TRAGEDY AND COMEDY
_Sunday, November 5, 1899._
The armistice lasted all day, except that the enemy threw two shells at
a waggon going up the Helpmakaar road and knocked it to pieces, and, I
hear, killed a man or two--I don't know why. The townspeople were very
busy building shelters for the bombardment. The ends of bridges and
culverts were closed up with sandbags and stones. Circular forts were
piled in the safest places among the rocks. The Army Service Corps
constructed a magnificent work with mealy-bags and corn-beef cases--a
perfect palace of security. But, as usual, the Kaffirs were wisest. They
have crept up the river banks to a place where it flows between two
steep hills of rock, and there is no access but by a narrow footpath.
There they lie with their blankets and bits of things, indifferent to
time and space. Some sort of Zulu missionary is up there, too, and I saw
him nobly washing a cooking-pot for his family, dressed in little but
his white clerical choker and a sort of undivided skirt. A few white
families have gone to the same place, and I helped some of them to
construct their new homes in the rocks amidst great merriment. The boys
were as delighted as children with a spade and bucket by the sea, and
many an impregnable redoubt was thrown up with a dozen stones. What
those homes will be like at the end of a week I don't know. A picnic
where love is may be endurable for one afternoon, when there are plenty
of other people to cook and wash up. But a hungry and unclean picnic by
day and night, beside a muddy river, with little to eat and no one to
cook, nowhere to sleep but the rock, and nothing to do but dodge the
shells, is another story. "I tell you what," said a serious Tory soldier
to me, "if English people saw this sort of thing, they'd hang that
Chamberlain." "They won't hang him, but perhaps they'll make him a
Lord," I answered, and watched the women trying to keep the children
decent while their husbands worked the pick.
In the afternoon the trains went out, bearing the wounded to their new
camp across the plain at Intombi's Spruit. The move was not well
organised. From dawn the ambulance people had been at work shifting the
hospital tents and all the surgical necessities, but at five in the
afternoon a note came back from the officer in camp urging us not to
send any more patients. "There is no water, no rations," it said; "not
nearly enough tents are pitched. If more wounded come, they will have to
spend the night on the open veldt." But the long train was already made
up. The wounded were packed in it. It was equally impossible to leave
them there or to take them back. So on they went. In all that crowd of
suffering men I did not hear a single complaint. Administration is not
the strong point of the British officer. "We are only sportsmen," said
one of them with a sigh, as he crawled up the platform, torn with
dysentery and fever.
In front of the wounded were a lot of open trucks for such townspeople
as chose to go. They had hustled a few rugs and lumps of bedding
together, and, sitting on these, they made the best of war. But not many
went, and most of those had relations among the Boers or were Boers
themselves.
When the trains had gone, Captain Lambton, of the _Powerful_, showed me
the new protection which his men and the sappers had built round the
great 4.7 in. gun, which is always kept trained on "Long Tom." The
sailors call the gun "Lady Anne," in compliment to Captain Lambton's
sister, but the soldiers have named it "Weary Willie"--I don't know why.
The fellow gun on Cove Hill is called "Bloody Mary"--which is no
compliment to anybody. The earthwork running round the "Lady Anne" is
eighteen feet deep at the base. Had it been as deep the first day she
came, Lieutenant Egerton would still be at her side.
_November 6, 1899._
When the melodrama doesn't come off, an indignant Briton demands his
money back. Our melodrama has not come off. We were quite ready to give
it a favourable reception. The shops were shut, business abandoned. Many
had taken secure places the night before, so as to be in plenty of time.
Nearly all were seated expectant long before dawn. The rising sun was to
ring the curtain up. It rose. The curtain never stirred. From whom shall
we indignant Britons demand our money back?
With the first glimmer of light between the stars over Bulwan, those few
who had stayed the night under roofs began creeping away to the holes in
the river bank or the rough, scrubby ground at the foot of the hills
south-west of the town, where the Manchesters guard the ridge. Then we
all waited, silent with expectation. The clouds turned crimson. At five
the sun marched up in silence. Not a gun was heard. "They will begin at
six," we said. Not a sound. "They are having a good breakfast," we
thought. Eight came, and we began to move about uneasily. Two miserable
shells whizzed over my head, obviously aimed only at the balloon which
was just coming down. "Call that a performance?" we grumbled. We left
our seats. We went on to the stage of the town. What was the matter? Was
"Long Tom" ill? Had the Basutos overrun the Free State? Had Buller
really advanced? Lieutenant Hooper, of the 5th Lancers, had walked
through from Maritzburg, passing the Royal Irish sentries at 2 a.m. He
brought news of a division coming to our rescue. Was that the reason of
the day's failure? So speculation chattered. The one thing certain was
that the performance did not come off, and there was no one to give us
our money back.
[Illustration: IMPERIAL LIGHT HORSE SHELTERS]
So we spent the day wandering round the outposts, washing ourselves and
our rags in the yellow river, trying to get the horses to drink the
water afterwards, contemplating the picturesque, and pretending to cook.
Perhaps the greatest interest was the work upon a series of caves in the
river-bank, behind the Intelligence Office. They are square-topped, with
straight sides, cut clean into the hard, sandy cliff. The Light Horse
have made them for themselves and their ammunition. On the opposite side
the Archdeacon has hollowed out a noble, ecclesiastical burrow. On the
hills the soldiers are still at work completing their shelter-trenches
and walls. I think the Rifle Brigade on King's Post (the signal hill of
a month ago) have built the finest series of defences, for they have
made covered pits against shrapnel. But perhaps they are more exposed
than all the others except the Devons, who lie along a low ridge beside
the Helpmakaar road, open to shell from two points, and perhaps to
rifle-fire also. The Irish Fusiliers, under Major Churchill, have a very
ingenious series of walls and covers. The main Manchesters' defences are
circular like forts; so are the Gordons' and the K.R.R.'s. All are
provisioned for fourteen days.
I spent the afternoon searching for a runner, a Kaffir the colour of
night, who would steal through the Boer lines in the dark with a
telegram. In my search I lost two hours through the conscientiousness of
the 5th Lancers, who arrested me and sent me from pillar to post, just
as if I was seeking information at the War Office. At last they took
me--the Colonel himself, three privates with rifles and a mounted
orderly with a lance--took me to the General Staff, and there the
absurdity ended. But seriously, what is the good of having the very
highest and most authoritative passes possible--one from the War Office
and one from the head of the Intelligence Department here--if any
conscientious colonel can refuse to acknowledge them, and drag a
correspondent about amid the derision of Kaffirs and coolies, and of
Dutchmen who are known perfectly well to send every scrap of
intelligence to their friends outside? I lost two hours; probably I lost
my chance of getting a runner through. I had complied with the
regulations in every possible respect. My pass was in my hand; and what
was the good of it?
But after all we are in the midst of a tragedy. Let us not be too
serious. Dishevelled women are peering out of their dens in the rocks
and holes in the sand. They crawl into the evening light, shaking the
dirt from their petticoats and the sand from their back hair. They rub
the children's faces round with the tails of their gowns. They tempt
scraps of flame to take the chill off the yellow water for the
children's tea. After sundown a steady Scotch drizzle settles down upon
us.
_November 7, 1899._
To-day the melodrama has begun in earnest. "Long Tom" and four or five
smaller guns from Bulwan, and a nearer battery to the north-west, began
hurling percussion shell and shrapnel upon the Naval batteries at
half-past seven. Our "Lady Anne" answered, but after flinging shells
into the immense earthworks for an hour or two without much effect, both
sides got tired of that game. But the Boer fire was not quite without
effect, for one of the smaller shells burst right inside the "Lady
Anne's" private chamber and carried away part of the protecting gear,
not killing any men. Then "Long Tom" was deliberately turned upon the
town, especially upon the Convent, which stands high on the ridge, and
is used as a hospital. His shells went crashing among the houses, but
happily land is cheap in South Africa still, and the houses, as a rule,
are built on separate plots, so that as often as not the shells fall in
a garden bush or among the clothes-lines. Only two Indian bearers were
wounded and a few horses and cattle killed. Things went pretty quietly
through the morning, except that there was a good deal of firing--shell
and rifle--on the high ridge south-west, where the Manchesters are.
About two o'clock I started for that position, and being fond of short
cuts, thought I would ford the river at a break in its steep banks
instead of going round by the iron bridge. Mr. Melton Prior was with me,
for I had promised to show him a quiet place for sketching the whole
view of the town in peace. As we came to the river a shell pitched near
us, but we did not take much notice of it. In the middle of the ford we
took the opportunity of letting the horses drink, and they stood
drinking like the orphan lamb. Suddenly there was something more than
the usual bang, crash, scream of a big shell, and the water was splashed
with lumps and shreds of iron, my hat was knocked off and lay wrecked in
the stream, and the horses were dashing this way and that with terror.
"Are you killed?" shouted Mr. Prior. "I don't think so," I said. "Are
you?" And then I had to lash my horse back to the place lest my hat
should sail down-stream and adorn a Queen's enemy. There is nothing like
shell-fire for giving lessons in horsemanship.
[Illustration: THE DRIFT AND WATERING PLACE]
The Manchesters had been having an uncomfortable time of it, and I found
Sir George White and his staff up on their hill. As we walked about, the
little puffs of dust kept rising at our feet. We were within rifle-fire,
though at long range. Now and then a very peculiar little shell was
thrown at us. One went straight through a tent, but we could not find it
afterwards. It was a shell like a viper. I left the Manchesters putting
up barbed-wire entanglements to increase their defence, and came back to
try to find another runner. The shells were falling very thick in the
town, and for the first time people were rather scared. As I write one
bursts just over this little tin house. It is shrapnel, and the iron
rain falls hammering on the roof, but it does not come through. Two
windows only are broken. Probably it burst too high.
_November 8, 1899._
Fairly quiet day. The great event was the appearance of a new "Long Tom"
on the Bulwan. He is to be called "Puffing Billy," from the vast
quantity of smoke he pours out. Nothing else of great importance
happened. Major Grant, of the Intelligence, was slightly wounded while
sketching on the Manchesters' ridge. Coolies wandered about the streets
all day with tin boxes or Asiatic bundles on their heads. Joubert had
sent them in as a present from Dundee. They were refugees from that
unhappy town, and after a visit to Pretoria, they are now dumped down
here to help devour our rations. Some Europeans have come, too--guards,
signalmen and shopkeepers--who report immense reinforcements coming up
for the Boers. Is there not something a little mediæval in sending a
crowd of hungry non-combatants into an invested town?