into contact with the Boers at
Abraham's Kraal, and (the river preventing a turning movement on the
north) he sent the second cavalry brigade galloping southward down the
line of the kopjes in order to turn, if possible, the enemy's left
flank. But he soon found that the position extended too far southward to
be assailable by his limited forces. This turning movement, or rather
the preparation for it, was carried out under an extremely heavy fire
from pom-poms and other quick-firing guns. Finding that his resources
would be exhausted in drawing out the long containing thread necessary
to hold the enemy in front, and so leave nothing with which to make a
flank attack, General French contented himself with engaging the enemy
on the northernmost end of their position.

At half-past one the Sixth Division arrived at Dreifontein, a farmhouse
about seven miles south of Abraham's Kraal. I had ridden hard in order
to catch them up as I had been in the early morning with the Ninth
Division, which did not arrive until four o'clock, and when I came up I
was just in time to see the Buffs, leading the 13th Brigade, preparing
to clear some kopjes near the main ridge which were held by the Boers.
Things were very hot here, and as I had never been in a big fight before
I found it very difficult to realise what was going on, or where the
enemy was, or where the fire was coming from, or at what point it was
being directed. All I knew for some time was that there were shells
dropping rather closer than was pleasant, and that with a rashness born
of ignorance I had got into a place where everyone had to lie down for
cover.

When your face is in the sand you do not see much. What you hear is not
encouraging--the distant boom of a gun, a few seconds' silence, then a
long quavering whistle in the air, like the cry of a banshee, growing
every moment nearer and louder, and finally the deafening report
somewhere near you. You never know where a shell is going to burst,
although you hear it long before it arrives; you can only sit tight and
hope that it will go where the other fellows are, or better still where
no one is. To say truth, shells generally go where no one is; I saw only
one man killed by a shell. I had raised my head from the ground and was
listening for the burst of a coming shell, when I saw a man among the
advance ranks of the 13th Brigade on my right stop suddenly in the midst
of a blinding flash. An arm and hand flew through the air in a horrible
curve; the smoke belched, the air was rent by the explosion, the smoke
blew and drifted away, and there on the hillside lay what was left of
the man, folded in the deep quietness of death.

A little to the left the Welsh Regiment was advancing up the steep side
of Alexander's kopje, which was doubly enfiladed by the Boer guns; two
Elswicks firing from the east and a Vickers-Maxim from the south-west.
There was also a nasty rain of bullets. In the long semi-circular
skirmishing line, strung like a girdle round the hillside, a man
suddenly turned and ran backwards for half a dozen paces, and then
tumbled, rolling over and over like a shot rabbit. I saw him five
minutes later when his body was brought to the dressing-station; he had
been shot through the heart. Poor fellow! He ran not of his own
conscious volition; he was killed while bravely advancing; he died while
retreating. The Welsh Regiment was losing badly all this time, and the
ground was becoming dotted with writhing and motionless bodies; it was a
horrible sight and came near to turning me sick, so I resolved to go and
see what was happening on the south side.

I made a long detour round by the headquarter farmhouse towards which
the black mass of the Ninth Division was advancing across the plain--too
late, as it turned out, to join in the action. Seeing a kopje on our
extreme right from which our artillery seemed to be firing, I rode in
that direction. There was not a soul in sight; and when I was within a
thousand yards of the place the instinct which so often interferes to
keep our heads from betraying us made me pull up. There was not a sound
except the far-away bang of guns and rifles. Near to the kopje there was
a garden surrounded by low trees and a hedge of prickly pear. The sun
setting behind us slanted into it and made it appear as a charming,
peaceful shelter from the dust and noise of the battle. I was still
debating with myself as to whether I should go on a little farther when
I heard behind me the sound of a horse galloping. I turned round and
saw, perhaps two miles behind me, three mounted men. The one who now
rode up had evidently just left them. He was a trooper in Rimington's
Guides.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "but I wouldn't stay here if I was you."

"Why not?" said the Green One; "no one in front, is there?"

The man spat on the ground.

"Don't know that there is, sir," he said, "but then I don't know that
there isn't, and that's good enough for me. If there _is_ anyone in
that garden"--and he pointed to the patch of trees--"you bet they won't
send out a flag of truce asking you to get out of the way before they
shoot. We've been sent to round up cattle out of that there garden, but
I believe the cattle are all a blind. Anyway, I'm not going near it till
I'm sure of it. I believe it's a trap."

They must have been watching us from the garden with their eyes on the
sights of their rifles, for no sooner had we turned our horses' heads
than _bang, bang, bang, bang--phtt, phtt, phtt, phtt_! We doubled
ourselves on our saddles and our horses stretched along the road, while
for perhaps thirty seconds our ears twitched to a hail of bullets that
lasted until we were out of range. While we were still racing my pony,
which was last, suddenly jumped into the air and shot past the big
cavalry horse, laying herself flat on the ground like a hare; and it was
not until she had carried me far out of range that I found the warm
blood from a bullet wound running down her leg. I had no further
interest that day but to have her attended to. At any rate, I think the
shot which was fired at her was one of the last fired in the battle of
Dreifontein.

The battle was fought on Saturday, March 10th. On Sunday morning we
found that the Boers had melted away from before us, and the army
marched on twelve miles to Aasvögel's Kop. On Monday the main body was
at Venters Vlei; and at four o'clock that afternoon General French,
after an artillery engagement, occupied a few hills commanding
Bloemfontein, and sent in an ultimatum requiring the surrender of the
town within twenty-four hours.

Early on Tuesday morning Mr. Gwynne (Reuter's correspondent), Mr.
Oppenheim, of the _Daily News_, and another correspondent, rode into
Bloemfontein and found that President Steyn had departed during the
night, that the Boer forces had retired from the immediate neighbourhood
of the town, and that the people were willing to surrender. They rode
back to Lord Roberts (who was by this time well under weigh with his
column), escorting the Landdrost in his Cape cart. The Field Marshal
was, I believe, sitting on a low hill having breakfast with his staff
when the keys were delivered up to him. This formality was conducted
with the utmost courtesy and good-humour, and when it was over the march
was resumed. Lord Roberts rode on and joined the cavalry, and a
procession was formed about three miles out of the town, Lord Roberts at
the head of the cavalry brigade which preceded the army. I shall never
forget that ride down the sloping country into Bloemfontein; the little
white-haired man sitting his horse like a rock, leading; then the
personal staff; then the general staff; then the foreign attachés; then
the correspondents; then the cavalry staff; then the cavalry; then the
main body of the army--artillery, infantry, engineers, commissariat, and
baggage.

As we came into the first street of the town it was apparent that the
day was regarded as a festival. One could hardly imagine a stranger
reception of an invader. Flags flew at every window, and the people were
all decked out as though for a holiday. Half-way towards the Presidency
there was a little diversion. Some Kaffirs, thinking that this was a
good opportunity of paying off old scores, had begun to loot and pillage
a large building like a school-house, which belonged to the Free State
Government. As we swung round the corner of the street they were in the
act of bundling out mattresses, bedsteads, linen, chairs, desks, and
tables, and carrying them off. A few dozen Lancers were let loose
amongst them; they dropped their booty and fled, only to be driven back
at the point of a lance and made to replace the stolen property. Then
the march was resumed until the procession drew up in front of the
Presidency. The Federal flag had been struck some time before, and the
flagstaff now stood gaunt and undecorated. There was a pause of about
ten minutes while Lord Roberts went in and transacted some necessary
formalities; then the little silk Union Jack, made by Lady Roberts, was
run up to the truck amid a great sound of cheering. The singing of the
National Anthem ended the ceremony. The town seemed altogether
English--English shops, English manners, the English language, and
English faces. All that day enthusiasm bubbled in the town like water
boiling in a pot; all day the troops continued to march in; shabby and
dusty and dirty and tired, they were nevertheless all stamped with some
nameless quality which they had not when they left England. All day the
population of Bloemfontein eddied through the streets like a crowd at a
fair; all day the sounds of rejoicing continued, and far into the night
the streets resounded to the cries of people who made merry.



XII

RETRACING THE STEPS OF THE ARMY


With its independence, handed over amid the imposing circumstance of
arms, Bloemfontein lost something of its charm. The noise and dust and
commotion of the army did violence to its pastoral quietness, and the
pretty shops put up their shutters at midday as though in maidenly
horror at the eagerness of crowds of soldiers running amuck like
children with their Saturday pennies. I entered the town early enough to
see what its normal condition must be, and there was something rude and
unkind in the din of the multitude breaking on this quiet place where
the bees sang loud in the streets, and the midday idler slumbered upon
the doorstep.

To be sure, one had opportunity for studying the soldier in a new
setting, but the study is one that requires time; the average Tommy is
an oyster to strangers. He varies to the tune and colour of his
surroundings; on the veldt, where hardness is to be endured, he is the
"good soldier," the patient, strong man; under fire he is a fierce
creature, still obedient to his habit of discipline, but hot for combat;
in the town, with money in his pocket, he is a little child. Indeed,
after weeks of absence from places where money is of value we all share
in this rejuvenation, and if you had been in Bloemfontein on any one of
these fine days you would have seen men of every age and rank, from
generals to trumpeters, wandering about the streets, agape at the shop
windows, chinking their money in their pockets, and buying things for
which they had no kind of use.

The British officer afield is a very different creature from the gilded
ornament of an English mess. His face is scorched and peeled, he is
generally (unless he be a staff officer) very ill-clad; he has a ragged
beard; he esteems golden syrup the greatest luxury on earth; he ceases
to be ashamed of originality in thought or expression; he altogether
fails to disguise what a good fellow he is. But in a very short time the
neighbourhood of a club, the possibility of a bath, the presence of
barbers and tailors, by a mysterious and marvellous working, reverse his
development, and the little graces which endear him to society at home
begin to reappear. So long as the sole of his boot was tied to the
uppers by a piece of string, he could not look you in the face with any
pretending; but when the cobbler has done his office, and the tailor has
sewn up the rent breeches, the spell is broken.

We "occupied" Bloemfontein so completely that, after the first few days,
I was glad to take the road again. We occupied the club, we occupied the
shops and hotels, we occupied even the homes of the simple townspeople;
and we occupied the streets, so that all day the town resounded to the
din of tramping feet. When one has slept for a month under the stars,
sheets and a roof are stifling; so as the railway was not yet open,
Major Pollock (of _The Times_) and I decided to go to Kimberley by road,
assured that the moral effect of the proclamation would keep us out of
danger from the Queen's enemies.

Our little caravan set forth by moonlight, taking the road travelled by
the left-hand column of the three parallel columns that had advanced on
Bloemfontein, and somewhat to the north of that taken by Lord Roberts
and the central column, with which we had gone in. The journey itself
was uneventful enough, full of the little interests and anxieties and
pleasures of the road, full of joy for the travellers, but without
serious interest to anyone else. There was just enough risk of
encountering a commando to give the necessary spice of adventure; two
despatch-riders--not mine, by the good fortune of half a mile--had been
captured the day before, and we kept a bright look-out. But by the time
we came across them the commandos were forlornly[2] dispersing. For the
rest, there was the unending charm of the climate and the place; the
gorgeous evenings, when sunset and moonrise encircled the horizon in a
flame of gold and silver; the spring-cold mornings, with the veldt
glowing from violet to purple and crimson; the noonday rest in some
deserted farm garden; the bed at nightfall, with the sound of horses
munching their corn for a lullaby--all the circumstances of simple
travel accomplished by the means that nature has provided. After having
been for so long in the company of 30,000 men we found the loneliness
and quietness refreshing, and we passed almost unnoticed through the
birds and beasts and flowers. We swam once more in the muddy Modder, now
quite an old friend. The track of the army was marked for us in two
ways--one ludicrous, the other tragic; both unmistakable. For all along
the way bright tin biscuit canisters of the Army Service Corps shone
like diamonds in the sun; and all along the way, at intervals, tired and
sick old cavalry horses stood by the roadside, each surrounded by a
crowd of foul aasvögels, the vultures of South Africa, waiting.

[Footnote 2: For the time being.]

The chief party of Boers which we encountered was at Abraham's Kraal.
While we were breakfasting about two dozen of them cantered up, of whom
about six were armed. If I had qualms, I hope I did not show them when I
said "Good-morning." I fell into conversation with one of the Boers, and
mentioned incidentally that, from their point of view, the game was up,
and that I supposed he knew that anyone who interfered with peaceful
Englishmen would be hanged. He was a sulky fellow, but he took my word
for it, and presently we began to talk. These Boers were in low spirits
about the war, and spoke of it without enthusiasm or hope. Most of them
were Transvaalers, and two spoke with an unmistakable Glasgow accent,
but on the whole they were gruff and uncommunicative, and, as they cast
envious eyes from their own sorry nags to our well-conditioned mounts,
I was glad to wish them good-day. They had come to bury the dead from
the Dreifontein fight, and from what they told me of the still unburied
Boers both there and at Paardeberg, I gathered that their casualties all
along the line had been heavier than we had thought.

I have said that the neighbourhood of the Boers made our journey
exciting, and there was one point at which the excitement became very
nearly painful. We had made a long stage one day, and at about sundown
arrived at the Modder, which we intended to cross at a drift near
Koodoesrand. This was the dangerous neighbourhood, and we were anxious
to push on and cross the river before encamping for the night. The banks
of the Modder at this drift are about forty feet high and almost
precipitous, the path down to the drift being little better than a track
worn at a long diagonal down the bank. It was steep enough going down,
but when we had crossed the shallow river and begun the ascent of the
other bank we found the track very soft and almost perpendicular. By
fetching a compass and putting the horses to it at a great pace the two
Cape carts managed to reach the top, but a four-wheeled American waggon
stuck fast at the bottom and could not be moved. At that moment the last
of the daylight ebbed, and darkness began to quench the sunset embers.

We tried unhitching the teams from the Cape carts and hitching them to
the waggon, but we only succeeded in breaking harness. It was after the
second attempt, when we were all standing hot and angry after our
unavailing exertion of whip-cracking and shouting, that we suddenly saw
a light shine out from the edge of a low kopje about two miles in front
of us. One of us lost his head, and by speaking his fears communicated
the malady.

"There are the Boers," he said, "and if they haven't heard us yelling
they must have seen the light from our lanterns. The sooner we get out
of this the better."

There was nothing for it but to unload the waggon and carry the contents
up by hand, and this we did in an agony of excitement, staggering and
sweating up the steep path with portmanteaus, beds, valises, cases of
tinned provisions, kettles, bottles, saucepans, bags of harness, oats,
and guns. The empty waggon was easily drawn up to the top, and then we
must reload it again with a burden which seemed to have swollen
enormously since it was unpacked. We were working so frantically that we
had not even time to look at the kopje, but when at length I glanced at
it I saw that a strange thing had happened.

The light was now suspended about thirty feet above the hill.

Had they a balloon? Major Pollock and I gazed blankly for more than a
minute at that mysterious shining, which seemed to rise higher and
higher. More than a minute: just so long did it take us to remember that
Orion rises low in the west!

Now for what will remain with me as the crowning impression of this
journey. The road we took led through a fairly fertile country, and that
in the Free State means that there generally was grass instead of karoo.
There were many farms; we probably passed twenty in the course of ninety
miles. Each of those farms I visited, and at each stood aghast at the
ruin that had been wrought. Signs of looting one expected--the looting
of food-stuffs and livestock and necessaries; that, after all, is but a
kind of self-defence, and I suppose it is allowable to live upon an
enemy when one invades his land. But the destruction that had here taken
place was wanton and savage. One seemed to travel in the footsteps of
some fiend who had left his mark upon every home, destroying the things
that were probably most prized by the owners, and destroying with a
devilish ingenuity that had saved him all unnecessary labour. For
example, in one little farmhouse I found a flimsy, showy, London bedroom
suite that was clearly the pride of the establishment, with its wardrobe
and full-length mirror. The destroyer had smashed just what could not be
mended--the mirror and the marble top of the washstand. In another
cottage I found an old clock that had ticked, most likely, for years on
end in the quietness of the little home; its hands were torn off, and
its works strewn upon the floor. In every house the little bits of
rubbish that adorn the homes of the poor were destroyed or disfigured;
in all were the same signs of violation, the same marks of the beast.

It has always seemed to me that a little farm in a lonely country
contains more than anything else the atmosphere of a home. It is
self-centred; there you see all the little shifts and contrivances which
result from the forced supplying of wants that cannot be satisfied from
outside. And when such a homestead is deserted, I think the atmosphere
is only the more pronounced; the disused implements find voices in the
silence and cry aloud for their absent owners. But when all that is
personal and human in such a place is ruined, the pathos turns to
tragedy. One farm I found absolutely gutted save for a great and old
Bible which stood upon a table in the largest room. It was a beautiful
folio, full of quaint plates and fine old printing, and bound in a rich
leather that time and the sun had tanned to an autumn gold. While I was
regarding it the breeze came through the window and stirred the yellow
leaves, exposing a pencil-marked verse in the most pastoral of psalms:
"_Hy doert my nederliggen in grasige wenden; Hy doert my sachtkens aen
seer stille wateren._" There was something impressive in the accident:
the old book stoutly reminding the chance passer-by that present evil
cannot affect the ultimate good, promising amid rude circumstances a
time of quietness. He was an old man who owned that book; his name and
age were marked upon the leaf; I think, to judge by the signs of
handling, that he had the heart of its contents; and I hope that
whatever his bodily circumstances, his soul retained some of the peace
of the "_grasige wenden_."

Who is responsible for all this mischief it is hard to say. I am sure
that the English soldiers, thoughtless though they may be, would not
stoop to this sort of purposeless outrage. I do not like to accuse the
colonial troops as a whole either, although I suspect that some of them,
some whose own homes had been destroyed by the enemy, might conceivably
have taken vengeance in kind. It is thought by many whose opinion is
valuable that the Kaffirs were here, as in Natal, responsible for much
of the damage; and that is a view which one would willingly take, for it
would acquit English-speaking troops of a miserable suspicion. Perhaps
the thing is well-nigh inevitable, for I know what pains Lord Roberts
took to prevent it; and it may be as well that we should recognise it as
one of the realities of war. For myself, the horrors of actual fighting
did not touch me half so nearly; I have seen men killed close to me and
been less shocked than I was by these domestic outrages. To die, for the
one who dies, is nothing; it affects him not at all; he is absent. But
here was not death, but outrage on the foundations of civilised life;
outrage upon living people, who suffer and remember.



PART IV

AN EXPEDITION WITH LORD METHUEN



XIII

IN THE FIELD AGAIN


After all, we need not have made so much haste to leave Bloemfontein. We
had been told there that a column would start for the relief of Mafeking
on March 20th, but when we arrived at Kimberley on the 18th we found
that no movement was to take place for several days. The date was
constantly shifted farther into the future, and the days of waiting had
grown into weeks before an order came that Lord Methuen with his force
of about 10,000 men was to march on Boshof. As far as information went
we lived from hand to mouth; all the orders came from Bloemfontein, and
they seldom provided for more than a day at a time. It was not
unnatural, therefore, that when an order to move did at last come we
built upon it all kinds of extravagant expectations, and it was a
cheerful army that left Kimberley on April 2nd and took the road for
Boshof.

After many days of inaction it was indeed good to recommence a moving
life among oxen and waggons and guns and soldiers. Kimberley was all
very well as a spectacle immediately after the siege; everyone flocked
to see the holes in the houses and the ruined buildings. It was all very
well (so, at any rate, we persuaded ourselves) to live in a club and to
dine again amid damask and flowers and cut glass after the rude life of
the fields; but even this was a novelty only for a day, and one soon
became impatient of the poor shift at living which dwellers in towns are
forced to make. I think I never saw a town so lost and drowned beneath
the wave of money-getting as Kimberley; even its recent privations were
turned to a nimble account, and 6-inch shells were selling at £10 apiece
before I left. The people who fled most readily from the projectiles
were of course the most eager to buy them--so highly do we esteem the
instruments which make us seem heroes to ourselves. For the moment
Kimberley transferred its attentions commercially from diamonds to
shells: a less romantic and (if you will believe it) a more sordid
industry; for there were already more storied and pedigreed shells in
private collections and for sale in Kimberley than ever fell into the
town.

Boshof, at any rate, provided a welcome change from all this. It is a
pretty little town of greensward streets and clear brooks; of white
cottages embowered in trees; of rose-gardens and orchards; rather like a
remote country town in Ireland--poor and pretty and sleepy. There were
few able-bodied men left in it, and aged people looked doubtfully out
from their fuchsia-covered doors upon the ranks and regiments of foreign
soldiers who came clattering through the streets on some of those hot
April afternoons. We were to advance, it was now thought, on the 6th; in
what direction we did not know certainly, but we suspected that it would
be along the Hoopstad Road. The arguments and speculations with which we
occupied ourselves need not be recorded now, but it was at once our hope
and fear that we should advance along the north bank of the Vaal. Hope,
because there was work to be done there; fear, lest our smaller force
should be absorbed by Lord Roberts's larger army and become merely its
left flank. Events showed that we might have spared ourselves both hopes
and fears, but fortunately we were ignorant, and so found occupation for
many an hour that had otherwise been empty.

An interval of inaction in the midst of a war is tedious in some ways,
but it is at least of benefit to a mere onlooker, who is thus enabled to
disengage himself from the whirl of operations and to discover the
results of his unwonted occupation. After having lived amongst
soldiers--in some ways and in spite of their profession the most human
and civilised of men--it had come upon me as a shock to find in
Kimberley the same bloodthirstiness that had distinguished the more
thoughtless section of the public at home. Cruel shouting for blood by
people who never see it; the iteration of that most illogical demand, a
life for a life--and, if possible, two lives for a life; the loud,
hectoring, frothy argument that lashes itself into a fury with strong
and abusive language--they all came like a clap of thunder after what I
am bound to call in comparison the quiet decency of the battlefield.
This is a grave thing to say, but it would be unfair to disguise so
clear an impression as this that I received, who went to South Africa
with so little political bias that eager partisans of neither colour in
Cape Town would own me. To appear lukewarm amongst people who are
red-hot is not always pleasant, but it has its compensations; one has at
least a foothold--inglorious, perhaps, but safe and desirable in a dizzy
world.

It was impossible to be in Kimberley and not to become involved in the
endless political discussions of clubs and dinner tables. I used to try
very hard to discover what it was that made the average Briton living in
South Africa hate the Boers so bitterly. The Colonial despises the Boer,
but one does not hate a man only because one despises him. Jealousy is
the best blend with contempt, and there is no doubt that the Boer's not
unnatural desire to be paramount in his own land was what English
colonists with whom I talked chiefly resented. We might talk for an hour
or for a day--the same old grievances always came round: the inferior
political position of the Uitlanders, the primitive, not to say dirty
and slovenly, habits of many Boer farmers, and their lack of energy.
These are the grievances of the man in the street, and they appear grave
enough--when once one has invested oneself with the right of censorship.
Then the rebels--wretched, unsuccessful farmers, who found themselves
misled and their ideas of duty confounded--these were the chief objects
of the lust for revenge. A rebel, as a man who has tried unsuccessfully
to overthrow by force the Government to which he owes allegiance, must
expect to suffer; but even in the case of these miserable creatures
there is surely a scale of responsibility to be observed and a measure
of justice to be meted. If Kimberley or Cape Town had ruled the matter
by their mass meetings nearly every rebel would have been hanged--a very
poor way, one would think, of making loyal subjects. But the reasons
that were urged in support of such drastic punishment were astonishingly
frank: "It doesn't pay to be loyal," one was told; "we might as well
have been rebels." Not a very lofty form of patriotism.

One came to shrink from using that grand word, so plausible a cloak did
it become for much that is mean and degrading. For example, when I was
riding from Bloemfontein to Kimberley I and my companion descried a
farmhouse two miles in front of us near Koodoesrand Drift; when we had
come within about a mile of it a little travesty of a Union Jack was run
up on a stick, and when we rode up to the door a farmer came out,
smiling, rubbing his hands, sniggering--in a word, truckling. His talk
was like the political swagger of the music-hall or the butler's pantry.

"I'm John Bull to the core--eh? No damned Boers for me--eh? Ha, ha, wipe
'em out, gentlemen, wipe 'em out: old England's all right as long as
we've got gentlemen like you to defend us--eh?" (He took us for
officers.) "John Bull for ever--eh?"

And while he spoke someone inside the house played "God Save the Queen"
with one finger (incorrectly) on a harmonium. The incident had a more
unpleasant flavour than I can well convey; we went away feeling ashamed.

All this belongs to the dark side of the campaign; fortunately there was
another, how bright I cannot say, that went far to make one forget the
rest. For the soldier the whole moral question had been decided; his
duty was so clear that he never needed to hesitate. And his blood would
have been sluggish indeed who must not have been stirred to the heart by
these inspiring circumstances: whether in camp, where the population of
a town was housed and fed in an hour, every man charged with some duty
for the common benefit, the whole a pattern of social administration; or
on the march, with the scouts and patrols opening and spreading in
advance and covering every patch of ground for miles round, the sweep
and imposing measure of the marching troops, the miles of supply and
baggage waggons, each in its appointed place; or on the battlefield,
where troops were handled and manoeuvred as on a chessboard, where men
went to death with light hearts, lying for perhaps hours under fire,
stealing a piece of ground here or a bit of cover there, with one eye on
their officer and another on the flash before them, and perhaps a
thought in the middle of it all for someone at home--there, indeed,
where stern duties were faithfully fulfilled was set a great example.
Fortunately for some of us at home the men who direct and conduct our
battles are magnanimous, and one had the gratification of seeing, even
upon occasions so savage, little acts of courtesy and humanity rendered
on both sides that went far to take the sting out of a defeat.

And let there be no mistake about the Boers as soldiers. In spite of the
far too numerous abuses of the rules of civilised warfare by detached
and independent combatants--abuses, it should be remembered, that have
occurred and will occur in every war and in the ranks of every army
--our officers and men have a genuine respect and admiration for their
enemy. No one looked upon death at their hands as anything but
honourable. And as one's admiration and sympathy were stirred for one's
own fellow-countrymen, who so unflinchingly performed their duties,
could one withhold it from that other army five miles away across the
plain--citizen soldiers fighting for their country and their homes? For
the soldier politics do not exist; he fights and dies for an idea. This
is mere sentiment, you may say, instead of fact about arms and battles;
yet the hardest fact that rings beneath your stamp is no more real than
poor, flimsy sentiment, which is a living force in the world, and will
remain to be reckoned with when pom-poms and Creusots are rusting in
archæological museums--monuments only to the mechanical and political
clumsiness of the nineteenth century.



XIV

THE CAPTURE OF BOERS AT TWEEFONTEIN


Lord Methuen had not long to wait for occupation. As soon as he arrived
at Boshof he posted his pickets on every possible point of vantage, and
patrolled the neighbourhood of Boshof over a wide circumference; and he
was rewarded. The little engagement at Tweefontein was, we all hoped, an
auspicious beginning for Lord Methuen's advance. If one might apply the
word to military tactics, it was as artistic a piece of work as could
be. I do not remember a single mistake or an instance of anything less
well or less quickly done than was possible. The result was a raising of
everyone's spirits, and I thought that Lord Methuen himself had the air
of a man emerging from depression. Certainly no general was better liked
by those around him, and, in spite of all mischievous gossip to the
contrary, he was perfectly trusted by his officers and men.

[Illustration: LIEUT.-GEN. LORD METHUEN, K.C.V.O., C.B., C.M.G.]

On Friday morning, April 6th, a native guide came in with information
that the enemy had a laager at a farm called Tweefontein, nine miles
south-east of Boshof. In ten minutes Major Streatfeild had his horse
packed and saddled and was off to the Yeomanry camp. Now the Yeomanry
horses were out on the plain grazing a good mile away; yet from the time
when the order was given until the moment of starting exactly
thirty-five minutes elapsed--a performance that would not have disgraced
veterans. The artillery and the Kimberley Mounted Corps (an excellent
force, although not so well horsed as the Yeomanry) were ready in the
same time, and the force started in the following order: Scouts of the
Kimberley Mounted Corps; advance guard ditto; Staff; Imperial Yeomanry,
under Lord Chesham; Fourth Company Royal Artillery; Kimberley Mounted
Corps, under Lieut.-Colonel Peakman.

When the force was within three miles of Tweefontein the scouts
returned, stating that the only kopje in the neighbourhood was held by
the enemy. The native guides had led us by an excellent road and with
absolute accuracy, and the enemy had no idea of our presence until we
came up over the ridge and showed our force in the centre. Lord Methuen
then developed his attack, which, as the kopje was isolated, was on the
simple plan of a centre with two extending wings. There was a delay in
the centre until Captain Rolleston's (Lieutenant-Colonel commanding
Nottinghamshire Yeomanry) company, under Lord Scarborough, could get
into position on the left. The enemy opened fire without delay, so the
Yeomanry had to make a wide detour. Meanwhile the centre was held back
while the Kimberley Mounted Corps, under Colonel Peakman, were sent to
the right, where they found cover in a ridge of very low kopjes.

When both flanks were in position the main body of Yeomanry dismounted
and advanced towards the kopje in extended order. Now was their time.
You must remember that this was their baptism of fire, and everyone was
on the look-out for signs of "greenness"; everyone had more or less been
making fun of them in a mild way, and prophesying all sorts of disaster.
As they advanced the bullets began to pipe on the edge of the
firing-zone, but there was not a bit of change in the Yeomanry when they
came under fire. I know from experience how disconcerting it is to ride
into the zone of fire, and walking must be much worse. It is not half so
bad when you are fairly in; it is like wading into a cold and shallow
sea instead of plunging--a kind of shivering sensation, most unpleasant.
Well, they went through this nasty belt as coolly as you please--no
hurry or funk. They dropped like wax when the order came to lie down,
and fired steadily.

The whole of our little field was now under fire, and the cavalry on
each side were keeping the Boers very busy. All the time the right and
left flanks were opening out and reaching towards each other behind the
kopje. The only disappointment was that the artillery could not get to
work; the rise of the ground was so great and we had covered the
position so completely that it was rather dangerous to attempt shelling.
For about two hours there was hot firing, and every now and then there
was a little work for our ambulance people, but not much. The only
noticeable evidence of inexperience on the part of the Yeomanry was that
they did not realise--and no one can realise this when fighting the
Boers for the first time--how great is the enemy's firing range, and how
far away one must keep to be able to live at all. They kept pressing
forward, and Major Streatfeild had to ride across from the General under
a very hot fire to tell them to keep back.

Towards the end of the engagement there was a gap in front of the
artillery position, and the guns spoke. They got the range at once, and
fired three rounds of shrapnel, and a few minutes after the third round
had been fired a white flag was waved from the hill. Silence fell like a
shadow over the place that had been crackling with fire a minute before;
people who had been lying flat on the ground stood up and stretched
themselves; and in the midst of the silence a shot cracked from the
hill, and there was a rush of men towards a prostrate body on our side.
Then another shot cracked--from our side this time; the treacherous
Boer, I was told, fell dead, and the action was over.

We captured fifty-two prisoners, and the Boers had eight killed and six
wounded. No one escaped. They all laid down their arms and surrendered,
handing over also a cart of dynamite. From this it was gathered that
General Villebois (who was killed) had been trying to get behind us to
the railway line near Modder River, where he hoped to destroy it. I
spoke to some of the prisoners next day--Frenchmen, many of them, and
nice enough fellows. I heard then something which gave me pause with
regard to the white flag. When the thing happened it appeared to be a
flagrant and indubitable case of treachery; everyone was speaking of it.
But one of the prisoners, in talking to me, referred to the "rascal" who
showed the flag.

"We had no intention to surrender," he said; "no order was given; that
worm had a flag in his pocket, and he held it up; poor ---- (mentioning
the man who shot and was killed) probably never saw it. It's a wonder
half of us did not go on firing."

I give this statement for what it is worth. "All lies" was the comment
of some of the officers there, and quite possibly they were right; but
quite possibly also they were wrong, and the whole thing was an
accident. At least one may learn a lesson from it. I hated to believe
it, but I believed it to be treachery. Now it turns out that I may have
been unjust, and possibly on a dozen other occasions the same sort of
involuntary injustice may have been done to our enemies. Certainly it is
much easier for soldiers to see a small conspicuous object when it is
displayed by the enemy than when it is displayed by one of their own
side. The men on either side are intent upon watching the other side,
not their own.

In General Villebois de Mareuil's pocket was found a note-book
containing a cleverly planned diagram of an attack on Boshof, and when
the sun was setting he was buried in the town he had hoped to enter
victoriously. It was a most impressive ceremony; the slanting sun, the
imposing military honours, the solemn words of the office--it is easily
imagined; it will not be easily forgotten by those of us who witnessed
it. Next morning we had left Boshof and its green streets behind, and
were winding along the road, the line of patrols sweeping like a long
billow over the hills before and on each side of us. We paused for a
night at Zwaartzkopjesfontein, went on the next morning to
Mahemsfontein; whence, having received orders from Lord Roberts to halt,
we fell back on Zwaartzkopjesfontein.

On Monday morning, April 9th, I went out with the Yeomanry, who made a
reconnaissance ten miles to the east. We found a party of about sixty
Boers chasing goats and cattle and stock of all kinds on a Dutch farm
occupied only by women. We could see them through glasses driving the
stock away (about sixty head), but they only fired a shot or two at one
of our scouts, and then fled, taking and keeping a four-mile start of
us. This expedition was at least interesting, as again showing the
really excellent work and methods of the Yeomanry. They cared for their
horses in a more intelligent way than any regular cavalry I have seen,
and they were not above taking hints from the Colonials in the matter
of marching and patrolling order. Everyone was surprised. It had been
quite the thing to smile at the very mention of the Yeomanry; yet they
speedily proved themselves quite equal to take their place beside any
other of the Volunteers, even the best of the Colonial mounted corps.

With a charming courtesy Lord Methuen designed and erected at his own
expense a monument over the grave of his fallen enemy. On the stone is
engraved this inscription:--


                              [cross]
                           A LA MEMOIRE
                 DU COMTE DE VILLEBOIS DE MAREUIL
                           ANCIEN COLONEL
                       DE LA LEGION ÉTRANGÈRE
                              EN FRANCE
                        GÉNÉRAL DU TRANSVAAL
                       MORT AU CHAMP D'HONNEUR
                            PRÈS DE BOSHOF
                            LE 5 AVRIL, 1900
                          DANS SA 53ème ANNÉE

                               R.I.P.



XV

AN ELUSIVE ENEMY


In spite of their former experiences the troops under Lord Methuen were
in some danger of forgetting the sterner realities of warfare, and of
mistaking for them the mere physical discomforts incidental to life
afield in rough weather. The camp at Zwaartzkopjesfontein--the highest
point of land within a large area--was scattered amongst rocks and
boulders piled high into an island ridge rising from the plain; and
amongst the rocks and ferns one found here and there a piece of lawn
(long untrodden by any feet but those of goats) large enough to picket
one's horses and pitch one's tent upon. Eastward the plain stretched to
the horizon, as level as the sea; indeed, in a landscape so monotonous
that one was fain to decorate it with fancies, it stood for the sea, and
touched the rocky base of our island as the sea washes many a mile of
bluff coast. Winter was setting in, and all day long wreaths of mist and
banks of rain came blowing from the eastward (the seaward, as we called
it), and shrouded the brown rock. The signallers on the height used to
wrap themselves in their oilskins as darkness fell and lamps took the
place of flags and spy-glasses; in the dark gusty hours we heard the
"all's well" of a sentry as the visiting patrol went by, much as one
hears the cry of the watch on board ship; and down below, the
mimosa-trees sighed like surges against the foot of the rock.

The ten days spent there by the troops were marked by only two
expeditions against the invisible enemy, neither of which achieved
anything but a nominal result. One was under Colonel Mahon, and repaired
the telegraph line in the neighbourhood of Modder River; it was intended
to patrol as far as Klip Drift, but the rain made the veldt impassable
for waggons. Certainly the line was repaired, but, as the Colonel
contemptuously remarked, "What's the use of sending an expedition to
repair telegraph lines? An old woman can cut 'em again ten minutes after
you've gone."

The other flying column was under General Douglas, and was sent out
eastward in search of a commando known to be in the neighbourhood. As
both columns started on the same day (April 11th) I could not be with
both, so I chose General Douglas's as offering the better chances of an
engagement. Two days before Lord Chesham had conducted a reconnaissance
with his cavalry, to which I had been invited, and at which he had
promised me "fine sport." Result: a fine cross-country gallop, a deal of
used-up horseflesh, a number of tired and (because they had been hurried
out without their breakfasts) rather cross men, and a sight of a few
Boers riding off at a distance of five miles. "Butterflies" was
someone's description of these elusive enemies of ours; and when one
considers what a fine chase they gave us, and how hot and cross we
became in the course of it, the description seems not inapt.

General Douglas's column, consisting of a battalion of the Northamptons,
300 Imperial Yeomanry, 50 men of the Kimberley Mounted Corps, a section
of Field Artillery, Ambulance and Supply Corps, set out before dawn on
Wednesday, April 11th. We marched, as it had hitherto been my lot always
to march in this campaign, eastwards towards the fires of dawn, leaving
the dark night-sky behind us. The waggons creaked and jolted across the
rough veldt, the gun harness jingled, the horses snorted out the cold
air, the Kaffirs cried to their beasts; and in this discordant chorus we
stretched out across the sea-plain while the east kindled and glowed.
Above us the clouds changed from grey to dove-colour, from that to
rose-pink; and then, straight before us, the sun came up and gave us
gold for redness. The little purple wild flowers opened, showing us
where the night had left a jewel on every petal, and the sleepy soldiers
plucked them as they passed and cheered themselves with their faint
fragrance. The day, like the night, comes quickly there, and brings with
it an even greater change. For in that last week of autumn we tasted of
every season; hot summer days, nights of spring, dark, cold winter
mornings by the camp fire; and it was when night changed to day that
winter faded into summer. For that reason, I suppose, the hour after
sunrise was the most invigorating of all, and long before the sun had
dried the dew from their clothes the men were marching with a freer
step.

This will show you how suddenly things may come upon the unwary in that
country. I had been riding with the scouts, two miles in advance of the
column, and we had just been examining through glasses a moving group in
the distance. It turned out to be nothing but cattle feeding--the only
moving things in a plain that seemed absolutely level, and I rode back
and rejoined the column. The Brigadier was just saying that he was
afraid we should see nothing to-day, when an orderly galloped up with a
note from Lord Chesham (who was out with the scouts on our left flank)
to say that the Boers were holding a kopje three miles on our left front
in strength.

Then began the excitement. Everyone was wide awake in a moment and
curious to see how the new Brigadier would manage his first job. The
convoy was halted, and the troops drawn on under cover of a slight and
almost imperceptible rise in the ground. Riding on in advance I suddenly
came on the scouts in action, that is to say, their horses were picketed
in rear of them, and they were lying hidden in the long grasses. And
there you have a typical picture of this kind of warfare. A row of men
lying on the ground, for no apparent reason, chewing the long stalks and
talking quietly to each other; in front a flat and seemingly vacant
ground; profound silence reigning everywhere. But use your glasses, and
you will see what looks like a shadow, but is really a rise on the
ground, giving advantage enough for the extermination of an army; show
your head, and you will hear the bang and whirr of the Mauser.

Presently the jingle of harness sounded behind me, and the guns went by
to take up a position on the left. I followed behind them in shelter of
the ridge, and therefore out of sight of the position. When I saw it
again I found that we were facing three long low mounds, running north
and south across our path, and the attack was now being developed. The
infantry, so dense a mass when marching, were now strung out in long
lines sweeping towards the left, and Lord Chesham with two squadrons had
also gone far to the left, to try to get round the position. Meanwhile
the guns were unlimbered, and their anxious crew (the battery had never
been in action before) were on tenter-hooks.

Up rides a staff officer. "Shell that ridge on the left."

"Right, sir. Sight for 1,800. Fuse six--no, six and a half," says the
nervous subaltern.

"Fire, number one gun! Fire, number two gun!" Then two shattering
explosions, the suspense of six seconds, the burst of shrapnel in the
air, the cloud of brown dust rising where it struck, and the hollow
"boom" coming back when all was over.

These exercises were repeated with much zeal by the subaltern and his
crew, until after about fifty rounds had been fired the order came to
cease fire; and it was afterwards ascertained that, as the net result of
this commotion, one partridge had been shot. But I know of another
result. A certain subaltern member of the Royal Regiment of Artillery
sat thereafter a little straighter on his horse than he had sat a week
ago.

But while the noise was going on, for all we knew, the Boers might be
suffering heavily from the shrapnel; although we rather thought not,
since no one was shooting back at the guns. Meanwhile the infantry was
threading out to the left, from which direction a shot now and then
sounded; and the remark of the onlookers (the onlooker is invariably a
critic) was, "Why is he committing all his force to a left-flank turning
movement, leaving only a hundred and fifty men to watch his centre and
right, when there may be only a dozen men on that left kopje?"

So said we, who sat on the gun limbers looking very wise; and, by one of
those unfortunate chances which sometimes justify the amateur critic and
encourage him in his vice, we turned out to be right. What was really
happening was this. The 150 or 400 Boers (I never discovered which,
although I believe it was the smaller number) who sat on that hill and
saw us coming did not wish to stay. So they held the middle kopje, and
threw out what is called a "false flank" on to the left kopje; and then,
seeing our whole force committed to the left, they went behind the hill
and filled their pipes, and packed their saddlebags and rode off,
leaving the six men to keep us busy while they went. And then the six
men departed also; and after much careful scouting, we rode victoriously
over the kopje. If we had attacked on the right flank also, we should
probably have caught them, as Lord Chesham would in a little longer have
got round to their rear and cut them off. Of course, the whole
difficulty in such cases arises from the invisible fire of smokeless
powder. One never knows whether the banging is produced by six men
firing briskly or by sixty firing slowly, and that was why Lord Chesham
had to tire out his horses by taking them round twelve miles to avoid
six men.

Our only "casualty" was carried out of action in a stretcher--he was a
member of the volunteer company of the Northamptons.

"They've got me, sir," he said to me, in tones of mingled pride and
martyrdom, "'it in the leg."

As a matter of fact, the man was only scratched; he could easily walk,
but could not resist the circumstance of the stretcher; and he fell into
his place for the rest of the march, a very proud man.

We bivouacked at Granaatz Plaatz farm that night, whence the heliograph
winked the news of our engagement to our camp. It was a day of alternate
sunshine and cloud, and the messages gave the signallers much trouble. I
had one to send after the official messages, and the sun was getting low
by the time it began. The shine never lasted for more than twenty
seconds, but they managed to edge the words into the blinks until they
came to "Zwaartzkopjesfontein." The sun always gave out in the middle of
it; the regulations demanded that the word should be begun afresh every
time, and finally the sun sank victoriously on the fell word. Darkness
set in, and a blinding thunderstorm with deluges of rain, but the
signallers were not to be beaten.

"We'll do ut on the lamp, sorr, and divil take the ould sun for goin'
out on us," said the Irish sergeant.

I should not like to say how many people had to do with that message
before it got near the cable. In the first place, the light could hardly
penetrate the twelve-mile space of rain; and even when they had
succeeded in "calling up" headquarters the lightning flashes interfered
with our feeble dots and dashes. I shall always remember that little
group of men working most admirably on the kopje high up amid the storm
and rain--one lying on his face in the mud with a telescope propped on a
stone reading the reply; another keeping the paper dry under his helmet
while he spelt the message to the operator; and a third working the
shutter that, by occulting the light, makes flashes from the lamp.

"_Guardian_--G-u-a-r-d-i-a-n," says the reader.

"Bang, bang; rattle; bang, rattle, rattle; bang; bang, bang, rattle;
bang, rattle; bang, rattle, rattle; bang, bang, bang," goes the lamp.

An anxious pause is enlivened by a clap of thunder.

"Answered," says Spy-glass. And often a word had to be repeated three or
four times before it was answered, but at the fourth letter of
"Zwaartzkopjesfontein" the answering signal was plainly given, followed
by DDDD, which, although not in the code-book, is an expression well
understood by all signallers.

All that night it rained, and the men in their wretched bivouacs sang
through it all with a most admirable heroism. Imagine yourself with two
other people lying in three inches of water with two blankets supported
by rifles over your head, and you have their condition. And they started
again in the cold, rainy darkness, wet and chilled to the bone, still
singing. But that is the private soldier all over. Put him in really
happy circumstances, and he grumbles himself hoarse; give him something
really to grumble at, and he is cheerful; give him misery, and he sings.
We marched fifteen miles on Thursday, the 12th, and encamped at
Buitendam, the farm of a field-cornet, where a few of the enemy sniped
at us as we arrived and had the satisfaction of seeing the whole force
turned out after a weary march. But of course the Boers are in their
element at this kind of game. A hundred of them wish to drive away some
stock; they leave a dozen to snipe from a ridge, while we send Tommy
plodding round for miles on a flanking movement (for you must keep him
out of range); and when the cattle have been driven far enough away,
Mr. Boer jumps on his horse and is off also, while we ruefully "occupy"
the vacant hill.

We found a noisy and rather gratifying revenge in destroying some
ammunition which was buried in the garden; the throwing of three
thousand rounds of cordite ammunition into the fire is a peculiarly
exciting game. Some presiding genius, instead of blowing up the two
cases of dynamite, threw them into the dam, whence, I have been told,
they were fished up, not a penny the worse, by the Boers after our
departure next day.

A thing happened in connection with this Boer ammunition which shows
once more how very easy it is to attribute all kinds of sins to one's
enemy. Someone came running up to a little group of us with several
packets of cartridges, one with the seal broken.

"Here's a pretty thing," he said; "poisoned bullets--the brutes!"

Sure enough, there were the steel bullets projecting out of the
cartridges, each completely coated with something very like verdigris up
to the edge of the brass envelope. The sealed packets showed that they
must have been so received from the makers, which easily proved the
most premeditated barbarity. Exclamations were rife; a brigadier was
making notes in his pocket-book; someone was urging a correspondent to
send home a cable announcing the fact, when a man, who had been sitting
quietly through it all, said--

"That's all very well, but how about the rifling in the barrel? I guess
there wouldn't be much of that stuff left on by the time the bullet was
spinning."

Silence fell like a cloud on the group, and the bubble was finally
pricked when another officer came up and said--

"More bad grease! I've had to chuck out half a box of ammunition because
the grease has gone bad and fouls the rifles."

Of course; it was as simple as day. The bullets had, as usual, been
dipped in grease to preserve them, and the grease had gone bad. When I
returned to the little circle there was an animated conversation in
progress on the subject of visiting patrols.

We marched in next day, eighteen miles, having covered a pear-shaped
track eastwards of about forty miles, while the men behaved like Trojans
under most uncomfortable circumstances.

We remained for some days in camp, waiting for Lord Roberts to move, and
fighting no more dangerous enemy than the wet and boisterous weather of
young winter. Certainly Lord Methuen had a fine force there, well tried
and in excellent condition, and we all hoped that he might be given a
chance to do something with it. There is something at once lonely and
lofty in the position of a General Officer in the field that wins one's
sympathy. You see it most plainly at a full church parade such as was
held on Easter Sunday, when the whole force was formed into a hollow
square. Walls of living faces; before them, a few paces, company
officers; before them again, commanding officers; the chaplain in the
middle; and then the pleasant-looking Guardsman striding into his place
in front of all and saluting the chaplain--the only person to whom that
honour is rendered. After the short service the General's position is
still more sharply indicated, when the shouting of orders takes the
place of the parson's placid tones.

"Northamptons! _'shon_! Fours left, by the left--quick--_march_!" and
the tramp of feet nears the spot where the General stands alone. Down
the whole battalion you hear the order run, "Company! eyes _left_!" and
hundreds of eyes are turned on the General, until the (to him) welcome
"Eyes _front_!" relieves him from so particular a scrutiny. Is it not a
paragon of what he has to endure from the world?



XVI

A SURPRISE ON THE MARCH


Strangely enough, I had just written the last chapter, describing the
profound peace of our environments, when from my tent near the farmhouse
I saw one after another of the headquarters staff mount their horses and
gallop westwards up the hill after Lord Methuen, who was easily first.
One learns to read signs quickly in a military camp, and it did not
require much intuition to understand that something was, in the phrase
of the orderly at the vacant headquarters, "bloomin' well hup." My own
horse was ready in five minutes, and when I reached the top of the hill
I found the cavalry horse lines vacant.

The site of the Zwaartzkopjesfontein camp turns an abrupt face
eastwards, but on the westward side the plateau slopes almost
imperceptibly to the plain, which is, in its immediate neighbourhood,
thickly sown with kopjes. Down this slope the cavalry were galloping,
about two miles in advance of me, in squadron formation, towards a small
kopje on which we had a picket. Realising that nothing could happen
immediately, I followed them at a foot-pace, and came up with them at
the foot of the hill where they had dismounted. Scouts were sent out
westwards among the low bush with which these slopes are clothed, and
from the top of the hill one could see them scattering and spreading
over ten miles of country; but no sound broke the silence of the hills.
Summer was back again to-day; our sea-plain was calm, shimmering in the
haze; and only the buzz of an insect disturbed the peace of the little
group on the brown hill.

While we were watching the scouts I heard what was in the wind. It
seemed that an outpost of four yeomen, who were stationed about six
miles north-west from camp, had so far forgotten the delicacy of their
position as to light a fire and cook a turkey which they had found. They
were surprised in the act by a small party of Boers, who fired upon
them. Of the men thus surprised three were taken unhurt, while the
fourth escaped slightly wounded, and, returning to camp, told the
disturbing tale. Three squadrons had instantly been turned out to
attempt a rescue, and it was on their heels that I had come out. We
waited for an hour, and then the scouts came in one by one, all with the
same tale. Nothing to be seen--no Boers; one thought that he had seen
two on the sky line seven miles away, but they might have been Kaffirs
rounding up cattle--he was not sure. So we had to give up the men for
lost, and ride back to camp in a hurry and in rather bad temper, for it
was mail day, and time was precious. But the little disaster proved to
be a cheap enough lesson to the Yeomanry, and also to be the herald of
operations far more important.

This happened on Thursday, April 19th. On Friday morning I was out at
the same place at half-past six, because a staff officer had told me the
night before that there was "a show on," and a "show" may mean anything
from a patrol to a reconnaissance in force. Lord Chesham, who was in
command, was sitting on the kopje with his staff, and I climbed up and
joined them, the cavalry remaining as before underneath the hill while
the scouts went out. We sat for an hour, comparing each other's glasses,
until the stones became hotter and hotter and the sky line began to wave
in the heat. At last I rode out to where there was an advanced picket,
and sat searching the horizon with glasses. We were in a little grove of
mimosa, and the doves were busy above our heads. After waiting for
another hour we saw some Boers to the north, and presently the right
flank scouts came in to report that there were about forty Boers working
northwards on our flank.

That was quite enough. Everyone was back at the kopje in no time, and
Lord Chesham sent out Lord Scarborough with one squadron, and Colonel
Mahon with another.

I went with Lord Scarborough's. We rode out to the point at which the
picket had been cut off, and saw more and more Boers coming from the
north--about seventy--but they never got within range, although they
worked closer and closer. Our little body of men was so well protected
by flankers and scouts that, when the Boers at length began to steal
along our flank with the evident intention of sniping us as we returned,
we were able to retire before they came within range, having discovered
the very useful fact that they were becoming more numerous and bolder in
our neighbourhood.

As we passed through the camp we saw waggons and tents being packed.
Advancing at last? Oh, dear, no. Only Lord Kitchener at the other end of
the wire playing with us again. We were to retire on Boshof, but Lord
Methuen decided, instead of going into the town, to encamp at Beck's
Farm about five miles out, where the grazing was better. The lay mind
found it hard to understand the purpose of these movements. Lord Methuen
had been humbugged and baffled by Headquarters in what seemed at the
time a most unbusinesslike way. First he was ordered out from Kimberley
to Griquatown. When he was there and had 400 Boers in his grasp he
received a message ordering him back to Kimberley at once. Then he was
sent to Boshof and ordered to march with all speed on Hoopstad. Having
reached Mahemsfontein he was ordered to halt, and that place being
unsuitable for an encampment, had to fall back on Zwaartzkopjesfontein.
And then he was ordered back to Boshof again. No doubt the explanation
was that the advance of the main army under Lord Roberts had been
delayed, but of course the Boers believed that all this was due to their
own formidable movements, and were accordingly encouraged.

Well, there was no doubt that we were moving, and I hoped that we were
going to march in the direction of Fourteen Streams and do something
towards the relief of Mafeking. That was what we had all been longing
to do, and it was with a long face that a staff officer said, "Back to
Boshof."

So back we started.

Our column was nearly three miles long, and just as the tail of it was
leaving camp and the head of it, like a snake's, beginning to curl round
Spitz Kop--a lofty cone-shaped kopje beside the road--pom--pom--pom--pom!
suddenly sounded from--where? The wicked little shells licked like a
rising tide along our right flank.

Up on a ridge far on our right I saw the rogues working their gun, as
busy as monkeys. Our friend the pom-pom once more, and most vivacious.
At the same time I heard the banging of Mausers behind me, and the air
above sang for an instant. And when that flight was over--Boom...! and
the long screaming whirr--sounds which tell you that someone has touched
off a field-gun, and that the shell is coming your way. This one was a
common shell, and did not come within a hundred yards. The whole thing
was very prettily done. Such a surprise, too. We had no idea that they
had guns.

Turning my horse round I paused for an instant to watch the effect and
the result. The column was still moving on, the Kaffir drivers shouting
a little louder than usual perhaps, but not a bullock out of place or
even a sheep touched. They were firing on a rather vulnerable part of
the convoy, where a flock of about a thousand sheep were being driven
and the remount horses led. But even while I looked the rear-guard was
spreading out and joining hands with the right flank, and the sound of
rifle fire from the ridge showed that they were already engaged. The
pom-pom and the 12-pounder continued for about a quarter of an hour, and
then our battery opened with a roar and silenced them in about two
minutes. And all the while the convoy jolted along the road, and the
rest of the action, or the chief part of it, remained with the right
flank. But I could see the Boers galloping along the ridge in front of
us to be ready for the convoy when it should come up, and certainly that
ought not to have been possible. It is ungrateful to criticise the
Yeomanry who had been doing so very well and learning so quickly, but,
if the truth must be told, their work on the right flank that day was
not beyond reproach. Once, when the fire was slack, I went across to the
right, and rode back very quickly, for I found kopjes which, according
to all military rules, should have been occupied by us, held by the
enemy.

Of course to guard efficiently the flank of a marching column is not
easy for untried troops, especially when a running fight has to be kept
up. In this kind of country, where a line of kopjes runs parallel with
the road, the best plan is for two flanking parties to occupy them by
turn. Thus A party should occupy No. 1 kopje and B party No. 2; when No.
1 needs no longer to be held A leaves it and seizes No. 3, and then B
leaves No. 2 and occupies No. 4, and so on. But the Yeomanry were
strolling aimlessly along the foot of the kopjes, while the nimble Boer
was climbing up the other side to the top, and shooting down upon
them--or over their heads at the convoy--as he pleased.

It is a marvel that of our twenty casualties only two were killed. If
the Boers had known of our movement just a little sooner I fear we
should have suffered heavily, or at least lost many cattle and perhaps a
few waggons. At the same time we were taken at the usual disadvantage of
a moving force that has to defend itself, and, with the exception of the
flanking, our work was done really well. The guns at once silenced the
Boer artillery, and they were brought into action so expeditiously that
the Boers never got the proper range. It is true that one shell plumped
into the middle of a flock of sheep, but I believe it killed only two.
And our rear-guard fought manfully. The fire was heavy there, and one
could not see much, but I saw enough to realise that theirs was stiff
work. They and darkness finished the engagement, and we went on to
Boshof, arriving there just as night closed in.

I shall never forget riding down the main street in pitch darkness--the
street full of waggons (each with its sixteen oxen), blundering about,
the waggon in front of one suddenly stopping, and the waggon behind
coming on--cries, curses, hailings, and railings of the drivers and
soldiers--everyone trying to find his camp or his waggons or his horses,
and not a light to be seen. And, in spite of it all, order emerged from
the chaos; brigade signals flashing, camps pitched, pickets posted to
keep watch over us all night, fires lighted, stations allotted; and
presently "last post" and "lights out," and in spite of the bellowing
oxen, rest.



XVII

UNDER THE RED CROSS FLAG


There was a burial party going out to Spitz Kop early the next morning,
and Major Pollock and I had leave to go with it. No one was armed, the
ambulance being preceded by an orderly carrying the P.M.O.'s bath-towel.
When we came near to the Boer pickets we rode on with the bath-towel,
while the Red Cross flag waved over the ambulance; and had come quite
close before we distinguished the two figures sitting amongst the large
brown boulders of the hill.

They both spoke English and treated us with civility. They were both
farmers from the neighbourhood of Boshof, and had a keen appetite for
news of the town. We were soon deep in an examination of their
weapons--one of them had a beautiful Mauser sporting rifle,
hair-sighted, of which he was extremely proud; altogether we had quite a
friendly chat. They gave us the best information they could as to the
whereabouts of our dead and wounded, but it seemed that the Boer
ambulance party had been out working all night, and had recovered nearly
all the wounded as well as the bodies of two dead.

We went on behind the kopje into a level space surrounded by ridges, and
as we advanced (the bath-towel well to the fore) mounted men began to
appear from behind the ridges. First by twos and threes, then by sixes
and dozens, from north and south and east and west the black figures
came cantering towards us, until our little party was surrounded by, I
suppose, three or four hundred mounted men. The babel of talk was
deafening; everyone had something to say about the fight of yesterday;
and in addition to that it was easily apparent that merely as Englishmen
we were objects of absorbing interest to these pastoral Free Staters. I
know that my tobacco-pouch was empty in about two minutes, and I
presently fell into more particular conversation with the Boer doctor,
who had been up all night attending to his own and our wounded. It was a
rough-and-ready kind of first aid that he gave; a whisky-bottle filled
with carbolic dressing hung from his saddle on one side, and on the
other were rolls of lint and bandages; but I believe that the ambulance
equipment in the laager was thoroughly complete. He told me of one of
our men who had been wounded in the thigh, and had been seen late the
night before crawling about on the ground; but when they had brought
back a stretcher for him they had not been able to find him. The doctor
thought he knew where he was likely to be, so I volunteered to go with
him and search the place. The doctor and I, therefore, with one other
Boer, rode away towards the west.

The wind was blowing strong from the west, choking down our voices as we
tried to speak while we rode; and therefore we had no idea until some
hours later of the excitement that was caused by our departure. It
seemed that the Commandant, who had been engaged in conversation with
our doctor, had ordered that no one should advance any farther into the
Boer position, and that the empty ambulances must be sent on to receive
the dead and wounded. Indeed we heard afterwards that the friendly
outpost which we first encountered had got into very hot water for
allowing us to pass. When I galloped off, therefore, I was unconsciously
disobeying a very important order, and several of the Boers and our own
party shouted after me that I must come back; but riding against a stiff
breeze none of us could hear a word, and we were so soon out of sight
and over the ridge that the Boers, with a shrug, left me to my fate.
Pollock called the second in command (a Scotchman, I regret to say) to
witness that I had not heard the order, and he promised to intercede on
my behalf with the Commandant, who was a son of General Cronje of
Paardeberg fame.

I had now better return to my own adventures. With my two companions I
soon reached a rocky plateau, where the horses had to choose their steps
carefully amongst the sharp stones, and searching thus for about an hour
we had a long and interesting conversation. I remember asking one of
them what his real feeling was about their chance of success.

"We shall win," he said, with that simple confidence, born of ignorance
and self-trust, which is often a dangerous element in a force opposed to
us. "Lord Roberts with all his army cannot leave Bloemfontein; we oppose
him there. Your Lord Methuen cannot advance here; he has had to retire
twice."

We knew that they would thus interpret Lord Roberts's delay and his
contradictory orders to Lord Methuen, but it was rather galling not to
be able to deny it.

"We have no dislike for the English," the man went on; and it was at
least true of him and many of the Free Staters whom I met, although it
was not true of all the Transvaalers. "You are brave soldiers and you
fight well and we can respect you, but you are led astray by Joe
Chamberlain." His face darkened when he uttered the name; I had a
glimpse of a man hated by a nation.

"Rhodes, too," he said, but with less hatred and more contempt. "If we
had caught him in Kimberley we should have killed him, but if _we_ don't
kill him----" and he named an alternative in which he clearly saw a
Providence working on behalf of the wronged.

I asked him a little later what he thought of our generals and of whom
he was most afraid? He was quite ready with an opinion.

"There is no difference," he said, with a lofty air, "it makes no
difference to us; we take them as they come. First come first served."
He was even impartial. "Your Lord Methuen has been blamed for
Magersfontein, but the English do not know that we were as much
surprised and scared as he was when his troops stumbled on us in the
dark. It was a very near thing for us. We are not afraid of Kitchener of
whom you talk so much. Roberts? Yes, he is a fairly good general, but
alone we do not fear him. Roberts and Kitchener together are good; we
do not like them. But alone we will take them on any day."

Although we talked for a long time I did not really learn much from
these Boers, who represented the most unthinking class. Just as I had
found the English colonists to conduct their arguments in a circle and
constantly to bring forward the same old statements, so I found these
Boers repeating the same assertions over and over again: that the Lord
was on their side; that they must prevail in the end; that they could
not trust us; that we had played them false; that we were really after
their gold-fields; "if there had been no gold in South Africa there
would have been no war." They spoke as men who repeated a lesson; yet I
am bound to say that they spoke with sincerity, and although they seemed
to speak parrot-wise, they probably accepted current forms of speech as
giving the best expression to a deep and universal conviction.

We had been riding for nearly two hours, when one of my companions
noticed marks on the ground evidently made by a man dragging himself
along. We followed this spoor down the rocky slope where ferns and
little shrubs divided the stones. It wound about, choosing the
smoothest places, covering altogether a distance of about a mile; it
led us at last to the shade of a mimosa bush, where the poor soldier had
ended his duty and journey together.

There was nothing to be done now but to rejoin my party, and when I
expressed a wish to do so the doctor said, "This will be your nearest
way," pointing to a barrier range of low hills. They lay in the right
direction, so I rode on for about a mile and a half, the two Boers still
accompanying me, until we reached the top of the nearest hill. What was
my surprise to see lying below me the smoke and waggons and picketed
horses of the enemy's laager! The Boers, to the number of perhaps seven
or eight hundred, were sitting or lying beneath trees that made a circle
round the mile-wide basin. I glanced at the faces of my companions with
some misgiving, but honesty was written there.

"I have no business to be here, you know," said I. "We shall all get
into a row." They preceded me down the slope, and, with a presentiment
that I should get out again, I slipped out my pocket compass and made a
mental note of the bearings of the laager from Spitz Kop, the head of
which was visible about six miles away. There was a small farmhouse
which appeared to be used as headquarters; round this were twenty or
thirty waggons piled with cases, but, so far as I could see, no forage
or oats. There were either three or four guns; there were certainly four
gun-carriages, but one of them may have been a limber. As we came into
the basin a small, young-looking man, to whom I was introduced as the
Commandant, met us.

"Please remain here," he said to me sharply; and as he led the doctor
away, pouring forth a stream of Dutch, I gathered that my poor friend
was getting into trouble. At last Cronje came back and addressed me,
speaking English very imperfectly. This is the substance of what he
said--

"You should never have been allowed to come here, and it is my duty to
detain you as a prisoner."

I remonstrated. "I'm a non-combatant, sir."

"I cannot help that. You are here and you have seen this place, and I
must send you to Pretoria, whence, if the authorities are satisfied that
you are a genuine non-combatant, you may be sent to Delagoa Bay. It was
very foolish of you to come here."

I explained that I had come in ignorance, not knowing where my guide
would lead me; that I had come to look for a wounded man, and under the
protection of a flag of truce; that the whole thing was an unfortunate
accident, and that he should treat it as such.

Much to my surprise he seemed to waver. "If I were to let you go"--and
he looked at me sideways--"would you undertake to give no information?"

I suggested that the question was an unfair one. "You know how you would
answer it yourself, sir."

"Yes" (he was melting), "we are honourable also, and to our own side
first of all. I have spoken of you with the doctor," he said, looking at
me kindly for the first time, "and I shall let you go. By rights you
ought to go to Pretoria. Of course your general may come and attack us
here, and your information will be useful, but we are strong enough for
all the English. Bring his horse," he shouted to someone standing by,
and to me, "You may go. No, you may not!" he added sharply; and then,
with a smile, "not until you have had a cup of coffee."

Upon this civility we parted, but it was not until I had rejoined my
anxious friends with the ambulance that I began to suspect Commandant
Cronje of a piece of pleasantry. Major Pollock, it appeared, had
interceded on my behalf so effectually that my fate had been decided and
my safe return promised long before I had met the Commandant. He
afterwards entertained himself by playing upon my anxiety, which, I have
no doubt, was apparent enough.

But now the ambulance was slowly returning from the place whither it had
been sent to receive the dead bodies. A place for the grave was chosen
where a thorn tree spread shadows on the ground. There were stony hills
all round, encircling a wide and green basin just within the Boer lines,
and it was beside one of these that the grave was dug. The ground was
very hard and the labour severe; it was at least two hours before the
fatigue-party, working in short shifts, had excavated a resting-place
for the two bodies. While they were working the Boers gathered round us
to the number of a couple of hundred. They were very silent, eyeing us
with an absorbed interest that embraced every article of our equipment.
Men of the humblest peasant class, poorly--in many respects
wretchedly--clad, they presented, in their ragged and shabby apparel, a
sharp contrast to our Yeomanry soldiers, who seemed, by comparison, trim
and well cared for. The Boers wore their ordinary clothes, which were
relieved by only one military touch--the bandolier. This was generally
of home manufacture, and in many cases was a touching and significant
document of affection. "Thought flies best when the hands are easily
busy"; ah, how many thoughts and fears had been worked into those
bandoliers when busy fingers wrought them in the far-away farmhouse! In
some of them, I thought, portraits of the makers were to be discovered.
Fancy stitches and cunning invention which provided for thrice the usual
number of cartridges told one tale; flannel paddings which sought to
make of the military appointment a winter garment told another. The
Boers, I suppose, envied us our serge and whipcord, but to examine their
homely makeshifts was to realise that even the art of Stohwasser may
leave something to be desired. Although they eyed us diligently they had
now fallen strangely silent; they offered us little conversation, but
spoke freely in low tones amongst themselves; they replied to our
questions with a brief civility that did not encourage any very brisk
intercourse. We soon gave up the attempt and lay down under the shade of
the ambulance in our sheltered hollow, listening to the wind singing in
the thin vegetation of the hill above us.

The sound of picks ceased at last, and an orderly came to report that
the grave was ready. The stretchers were withdrawn from the ambulance
and exposed two bodies stained with soil and blood--one shot through the
lungs, another through the head; neither of them remarkable for the
dignity that death is supposed to lend to the meanest features, both
looking strangely small and almost grotesque in their crumpled postures:
two troopers of the Yeomanry, known (as it happened) to not one man of
the crowd; and now emerging, before they reached a final obscurity, to
be for a moment a mark for all our thoughts and eyes. They were laid
beside the grave; the Boers ranked themselves upon one side, we upon the
other; the doctor opened his book and, shyly enough, began the service.
A bird flew twittering and perched on the thorn above us, making the
office choral.

You are to remember that there were present to us just the simplest
facts of life. Hills and the naked sun, great winds and death--before
these we may cease to make believe; they tune and temper us to
accordance with pulses which, if only we are honest, will give us back
multiplied our own faintest vibration. Honesty is easy when we can
forget ourselves; and here, where the wind seemed to pluck the words
from the reader's mouth and carry them to the hills that matched them in
grandeur, they cut the last link between us and our selfish thoughts and
fears, imparting a sense of world-without-end, making us one with our
feathered clerk who, his red-brown wings folded, wove a thread of song
into the Psalm. In that texture of admonition and prayer are many
seizing pictures: man walking in a vain shadow and disquieting himself
in vain, heaping up riches, ignorant who shall gather them: man turned
to destruction: our secret sins set in the light of one countenance: a
displeasure in which we consume away: a wrathful indignation that can
make all our busy years as a tale that is told. The first thought in
each of us had been, "There, but for the grace of God, I lie"; but the
bird's song seemed so to chase away all shadows of self-pity that Death
appeared in his natural order with the wind and rain and sun; no more
unkind than they.

At a signal the bodies were placed in the earth. No hateful furniture;
clay against clay: they seemed almost to nestle in it. A trooper covered
one face with his handkerchief, his comrade shielded the other with a
branch of mimosa; and while the words flowed to an end we stood,
Dutchmen and Englishmen, our small quarrel for the moment forgotten,
face to face with clear truth and knowing for once the taste of
sincerity. It was a good prayer to pray, that at our own last hour we
should not fall from that charity for any pains of death.

It seemed a natural thing for us to shake hands with the Boers before we
turned to resume this game of hostility in which we stumbled upon such
great issues. It was a silent ride home, and I need not say that it went
sore against the grain with me to make my report to Lord Methuen and the
Intelligence Department respecting the position of the laager. My
thoughts were not upon compass bearings and distances, but in the
sun-steeped basin where the grave was; and all day long I had a picture
in my mind of two groups of men united in one human emotion, but now
seeking each others' lives. At night, long after the camp slept, I lay
awake with the echo of the graveside "last post" ringing in my ears,
and, because of the appetite for effect that afflicts us in weak
moments, I was teased and worried by a sense of incompleteness. In a
military camp, after "last post" and "lights out" have been sounded, no
bugle save that which sounds an alarm may be blown until the hour of
reveille. The soldiers under the hill had been trumpeted to their last
sleep; in a few hours I should hear the morning call: why should they
never hear it again? Suddenly my irrational complaint was silenced as
certain words of Saint Paul to the Corinthians reverberated in my mind.
After all, it was well; one night was but a little longer than the
other; and, those words being true, my troopers should wake to a
familiar sound.



PART V

WITH THE FLYING COLUMN TO MAFEKING



XVIII

A STRATEGIC SECRET


It was now more than six weeks since we had hurried from Bloemfontein to
be in time for the expected operations for the relief of Mafeking. When
Lord Methuen had moved from Boshof we had been sure that Mafeking was
the goal, and I think that Lord Methuen himself had at least expected to
conduct a turning movement on the Boer position at Fourteen Streams. It
is easy to see now, when even Lord Roberts's strong march on Pretoria
has been harassed and his communications interrupted, why such a
movement of Methuen's small force could not have been successful; but we
did not see it then. There was a great dearth of information, and the
secret of the Flying Column was kept perfectly until within a few days
of its departure. While we were waiting at Boshof in the blank days that
followed the rear-guard engagement everyone suspected his fellow of some
secret information, and men's most trivial movements were elaborately
construed into indications that they meditated some independent action.
Even Lord Methuen was so much in the dark that he used to say he liked
to see the correspondents coming, as he supposed it meant that he should
have something to do. Those of us who were there knew really nothing,
and had only come prompted by a vague instinct that something was in the
air.

Unavoidable as the delay in despatching a column to the relief of
Mafeking seems to have been, I think that there was one moment at which,
if Lord Methuen had had a slightly stronger force under his command, the
course of the campaign on the north-west frontier might have been
changed, and Mafeking relieved by pressure from the south. After my
accidental discovery of the Boer laager near Spitz Kop there was a long
discussion by Lord Methuen and his staff of the possibilities of
surrounding and attacking the enemy. It was plain that this large force,
commanded by young Cronje, had moved across from Fourteen Streams with
the object of harrying us and perhaps retaking Boshof; and for a few
days there was practically no force at Fourteen Streams. Now if Lord
Methuen could have sent out a light column westward from Boshof to the
rear of the laager, and also held the enemy in front with the remainder
of his force, he might with good fortune have bagged the whole Boer
force, which he knew from my information to be weak in guns. I know he
was urged to do it; I know he wanted to do it; I know what the chance of
a sensational success meant to a man whose successes had hitherto been
unexciting and his one failure a spectacle; and I admired him for not
running the risk. It would have been so easy to yield to the urgency of
his staff and Intelligence Department, and success was almost certainly
assured; but Lord Methuen, who has been foolishly accused of all kinds
of rashness, chose in this case to read in that "almost" an assurance
that he was not justified in taking the risk. He had no Horse Artillery;
and the rapid and secret march to the rear of the laager might have been
impossible with field-guns. So he decided at any rate; and decisions
like these are among not the least important victories of a campaign.

Since the Boers were in the neighbourhood, and might at any moment make
an attack, Major Pollock and I were anxious not to leave Boshof until it
became absolutely necessary. We had a secret agent watching our
interests at Kimberley in the person of a staff officer whose name I
suppose I had better not mention; thus we witnessed, without misgiving,
the sudden and hurried flight of all the other correspondents from
Boshof, mystery written on their faces. Thus we spent two more peaceful
days riding in the shady lanes and lying on the sunburnt kopjes,
sweeping the horizon with the telescopes of Lord Chesham and his
pleasant crew; thus we received a telegram from Kimberley advising us to
"come here and attend to the business yourselves"; thus we rode away and
closed what will remain in my memory as the pleasantest chapter in the
campaign.

The diary that follows was written during the march of the Relief
Column--not always under the most favourable circumstances. The
imperfections of a document of this kind are so closely bound up with
its only merit that I have decided to leave it exactly as it was
written, and not to risk a sacrifice of reality in an attempt to abolish
defects which, I hope, the reader will regard as being in the
circumstances unavoidable.



XIX

THE DEPARTURE FROM KIMBERLEY


BARKLY WEST, _Thursday, May 3rd._

At last!

During the inaction of the past weeks there has been but one question
asked--"Is nothing to be done for Mafeking?" With the gallant little
garrison waiting and keeping the enemy from the door while disease is
busy within, it has been hard to sit still and wait for the orders that
have been so long in coming. But Kimberley, which had been almost
emptied of troops by Lord Methuen's departure, gradually filled again as
General Hunter's division assembled; and a few days ago it became plain
that some movement was imminent.

Tuesday evening--the eve of the mysterious move--was full of romance for
anyone who knew what was about to happen. The dining-room of the club
was gay with yellow and brass and scarlet and the subtler colours of
wine and flowers; but conversation grouped itself into the small low
choruses that indicate far more truly than one united sound indicates
the presence of some common and thrilling interest. Earlier in the day
I had been admitted to a kind of _séance_ in the Press Censor's office,
where an envelope alluringly marked "secret" had been opened, and its
contents read to a "limited number of correspondents of known
discretion." Within it was written that a flying column under Colonel
Mahon would set out at daybreak on the 4th from Barkly West for the
relief of Mafeking; that a certain number of correspondents (of known
discretion) would be invited to accompany it; that the estimated time
was fifteen days; that no provisions or forage would be supplied; that
the correspondents must give their word of honour to divulge nothing
until a certain time: to all of which we set our hands and seals, and
then departed from the office somewhat impressed. It is characteristic
of our Intelligence Department that on leaving the office I was greeted
by a Kimberley resident with the remark--"Well, I hear that Mahon is
going to make a dash for Mafeking on Friday _viâ_ Barkly West; good
business!"

[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL BRYAN MAHON, D.S.O.]

So in the evening, although if you had asked point-blank questions you
would have been told nothing, the forthcoming dash to the rescue was
really the topic. That it is to be the work of the Colonial troops is
fair enough, since no one has a better right than they to help their
besieged comrades. Therefore the British officer has been for once
eclipsed, and the Colonials have had it all their own way. They hovered
and bustled about the club all the evening, taking leave of friends and
settling affairs. Some of them, one knew, would not return; and the
thought never fails to lend a strange kind of solemnity to the eve of a
big enterprise. "We're going to have a tough job," Colonel Peakman had
said, and men had looked grave for a moment, and then gone on talking
and laughing; but the prospect of serious fighting was displeasing to no
one. That is always the way; the excitements and not the horrors of a
battle are remembered; every man thinks that, though all the rest should
fall, he shall stand at the last; a sense of danger in the future is a
trumpet-call. And this is a noble part of warfare, to relieve the
distressed. A duty to be done at all costs; no questions of how or why,
but a clear lead.

There is something in the very words "flying column" to appease the
impatient; wings in the air, a swoop upon the victim. But it is merely a
bold figure of speech, and means in a case like this a rapid march of
twenty miles a day, mules instead of oxen, short rations, starving and
ruined horses. These flying cavalry columns and forced marches (the only
means by which the slippery Boer is to be cornered) demonstrate to how
great an extent this is a campaign of horses. Only the shortest horse
rations can be carried, and even at the best, a fortnight's continuous
work of this kind will so knock up a good horse that he must have three
months' rest before he can be of any further use. So your flying column
must start with fat horses, and use up their reserve of flesh, arriving
at the end with skeletons. It is dreadful enough to see a good beast,
and hundreds of good beasts, starving before your eyes and working hard
all the time; but it is only one of the many horrible and necessary
accompaniments of a war. What is asked of the horses on an expedition of
this kind is that they shall carry a man say twenty-five miles a day on
the march, and at the end perhaps carry him another thirty galloping
about in a fight; and no animal will stand more than a fortnight of
that, even on full rations. So the remount officers have been busy in
Kimberley, buying up every animal that looked as though he would last
for a fortnight; and the private buyer has been hard put to it to
provide for his needs. I was lucky enough in the two hours of yesterday
afternoon that were available for the purpose to light upon a cart and
team that would carry my load of forage and bully beef; and at 5 p.m. to
see the leaders harnessed in for the first time, while my faithful
Kaffir groom gathered up the reins with doubt in his eye. Of course the
leaders turned round and tried to climb up over the wheelers' heads, but
at length they came to an approximate sort of unanimity as to which pair
was to lead. Thereafter I had the fearful joy of seeing the equipage set
forth at speed down the narrow street. A policeman escaped with his life
at one corner, a cripple was snatched from death at another, a nigger
was cannoned off at a third--the proprietor of the public menace riding
diffidently behind the while, trying to look as though he had no hand in
it. But the great thing was that I had got something capable of "flying"
with the column, and I was twice hailed on the way out to know whether I
would sell the horses.

From Kimberley to Barkly (whither the forces comprising the column had
proceeded earlier in the day) the road lies through twenty-five miles
of the loneliest veldt; except at the half-way house I did not see a
human being all the way. The young moon was up, and threw the earth and
sky into sombre night colours--a purple wall of earth meeting the
spangled violet of the sky in one long line. For twenty miles of the
road there was hardly a sound save the beat of horses' feet; but
presently there stole on my ear a kind of music for which one's senses
long in this barren country--the murmur of water over stones. It was the
Vaal river, running here broad and deep, and making Barkly West a
pleasing instead of a dull place. Beside a sharp bend the lights of an
inn shone upon the road, promising rest for tired people, whether they
had four feet or two; and the promise was fulfilled.

To-day has been given up to horse-buying; the place was like a fair;
everyone who owned even the framework of a horse brought it out and
offered it for sale; and officers were competing busily for the purchase
of any decent animal. I found time to go down and listen to the
river--strange sights the water that is flowing so quietly must have
passed this morning! For one of our 6-inch siege guns was sent up to
Warrenton last night, and opened at daybreak on the Boers at Fourteen
Streams. One longs to know something of the result; but the water flows
secretly on into more peaceful scenes.


GUNNING'S FARM, _Saturday, May 5th_.

We did not get away until nearly nine yesterday morning, and for the
first few miles were much delayed by breakdowns in the transport column.
The transport mule is a troublesome creature; sometimes he insists on
stopping to pick up grass; always he is reluctant to do merely what is
required of him. So although our transport column is supposed to take up
only one mile of road, it straggled over a good two miles during
Friday's march. The road was very dangerous, winding through narrow
passes and thick bush country; therefore the scouting was slow and
laborious, and the whole column was halted before every unusually
dangerous place. But we met no Boers; and since we desire to proceed
very quietly and unostentatiously at first this was fortunate. The
column consists of about eleven hundred men of the Kimberley Mounted
Corps and the Imperial Light Horse, a mixed company of picked volunteers
from the Sixth Fusilier Brigade (representing England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales), and a four-gun battery of the Royal Horse
Artillery, with two pom-poms in addition. Every man is mounted,
including the infantry men, who ride on waggons. Yesterday we marched
only twelve miles, owing to the difficulties of the ground, but in the
evening our business began in earnest. Lights had to be out at eight
o'clock, and this morning we marched off at two, no lights or fires
being allowed, not even a match for a cigarette. The joys of rising at
1.30 in the cold pitch darkness (for these are winter mornings, in spite
of the summer noonday), and of trying to harness a team, and pick up all
one's kit, exist only in retrospect, where all troubles fade. The
six-hour march this morning was very cold and very tedious; four hours
of it were in darkness, and how late the sun seemed to be in rising! But
he came punctually, in spite of a mild panic amongst us lest something
should have happened to him, and the pageant of his rising was
entertainment for the last two hours. Fifteen miles before breakfast and
fifteen after lunch--a journey almost too heavy for the second day. Two
teams of mules were knocked up, and more will follow if this goes on.

At Spitz Kop, our breakfast outspan, we heard guns in the distance, and
from the top of the high hill we could see the little fluffy clouds of
smoke, that meant so much to someone, bursting on both sides. There was
an alarm that the Boers were coming our way, and the guns were turned
out; but it was a false alarm, and the column came on here to Gunning's
Farm, where we arrived after dark. Camping in the dark after a
thirty-mile march is wild work--such a commotion of hails and calls,
such searching for one's camp, and for the watering-place for horses.
The hour of lamplight is precious, and I am near the end of it now.


MUCHADIN, _Monday, May 7th_.

A day seldom passes on which one does not receive fresh proof that the
world contains foolish people. In the small hours of Sunday morning,
when the camp was astir in the darkness, a rifle-shot rang out quite
close to me. I could hear the bullet going up like a rocket until the
sound was lost. It was the usual thing--some idiot charging his
magazine, and forgetting to close the cut-off--with the result that when
he snapped his trigger the gun went off. Any good result of our
discomfortable regulation as to fires and lights is quite cancelled by
such an act, which proves much more certainly than fires can prove the
presence of armed troops. The same thing happened early this morning,
and the pickets were turned out to find that the alarm was false. It is
a great pity, but where the British soldier is to be found in any force,
there seems invariably to be found also the man who lets off his gun by
mistake. The marvel is that the thing generally hurts no one.

Sunday's march was uneventful, except that trouble began among the
horses. One of my four fellow-correspondents lost a fine pair--the
wheelers of his team--which he had bought in Barkly on Thursday, and
which probably returned to their former owner. But as we have no lines
of communication, he will not see them again. My horse fell sick, and
the three hours of the midday bivouac had to be spent in hastily
breaking in to the saddle one of the leaders of my team. The
headquarters staff lost two horses, and five mules strayed from the
supply park. The fact was rather tersely announced by Corporal Jenkins
of the Army Service Corps, who came up while I was talking to his
officer, saluted, and said in the language of his kind--

"Please, sir, I'm deficient of five mules."

The loss of animals from so small a column is really serious, and
everyone is looking blue over his deficiencies. I am deficient of a
spade and two nose-bags. But then I am to the good by one lame dog, who,
in return for slight services rendered on the road, refuses to allow any
but my own lawful servants to approach the encampment. We did eighteen
miles to-day, and encamped at Greefdal in the evening. We are now well
north of Fourteen Streams, where all day long we have heard the guns
booming. In the afternoon the native scouts (who work far outside the
ground patrolled by our scouts and flankers) reported a party of 500
Boers approaching from the south and east, but they must have turned
northward, for we have heard nothing more of them. This morning we could
see a long line of dust moving about twenty miles to the north-east; but
it has subsided, and the Boers are probably in laager. It is fortunate
that Colonel Mahon is an absolutely careful man, since any little
neglect in the matter of patrolling and choosing bivouac positions might
mean complete disaster to the column, and the frustration of its end.
These little things have often been neglected in this campaign; and
whenever there has been a convoy captured, it has been because someone
has taken for granted that someone else was holding a drift or pass. So
we move warily through a placid country that may become at any moment
full of menace; travelling may at any moment be exchanged for fighting,
and the roadway for the battlefield; even the green slopes that front us
may hide the gravest danger, and the river-bed with its grasses and
lapsing waters become a pit of death. But one knows little of the
future; it is on the knees of the gods.



XX

FROM TAUNGS TO VRYBURG


DRY HARTZ, _Tuesday, May 8th_.

The march of yesterday afternoon was not without its incidents. We came
in sight of the village of Taungs at about four o'clock, our road
passing ten miles to the west of it at the opposite side of the Hartz
valley. I was riding with the advance guard when a man rode up from the
direction of the village.

"I've just come to have a look at the troops," said he; "I'm a British
subject."

"Oh, are you?" said the colonel in command of the guard, and ordered him
to be detained and examined. He told us a great many lies, and is now a
prisoner. We have collected about nine prisoners so far, chiefly
insurgents against whom there is grave evidence; and they ride along in
an ox-waggon quite contentedly, while the dozen men of the Scots
Fusiliers who act as their escort regale them with specimens of northern
wit. To judge by the sounds of hilarity which float from the waggon,
even towards the end of a long march, their efforts are well
appreciated.

A patrol was sent over to Taungs, and we watched the squadron dancing
away until a fold of the green plain hid them. Soon afterwards we came
into camp.

The paramount question at such a moment is always: "What is the water
like?" Last night it was very bad, and there was no officer in charge of
the watering when the rear of the column came in. The only water was a
small, almost stagnant river, and the men were into it, bathing, as soon
as they arrived. Then the horses and mules were watered, and stirred up
the mud with their feet; and then we sent for drinking water. Of course
one has it boiled, but even so----.

While we were having dinner the patrol returned from Taungs, having cut
the wire north and south and destroyed the instrument. They found the
village empty except for women.

Encounters with insurgents are often amusing, although amongst them they
have so far afforded natives of all our three kingdoms reason for shame.
Here is something quite typical.

SCENE: _The veldt road. Enter very slowly from the north, an ox-waggon.
Enter from the south, a cloud of dust, out of which emerges the Mounted
Advance Guard of the column. They meet, and halt._

TROOPER _in charge of ox-waggon, saluting and pointing with his thumb
within_:

"Come to report, sir. Found this woman trekkin' along, and won't give no
account of herself."

_Commanding Officer draws aside tent of waggon and discovers fat and
hearty old woman._

C.O.: "Now, my good woman, what have you to say for yourself?" (_No
answer._)

TROOPER: "Please, sir, she come from that there rebel farm." (_To fat
and hearty old woman_) "Now then, missus, tell the Colonel who you are."
(_Long silence, during which something seems to be working in the mind
of the fat and hearty old woman._)

C.O.: "Can anyone speak Dutch? Here, Evans, ask her what she has to say
for herself." (_Trooper Evans asks her in fluent Dutch--no
answer--question repeated with emphasis._)

F. and H.O.W.: "Whethen now, and shure it's Mrs. McGuire Oi am, and bad
luck to the whole av ye. Glory be to Goodness, but it's a quare place
Oi'd be in if the likes of you was all Oi had to me back, wid all me
bits av sticks and the ould hin herself took be the Boers--bad cess to
'em" (_and much more to the same effect, during which the waggon is
searched and a couple of Martini rifles found in it, and various other
damning evidences, with the result that the waggon is confiscated, and
the fat and hearty old woman bundled off to her farm, protesting
loudly_).

But although such incidents are sometimes amusing they are often
painful, and the burning of houses that has gone on this afternoon has
been a most unpleasant business. We have been marching through a part of
the country where some mischievous person has been collecting and
encouraging insurgents. And this afternoon in the course of about ten
miles we have burned no less than six farmhouses. Care seems to have
been taken that there was proper evidence against the owners who were
absent. In one case the wife of an insurgent who was lying sick at a
friend's farm, watched from her sick husband's bedside the burning of
her home a hundred yards away. I cannot think that punishment need take
this wild form; it seems as though a kind of domestic murder were being
committed while one watches the roof and furniture of a house blazing;
and how many obscure deaths of the soul take place while a woman
watches her home, and all the little valueless possessions that are
precious to her, falling into ruin before her eyes? I stood till late
last night before the red blaze, and saw the flames lick round each
piece of the poor furniture--the chairs and tables, the baby's cradle,
the chest of drawers containing a world of treasure; and when I saw the
poor housewife's face pressed against the window of the neighbouring
house my own heart burned with a sense of outrage. The crime of
insurrection is a serious one, but I never heard yet of a crime for
which the responsibility rested on the criminal alone.

On quite different grounds, this destruction would appear to be worse
than useless. The effect on those of the Colonial troops who, in
carrying out the orders to destroy, are gratifying their feelings of
hatred and revenge, is very bad. Their discipline is far below that of
the Imperial troops, and they soon get out of hand. They swarm into the
houses, looting and destroying, and filling the air with high-sounding
cries of vengeance, and yesterday some of them were complaining bitterly
that a suspected house, against the owner of which there was not
sufficient evidence, was not delivered into their hands. Further, if
these farms are to be confiscated (as the more revengeful loyalists
desire) and given over to settlers, why burn the houses? The new
occupant will only have to build another homestead, and building is a
serious matter where wood and the means of dressing stone are so very
scarce as here. The ends achieved are small--simply an exhibition of
power, and punishment which (if it be really necessary) could be
otherwise inflicted; and the evils, as one sees them on the spot, are
many and great. If I described one-half of the little things which I saw
in the process of destruction I should be accused of sentimentalising;
but the principle of the thing seems clear enough. If one could only
hope that with the conflagration would die down those hotter fires that
burn in the heart of this country, one might accept the manifest
disadvantages. But good feeling will never spring from ashes like these;
every charred spot is the grave of that which neither time nor laws can
revive.


BRAKFONTEIN, _Wednesday, May 9th._

We are not far from Vryburg now, and expect to enter it to-day without
opposition. From several prisoners taken on the way (there are twenty of
them now) we heard that the Boer police in Vryburg knew of our presence
at two o'clock on Sunday, and that they all fled. Another farm was
burned this morning, and much ammunition destroyed. We have now got over
a great and critical part of our journey, which has been admirably made
through very difficult country, and we do not expect opposition until we
approach Mafeking. Cronje, who was reported on Sunday to be moving
westwards with a force to cut us off, has apparently missed us, and he
will hardly attempt a rear-guard action without guns. We have two
pom-poms, and everyone--even the most peaceful of us--who has once been
shot at by these infernal machines is eager to watch them at work from
the right end.


VRYBURG, _Thursday, May 10th._

We occupied Vryburg yesterday at about three o'clock. We made a very
easy march, with a long rest at midday, and as the column wound up to
the summit of a high ridge we saw Vryburg lying green and white on the
farther slope. Half our journey done, and the most dangerous half; it
was a pleasant sight. The Boers had all left the little town, and the
English residents--chiefly women of the artisan and shopkeeper
class--swarmed out to meet us, waving spurious Union Jacks, and
exhibiting all the loyalty that can be displayed by means of dyes and
pigments. It was like Bloemfontein on a smaller scale.

The people here have been in rather a bad way. There has been a great
deal of sickness; the supplies have been very scanty, and meal seems to
be the only thing of which they have plenty. So naturally they welcomed
the column as the sign of an open road to Kimberley.

I went to see the railway station, which has been much damaged. The only
two locomotives here have been outraged; vacuum gauges have been broken,
dome-covers torn, and taps smashed; and bullets have been fired at the
steel-plated boilers, which, however, they did not penetrate. But it is
only outrage, and it seems that with materials left in the workshops
here the engines can be repaired in a couple of days. The Boers have
been very clumsy over this; a dynamite cartridge might have been
strapped under a driving axle in far less time, and its explosion would
have been more effectual.

Our chief joy has been in straying about the town, revelling in the
sense of things to be bought. No man can withstand shops after having
experienced for several days conditions under which money is not of
value. There is really nothing to buy that is of much use, but we stand
agape at the window of an ironmonger's shop, fingering the money in our
pockets, and wondering whether to buy an axe or a mincing machine. On
the whole, the axe has it; one must have fires; and bully beef _can_ be
eaten in the slab form.



XXI

NEARING THE GOAL


JACKAL'S PAN, _Saturday, May 12th_.

Colonel Mahon's column left Vryburg on Thursday at sunset in a cloud of
purple dust, and as long as the light lasted, we could see the rather
pathetic-looking little crowd of residents waving handkerchiefs and
flags. It was intended only to march for three hours; but our
information about water proved to be incorrect, and the column wound
along in the moonlight over mile after mile of the most sterile veldt I
have yet seen in the country. I was riding with Colonel Mahon for the
last few hours, and was to some extent buoyed up by the repeated
assurances of the guide that there was water "just round the bend"; but
even so it was a weary correspondent who got off his horse at 2 a.m.,
after eight hours of walking and riding at a foot-pace. Of course, the
poor mules suffered most. Even four hours in harness without a rest is
considered too much for them; here they had twice that time, over very
rough ground, and in consequence half of them had bad breast-galls. It
was a mistake to go on for so long, especially as we had to halt after
all without water; but the Colonel could not be persuaded to halt until
his transport officer warned him that the mules were at the end of their
endurance. And all through that weary march no lights were permitted; no
smoking even, which gives one something to do; and when we got into the
bivouac at two o'clock, no fires or lights. We had to be up at five and
start in the misery of darkness and intense cold; without even the
comfort of a hot drink; but we reached the water at eight, and had a
long morning of rest and sunshine. No one really grumbles at this sort
of thing, although it is most unpleasant; and as the men are all picked
for health and endurance, no one is any the worse for it.

We marched eighteen miles on Thursday night, and four the next morning;
thirteen yesterday evening, and eight this morning; this afternoon we
expect to do another twelve, and reduce the distance before us to an
easy two days' journey. Of course, all this speed is achieved at a
certain cost in mule and horse flesh, but we hope that the end will
justify it. The authorities at Kimberley have not done so well for us as
they might have done. They did not take the trouble to find out exactly
how many horses were in the force, with the result that the daily horse
ration has been reduced from the inadequate seven pounds to the absurd
four pounds, while the men are on half meat and three-quarter biscuit
rations. Another serious defect in the equipment of the column is that
there is not even a section of engineers with us. The want is the more
felt as water is scarce and bad along the route; often the only water is
a small pan or pond into which the mules wade breast high and churn it
into mud, which the men have to make a shift to drink. A few sappers and
a waggon with the advance guard would ensure a clean supply for
everyone, since water that is quite insufficient in a dam can be made to
go a long way when it is pumped into watering troughs; and a section of
engineers can fix up the whole necessary apparatus in ten minutes.

Far more interesting than the march of a great army corps, where one
gets lost in the miles of transport, is the progress of a small column
like this, where one is more or less in touch with everyone, and can
watch from within the deliberations and methods of the small staff to
whom success or failure means so very much. The little group that rides
in front of the guns discusses minutely many questions of absorbing
interest in the course of a day's march. Whether such and such a ridge
ought to be patrolled; how far the scouts are working in this or that
direction; whether it is advisable to halt now and go on after a rest,
or do a greater distance and have a long rest at the end. And then, when
the time for the five minutes' rest in the hour has arrived, "_Halt_!"
is passed down the column, and one hears the word running down squadron
after squadron until it is lost among the lines of the ammunition
column. The connecting files pass it forward to the advance guard, who
send it out to their scouts and patrols, until the great serpent that
winds over the country is completely at rest. Then follows a sound of
horses cropping grass and men talking. Then "_Stand to your horses_!"
runs down the column, followed by a shuffling of feet as men scramble
from the ground where they have been lying; "_Prepare to mount_!" and
there is a general gathering up of reins; "_Mount_!" and a long rustle
and jingle as the men swing into their saddles; "_Walk march_!" and the
serpent is off again, feeling his way before him.

Three miles in front of us the furthest scouts of the advance guard are
working cautiously in the bush, and from the officer in command of the
guard a note occasionally comes back to the Brigadier, carried from
squadron to squadron and passed along the connecting files until it
reaches the head of the main column. One never becomes accustomed to the
interest and mystery attaching to these notes, and one almost holds
one's breath while they are read; they may contain so much, may carry
news of the gravest or most astonishing nature; for if the advance guard
found the enemy in strength standing on his head in a donga the
information would still be conveyed through the cold propriety of Army
Form No. C 398. It is one of the sanest of cold-blooded regulations; let
a patrol be never so hard pressed and requiring help never so urgently,
the officer commanding it must take time to say so in writing.

I am glad to see that no more farms are being burned, and that we are
not burdening ourselves further with the insurgent prisoners. We have
already twenty-five, but the Brigadier has been content to read the
insurgents who have been taken since a lecture on the folly of their
ways, and to warn them that a day of reckoning is coming. I came up to
a house yesterday where the Dutch farmer, who was known to be disloyal,
had just been arrested and taken away. The troops were making
preparations to burn the house, acting on the general order, which had
not been cancelled. Within, a child had dropped his toys to stare in
astonishment at the strangers, and his mother was weeping alone. I rode
back to the Brigadier and said what I could, with the result that I was
able to return and assure the woman that her house would not be burned,
and in addition to see her husband come back in half an hour. The effect
has really been produced already, and prisoners in a flying column are a
particular nuisance.


BRODIE'S FARM, _Sunday, May 13th_.

The end is drawing near now, and a fight is almost certain this
afternoon or to-morrow. A commando of Boers, 400 strong, was reported
yesterday afternoon about eighteen miles on our right flank, and some
time during last night they pushed on and occupied a kopje at
Koodoesrand, directly in our path, where they laid an ambuscade with
three guns. They expected (as well they might) that we should come on
and butt into their position. But we have learned our lesson, and this
morning we made a detour and have got past them. We have marched nine
miles; we shall reach the next water (twelve miles) this evening, and
to-morrow we must march straight on to Mafeking (twenty-four miles), for
there is no water all the way, and there is the prospect of heavy
fighting at the end of it. The horses will simply be used up, but that
cannot be helped; if we win it will not matter, and if we lose----. It
will be a trying day for everyone, and we shall only have a few hours'
sleep to-night, but I think no one grudges the discomfort. I write on
the eve of what may be a very brilliant, a very disastrous, or a very
simple affair. We are a small force, the march so far has been
brilliant, and success will be a brilliant crown for the expedition and
its leader. Everyone is more than a little anxious, but it is hard to
foretell any result.

I forgot to say that we had a runner from Mafeking, with messages from
Colonel Plumer and Colonel Baden-Powell; they asked us what our numbers
were, how many our guns, and what the state of our supplies. The answer
was most ingenious, as we had no code to which they had a key, and we
could not trust a straightforward statement of such important facts to
the risks of the road. So Colonel Rhodes invented this answer:--

"Our numbers are the Naval and Military multiplied by ten; our guns, the
number of sons in the Ward family; our supplies, the O.C. 9th Lancers."

Excellent as the Boer Intelligence is, I do not suppose that they are
aware that the Naval and Military Club is at 94, Piccadilly; that the
house of Dudley rejoices in six stalwart sons; or that the officer
commanding the 9th Lancers is Colonel Little.



XXII

WE REPEL AN ATTACK AND JOIN FORCES WITH PLUMER


BUCK REEF FARM, _Monday, May 14th_.

A diary is the last place in which to indulge in prophecy; it preserves
too clearly the record of fallacy. In the last twenty-four hours have
been reversed all the expectations of those in charge of this column,
and even the direction of our march has been completely changed. My last
entry was made at midday yesterday, and at 2.30 we resumed the march
northwards, intending to reach a point ten miles distant at which there
was water. The road was very heavy, or rather there was no road at all,
the way lying over rough bush veldt, which consists of long, rank grass,
with thorn bushes at small intervals and hardwood trees at greater
distances--the whole something like an English paddock or park of young
trees, except, of course, for the grass. This was heavy going; the mules
were hot and tired, and the convoy trailed out and straggled; we spent
quite two hours in covering the first four miles.

I have said that the convoy straggled, and there were long intervals
between one part of it and the next. During one such interval, the
afternoon being very hot, I lay down under a tree and left my horse to
graze. A cloud of locusts flying high and beating the air with millions
of wings made a pleasant sound as of wind in a forest, and listening to
these and to the thousand other minute noises that proceed from the
insect life on a few square yards of veldt, I almost fell asleep. There
was not a sound from the column; you could not imagine a more peaceful
spot; and the obvious contrast between the purpose of this little army
and its present circumstances impressed me more vividly than ever. And
in less than half an hour from that moment of absolute peace the bullets
were hailing round us and the air was resonant with the boom of guns.
This is how it happened.

It was half-past three when I left the shade of the tree and joined
Colonel Mahon in front of the Horse Artillery, and at twenty minutes to
four we heard the sound of rifle-shots--three or four--to the
south-east. We had now got into a kind of wood in the bush, and here and
there could see beyond the edge of it eastwards towards a hillside that
sloped up from us to a ridge four miles away. On this ridge we could see
a cloud of dust, and we were looking at it through glasses when a note
came in from the right flank reporting a body of the enemy advancing on
us from the east. Presently we made out on the edge of the dust a line
of horsemen opening out on a kind of glade on the hillside, and the
Brigadier ordered the guns to come into position where we were standing.
It was really no sort of position at all, being merely a wood with no
view from it, and in a hollow at that; but it was all that could be
done.

The guns came galloping up, the horses as keen as mustard; in five
minutes they had unlimbered and were in position; but Major Jackson, who
was in command of the battery, reported that the range was extreme and
that he could not be effective. So we lit pipes and waited, while the
convoy was ordered to be hurried up as much as possible.

Up galloped an orderly with a note, and everyone tried to read the
Brigadier's face. It clouded a little.

"Enemy advancing in strength on our front" was the essence of the note.
But "They've got us in the nastiest place of the whole march" was all he
said.

In a few minutes more Prince Alexander of Teck came up to report that
the convoy was well up, and just as he had finished speaking rifle-fire
broke out on our right, and a minute later, sharply, on our front. It
was then 4.45, and a bewildering moment for the Brigadier, who had a
great, bulky convoy to protect, and had it at the moment in a
defenceless position. I think I would not take any reward to bear the
responsibility of acting at such a moment. The shots were sounding
quicker, but one could see nothing except the surrounding trees. Colonel
Mahon looked coolly round.

"We must try with the guns," he said, and ordered another squadron out
on the right.

The orderly rode away with the order, and at exactly five o'clock the
fire broke out furiously and bullets began to whistle over us. Everyone
put his horse into a canter by instinct, and I think the staff went
round to the guns. I returned to the convoy to look after my cart.

The convoy was moving on now on as broad a front as the shrubs and trees
would permit of; it raised a cloud of dust, which the level rays of the
sun lit like a rainbow, and the bullets began to come in a hail. Well,
that is rather exaggerated--not a hail. But on a summer day after
oppressive heat and dark clouds the big raindrops begin to splash on the
ground; and this fire, which many old stagers who have been through
several fights describe as the hottest they have known, was something
like that. There was no cover; everyone was under fire; so there was
nothing to do but to dismount and lead one's horse along beside the
convoy. Every now and then with the clear high "phit" of the Mauser
bullet would come the hideous twisting whistle of the Martini--really a
horrible sound. There was something like a panic amongst the native
drivers; they walked along bent almost double, taking what shelter they
could; one I saw crawling along on his belly, and the sight made me
laugh, although I had at heart too much sympathy with him to be really
amused. The mules and horses, alarmed by these strange whistlings in the
air, began to neigh and scream, and they added to the general tumult.
One gave up wondering whether or no one would be hit, but merely
wondered if it would be a graze or a "plug." There were the usual number
of miraculous escapes; the driver of the waggon beside which I was
walking tumbled off his seat like a sack, stone dead; a mule in the
waggon behind me leapt and kicked, and sank on the ground; my horse
jumped as a Martini bullet smote the sand at his heel; yet I think there
was never a bullet nearer me than a dozen feet. Major Baden-Powell, who
is accompanying the expedition for his brother's relief, had his watch,
worn in the left breast-pocket, smashed to atoms, but his skin was not
even scratched.

They were ten very long and, to put it frankly, very hateful minutes
that passed until M Battery opened with a roar. It was a welcome sound,
and still more welcome the "pom--pom--pom--_pom_," like the bark of a
good dog, that sounded immediately afterwards. And it was like oil on
water, or water on fire. Immediately the enemy's fire slackened; in two
minutes it had almost ceased; in five it had stopped entirely, and one
began to get one's breath. There were men lying all round and about the
wood, and the small ambulance staff had more work than they could do; my
cart made three trips, carrying wounded men from the column to the
dressing-station. Only ten minutes of fighting, and over thirty
casualties; six killed, twenty-four wounded, one missing.

But when one had been through those ten minutes, it was not the men
lying stark and still in the grass beside the ambulance that made one
astonished; it was the sight of people walking about and talking that
made one wonder whether or no one had been dreaming. It was decided to
halt. Everyone lay down where he stood, and it was a strange, troubled
night, with horses stumbling about in the moonlight and blowing with
astonishment into one's face.

This morning, as some of us more than half expected, the enemy had
cleared, but in consequence of a message received from Colonel Plumer
asking us to meet and join him at a certain place we have turned from
our original direction. We reached a dry river at eight o'clock this
morning, and men had to begin to dig in the sand for water for
themselves and their horses. One of my servants found a well fifty feet
deep, from which the bucket hoist and ropes were missing. I had sixty
feet of rope in my cart, and I went quietly away with two boys carrying
all our buckets and bags and kegs, and leading all the horses. We had
two hours of very hard work at that well; and when the horses had drunk
their fill, and every vessel had been replenished, the fact that there
was a well was reported to the Brigadier. In ten minutes a crowd of
troopers was round the well, trampling down earth into the water; but if
we had only had a few engineers everyone could have been supplied in
half an hour.


JAN MASSIBI'S, _Tuesday, May 15th_.

We marched off at half-past three yesterday, keeping west of north; on
and on, until half-past eight in the evening. Everyone was dog-tired,
and dropped to the ground, only to be roused at one o'clock this morning
by the Brigadier, who personally went round and woke people up. He had
to shake me twice, and I imagine that other people were wrapped in just
as profound an oblivion; nevertheless we were on the march again at
1.30.

Oh, the weariness of that eternal plod through the rough grassy ground,
the coldness, the interminable darkness! It was no better on horseback
than on foot, for the animals kept falling asleep and stumbling. At
every halt one tumbled off one's horse and fell asleep, only to be
awakened by the hateful "Stand to your horses." But at last the light
began to glimmer in the east, the air took an even colder tone, so that
even the grasses seemed to shiver with the breath of dawn, and presently
the whole horizon on our right burned with a red fire. Thereafter the
shedding of greatcoats and sweaters and woollen helmets, and the glad
breathing in of the wine of morning. A little after daylight our advance
patrols came in touch with the pickets of Colonel Plumer's camp, down in
the valley of the Molopo River at Jan Massibi's. The Brigadier and his
staff rode on, and it was a pleasant meeting between the two officers.
And pleasanter still when the cloud of dust that heralded our force
appeared on the crest of the southern ridge and the long column began to
pour down the slope and to cross the drift. Soon it was filling the
valley and mingling with the other force already encamped, and now
everyone is busy washing or eating near the picturesque little cluster
of Kaffir kraals and big shady trees; for the region of karoo and
shadeless plain has been left far behind. Our supplies are practically
exhausted; the horses are eating their last ration to-day; but Mafeking
is only eighteen miles distant, waiting for our help. There is something
inspiring in that knowledge, and in the news of the grand little
garrison's latest success; and everyone is anxious to push on and get
the inevitable fight over.

To-day we rest under the trees and dream through the music of singing
birds, with perhaps a thought for yesterday and the fellow-travellers
whose journey ended so suddenly. But for the soldier, more than for
anyone, the watchword is "No regrets"; and as for to-morrow, who can
tell the issue?



XXIII

THE FIGHTING ON THE MOLOPO


At daybreak on Wednesday, May 16th, the two columns under Colonel
Mahon's command moved from Jan Massibi's in two parallel lines along the
northern bank of the Molopo River. As the sky brightened before us
Mafeking was eagerly looked for, but for a long time each successive
rise only showed us another beyond which hid the desired view. The
country consisted of a succession of ridges lying at right angles to our
line of march, and as each one rose before us the staff galloped forward
to the summit, only to see another lying beyond. But at last, while some
of us were buying eggs at a Kaffir kraal, a more adventurous person
climbed upon a rubbish heap and shouted "There's Mafeking!" There was a
rush for the coign of vantage, and a great levelling of glasses. There
it lay, sure enough, the little town that we had come so far to see--a
tiny cluster of white near the eastward horizon, glistening amid the
yellowish-brown of the flats. We looked at it for a few moments in
silence, and then Colonel Mahon said, "Well, let's be getting on"; and
no one said anything more about Mafeking, but everyone thought a
great deal.

[Illustration: Sketch Map of Fight at ISRAEL'S FARM. on May 16th]

There was a difficulty about water, and it was finally decided to halt
at midday at a point where the Molopo River curved near to the road. We
turned off the road down a slope which sank towards the river on the
right. The ground rose up on all sides round us, but the guns were
placed near the top of the northward rise. The mules were outspanned and
led to water, and we breakfasted. Remember that we had been up since
half-past five and had had nothing to eat, that it was now nearly an
hour after midday, and you will understand how it happened that I was
more interested in the cooking of certain meats than in the galloping
about of orderlies on the hillside.

Breakfast was just over and my horse was being saddled, when a crack of
rifle-fire on our right front warned me that things were about to
happen; and at the same time I saw that the mules were being harnessed
with frantic haste. By the time that I had ridden up the slope the guns
had gone forward into position, but as yet there was no firing except
from rifles, which were banging in a desultory fashion now all along our
right flank. I searched the slope beyond the river with my glasses, but
could not see a man; yet the firing was there sure enough, and
increasing. It was at 1.55 that the first firing broke out, and for half
an hour the same thing continued, during which the convoy was formed up
in what seemed a sheltered part of the hollow. We were in a bad place--a
very shallow saucer; and on the edge of the saucer the Boers had taken
up their position.

During this half-hour little seemed to be done, but there is always this
interval during which a battle develops. We did not as yet know any but
one place in which the Boers were; it was pretty certain that they did
not know what we were going to do; so the right front, where our advance
guard had first come into touch with the enemy, was as yet the only
point of contact. Meanwhile Colonel Plumer, with the whole of his
mounted men, was sent off to the right flank; Colonel Peakman, with the
Kimberley Mounted Corps, was held back to watch the rear; Colonel
Edwards was sent with the Imperial Light Horse to the left flank, with
instructions to work round in advance if possible, and so turn the
enemy's right; and the Royal Horse Artillery and the Canadian guns took
up a position on the front. It was difficult to find a place from which
to look on, especially as we were far from confident that the Boers
were on our right alone. There were folds in the sides of our saucer,
and I found a kind of ridge on the northward slope below our guns. I had
just dismounted and was watching the right ridge through my glasses when
the edge of the horizon at which I was looking was divided by a bright
flash. In a few seconds there was a deep report, followed by the whine
of a shell in the air; the sand spouted up in a great fountain--Heavens!
how close to the convoy; and presently the sound of the burst drowned
the crackling of musketry. The convoy huddled away from the smoking
patch where the shell had fallen, and began--oh, how slowly!--to wind up
the slope towards me. Another shell, still on the same spot, of which
the waggons were now quite clear; and now the shells followed each other
so rapidly that one gave up trying to distinguish between the initial
and the bursting reports, and became absorbed in watching the brown
columns spouting from the earth.

They were now playing all round the moving convoy, and each was a
miracle; wherever there was a blank space, there the fountain rose; and
when the convoy had closed up so completely that one was certain that
the next shell must hit something, it fell quite wide. I was still
watching this beautiful and dreadful sight when the air above me
vibrated to a new song, and on my right a small shell burst with a
disagreeable sound. I cleared away to the northern side of the basin,
only to feel once more obliged to move as a new gun opened and began to
churn up the ground. To be sure, these were long, range-finding shots,
and were not intended to pitch where they did, but it is not always safe
to rely upon the accuracy of shrapnel fire, and I moved again. But it
was of no use; the enemy's pom-pom suddenly began to bark, and played on
the one spot which had seemed but a moment before to be safe.

During this development (which had only occupied about ten minutes) our
artillery had gradually come into action; first the solitary, abrupt
bang of the 12-pound horse gun, then the readier and brisker fusilade of
the Canadian quick-firing Vickers-Maxim, then the clamour of our two
pom-poms, then the rattle of a Maxim somewhere in the rear. And all the
while the area from which the sounds proceeded was spreading like a
bush-fire; beginning on the right, it worked across our front, spread
from the left front along that flank until it seemed almost to meet the
firing on the right rear. When all the guns were going the medley was
terrific, although I suppose it was nothing to the sound produced in a
really big pitched battle. But it was confusing enough, and, what with
the baffling effect of the cross-fire, the whining in the air, and the
continuous noise of the explosions, the rattle and crackle of musketry,
the galloping hither and thither of orderlies and messengers, and the
unpleasantness resulting from the whole thing's happening in so small an
area, provided excitement enough to satisfy the most jaded adventurer.

In colder language what had happened was this. The commando that had
been holding on for days on our right as we marched had got ahead of us
when we diverted towards Plumer, had effected a junction with a force
sent out from Mafeking to oppose us, and had just arrived in position
near Israel's Farm when we came up against them. Fortunately they had
not time to entrench, but they were just going to begin when we turned
them, as we found picks and spades lying about in rear of their
northward artillery position. From the large outline of their attack
there must have been at least 2,000 of them, and from the cleverness
with which they were disposed we at first estimated them at twice that
number. We held them on our right while we sent a strong force working
round on our left, which ultimately got out far enough to turn their
right. Of course we were too few to do more than dislodge them;
surrounding was out of the question; so when we had fairly turned them
we "let go" on the right, and the Boers fled in that direction. The
house at Israel's Farm they held until the very end, shelling our
rear-guard briskly. The engagement lasted close on five hours, during
which our casualties amounted to less than forty.

In even fewer words than these (so concise is his art) the military
despatch-writer might have described those eventful hours; and one takes
a kind of pleasure in trying to imitate him, so supremely inadequate are
such sentences to produce any real impression on people who have never
found themselves in the midst of a battle. Not that any art of written
words is equal to it. One goes through the whole gamut of sensation; one
is charmed, afraid, bewildered; charmed by the scale and magnitude of
the operations, afraid for one's own skin, bewildered with a kind of
dream at the strangeness of it all. One may sit, as I sat, under a tree
listening and watching for hours; and from the grossly and crudely real
the thing fades and changes into an unreal image of the senses. The
gaudy flies and beetles that hum round one, whose noise is so much
louder and nearer than the crash of shells, they fill the foreground of
reality; it is not conceivable that the man with the pleasant face and
kindly eye who is directing a battery should be attempting the lives of
his fellows on so large a scale. Yet it is the scale that makes the
difference: a man who would abhor to kill another will with a smile
direct the machine that destroys twenty; and he, if anyone, has the
right to act upon this reduced estimate of the value of human life, for
he counts his own as lightly as that of his enemy.

But I have forsaken my narrative of the fight, and I am confronted by
the fact that there are five hours of fighting to be accounted for.

Five hours! Was it for so long that one listened to the voices of guns
and rifles? I can hardly believe it, and no bare catalogue of
manoeuvres seems to fill the gap. Our artillery positions were changed
several times, and when the convoy was crowded up into a fold of the
ground the shells no longer reached it, but continued to pound at
Colonel Peakman and his rear-guard. At about five o'clock, the Boers
having cleared from our left front, the convoy was pushed on in that
direction, and we penetrated as far as the position which had been held
by the Boer 15-pounder on our front. Just as we reached that point a
note was brought in from Colonel Plumer on the right reporting that he
was checked by the Boers at Israel's Farm, and accordingly the Horse
Artillery battery was formed up in front of the convoy, and with the two
pom-poms (which followed it about like small dogs barking after a big
one) shelled the farm, which the enemy evacuated. The sun began to sink,
the firing in our rear dropped and died out gradually, and with a few
shots from a Martini, fired by someone on the left who amused himself by
sniping the staff, the fight came to an end.

The fight was over, but as the convoy began to work its way cautiously
through the bush in the dusk we began to talk about it, and to fit it
together from the pieces of our individual experience. What had they
been trying to do? What had So-and-so been doing on the left? Had we
many casualties? Should we go on into Mafeking? Ah, that was the
question. But after about an hour's trekking through the bush it was
decided to halt, as someone reported that the enemy was entrenched ahead
of us. As for the fight, we did not then fully know what had happened,
but we found out afterwards. The Boers had once more given us a lesson
in tactics, and we had given them one in dealing with a nasty situation.
With a comparatively small force (although stronger than ours) they had
bluffed us by extending their attack round a large perimeter, leading us
to suppose their strength to be far greater than it really was. They had
caught us in the one bad bit of country between Jan Massibi's and
Mafeking, and but for the really excellent fighting on our side might
have held us where we were until the want of supplies forced us to
retire or surrender. As we had so few casualties it is probable that
they had not many; but it is possible to have very warm fighting with
few casualties. Our cover was excellent; so was theirs; and Colonel
Peakman, who, with the rear-guard, bore the heaviest burden of the
fight, lost hardly a man, although he lost heavily in horses. Everyone
is agreed that the honours of the day fell chiefly to this gallant
business man, who in his spare time had made himself so good a soldier.

All these matters were talked over until we halted about seven o'clock
and reluctantly heard that we were not to proceed that night. No lights,
of course; but everyone was ready to lie down. While my bed was being
prepared I went over to the ambulance, whither the wounded were being
brought in on stretchers. There were only two small waggons, and the
wretched sufferers were literally heaped inside them, lying in the dark
amid their own blood. The little staff under Surgeon-Captain Davies
worked gallantly, getting the men out, dressing their wounds, making
them as comfortable as possible on blankets over the grass; but it was a
miserable and sordid scene, relieved only by the cheery willingness of
the helpers and the fortitude of the patients. Even here, of course,
there were no lights, but in the recesses of a waggon an orderly was
trying to prepare hot water with a tiny Etna. Dressing about twenty
serious surgical cases out of doors in pitch darkness, with a limited
supply of not over clean water, short-handed, hurried, without proper
appliances--it was a sight that would have startled the artist in
antiseptic surgery. But there they lay; and it was with something like a
sense of shame that I turned into my own comfortable bed.



XXIV

MAFEKING AT LAST


They were twenty-four very exciting hours that began when we moved from
Jan Massibi's at daybreak on Wednesday and ended when we lay down to
snatch a little rest at daybreak on Thursday. Many miles were travelled,
a great enterprise was brought to a successful issue, a tough battle was
fought, men received wounds and died, Mafeking was relieved: enough
incident and adventure to fill months of ordinary life. The bare events
are recorded here, but the emotional history of those twenty-four hours
will probably never be written. But as you read the narrative, put
yourself in the place of those to whom it was not a story but a piece of
life, and then perhaps you will realise something of what it meant to
them.

Not much of the story remains to be told.

At midnight between Wednesday and Thursday I was awakened by a general
stir in the surrounding camp, to find that the moon was shining
brightly, lighting up busy drivers, and the troops getting their horses
ready. We were to advance. Major Karri-Davies had ridden on into
Mafeking, and, with the luck which rewards daring, had found the road
clear, and sent back a messenger with that information to Colonel Mahon.
I think men were never so willingly awakened from sleep; not even the
wounded grumbled, who had also to be roused from their beds on the grass
and repacked into the stuffy ambulance. At about 12.30 we were ready to
start, but during the first mile there were long halts and delays while
the guides argued and boggled about the roads. At last the strain became
too great, and Major Gifford, Captain Smith, and I resolved to ride on
and trust to finding the right road. We knew the direction by the stars,
and started across the veldt a little south of east.

It was bitterly cold, and we were all both sleepy and hungry, but there
was an excitement in the air that kept us easily going. After about half
an hour we heard voices ahead, and descried the shapes of horses and
men. Our hearts sank for a moment, only to rise again when we recognised
Colonel Peakman, who, having been in command of the rear-guard on the
previous day up till nine o'clock at night, was now taking his turn at
advance guard at one o'clock the next morning. As a Kimberley man, it
had long been his ambition to lead the relieving force into Mafeking,
and I think no one grudged him the honour. Amongst all, indeed, there
was a certain amount of competition, and the four correspondents who
survived to the end of the expedition became strangely silent about
their intentions for the evening. I pinned my faith to Peakman, as I
knew he was as anxious as anyone to be in first.

Well, we joined the Advance Guard, which presently went on along the
road pointed out by the guide, and for an hour we jogged on at a fast
walk, until we had clearly "run the distance," as they say at sea. Still
no sign of the trenches or forts which should mark the outward boundary
of the defended area. We pulled up, and the guide was questioned.

"Two miles more," he said.

We rode on for another quarter of an hour, and still found nothing
before us but the rolling veldt; not a light, not a sound except the
beating of the horses' feet. Again we halted, and this time Colonel
Peakman himself questioned the guide, and the man had to admit that he
had mistaken his way, and that we were on the lower road, longer by a
good three miles than that originally intended. We had no connecting
files with the main column, and, as it had a guide of its own, it was
certain that it would take the shorter road, and probably be in before
its own Advance Guard. A bitter moment, in which things were said to the
guide; but some of us hoped that the slow convoy, with its tired and
galled mules, would even yet take a longer time on its short road than
we on our long one. So we went on again, this time at a trot; the
excitement seemed to extend to the horses, so that even they could not
be restrained. In ten minutes we saw men sitting by the roadside, and
found a hundred very weary Fusiliers, who had been sent to take Israel's
Farm at the end of the fight, and told to go on afterwards.

"Had anyone passed along the road before us?" "No"; and with a gasp of
relief we hurried on. In a few moment's the group in advance pulled up,
shouting "'Ware barbed wire!"

We all stopped, and there were frantic calls for wire-cutters. With four
reports like the snapping of big fiddle-strings the last barrier before
Mafeking was removed, and we passed on again, this time at a
hand-canter. In a few minutes we heard the sound of a galloping horse
on the road, and a mounted man challenged us.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Friend."

"Who are you?" (The excitement was too high for the preservation of the
proper formula.)

"Colonel Peakman, in command of the Advance Guard of the Relief Column."

"By Jove, ain't I glad to see you, sir!"

It was an officer sent out by Colonel Baden-Powell to meet us and bring
us in. We left the squadron, and the five of us went on, this time at a
gallop, over trenches, past breastworks and redoubts and little forts,
until we pulled up at the door of the headquarters' mess.

Ah, the narrative is helpless here. No art could describe the
handshaking and the welcome and the smiles on the faces of these
tired-looking men; how they looked with rapt faces at us commonplace
people from the outer world as though we were angels, how we all tried
to speak at once, and only succeeded in gazing at each other and in
saying, "By Jove!" "Well, I'm hanged!" and the like senseless
expressions that sometimes mean much to Englishmen. One man tried to
speak; then he swore; then he buried his face in his arms and sobbed.
We all gulped at nothing, until someone brought in cocoa and we gulped
that instead; then Baden-Powell came in, and one could only gaze at him,
and search in vain on his jolly face for the traces of seven months'
anxiety and strain.

After an hour we went out and found the column safely encamped just
outside the town. Everyone was dog-tired, and although it was half-past
five in the morning and the moon was sinking we lay down and were
immediately asleep--in Mafeking.

We did not know it, but we were in a besieged town. Officially the
relief did not take place until ten o'clock that morning, when the Boers
hurried away with their last gun. I was awakened at eight by the sound
of heavy firing, and as soon as my horse was ready rode away to the
north-east corner of the town (we had entered from the north-west), to
where the greater part of our column was in action. Through glasses one
could see something being drawn up the purple slope of a hill six miles
away--the last gun of the besiegers. Earlier in the morning our troops
had advanced on all the Boer positions which were still occupied (only
the eastern ones were then held), and had shelled the enemy in the
midst of his preparations for flight. It was only a rear-guard action;
indeed the engagement was practically limited to the artillery; and all
I was in time to see was the flight. It was a good sight, the mounted
men galloping in open order up the hillside which the morning sun was
throwing into a thousand patches of light and shade. They were soon out
of range, and we stood watching the disappearing specks of black crawl
like flies up the furthest ridges, here in groups of a dozen, there in
twos and threes, until the last one had vanished from our view; and thus
the siege of Mafeking came to an end.

There was joy in the camps of the relieving column when it was known
that they had also taken part in the siege; "Another bar," said the
medal-hunters.

Colonel Mahon's column consisted of 900 mounted men of the Imperial
Light Horse, under Lieutenant-Colonel Edwardes, and the amalgamation of
local troops known as the Kimberley Mounted Corps, under Colonel King;
100 picked volunteers from the Fusilier Brigade; four guns of M Battery
Royal Horse Artillery, under Major Jackson, and a pom-pom section (two
guns), under Captain Robinson, the whole artillery force consisting
of 100 men; three Maxims, 56 waggons, and several private Cape carts,
660 mules; in all, 1,200 horses and 1,100 men.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF SIGNED MENU OF THE RELIEF DINNER AT
MAFEKING]

The staff was: Colonel Mahon, 8th Hussars, brigadier; Captain
Bell-Smythe, 1st Dragoon Guards, chief staff officer; Colonel Frank
Rhodes, late Royal Dragoons, chief of Intelligence Department; Prince
Alexander of Teck, 7th Hussars, A.D.C.; Major Jackson, commanding Royal
Artillery; Major Sir John Willoughby, late of the Blues; Major the Hon.
Maurice Gifford, attached to the Imperial Yeomanry, general staff; and
Lieutenant F.W. Smith, Kimberley Mounted Corps, galloper. There was not
an officer on the staff whose industry and good sense did not contribute
to the success of the expedition; and we correspondents owe a peculiar
gratitude to Colonel Rhodes, who acted as Press Censor. No doubt his own
experience as a correspondent helped him to fulfil what is always a
responsible and seldom an easy office. He was always considerate, always
interested, always kind and always fair.

Here ends an imperfect narrative of the relief. What the deliverers saw
on Thursday morning was a little white town lying in the midst of a
wide shallow basin of green moorland; and it reminded one of a town that
had been long deserted and in ruins. I am not exaggerating when I say
that by far the greater number of houses in the town had been struck by
shells, and that very nearly all had been struck either by shells or
bullets.

After the engagement on Thursday morning the relieving column formed up
and entered the town, headed by Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Mahon, and
his staff. As one passed house after house, one with a gaping hole in
its side, another with the chimneys overthrown, another with a whole
wall stove in, none with windows completely glazed, all bearing some
mark of assault--as this panorama of destruction unfolded itself one
marvelled that anyone should have lived throughout the siege. And when
the procession formed up in the dilapidated Market Square, and the whole
of the Town Guard mustered--Kaffirs, Parsees, Jews, Arabians,
Englishmen, Dutchmen, nearly every sort and nationality of men--and when
the Mayor read an address expressing in the conventional terms of such
compliments the emotions of this motley crowd, one asked oneself what it
was that had held these very ordinary-looking people to so heroic an
intention. Remember that the defence of Mafeking had been one big bluff,
that there was nothing to prevent the Boers, with determination and
careful arrangement, from taking the place at almost any time, and you
will realise how startlingly that question asserted itself. I like to
think that there were many men in Mafeking whose courage alone would
have disdained surrender; but there was one man in whose face one found
the answer to the riddle. Brains alone would not have done it; heart
alone would have fainted and failed under those long months of danger;
but the officer commanding this garrison had both brains and heart, and
so he taught his men to endure.

I do not pay the garrison of Mafeking so poor a compliment as to suppose
that the mere hunger for luxuries, serious misfortune though it be, was
the signal trial of its endurance. Ladysmith suffered worse in this
respect and did not complain. In Mafeking there was always a plentiful
supply of green vegetables, of tobacco, and of wine, and it was only
with a smile that the heir to one of the wealthiest estates in England
told me that they had latterly invented a brawn made with glue from the
hides and feet and ears of mules and donkeys.

But nearly 30,000 shells fell into a town covering about the same area
as Cowes; in many streets not a man dared show himself save under the
cloud of a dark night, for they were swept by rifle bullets; hardly one
of the many forts on the circumference of defence held weapons half so
formidable as the stout hearts that served them. Thirty thousand shells!
I have been in the neighbourhood of perhaps a hundred bursting shells,
and every burst will be a memory for a lifetime; but thirty thousand!
The heart stops at the thought. Yet here was the little ruined town;
here were the men with weak bodies and cheery faces to prove that
courage can raise the mind beyond fear and suffering; that, given an
ideal and a chance in the leadership, men may be counted on for
something far greater even than bravery.



XXV

A MEMORIAL OF THE SIEGE


There is nothing pretty about the place where the dead defenders of
Mafeking are laid. It lies in a little square of brown stone wall,
planted amid the dreary waste outside the town. There are no green
lawns, no twisted yews, no weeping willows; the few fir trees hold
themselves stiffly up, as though in pride at this triumph of the
vegetable over the animal; and the great bushes of faded geranium only
throw into relief the regular lines of limestone mounds, each with its
prim wooden cross of advertisement. Always an ugly and a dreary place,
it was, when I saw it a few days after the relief, more dreary than
ever; for the sun, whose presence makes the difference of a season in
this bare land, was hidden behind dark stacks of cloud flying westward
before a cold gale.

From a sandbag protection at one corner of the cemetery there is a view
on all sides to the horizon. The town, the empty railway station, the
hospital, the network of shelter trenches, connecting earth-works,
redans, redoubts, forts, and emplacements; the straight line of
railway-ruled across the plain to the horizon--these make the view.
Hardly anything is moving except the white flag on the hospital and the
colours on the forts. Sometimes a figure crosses the open stretch
between the hospital and the town, but outside the cemetery itself
hardly a man is to be seen. The wind hums in the empty hearth of a
locomotive, through the stiff trees of the cemetery, past the signal,
standing like a sentinel gone to sleep with his head sunk on his breast,
waiting in an attitude of invitation for the train that is seven months
overdue.

One's eye returns along the shining rails until it rests again within
the yard, in a far corner of which a couple of orderlies detailed for
burial fatigue are hacking with picks at the hard, white earth. The
graves are in prim, uniform rows--the soldiers' graves, I mean, for even
here the military element swamps the civilian, and one hardly takes note
of the private graves, they are so few. But the soldiers' graves are
arranged with military precision, row behind row, each row containing
twenty graves or more. And at least seven or eight rows of graves are
marked by the regulation cross, while there are many rows on which as
yet no crosses have been erected. The painted words on the crosses
become monotonous as one reads from the head of the first row down to
where the mounds give place to gaping caverns--five or six--prepared for
the dying, whom even now the doctor is plying with physic in the
hospital. Trooper A, Private B, Colour-Sergeant C; the names vary,
indeed, but there are only three versions of the manner of death--"Died
of wounds," "Died of enteric fever," "Killed in action"--the three
epitaphs for soldiers in South Africa.

It was strange, amid the dreariness and stagnation of this place, to
think of the jubilations at home. What cheering, what toasting, what
hilarity! But here the sparkle in the wine had died, leaving the cup
that had brimmed flat and dull and only half full after all. Food was
scanty and of the plainest quality, there was no news from the outside
world, disease was still busy; and here, set forth in the hard
limestone, was the bill for all the glory and excitement. The bill, but
not the payment; that was being made at home by the people who cared for
what lies beneath the limestone.

The evils of a war are so direct and obvious that they are apt to be
discounted or accepted as Fate, and classed among the thousand
unavoidable ills beneath which we must patiently sit. But are they? In a
war, the necessity and even justice of which are doubted honestly by
many, where all share the responsibility and few the personal cost, it
is hard to see the hand of an impartial Fate.

A strange place, you may say, in which to attempt the adjustment of
mingled impressions. Yet in the midst of our crude existence at
Mafeking, where life was shorn of all the impalpable things that make it
real and reduced to a simple material level of food and sleep and noise,
it was a kind of relief to spend an hour in the place where men had gone
down into rest and silence. In normal circumstances one may avoid such
places, but after the din of arms and the shout of victory there was a
sense of companionship to be found in the place that stood for the
ending of disputes. Peaceful, yes; but how was the peace gained? It is
sweet and seemly to die for one's country; but blood and fire, grief and
anguish had filled the vestibule of this sleeping-chamber; and peaceful
though it be, the graveyard of Mafeking is a place to induce in
Englishmen some searchings of heart.

"Oh, surely not," says the music-hall patriot; "the brave fellows who
lie there have died a glorious death, and the glory is ours as their
fellow-countrymen"; and he drops a tear and a shilling into the
particular tambourine which happens at the moment to be raising the
loudest clamour, and honestly believes himself to have achieved some
nobility at second-hand.

Our glory? Hardly that. Those who, justly or unjustly, place the martyr
in his last predicament do not wear his crown; and the glory of Trooper
A's death does not rest with you or me, but with those in whose hearts
his memory is quick and real. To count these scores of deaths, as it
were, to our credit in the war, to esteem them merely as things for
which more vengeance must be taken, would be the last and greatest
mistake. Surely they lie in the scale of responsibility, they are things
for which an account must be rendered, by which an obligation is
incurred to use well the fruits of victory.

There is no need that the wind should moan over this desolate patch, or
that the tattered geranium should scatter its withered leaves on the
unlovely ground. Were it as sweet as a garden in Delos, were the ground
carpeted with violet and primrose and shadows of laburnum, the
burying-ground of Mafeking would still be a sad spot on the chart of
British South Africa.



XXVI

GOOD-BYE TO MAFEKING


A sudden order from General Hunter; a morning of preparation; a
commotion of dismantling, packing, harnessing, saddling; handshaking and
well-wishing; cheers ringing, hoofs clattering, dust rising beneath
wheels and many feet, a backward glance along the road, and--Good-bye to
Mafeking. An episode in the lives of men, and one which, in spite of the
excitement that went before it, will probably leave a small though deep
impression. Life there was dull beyond words, perhaps because there must
be a reaction after seven months of excitement, and because the nature
of man is elastic, springing quickly back to the commonplace when an
unusual element in its circumstances has been withdrawn. I tried hard to
fancy that the people of the garrison bore in their faces or manners
some sign of the strain which they had undergone. But the months seemed
to have left no traces except on the buildings and on the cemetery; or
perhaps their mark upon the besieged men was set beneath the surface
scanned by a casual observer. At any rate, the people of Mafeking could
not successfully be exhibited in a show of wonders, and they took less
interest in their food than did we, their deliverers, who lived with
them for a while in what might be called "poor circumstances." Strange
to say, the only way in which to secure an ample meal in Mafeking was to
give a dinner-party, when all sorts of things were produced from secret
reserves and--charged for.

Brigadier-General Mahon's column left Mafeking on Monday, May 28th,
taking the road that runs southward beside the railway, and I think that
everyone breathed a sigh of satisfaction when we were once more fairly
on the road. "The Happy Family" someone called Mahon's force, and there
was certainly never a more united company. He is the kind of
leader--considerate, strict, careless of unessential formalities,
careful of all essential details, jolly of face, kind of eye, a good
companion on the road, a rock of strength and confidence in the
field--who is obeyed in the spirit as well as the letter, and for whom
men would gladly march their feet to blisters. It need hardly be said
that he is an Irishman--"Ould Pat Mahon God bless 'um!" as a friend of
mine said that morning; and the remark was strangely apt, in spite of
the Brigadier's youth and the fact that his name is Bryan.

For four days we marched southward in easy stages across a stretch of
country that was almost blighted by the scarcity of water; we never had
water through which the bottom of a white cup could be seen; nearly
always we had to share with the mules and horses the vast puddle known
in that country as a pan, and at every puddle or waterhole, as the mules
churned it up into inky mud, the wish was the same--"If only we had some
engineers!"

At Maritsani siding we found the first really serious break in the
railway. For about three miles the line was completely wrecked, and two
culverts, one (over the river) spanned by unusually long girders, had
been blasted in the middle and were lying broken in the gap. Even here
it was easy to distinguish between the work of the trained German or
French engineer and that of the ordinary rank-and-file Boer. The Boer
did not understand dynamite, but he had a very fair idea of destruction
from the spectacular point of view, and his work made by far the finer
show. One might almost think that children had been at work, so
laborious and futile were his efforts. The permanent way for perhaps
two miles was bodily uprooted, each length of rails with the sleepers
attached, and laid along the embankment. Not a thing was destroyed; the
fishplates, four to each joint, were lying at a convenient distance, and
even the bolts and nuts for securing them were disposed in little heaps.
All that the repairing party had to do there was to replace the lengths
of line, couple them, and shovel in the ballast. But the mile on which
the trained engineer had been at work probably took four times as long
to repair. Here a dynamite cap had been attached to the middle of each
rail, with the result that there was a piece about six inches long blown
out of every length, and that meant that all the old way had to be taken
up and an entirely new one laid down. One thing I did envy this
simple-minded enemy of ours, and that was the pleasure he must have
experienced in doing one bit of damage. Towards one culvert the line
sloped down in a long gradient, and on this a couple of trucks and a van
had evidently been placed and allowed to run down to the culvert, where,
the bridge being gone, they plunged into the gap. Think of the glorious
smash! The trucks must have got up considerable speed. And picture the
crowd waiting expectantly for the final catastrophe. I must say that I
should have liked to see it.

The destructive spirit had evidently been satisfied by this gorgeous
sacrifice, for nine miles of the line and telegraph wires running
southward from Maritsani were untouched, and at Kraaipan, where we met
the repairing party from the south, the damage was nearly repaired.

On the Thursday night we marched from Kraaipan to a point four miles
north of Maribogo station, and during the march we heard a whistle in
the far distance. A message was sent to the advance guard, and the train
was "held up" while we gleaned some news from the officer in charge. To
us who had been living in the wild for more than a month the great hot,
hissing, bubbling engine was a strange sight, and we stood gazing at it
open-mouthed like yokels, and stretching out our hands towards its warm
body. When we had learned the news it moved off into the darkness with a
shriek, and we resumed our march with a strange sense of cold and
silence. Early next morning (June 1st) the column marched into Maribogo,
where it was to receive ten days' provisions and a complete supply of
remounts--new wings for the flying column. Hunter and the components of
his force were to rendezvous at Lichtenburg on June 7th.

Setting out from Maribogo on Sunday morning, June 3rd, we entered the
Transvaal at about midday, and reached Geysdorp in the afternoon. Hart's
brigade had left Maribogo a few hours before us, and we passed ahead of
it at Geysdorp. After having been long with only mounted troops we
thought the infantry brigade a slow and primitive thing; but we envied
it the drums and fifes, to the music of which the Irishmen were stepping
along bravely when we passed. Although their destination, like ours, was
Lichtenburg, we marched at different times of the day, for even in this
large country there was not room on the road for both brigades. While
they were yet asleep in their bivouacs we were at breakfast, and their
reveille generally found us setting out on the march.

The awaking of a column on these dark, cold mornings is ghostly and
mysterious. The first trumpet-call trembling through the chill starlight
brings one back from dreams to the world. The cavalry trumpeter plays a
longer and more ornate flourish than that sounded by the infantry
bugler, but reveille is all too short on a winter morning. From under
one's shelter one sees the camp return to life--first a match glowing
here, then the smoke and crackle of a fire there, until acres of ground
are scattered with flame. Then the sound of voices begins to insinuate
itself--one never knows exactly when it begins--until the air is lively
with the cries of the cheerful Kaffir. Darkness still on the ground and
cold starlight in the upper air; but eastwards a very sharp eye might
notice a kind of lightening of the gloom. And cold, bitterly cold, one
gratefully withdraws beneath blankets the hand that was experimentally
stretched out. In one's own little camp the stir is also beginning;
fires being kindled, shadowy figures moving through the gloom, the sound
of horses munching corn. Presently the air vibrates to another
trumpet-call--"Stables"; and the few horses (chiefly among the
artillery) that know the calls begin to neigh and paw the ground. Now
the sky above the eastward horizon has faded to the palest blue,
revealing the heads of horses and men where one thought there were only
trees, and along the lower edge of the blue comes another line, like a
fine silver wire. It grows broader and fades into the blue, but in its
place comes a sheet of dull crimson. Millions of miles away God sets it
on fire, and it kindles, glows, flushes to scarlet, melts into gold,
until from the gold flows amber, and from amber the pure white wine of
daylight. All the old colours rush westward across the sky; the veldt
glows with tints that have no name nor description in our dull tongue;
yet these are the mere drip and overflow of the dayspring.

Small wonder if amid such an entertainment one forgets the bustle in the
now visible camp, and smaller still if one forgets that one ever wanted
to sleep. Another trumpet sounds--"Boot and saddle"--and the bustle
becomes acute as the mules are harnessed and horses saddled. And from
some near squadron which is to form the advance guard are heard the few
sharp orders that are necessary to transform it from a crowd of men and
horses to a military unit. "Fall in. Number!" And the numbers run down a
switchback of sound as each man shouts his own. "Stand to your horses.
Prepare to mount. Mount. Advance by sections from the right.
Walk--march!" And with the last word the day's work begins.

On Tuesday morning I had ridden on far in advance of the column in
search of buck. There was very little cover, and at the first shot they
were off like the wind, so I gave it up. Just beyond the ridge where I
had been shooting I came upon the pan of water that was to be our
outspan, and beside the pan was a farmhouse, outside of which stood a
little group of people. An old woman, a young man, a girl, two
middle-aged matrons, a man horribly deformed--people of different ages
and manners, yet having in common one startling thing: they were all
shaking with terror. It was startling because they were the only living
creatures except birds and springbuck that I had seen for miles of that
lonely march. The heath stretching to the sky north and south and east
and west; the muddy pan; the poor house and outbuildings; the solitary
horseman; the terrified group--these filled the picture; and it was not
without misgivings that I approached the house.

"Oh, sir" (it was one of the matrons speaking English with the pleasant
deliberation of a Dutchwoman), "was it you whom we heard shooting on the
hill?"

When I said that it was they all gasped with relief, and the women broke
out into a clamour of talk and questioning. Was the army coming? Were
there many troops? Where were the Kaffirs? Was I sure that there were no
Kaffirs about? When I had reassured them on the point the deformed man
spoke.

"The Kaffirs are jumping about. Ja! They have looted my farm. All my
stock also. We are afraid. I am waiting to go to my farm, which is one
hour over the hill, but when I heard your gun I was afraid the Kaffirs
were near. They know we are only women or sick men here, and they have
guns, and they are jumping about. Your Colonel at Mafeking gave them
guns, and now they run about stealing and murdering. All last night I
dared not move from here, although we have no food. I was afraid, and so
were these ladies, knowing they were jumping about. Now I go to my
farm."

He called a black boy, who presently brought round a miserable cart
drawn by two skeleton ponies. One of the women got in. There was no need
to ask the fierce little cripple why he had not been on commando, and I
was wondering how he was going to get into the cart, when he gave a
great leap, and, climbing nimbly into his seat, drove away.

When he had gone the woman of the house began to pour out a woeful tale.
Her husband--was he dead or alive? No news for three months; no letters
or telegrams. Even the casualty lists had ceased to reach them. Her babe
was dying for want of milk food. Could I give her a tin? General
Hunter's men had broken up her kraal to use the wood for burning, and
all her goats had wandered off and she had no one to send to look for
them. These few logs of wood were all she had to bake bread with; would
I ask the General to see that the soldiers did not take them? And then
the Kaffirs! It was a piteous tale launched on a flood of tears.
Possibly it was exaggerated; people have different ways of asking for
help; but the terror in the woman's eye when she spoke of the Kaffirs
was genuine. And I remembered the cripple's phrase--"The Kaffirs are
jumping about."

Captain Bell-Smythe, the brigade major, came up presently, and I found
him willing, as he and General Mahon had always been, to listen with
patience to the long recital of woe. A sentry was put over the house
and gardens to protect them from the desecrating foot of Tommy, and I
know that a tin of milk was furnished out of the scanty stores of the
headquarters' mess.

As for the Kaffirs, that trouble turned out to be a very real one. On
the next day's march four were captured by a patrol of General Barton
and shot, and it almost seems as though their blood were upon the heads
of those who failed to disarm them after the siege of Mafeking was
raised. I heard that the reason given was that it would offend the
Barralongs, who had fought so bravely in defence of their staadt; but
surely it had been better to offend them than allow them to run their
heads into a noose. The Kaffir trouble was like a shadow on our march;
they imagined that they had old scores to pay off; they paid them with
remarkable fidelity to their own austere sense of justice; and it was
felt that in suffering death they were bearing the punishment for more
than their own misdeeds.

Incidents such as these marked the days of our march to Lichtenburg. But
our family was breaking up; Colonel Rhodes and Sir John Willoughby, who
had worked so hard on the relieving march, left us at Maribogo; one by
one my fellow-correspondents were departing; one officer after another
who had been with us on some special service was being withdrawn.

And suddenly my own summons came. Over thousands of miles of sea-bed it
found me at a spot where the telegraph instruments never spoke before,
and may never speak again until the end of Time. We were encamped
fifteen miles from Lichtenburg, in a place made green by a clear and
brimming river. I had wished to send a telegram, and the obliging
orderly had undertaken to tap the temporary wire and "call up"
Lichtenburg. So the instruments were connected in the green field, and
soon the voice of the man at Lichtenburg was heard. The first thing he
did was to ask if anyone of my name was with the column, and when he
found I was there he said there was a cable for me. He read it to me
over the wire, with the result that I did not send my telegram. And
presently the voice ceased, the wire was disconnected, and (although I
had been hoping that the message would come) I went about like one under
sentence of death.

We came on into Lichtenburg the next day, once more passing the Irish
Brigade with its childish pipes. General Hunter's division was now
complete, and I had not seen so great an encampment of tents since
leaving Lord Methuen at Boshof. They surrounded the pretty town--long
lanes arched by great willows trembling over streams such as run clearly
through the streets of all South African villages. On the next day
Mahon's column, proceeding in advance of the Division, was to set out
towards Rustenburg, while I rode forty miles westward into Mafeking.

The day at Lichtenburg was very busy, occupied by those miserable duties
that affront the softer feelings. To dismantle and sell the moving home
that, as though by a miracle, has been nightly disposed through hundreds
of miles of road travel, and to part from horses that have served you
well and shared your dangers, if not your alarms, is to suffer a new and
painful damage to the affections. It was here, also, that I had to say
good-bye to Major Pollock, with whom I had been living for the last five
months. Some correspondents live always alone, and some like to join
with several of their fellows in a large mess; but I think that our
arrangement (when one is so fortunate in one's companion as I was) is by
far the best. Of course the newspaper correspondent has to remember that
he is the rival and not the ally of all his fellows; but in the South
African war there were many occasions when two correspondents might work
together to the advantage of both newspapers, and there were few
occasions when a correspondent could obtain any advantage or information
which was not shared by all the rest. At such times, of course, when
they did arise, we used to become very silent as to our immediate
intentions, and the subject which was uppermost in both our minds was
shunned. But so long as my companion was with me I never lacked a home
on the veldt.

The happiest endings and the lightest farewells are indeed serious; they
punctuate life, and set a period upon chapters that may not be revised.
Out of the dust of preparation rose once more the pillar of cloud that
had hovered over the column for hundreds of dusty miles; and soon to an
accompaniment of stamping feet and jingling harness it moved on, leaving
me behind as it had left so many others--not all to go home, but some to
sleep beneath the roadside bushes. General Mahon waited, chatting, until
the last waggon had passed, and then he also, who had been the
pleasantest of companions as well as the most respected of commanding
officers, rode away with that stiffening of the back with which your
true soldier ever turns from private to public affairs. I looked after
the vanishing column, and felt as though every prop of existence had
been knocked from under me. I had been one amongst a thousand, a mere
molecule in a large mass, moved hither and thither without reference to
my desires or efforts; and I resented the restoration of independence.
Strange contradiction! We crave and struggle for individuality; here was
mine restored to me, and I looked at it askance. The tail of the column
disappeared round a bend in the road. Was this indeed the end of the
chapter?

Not quite the end. As I set out on the westward road I met a
half-battalion of the Scots Fusiliers returning to camp from exercise,
marching at ease. Each company was headed by a piper who swung and
swaggered, blowing deep into the lungs of his instrument. As one company
passed, the measured bleat and squeal of the pipes faded and merged into
a sound heralding the approach of another. The gorgeous uniforms were
absent; but even the shabby khaki, stained with the soil of long marches
and hard fights, could not obliterate that perfect harmony of movement
which marks the first-class regiment.

I stood to watch them go by. The last company approached; the piper, his
head thrown back, so deeply drunk of sound that his soul seemed to float
on the steady hum of the chanter, set the rhythm to ranks of men
stepping out to the inspiring discord. I turned my horse's head; before
me the road stretched long and lonely; behind was the bustle and stir of
the camp. A file of officers marching behind the column hailed me with
envious congratulation when they heard where I was going. But they did
not know that, just for one moment, I would have given the world to turn
and follow the piper.



PLYMOUTH
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON
PRINTERS





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Relief of Mafeking - How it Was Accomplished by Mahon's Flying Column; with an Account of Some Earlier Episodes in the Boer War of 1899-1900" ***

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