MR. ALSTON’S VIEWS
The Zulu attack on Pretoria ultimately turned out only to have existed
in the minds of two mad Kafirs, who dressed themselves up after the
fashion of chiefs, and personating two Zulu nobles of repute, who were
known to be in the command of regiments, rode from house to house,
telling the Dutch inhabitants that they had an Impi of thirty thousand
men lying in the bush, and bidding them stand aside while they
destroyed the Englishmen. Hence the scare.
The next month was a busy one for Alston’s Horse. It was drill, drill,
drill, morning, noon, and night. But the results soon became apparent.
In three weeks from the day they got their horses, there was not a
smarter, quicker corps in South Africa, and Mr. Alston and Ernest were
highly complimented on the soldier-like appearance of the men, and the
rapidity and exactitude with which they executed all the ordinary
cavalry manoeuvres.
They were to march from Pretoria on the 10th of January, and expected
to overtake Colonel Glynn’s column, with which was the General, about
the 18th, by which time Mr. Alston calculated the real advance upon
Zululand would begin.
On the 8th, the good people of Pretoria gave the corps a farewell
banquet, for most of its members were Pretoria men; and colonists are
never behindhand when there is an excuse for conviviality and
good-fellowship.
Of course, after the banquet, Mr.—or, as he was now called,
Captain—Alston’s health was drunk. But Alston was a man of few words,
and had a horror of speech-making.
He contented himself with a few brief sentences of acknowledgment, and
sat down. Then somebody proposed the health of the other commissioned
and noncommissioned officers, and to this Ernest rose to respond,
making a very good speech in reply. He rapidly sketched the state of
political affairs, of which the Zulu war was the outcome, and, without
expressing any opinion on the justice or wisdom of that war, of which,
to speak the truth, he had grave doubts, he went on to show, in a few
well-chosen, weighty words, how vital were the interests involved in
its successful conclusion, now that it once had been undertaken.
Finally he concluded thus:
“I am well aware, gentlemen, that with many of those who are your
guests here to-night, and my own comrades, this state of affairs and
the conviction of the extreme urgency of the occasion has been the
cause of their enlistment. It is impossible for me to look down these
tables, and see so many in our rough-and-ready uniform, whom I have
known in other walks of life, as farmers, storekeepers, Government
clerks, and what not, without realising most clearly the extreme
necessity that can have brought these peaceable citizens together on
such an errand as we are bent on. Certainly it is not the ten shillings
a day, or the mere excitement of savage warfare, that has done this”
(cries of ‘No, no!’);” because most of them can well afford to despise
the money, and many more have seen enough of native war, and know well
that few rewards and plenty of hard work fall to the lot of colonial
volunteers. Then what is it? I will venture a reply. It is that sense
of patriotism which is a part and parcel of the English mind” (cheers),
“and which from generation to generation has been the root of England’s
greatness, and, so long as the British blood remains untainted, will
from unborn generation to generation be the mainspring of the greatness
that is yet to be of those wider Englands, of which I hope this
continent will become not the least.” (Loud cheers.)
“That, gentlemen and men of Alston’s Horse, is the bond which unites us
together; it is the sense of a common duty to perform, of a common
danger to combat, of a common patriotism to vindicate. And for that
reason, because of the patriotism and the duty, I feel sure that when
the end of this campaign comes, whatever that end may be, no one, be he
imperial officer, or newspaper correspondent, or Zulu foe, will be able
to say that Alston’s Horse shirked its work, or was mutinous, or proved
a broken reed, piercing the side of those who leaned on it.” (Cheers.)
“I feel sure, too, that, though there may be a record of brave deeds
such as become brave men, there will be none of a comrade deserted in
the time of need, or of a failure in the moment of emergency, however
terrible that emergency may be.” (Cheers.) “Ay, my brethren in arms,”
and here Ernest’s eyes flashed and his strong clear voice went ringing
down the great hall, “whom England has called, and who have not failed
to answer to the call, I repeat, however terrible may be that
emergency, even if it should involve the certainty of death—I speak
thus because I feel I am addressing brave men, who do not fear to die,
when death means duty, and life means dishonour—I know well that you
will rise to it, and, falling shoulder to shoulder, will pass as heroes
should on to the land of shades—on to that Valhalla of which no true
heart should fear to set foot upon the threshold.”
Ernest sat down amid ringing cheers. Nor did these noble words, coming
as they did straight from the loyal heart of an English gentleman, fail
of their effect. On the contrary, when, a fortnight later, Alston’s
Horse formed that fatal ring on Isandhlwana’s bloody field, they
flashed through the brain of more than one despairing man, so that he
set his teeth and died the harder for them.
“Bravo, my young Viking!” said Mr. Alston to Ernest, while the roof was
still echoing to the cheers evoked by his speech, “the old Bersekir
spirit is cropping up, eh?” He knew that Ernest’s mother’s family, like
so many of the old Eastern County stocks, were of Danish extraction.
It was a great night for Ernest.
Two days later Alston’s Horse, sixty-four strong, marched out of
Pretoria with a military band playing before. Alas! they never marched
back again.
At the neck of the poort or pass the band and the crowd of ladies and
gentlemen who had accompanied them halted, and, having given them three
cheers, turned and left them. Ernest, too, turned and gazed at the
pretty town, with its white houses and rose-hedges red with bloom,
nestling on the plain beneath, and wondered if he would ever see it
again. He never did.
The troop was then ordered to march at ease in half-sections, and
Ernest rode up to the side of Alston; on his other side was the boy
Roger, now about fourteen years of age, who acted as Alston’s
aide-de-camp, and was in high spirits at the prospect of the coming
campaign. Presently Alston sent his son back to the other end of the
line on some errand.
Ernest watched him as he galloped off, and a thought struck him.
“Alston,” he said, “do you think that it is wise to bring that boy into
this business?”
His friend slewed himself round sharply in the saddle.
“Why not?” he asked, in his deliberate way.
“Well, you know there is a risk.”
“And why should not the boy run risks as well as the rest of us? Look
here, Ernest, when I first met you there in Guernsey I was going to see
the place where my wife was brought up. Do you know how she died?”
“I have heard she died a violent death; I do not know how.”
“Then I will tell you, though it costs me something to speak of it. She
died by a Zulu assegai, a week after the boy was born. She saved his
life by hiding him under a heap of straw. Don’t ask me particulars; I
can’t bear to talk of it. Perhaps now you understand why I am
commanding a corps enrolled to serve against the Zulus. Perhaps, too,
you will understand why the lad is with me. We go to avenge my wife and
his mother, or to fall in the attempt. I have waited long for the
opportunity; it has come.”
Ernest relapsed into silence, and presently fell back to his troop.
On the 20th of January, Alston’s Horse, having moved down by easy
marches from Pretoria, camped at Rorke’s Drift, on the Bulialo River,
not far from a store and a thatched building used as a hospital, which
were destined to become historical. Here orders reached them to march
on the following day and join No. 3 column, with which was Lord
Chelmsford himself, and which was camped about nine miles from the
Bulialo River, at a spot called Isandhlwana, or the “Place of the
Little Hand.” Next day, the 21st of January, the corps moved on
accordingly, and following the waggon-track that runs past the
Inhlazatye Mountain, by midday came up to the camp, where about
twenty-five hundred men of all arms were assembled under the immediate
command of Colonel Glynn. Their camp, which was about eight hundred
yards square, was pitched facing a wide plain, with its back towards a
precipitous, slab-sided hill, of the curious formation sometimes to be
seen in South Africa. This was Isandhlwana.
“Hullo!” said Alston, as, on reaching the summit of the neck over which
the waggon-road runs, they came in sight of the camp, “they are not
entrenched. By Jove,” he added, after scanning the camp carefully,
“they haven’t even got a waggon-laager!” and he whistled expressively.
“What do you mean?” asked Ernest.
Mr. Alston so rarely showed surprise that he knew there must be
something very wrong.
“I mean, Ernest, that there is nothing to prevent this camp from being
destroyed, and every soul in it, by a couple of Zulu regiments, if they
choose to make a night attack. How are they to be kept out, I should
like to know, in the dark, when you can’t see to shoot them, unless
there is some barrier? These officers, fresh from home, don’t know what
a Zulu charge is, that is very clear. I only hope they won’t have
occasion to find out. Look there,” and he pointed to a waggon lumbering
along before them, on the top of which, among a lot of other
miscellaneous articles, lay a bundle of cricketing bats and wickets,
“they think that they are going on a picnic. What is the use, too, I
should like to know, of sending four feeble columns sprawling over
Zululand, to run the risk of being crushed in detail by a foe that can
move from point to point at the rate of fifty miles a day, and which
can at any moment slip past them and turn Natal into a howling
wilderness? There, it is no use grumbling; I only hope I may be wrong.
Get back to your troop, Ernest, and let us come into camp smartly. Form
fours—trot!”
On arrival in the camp, Mr. Alston learned, on reporting himself to the
officer commanding, that two strong parties of mounted men under the
command of Major Dartnell were out on a reconnaissance towards the
Inhlazatye Mountain, in which direction the Zulus were supposed to be
in force. The orders he received were to rest his horses, as he might
be required to join the mounted force with Major Dartnell on the
morrow.
That night, as Alston and Ernest stood together at the door of their
tent, smoking a pipe before turning in, they had some conversation. It
was a beautiful night, and the stars shone brightly. Ernest looked at
them, and thought on how many of man’s wars those stars had looked.
“Star-gazing?” asked Mr. Alston.
“I was contemplating our future homes,” said Ernest, laughing.
“Ah, you believe that, do you? think you are immortal, and that sort of
thing?”
“Yes; I believe that we shall live many lives, and that some of them
will be there,” and he pointed to the stars. “Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I think it rather presumptuous. Why should you suppose
that for you is reserved a bright destiny among the stars more than for
these?” and he put out his hand and clasped several of a swarm of
flying-ants which were passing at the time. Just think how small must
be the difference between these ants and us in the eyes of a Power who
can produce both. The same breath of life animates both. These have
their homes, their government, their colonies, their drones and
workers. They enslave and annex, lay up riches, and, to bring the
argument to an appropriate conclusion, make peace and war. What then is
the difference? We are bigger, walk on two legs, have a larger capacity
for suffering, and, we believe, a soul. Is it so great that we should
suppose that for us is reserved a heaven, or all the glorious worlds
which people space—for these, annihilation? Perhaps we are at the top
of the tree of development, and for them may be the future, for us the
annihilation. Who knows? There, fly away, and make the most of the
present, for nothing else is certain.”
“You overlook religion entirely.”
“Religion? Which religion? There are so many. Our Christian God,
Buddha, Mohammed, Brahma, all number their countless millions of
worshippers. Each promises a different thing, each commands the equally
intense belief of his worshippers, for with them all blind faith is a
condition precedent; and each appears to satisfy their spiritual
aspirations. Can all of these be true religions? Each holds the other
false and outside the pale; each tries to convert the other, and fails.
There are many lesser ones of which the same thing may be said.”
“But the same spirit underlies them all.”
“Perhaps. There is much that is noble in all religions, but there is
also much that is terrible. To the actual horrors and wearing anxieties
of physical existence, religion bids us add on the vaguer horrors of a
spiritual existence, which are to be absolutely endless. The average
Christian would be uncomfortable if you deprived him of his hell and
his personal devil. For myself, I decline to believe in such things. If
there is a hell, it is this world; this world is the place of expiation
for the sins of the world, and the only real devil is the devil of
man’s evil passions.”
“It is possible to be religious and be a good man without believing in
hell,” said Ernest.
“Yes, I think so, otherwise my chance is a poor one. Besides, I do not
deny the Almighty Power. I only deny the cruelty that is attributed to
Him. It may be that, from the accumulated mass of the wrong and
bloodshed and agony of this hard world, that Power is building up some
high purpose. Out of the bodies of millions of living creatures Nature
worked out her purpose and made the rocks, but the process must have
been unpleasant to the living creatures by whose humble means the great
strata were reared up. They lived, to die in billions, that tens of
thousands of years afterwards there might be a rock. It may be so with
us. Our tears and blood and agony may produce some solid end that now
we cannot guess; their volume, which cannot be wasted, for nothing is
wasted, may be building up one of the rocks of God’s far-off purpose.
But that we shall be tortured here for a time in order that we may be
indefinitely tortured there and he pointed to the stars, “that I will
never believe. Look at the mist rising from that hollow; so does the
reek of the world’s misery rise as an offering to the world’s gods. The
mist will cease to rise, and fall again in rain, and bring a blessing;
but the incense of human suffering rises night and day for so long as
the earth shall endure, nor does it fall again in dews of mercy. And
yet Christians, who declare that God is love, declare, too, that for
the vast majority of their fellow-creatures this process is to continue
from millennium to millennium.”
“It depends on our life, they say.”
“Look here, Ernest, a man can do no more than he can. When I got to the
age of discretion, which I put at eight-and-twenty—you have hardly
reached it yet, my boy, you are nothing but a babe—I made three
resolutions: always to try and do my duty, never to turn my back on a
poor man or a friend in trouble, and, if possible, not to make love to
my neighbour’s wife. Those resolutions I have often broken more or
less, either in the spirit or the letter, but in the main I have stuck
to them, and I can put my hand upon my heart to-night and say, ‘I have
done my best!’ And so I go my path, turning neither to the right nor to
the left, and when Fate finds me, I shall meet him, fearing nothing,
for I know he has wreaked his worst upon me, and can only at the utmost
bring me eternal sleep; and hoping nothing, because my experience here
has not been such as to justify the hope of any happiness for man, and
my vanity is not sufficiently strong to allow me to believe in the
intervention of a superior Power to save so miserable a creature from
the common lot of life. Good-night.”
On the following day his fate found him.