THE DEATH OF ADOLPH KRAUSE
Uninterrupted communication had once more been established between the
conspirators, and all was going well.
_So it seemed!_
But the Prince of Darkness was at work. And with him an accursed band
of Judas-Boers.
How can I tell the tale? How force into the background of my mind and
soul the unspeakable horror with which all my being is filled when I
contemplate this aspect of the war, in order to collect my thoughts
sufficiently to find the words I need?
That week the town was full of spies.
Captain Naudé had come in on Thursday night and was to leave again on
Saturday night. Another spy, young Delport, a brave and reckless
youth, was also in the capital, "recruiting" men to take out with him
to commando.
That Saturday night, as Mr. Botha was on the point of leaving his home
for the Captain's place of refuge, from where he had to "see him off,"
as arranged, Mrs. Krause arrived at his house in some agitation and
said that her husband had just come in and wished to see Mr. Botha.
Krause was suffering from an exceedingly painful whitlow in the thumb
of his left hand, she said, and he had come to see a doctor and to
have the whitlow cut. She implored Mr. Botha and his neighbour Mr.
Hocke to come without delay, and to be present when the operation had
to be performed.
With all the speed he could Mr. Botha hurried to the house in which
Captain Naudé was waiting, explained the case of Krause to him and
took a warm and hearty leave, kneeling with him for a few moments
first, as was his wont, in earnest prayer to God for the protection of
the traveller.
He then called for Mr. Hocke, and the two men hurried to Mr. Krause's
house in Prinsloo Street, where they found the doctor (a man initiated
in all the mysteries of Boer espionage and a trusted friend) on the
point of performing the small, though painful operation.
When it was over, Mr. Botha, prompted Heaven only knows by what
foreshadowing of disaster, gave his friend a serious lecture on the
dangers of his recklessness.
"How can you go about the town so much in broad daylight, whenever you
come in?" he asked. "Always on that bicycle of yours! Surely you must
know that you expose yourself to untold dangers!"
"Oh, I could not always stay indoors! The house is far too close," the
patient exclaimed, nursing his lacerated thumb.
Mr. Botha urged him to leave on Sunday night, not to remain longer
than was necessary, and to take with him a young German, who had been
wounded and was now convalescent, after having been concealed and
nursed for many months by trusty friends in town.
And another warning he impressed upon him with unusual earnestness:
"Whatever you do, Krause, don't associate yourself with the party
leaving under young Delport's guidance. I fear that there is something
terribly wrong. He is going out with far too large a number, fifty men
in all, he told me yesterday, and something warns me that amongst the
men there are detectives on the English side. Delport is young and
very reckless, and the thought of the great number going out with him
this time has made me more anxious than I can say."
Krause produced his revolver from an inside pocket, and declared that
before he surrendered himself a prisoner more than one British soldier
would be killed or wounded by him.
With a heavy heart and many sad forebodings, Mr. Botha left him. For
he remembered, with increasing anxiety, a visit he had had from
Delport, when the latter had asked for his assistance in getting his
men--fifty, as he had said--safely through the town.
Mr. Botha had refused at the time, pretending that he had never taken
part in such proceedings, and warning the young man that the game he
was about to play was hazardous in the extreme.
"If you _must_ go out with those men, leave on Monday night, when the
others have escaped in safety," was his last advice to Delport.
Unfortunately, Fate decreed that Krause and Delport should meet
accidentally on Sunday morning, the day after Mr. Botha's warning to
Krause.
Together the two men, flinging caution to the winds, or perhaps in
their enthusiasm entirely forgetting the wise counsel of their friend,
laid their heads together, and agreed to meet at a certain point that
night, Krause with the wounded German and two or three of his most
faithful friends, and Delport with his party of fifty men.
[Illustration: ADOLPH KRAUSE.]
As Mr. Botha, with strange intuition, had predicted, there were
dastardly traitors in that group of fifty men--Judas-Boers--who, under
the pretence of seeking an opportunity of joining the burgher forces,
had persuaded Delport to allow them to accompany him. That _he_ was
innocent in this black crime of hideous treachery, no one who knew him
ever had a doubt.
At the appointed place the two men met. Farther on they were joined by
the wounded German and his comrades; still farther, beyond the
boundary of the town, under a cluster of trees, well known to them as
a secret trysting-place, the large party had assembled one by one and
was awaiting the arrival of its leaders.
The latter, seeing in the distance a group of moving figures which
they took to be their friends, walked boldly and serenely forward--to
find themselves a moment later in a most deadly trap!
The conflict must have been a desperate one!
He who played so brave a part in it, Krause, the only armed man on his
side, shot down his opponents one by one, until they closed on him,
and then, overpowered by the fearful odds and battered beyond
recognition by heavy blows from the butt-ends of their guns, he was at
last pinioned to the ground by his infuriated captors.
Three men were taken, Krause, Venter (a mere boy, the son of a widow
in Pretoria), and one other--who must be nameless here.
Of the rest some fled into the open veld, while others, hopelessly
ignorant of their surroundings or of the route to take, wisely
returned to town under cover of the darkness of the night.
With one exception. Fritz W., the wounded German, lost his way and was
unable to go back to town before the curfew-bell, the hour at which
every resident was supposed to be indoors.
Finding himself near a small camp of soldiers in the vicinity of the
Pretoria West Station, he cautiously crept into one of the tents,
where he found a solitary soldier, sound asleep. Without a moment's
hesitation, he stretched himself down on the ground beside him,
thinking over the tragic events of that awful Sunday evening and
dozing off at intervals, from sheer exhaustion of mind and body.
During the night another soldier, evidently returning from duty as
guard or outpost, entered the tent and lay beside him on the other
side.
So he spent the night between two British soldiers, and with the first
approach of dawn he cautiously and stealthily extricated himself from
his perilous position and made his way to town.
* * * * *
Three or four days after the perfidious betrayal of the Secret Service
men the Committee was staggered with the tidings of the execution of
their comrades, Krause and Venter, in the prison-yard of the old
Pretoria jail.
The third, the nameless one, had, it was said, saved himself by
turning King's evidence.
Of their last days on earth nothing will ever be known, but those of
us blessed or cursed with the divine and cruel gift of imagination see
in our mind's eye two men in prison-cells in solitary confinement, one
a broken-hearted husband, the other the beloved son of a widowed
mother.
Wounded and suffering they lie on their last bed of pain. Friendless
and alone they await the untimely end of their brief but glorious
career. Longing, with all the weakness of the human heart, for one
last look of love, one reassuring clasp from a tender woman's hand,
they prepare themselves to meet the death they have faced so often and
so manfully in their heroic struggle for liberty and independence.
Fear? Despair?
No--a thousand times, No!
Could there have been fear or despair in the hearts of those two men,
with the knowledge beating in their brains that they held their lives
in their own hands, that one word from them of information against
their fellow-workers could avert their doom, and that they, and they
alone, could save themselves at the sacrifice of honour and fidelity?
How in the end they met their fate we do not know--we can but dimly
guess.
The painful task of acquainting Mrs. Krause with the fate of her
husband fell to the lot of Mr. Botha and Mr. Hocke.
As she would probably be destitute, the two men decided to collect a
sum of money before approaching her with their evil tidings, and this
they had to do by stealth, in order not to bring suspicion on
themselves.
They were successful in obtaining over £34 for the bereaved wife in a
very short time, from friends and sympathisers as poor as they
themselves, and later, from the same source, in the same
unostentatious way, a far larger amount was collected in order to send
the widow to her relatives in Germany.
These details, mundane though they may appear after the stirring acts
of heroism described above, are significant of greater
things--self-sacrificing generosity, unswerving loyalty, and a
compassionate desire to atone, in some practical and helpful way, for
their share in the disaster brought on innocent and helpless
womanhood.