KIDNAPPING MAUSER THE KITTEN
One afternoon when Mrs. van Warmelo and Hansie were returning home, as
they passed the house occupied by one of the biggest "lords" in the
British Army, they saw an exquisite black kitten sitting on the steps
leading from the street to the garden.
Such a kitten! Coal black she was, except for a snowy shirt front and
four dainty, snow-white paws.
A delicate ribbon of pale blue satin was fastened in a bow round her
neck, and she blinked at the passers-by in friendly consciousness of
her superior beauty.
"Oh, you darling!" Hansie exclaimed. "I wish you belonged to me!"
"She does," Mrs. van Warmelo answered, and stooping, she picked up the
unresisting kitten and placed it in her daughter's arms.
It was done in a moment and was meant for a joke, but Hansie took the
matter seriously and walked on, rapturously caressing her small
"trophy of the war."
"Hansie, put that cat down," Mrs. van Warmelo said, looking anxiously
up and down the street.
"No indeed, mother; you gave her to me."
"You know very well I did not mean you to keep her. I decline to have
anything more to do with the matter."
She walked rapidly on and Hansie followed in some uncertainty, but
holding on to her new-found treasure as if her life depended upon it.
Soon she caught up with her indignant parent and said in a
conciliatory tone of voice:
"Surely, mother, you don't suppose I would steal a cat from any one
else! But Lord ---- is trying to take my country, why should I not
take his cat?"
"Two wrongs never made one right," her mother answered, "but do as you
please. You always do."
Hansie kept that kitten and, after Carlo, loved it better than any
other pet, and even Mrs. van Warmelo relented as she watched the
playful creature hiding in the shadows and springing out at every
passer-by.
"What are you going to call her?" she asked her daughter.
"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps I'll go and ask Lord ---- what _he_ called
her."
She stopped, observing her mother's frown, and then went on:
"We must think of a name, a nice, appropriate war name."
A few moments later the kitten crept into a corner, with a small mouse
held firmly between her jaws.
"Oh, mother, look, she has caught a mouse already. She is going to be
a splendid mouser. And oh, now I have a name for her. We'll call her
'_Mauser_,' mother dear!"
So be it. "Mauser" is her name, and hereafter she may be seen
invariably in Hansie's company, a welcome addition to the small,
harmonious family.
Perched on Hansie's shoulder as she sat reading under the verandah, or
purring round her as she lay under the trees, with Carlo watching by
her side, Mauser was ever to be found where her young mistress was;
and when the latter went to town she and Carlo were invariably
escorted to the gate by the faithful Mauser, who again welcomed them
on their return.
This kidnapping episode had taken place a few months after the British
entry into Pretoria.
A full year had gone by; and Mauser, the kitten, had developed into a
beautiful full-grown cat and was the mother of five mischievous little
ones, grey-striped and very wild, for whom she had made a home in a
deep hollow in the trunk of one of the big weeping-willows, the very
tree under which "Gentleman Jim" had built his small kitchen of
corrugated iron.
It is a stormy night in November 1901, a month remembered by all for
the violence and frequency of its storms.
Hansie is bending over her diary, trying to make her entries between
the crashes with which the house is shaken.
Her mother is lying on a couch near by; her tired eyes are closed, but
she is not asleep. Who could sleep in such a storm?
Perhaps we may be allowed to look over the writer's shoulder.
"Nov. 8th, Friday, 10 o'clock p.m.
"And this terrific storm has been raging for hours! It seems
incredible.
"It was the same last night and the night before. As I write, the roar
of thunder never once breaks off, peal after peal, crash after crash,
vivid, dazzling flashes of lightning, torrents of rain mixed with
hail, and a howling wind.
"Such a night is never to be forgotten.
"One is thrilled and impressed by its magnificence, by its awful
grandeur and its majesty, and yet I think one would go mad if it
continued for any length of time.
"I feel as if _I_ am going mad with the thought of our thousands and
thousands of women and tender little children exposed to all this
fury....
"Where is the God of pity to-night?
"Surely not in our desolate land, not in our ruined homes--_not in
South Africa_!
"The fourth storm within a few hours, each more violent than the last,
is just approaching, and this one threatens to surpass the others in
unabated fury.
"The Lord hath turned His face from us.
"The hand of the Lord is laid heavily upon us. His ear is deaf to our
cries and supplications. I cannot write, my soul is crushed by the
sorrow, suffering, and sin around me....
"I feel better now, but the struggle has been great....
"At the front, fierce blows have been struck lately. Our men are
fighting as they never fought before....
"How the storm rages on! In my sheltered home, safe from the fury of
the elements, I think I suffer more than the women under canvas, for
_their_ sakes....
"The letter I have before me must be answered now. He asks me to bind
myself to him definitely....
"I have decided to do so. It is a weighty step, and God knows....
"But I have long prayed for guidance, and it seems to me clear enough
that we are destined for one another.
"So to-night, in this raging storm, with a heart filled with the
desolation of land and people, the blackness of the present, the
hopeless misery of the future, I am going to write the words which
will bind me for ever to L.E.B.
"Strange betrothal! Strange sequel to a stormy life!
"But perhaps--perhaps, the future holds something for me of calm and
peace...."
With throbbing brow she went out into the night to watch the storm,
from a sheltered corner under the verandah.
Nothing fascinated her so much.
Suddenly a blinding flash, accompanied by a sound like the sharp
cracking of a whip and instantly followed by a deafening roar of
thunder, drove her to her mother's side.
"Are you all right, mother? That bolt fell very near. I thought it
struck the house."
"It was frightfully close," Mrs. van Warmelo answered.
"Come and sit beside me here. I am quite sure one of our big trees has
been struck."
She was right, for walking through the demolished garden next morning,
they came upon the spot where the bolt had fallen and found one of the
gigantic willow trees furrowed from top to bottom, with the outer bark
scorched and curled up like paper and the white bark showing
underneath.
Jim was breaking down his little kitchen with all the speed he could.
"What are you doing, Jim?" Hansie asked.
"Jim's shifting," was the answer, soberly and sadly made.
"But the storm is over. All the danger is past. You can safely stay on
now."
"No fear, little missie. The Big Baas was very cross last night, and
when Him cross He don't care what He do. Jim want to live a little
longer."
Hansie laughed.
"I wonder where Mauser could have been with her kittens last night!"
she exclaimed, putting her hand into the deep hollow of the tree. "The
nest is empty. Do you know, Jim?"
"No, little Missie. I 'spose Mauser's time had not come yet," he said,
with stolid philosophy.
"I suppose not."
But alas, alas! Mauser's time was soon to come, for the soldiers,
setting a strong trap to catch a wild cat which was nightly plundering
them of their meat ration, caught Hansie's beloved Mauser instead,
killing her instantly.
No reproaches from her mother were added to her keen remorse as she
bent over the motherless kittens, whispering: "_I_ will care for you,
as _she_ would have done; but oh, remember this, that honesty is the
best policy, and all is _not_ fair in love and war."
* * * * *
Tragedy was in the air.
A bee-keeper came to Harmony one morning to help Mrs. van Warmelo to
take out honey from the hives, and this disturbance, combined with the
fact that the soldiers had unwisely set up a smithy near the beehives
under the row of blue-gum trees dividing their camp from Harmony,
enraged the bees so much with the noise and the smoke and heat of the
smithy fires, that they attacked man and beast in vicious fury.
[Illustration: THE APIARY, HARMONY.]
In a few moments all was confusion.
The servants rushed about frantically, in their endeavours to bring
the fowls and calves under shelter in time.
The two women took refuge in the house, closing the doors and windows,
while they watched the consternation and disorder in the camp.
Fortunately there was only one horse in the smithy at the time, a
beautiful chestnut mare belonging to the Provost-Marshal, Major Poore,
so Mrs. van Warmelo was told afterwards.
The soldiers seemed to lose their heads entirely. They ran away, not
into their tents, but right away into the "koppies" on the other side
of the railway line.
The bee-keeper cut the halter with which the unfortunate horse was
tethered to a post, then he too took refuge.
What followed was pitiful to behold and will never be forgotten by the
women, helplessly, and as if fascinated by the scene, watching from
their windows.
The infuriated bees, deprived of all other living things on which to
wreak their vengeance, turned, in their thousands, on the hapless
mare, which stood unmoved, as horses do, when lashed by hail or
panic-stricken under flames.
She made no attempt to save herself, but with bent head and ears laid
flat she stood still under the furious attack of countless bees.
One or two of the men, wrapped up to the eyes in the coats and
waistcoats of their comrades, cautiously approached the mare at their
own great peril, and tried with all their strength to move her from
the scene.
In vain. As if rooted to the spot she stood, with her four feet
planted firmly on the ground, and they desisted in despair, once more
fleeing to the hills.
All day they sat upon the hillside, homeless, many of them hatless,
until towards afternoon, when, the fury of the bees abating, they
ventured a return to their tents.
The next day, when the dead mare had been removed for burial, a letter
was brought to Mrs. van Warmelo from the Provost-Marshal, commanding
the immediate removal of the beehives to some safer spot in the lower
portion of Harmony.
This was done by degrees, little by little every night, in order to
accustom the bees to the change gradually, and there was never any
repetition of the attack.
Hansie, writing to her brother in his prison-fort at Ahmednagar, that
his bees had put a valuable English horse out of action for ever,
received in reply a postcard, with the single comment, "My brave
bees!"