"I cannot; you must decide for yourself."
Throwing a sack of cartridges over my horse's back, I set off. No sooner
in the open, than whizz, whizz, went the bullets past my ear. The pony
stopped, confused. I struck the spurs into his flanks, and on we flew,
the rapid motion, the novelty of the affair, and the continual whistle
of the bullets producing in me a peculiar feeling of exaltation.
Then the sack tumbled off. I sprang down, hooked the bridle to a tree,
rushed back for the bag, and started forward again. The firing now
became so severe that I raced for a clump of trees, hoping to find
temporary shelter there. Some of our men were here, lying behind the
slender tree-trunks and taking a shot at the enemy now and then.
"Absolutely impossible to live in the open," they said. "Better wait
awhile and see how things go."
I laid myself down under the trees and listened to the bullets as they
sang through the branches.
The very heavens vibrated as the roar of artillery grew ever fiercer,
and the loud echoes rolled along from hill to hill and died away in an
awful whisper that shook the grass-tops like an autumn wind.
What were those lines of Bret Harte's about the humming of the battle
bees?... I could not remember.
My eyelids grew heavy and presently I was fast asleep.
"Wake up! They're coming round to cut us off. We must clear!" And away
went my friend.
Knowing their horses would soon out-distance my heavily laden pony, and
trusting to get away unobserved, I took his bridle and led him away. For
about twenty yards all went well. Then suddenly there broke loose over
us the thickest storm of lead I ever wish to experience. Whether it was
a Maxim or not I could not say, but it seemed to me as if the whole
British army was bent on my destruction. Like raindrops on a dusty road
the bullets struck around me. The pony snorted, shivered, and sometimes
stood stock still. I jerked the bridle savagely and struggled on,
without the slightest hope of escaping, and thinking what a cruel shame
it was that I should be shot at like a deer. Finally the shelter of a
dry watercourse was reached. Following this for some distance, I
encountered another party of our men, to whom I handed my charge, too
shaken to repeat the experiment. The firing now slackened off, and I
returned to my chief, full of mortification over my failure.
It was evident the hill would not be taken that afternoon, so we
returned to our tent, intending to come back the next morning. Late that
evening, however, Colonel Villebois passed and told us our forces had
been withdrawn, General Botha being ordered to Colenso, where Buller had
made a feint attack to help Ladysmith.
Our struggle was therefore a failure, but it had not been made in vain,
since it proved once again that we also could storm a fortified hill,
and fight a losing fight--the hardest fight of all.