By a sudden effort I threw off the dreamy sensation--the feeling that I
was half-stunned by the pressure of the task I had undertaken, now that
it had suddenly grown so much greater than I had anticipated--and I
walked alongside the wagon-box, breathing hard, and planning that at the
first sound of approaching enemies I would rush forward to where Joeboy
was tramping beside the foreloper, assagai in hand, and make a dash with
him for liberty. But the minutes glided by, as the line of wagons, all
going on with the regularity of some great, elongated machine, rolled
easily along over the soft earth, the rested bullocks pulling steadily
under the guidance of their leaders and drivers.
In vain I listened for the furious rush of horses and the challenges and
orders to stop; then, by degrees, I began to grasp the fact that, though
hundreds of Boers must have heard the wagons start, not one gave heed to
the crack of whip, the cries of the black drivers, or the creaking and
rumbling of the wheels. The moving of wagons of stores was quite a
matter of course; somebody had given orders for their position to be
changed, and that was all. These sounds were nothing to the weary men,
rolled up in their warm blankets, making the most of their night's rest.
Doubtless it awoke many; but they only listened for a moment, and then
turned over to sleep again. Oxen, their drivers, and the wagons had
nothing to do with the enemy. Had there been a trumpet-call, a single
shot, or a loud order, to a man they would have sprung up to rush to
their horses, saddled, and been ready to attack or defend; but the
shifting of some wagons during the night--what was that? Nor was the
Boer force a carefully drilled cavalry brigade, with its transport-corps
under the strictest discipline, every man part of a machine which only
moved by order, and whose stores and supplies were under the most severe
regulation and guard; it was a loose, irregular horde, whose officers
had to permit the men to fight very much as they pleased, so long as
they fought well and advanced and retreated at the word.
It took time to reason all this out, and to get to believe that our bold
ruse was succeeding to a far greater extent than I had ever dared to
hope. There it was all plainly enough--all real; the wagons were going
steadily along, the first guided by Joeboy, and the rest following with
their black conductors quite as a matter of course.
As far as I could make out in the darkness, we were going along parallel
with the lines of the sleeping Boers. Growing more excited now, I began
to wonder how soon Joeboy would turn the heads of the leading bullocks
and strike out for the fortress; then my thoughts drifted into a fresh
rut, and I speculated as to how long it would be before we came upon
some outpost and were turned back.
Hardly had this idea crossed my mind, sinking my spirits almost to
despair, when a great figure loomed up before me. Joeboy was at my
side.
"Got um all, Boss Val," he said in a low tone. "Doppies come and stop
us soon. Say, `Where you go?'"
"Yes; and we shall be turned back," I replied quickly.
"Um? No. Joeboy say, `Big boss tell us to go right away other end.'
Joeboy hear and know how Doppie talk, and Joeboy say right words."
"Are you sure?" I said in Boer Dutch, to test him.
"Um? Yes. Know what to say, like Boss Val know. Always talk like Boer
before Joeboy come and live with Boss Val."
"Of course," I whispered, with a feeling of relief.
"Um! Boss Val jump in wagon and say nothing. Go to sleep like. Doppie
coming."
He gave me a push towards the wagon and went forward at a trot.
Yielding to his influence, I climbed in at the front, past the driver,
and drew the curtains before me, only leaving a slit through which I
could hear what passed. I was not kept waiting long. As far as I could
judge, about a dozen mounted men cantered up, and a thrill ran through
me as a familiar, highly-pitched voice cried in English, with the
broadest of Irish accents:
"Whisht now, me sable son of your mother! What does this mane?"
"Moriarty," I said to myself; and, with my heart beating fast, and a
strange feeling of rage flushing up to my head, my right hand went to my
revolver and rested upon the butt as I strained my ears to listen for
every word. My thoughts, of course, flashed through my brain like
lightning; but the answer to the renegade captain's words came slowly,
Joeboy replying in deep guttural tones, using Boer Dutch, to say:
"I don't know what you mean, Boss?"
"Ugh! You soot-coloured, big-lipped baste!" snarled Moriarty; and then
in Boer Dutch, "Where are you taking the wagons?"
"Over yonder," replied Joeboy.
"Why? Who told you?"
"Big boss officer man," replied Joeboy calmly enough. "Say want more
mealies there. Make haste and be quick. Ought to have gone there last
night. Wake all up and say come along."
"Oh," said Moriarty thoughtfully; and then, as I waited with my
trepidation increasing, to my great surprise and relief he said a few
words to those with him, which I could not catch; then aloud, in Dutch,
"All right. Go on."
When he began speaking Moriarty did not stop the wagons, which had
crawled on in their slow and regular ox-pace, so that I was taken nearer
and nearer till I was in line with the group of horsemen, and then past
them; then the voices grew more indistinct. As the last words were
uttered the patrol or outpost, whichever it was, trotted off, leaving me
wondering what the broad-shouldered black just before me on the
wagon-box might be thinking about what had passed, and my peculiar
conduct in taking refuge inside. "A shout from him, if he is
suspicious, might bring them back," I mused; so, under the
circumstances, I decided to keep up the appearance of having got in for
the sake of a rest, and sat back upon one of the sacks.
However, I was not permitted to stay long inside, for as soon as the
mounted Boers were out of hearing Joeboy came to the front of the wagon
and called to me in his deep tones--speaking in Boer Dutch--to come out.
I stepped out past the driver, yawning as if tired, and leaped down, to
walk on with the black.
"Hadn't you better turn the heads of the leading bullocks now towards
the laager, Joeboy?" I said.
"Um? Did," he replied, "soon as Doppie captain went away. Going
straight home now."
"Ah!" I ejaculated. "Capital! But we shall be stopped again and sent
back."
"Um? Joeboy don't think so. Doppie over there, and Doppie over there,"
he said, pointing in opposite directions with his assagai.
"You think we shall not meet another party, then?"
"Um? Can't hear any," he replied.
"But about the drivers and forelopers? When they find where we're going
they'll want to go back to the lines."
"Um? No," said Joeboy decidedly. "Black Kaffir chap. Not think at
all. Very sleepy, Boss Val. Jus' like big bullock. You an' Joeboy
tell um go along and they go along."
"But suppose they turned suspicious and said they wouldn't go with us?"
"Um?" said Joeboy, and I heard him grind his teeth. "They say that,
Joeboy kill um all: 'tick assagai in back an' front. All big 'tupid
fool. Ha! ha! Joeboy almost eat um." He laughed in a peculiar way
that was not pleasant, and it moved me to say:
"Don't attempt to touch them if they turn against us. I'll threaten
them with my pistol."
"Um? Boss Val think better shoot one? No; Boss Val mustn't make Doppie
come. Joeboy say `Trek,' and they no trek, he 'tick assagai in um
back."
"No, no; there must be no bloodshed."
"Um? Blood? No; only 'tick in little way. Make um go like bullock.
Make um go like what Boss Val call `'tampeed.' Black Kaffir boy not say
`Won't go.' Be 'fraid o' Joeboy."
I thought it very probable, and said no more. Leaving him with the
foreloper of the first wagon, I stood fast and listened intently while
the whole of the six great lumbering wagons, drawn by their teams
averaging four-and-twenty oxen, crept past me. The forelopers walked
slouching along, shouldering a bamboo sixteen or eighteen feet long,
without so much as turning their heads in my direction; and the drivers
on the wagon-boxes were sitting with heads down and shoulders raised,
apparently asleep and troubled about nothing. They all trusted to the
front wagon for guidance, as their teams, until the oxen were tired,
needed no driving whatever, but followed stolidly in the track of those
in front.
So slow!--so awfully slow! when I wanted them to go in a thunderous
gallop! Yet I knew this was folly. I wanted to play the hare, though I
knew that in this case the tortoise would win the race; for to have
hurried meant some accident, some breaking of the heavy wains: a wheel
off or broken, the giving way of trek-tow or dissel-boom. There was
nothing for it, I knew, but to proceed at the oxen's steady crawl, which
had this advantage: the wagons made very little noise passing over the
soft earth, the oxen none at all worth mention. But it was agonising,
now that we had started and actually been passed on by the enemy's
patrol, to keep on at that dreadful pace, which suggested that, even if
we did go on without further cheek, when day broke we should still be
within sight of the Boer lines and bring them out in a swarm to turn us
back.
It seemed to me we must have been creeping along for an hour, though
perhaps it was not half that time, when suddenly the first team of oxen
was stopped, the wheels of the first wagon ceased to move, and the whole
line came, in the most matter-of-fact way, to a stand. No one seemed to
heed, and the oxen went on contemplatively chewing their cud.
"What is it?" I said, running up to Joeboy.
"Um! Cist!" he whispered. "Doppie coming."
I could hear nothing, and it was too dark to see, so I stood listening
for quite a minute, knowing well that the black must be right, for his
hearing was wonderfully acute. Then in the distance I heard the sound
of trotting horses coming along at right angles towards us; and as it
occurred to me that the patrol would come into contact with us about the
middle of our long line, I began to wonder whether Joeboy would be able
to get the better of the Boer leader again.
Nearer and nearer they came, and a snort or the lowing of a bullock
would have betrayed us; but the stolid beasts went on ruminating, and,
to my utter astonishment, the little mounted party rode past a couple of
hundred yards behind the last wagon, as near as I can tell, and the
sound of the horses' hoofs and chink of bit against ring died away.
"Ha!" I ejaculated, with a sigh.
"Um?" said Joeboy, who had come by me unheard. "Yes, all gone. Doppie
big fool. No see, no hear. Joeboy hear; Joeboy see wagon and bullock
long way off. Doppie got wool in um ear an' sand in um eyes."
"So have I, as compared with you, my big black friend," I thought to
myself; "but I don't want you to call me or think me a big fool, so I'll
hold my tongue."
"Doppie can't hear now," said Joeboy. "All agone. Not hear any more.--
Go on. Trek!" he cried in his deep, guttural tones; and the bullocks
dragged at the great tow-ropes, the axles groaned, and away we went
again in the same old crawl hour after hour, but without further alarm,
though in one prolonged agony of anxiety, during which I was always
looking or listening for pursuers.
Then came another trouble: the darkness was greater than ever. It was a
cloak, certainly, for our proceedings; but there was not a star visible
to guide us in our course towards the old stronghold.
"Think we're going right?" I asked again and again.
"Um? Joeboy think so," he always replied. "Wait till light come. Soon
know then."
Words of wisdom these, of course; but though we kept on in what we
believed a straight line for our goal, the line we were taking might be
right away from the camp, or we might be proceeding in a curve which
would bring us within easy reach of the enemy--perhaps as near as when
we started. Truly we were in the dark; and as the air grew colder
towards daybreak, everything looked, if possible, blacker still.
"Morrow morning," said Joeboy, suddenly coming back to where I trudged
alongside one of the wagons, whose drivers appeared to be all asleep.
I looked in the direction he indicated, and there was a faint dawn low
down on the horizon.
"Then we're going wrong, Joeboy," I said; "that's the east."
"Um!" he said. "Too much that way. Going right now."
I looked back in the direction of the Boer camp, but nothing was visible
there. It seemed as if the darkness lay like a cloud upon the earth;
but, upon turning again to look in the way the heads of the oxen were
pointed, I could see what looked like a hillock in the distance. Fixing
my eyes upon it, I could gradually see it more distinctly, and in a few
minutes' time made out that what had seemed like one hillock was really
two--the one natural, the other artificial: in other words, the pile of
ironstone and granite in one case, the built-up stronghold in the other.
"Joeboy," I said, beckoning him to one side after a furtive glance at
the black foreloper, "we're a long way off, and the Boers will miss the
wagons and see us soon."
"Um? Yes," he said coolly.
"Do you think that you can get the bullocks to go faster?"
"Um? No," he said. "Must go like this."
"But the Boers will come after us as soon as they see us."
"Um? Yes; but can't see us yet. When Doppie see us Boss Denham see us
too, and come along o' fighting boys."
"Yes; I had half-forgotten that," I replied. Not thinking of anything
more to say, I trudged on. At last, as the light grew stronger, Joeboy
turned to me to say:
"Boss Val see Doppie now?"
I looked back in the direction of the enemy's lines and shaded my eyes;
but nothing was discernible.
"I can't see them yet," I said.
"Um? No. Joeboy can. Can't see a wagons yet."
"They can't see the wagons?" I cried. "How do you know?"
"Come on horses after us," he said. "Gallop fast."
"Of course," I replied, and looked anxiously at our great, lumbering
prizes, wishing I could do something to hurry the bullocks on; but
wishing was vain, and I knew all the time it would be madness to attempt
to hasten the animals' pace, and likely only to end in disaster.
The darkness, which had appeared to be low between us and the Boer
lines, now began to turn of a soft grey, which minute by minute
lightened more and more, and rose till it looked like a succession of
horizontal streaks, beneath which lay something disconnected and
strange, but which gradually took the form of a long line of horses,
broken here and there by little curves which, by straining my eyes, I
made out to be wagon-tilts seen through the soft pale-bluish air. Next,
on turning sharply to look in the direction of our comrades, there were
the old piled-up walls of our stronghold clearly marked against the sky.
"It's a long, long way yet, Joeboy," I said.
"Yes, long way," he replied.
"Can you see the Boers on the move?"
He shook his head, and then hurried to the foreloper, a heavy-looking
black, who was signalling to him.