There is a funny side to pretty nearly every kind of tragedy if one only
has the humorous edge of his nature sufficiently well developed to see it.
Not that the humour is always apparent at the time--that comes later. I am
led to these reflections as I watch Lieutenant "Jack" Brabant, of the
Scouts, dancing a wild war dance round our little camp fire. He is a
picturesque figure in the firelight, this thirty-year-old son of the
renowned General Brabant, ten stone weight I should say, all whipcord and
fencing wire, rather a hard-faced man; no feather-bed frontiersman this,
but a tough, hard-grained bit of humanity, who has fought niggers and
hunted for big game at an age when most young fellows are thinking more of
poetry and pretty faces than of hard knocks and harder sport. I know him
for a rattling good shot at either man or beast, a fine bushman, and a
dandy horseman. He is a rather quiet fellow, as a rule, but all the
quietness is out of him to-night, and he only wants to be stripped of his
tight yellow jacket, cord breeches, leather gaiters, soft slouch hat with
green puggaree, and then, given a coat of black paint, he would pass well
for some warrior chief doing a death dance in the smoke. He is boiling with
passion, his left fist, clenched hard as the head of an axe, moves up and
down, in and out, like the legs of a kicking mule midst a crowd of
cart-horses. In his right he swings his Mauser carbine, and a man don't
need to be a descendant of a race of prophets to know that something has
gone gravely wrong with the lieutenant, otherwise he would not be making a
circus of himself in this fantastic fashion.
I lay my pencil aside for a minute or two to catch what he is saying, and
when I have got the hang of the story I don't wonder he feels as mad as a
wooden-legged man on a wet mud-bank. He had been out all day since the very
break of dawn with a couple of scouts, searching the kopjes for a notorious
Boer spy, whose cleverness and audacity had made him a thorn in our side.
If there was a man in the British lines capable of running the "slim" Boer
to earth, that man was Lieutenant Jack Brabant. It had been a grim hunt,
for the spy was worthy of his reputation, and the pursuers had to move with
their fingers on their triggers, and a rash move would have meant death.
All the forenoon he dodged them, in and out of the kopjes, along the
sluits, up and down the dongas; sometimes they pelted him at long range
with flying bullets, sometimes he sent them a reminder of the same sort.
And so the day wore on; but at last, towards evening, they fixed him so
that he had to make a dash out across the veldt. He was splendidly mounted,
and when the time came for a dash he did not waste any time making poetry.
Neither did Brabant and his two men; they galloped at full speed after the
fleetly flying figure, and when they saw that a broad and deep donga ran
right across his track, cutting him off from the long line of kopjes for
which he was making, they counted him as theirs. He only had one chance, to
gallop into the donga, jump out of the saddle and fire at them as they
closed in on him; and, as they rode far apart, it was a million to one on
missing in his hurry in the fading light. But the gods had decided
otherwise, for the whiplike crack of rifles suddenly cut the air, and the
bullets fell so thick around the pursuers that the three men could almost
breathe lead. Half a mile away, on the far side of the donga, appeared a
squad of Yeomanry, blazing away like veritable seraphs at Brabant and his
men, whilst they let the flying Boer go free. Brabant whipped out his
handkerchief, and waved it frantically; but the lead only whistled the
faster, and he had only one chance for his life, and that was to wheel and
ride at full speed for the nearest cover, where he and his men hid until
the Yeomen rode up. Then Brabant hailed them, and asked them what the devil
they meant by trying to blow him and his men out of the saddle.
There was a pause in the ranks of the Yeomen, then a voice lisped through
the gathering gloom, "Are you fellahs British?"
"Yes, d--n you; did you think we were springbok?"
"No, by Jove, but we thought you were beastly Booahs. Awfully sorry if
we've caused you any inconvenience. What were you chasing the other fellah
foah, eh?"
"Oh!" howled the disgusted backwoodsman with a snort of wrath, "we only
wanted to know if he'd cut his eye tooth yet."
"Bah Jove," quoth the Yeoman, "you fellahs are awfully sporting, don't yer
know."
"Yes," snarled the angry South African, "and the next time you Johnnies
mistake me for a Booah and plug at me, I'll just take cover and send you
back a bit of lead to teach you to look before you tighten your finger on a
trigger."
Talking of the Yeomen brings back a good yarn that is going round the camps
at their expense. They are notorious for two things--their pluck and their
awful bad bushcraft. They would ride up to the mouth of a foeman's guns
coolly and gamely enough, but they can't find their way home on the veldt
after dark to save their souls, and so fall into Boer traps with a
regularity that is becoming monotonous. Recently a British officer who had
business in a Boer laager asked a commander why they set the Yeomen free
when they made them prisoners. "Oh!" quoth the Boer, with a merry twinkle
in his eye, "those poor Yeomen of yours, we can always capture them when we
want them." This is not a good story to tell if you want an _encore_,
if you happen to be sitting round a Yeoman table or camp fire.
But it is time I got back to the subject which lay in my mind when I sat
down to write this epistle. The lieutenant's war dance took me off the
track for a while, but I thought his story would come in nicely under the
heading of "Hunting and Hunted." Camp life gets dull at times, so does camp
food, the eternal round of fried flour cakes and mutton makes a man long
for something which will remind him that he has still a palate, so when one
of the scouts came in and told me that he had seen three herds of
vildebeestes, numbering over a hundred each, and dozens of little mobs of
springbok and blesbok, within ten miles of camp, away towards Doornberg, I
made up my mind to ride out next day, and have a shot for luck. My friend
Driscoll, captain of the Scouts, rammed a lot of sage advice into me
concerning Boers known to be in force at Doornberg. I assured him that I
had no intention of allowing myself to drift within range of any of the
veldtsmen, so taking a sporting Martini I mounted my horse and set forth,
intending to have a real good time among the "buck." At a Kaffir kraal I
picked up a half-caste "boy," who assured me that he knew just where to
pick up the "spoor" of the vildebeeste, and he was as good as his boast,
for within a couple of hours he brought me within sight of a mob of about
fifty of the animals, calmly grazing. I worked my way towards them as well
as I could, leaving the "boy" to hold my horse; but, though I was careful
according to my lights, I was not sufficiently good as a veldtsman to get
within shooting distance before they saw me or scented me. Suddenly I saw a
fine-looking fellow, about as big as a year-and-a-half-old steer, trot out
from the herd. He came about twenty yards in my direction, and I had a
grand chance to watch him through my strong military glasses. He looked for
all the world like a miniature buffalo bull, the same ungainly head and
fore-quarters, big, heavy shoulders, neat legs, shapely barrel, light loin,
and hindquarters, the same proppy, ungainly gait. I unslung my rifle to
have a shot at him, when he wheeled and blundered back to the herd, and the
lot streamed off at a pace which the best hunter in England would have
found trying, in spite of the clumsiness of their movements. The half-caste
grinned as he came towards me with the horses, grinned with such a glorious
breadth of mouth that I could see far enough down his black and tan throat
to tell pretty well what he had for breakfast. This annoyed me. I like an
open countenance in a servant, but I detest a mouth that looks like a mere
burial ground for cold chicken. We rode on for a mile or two, and then saw
a pretty little herd of springbok about eighteen hundred yards away on the
left. Slipping down into a donga, I left the horse and crawled forward,
getting within nice, easy range. I dropped one of the pretty little
beauties. I tried a flying shot at the others as they raced away like magic
things through the grass, which climbed half-way up their flanks, but it
was lead wasted that time.
My coffee-coloured retainer gathered up the spoil, and paid me a compliment
concerning my shooting, though well I knew he had sized me up as a
"wastrel" with a rifle, for his shy eyes gave the lie to his oily tongue.
We hunted round for awhile, and then from the top of a little kopje I saw a
beautiful herd of vildebeestes one hundred and sixteen in number, lumbering
slowly towards where we stood. The wind blew straight from them towards us,
so that I had no fear on the score of scent. Climbing swiftly down until
almost level with the veldt, I lay cosily coiled up behind a rock, and
waited for the quarry. They came at last, Indian file, about a yard and a
half separating one from the other, not a hundred and twenty yards from
where I lay. I had plenty of time to pick and choose, and plenty of time to
take aim, so did not hurry myself. Sighting for a spot just behind the
shoulder, I sent a bit of lead fair through a fine beast, and expected to
see him drop, but he did nothing of the kind. For one brief second the
animal stood as if paralysed; then, with a leap and a lurch, he dashed on
with his fellows. I fired again, straight into the shoulder this time, and
brought him down; but he took a third bullet before he cried
_peccavi_. I had a good time for pretty near the whole of that day,
and was lamenting that I had not brought a Cape cart and pair of horses
with me to bring home the spoil, when, happening to look into the face of
my brown guide, I saw that his complexion had turned the colour of blighted
sandalwood. He did not speak, but swift as thought ripped out his knife,
and cut the thongs which bound the springbok and other trophies of the
day's sport to his saddle, letting everything fall in an undignified heap
on to the veldt. Then, without a word of farewell, or any other kind of
word for that matter, he drove his one spur into the flank of his wretched
nag, and fled round the bend of a kopje, which, thank Providence, was close
handy, and as he went I saw something splash against a rock a dozen yards
behind him. I had glanced hurriedly over the veldt the moment I caught that
queer expression on the saffron face of my assistant, but as far as the eye
could reach I could see nothing. Now, however, looking backwards, I saw
three or four men riding out of a donga two thousand five hundred yards
away.
Twenty-five seconds later I had caught and passed my fleeing servant, who
was heading for some kopjes, which lay right in front, about a mile and a
half away. As I passed him he yelled, "Booers, baas, Booers! Ride hard,
baas, ride hard; there are three hundred in the donga." When I heard that
item of news I just sat down and attended strictly to business, and I am
free to wager that never since the day he was foaled had that horse covered
so much ground in so short a space of time as he did by the time he reached
the kopjes. My servant had adroitly dodged into a sluit which hid him from
view, and I knew that he could work his way out far better than I could.
Besides, if they captured him, the worst he would get would be a cut across
the neck with a sjambok for acting as hunting-guide to a detested
Rooitbaaitje; whilst as for me, they would in all probability discredit my
tale concerning the hunting trip, and give me a free, but rapid, pass to
that land which we all hope to see eventually, but none of us are anxious
to start for; because a correspondent has no right to carry a rifle during
war time, a thing I never do unless I am out hunting. I gave my tired horse
a spell, whilst I searched the veldt with my glasses, then slipping through
a gully I made my way out on to the veldt, got in touch with a donga that
ran the way I wanted to travel, got into its bed, gave my horse a drink,
and rode on until dark; then I made my way into camp, and religiously held
my peace concerning the doings of that day, because I did not want the life
chaffed out of me. A few days later I happened to call at the Colonial
camp, and was asked to dine by one of the officers.
"Like venison?" he asked cheerily.
"Yes, when it comes my way," I replied.
"Got some to-day," he said. "It's nicely hung, too; not fresh from the
gun."
"Shoot it yourself, eh?"
"Well, no, not exactly; was out on patrol on Monday, and saw a couple of
lousy Dutchmen. They didn't think we were round, so were enjoying
themselves shooting buck. We nearly got one of 'em with a long shot."
"Didn't they show fight?" I asked innocently.
"Fight?" he said, with scorn unutterable in his accent. "Not a bit of it.
They dropped their game, and cleared as if a thousand devils were after
them. I never saw men ride so fast."
"Positive they were Dutchmen?" I ventured.
"Yes," he laughed; "why, I'd know one of those ugly devils five miles off."
That settled me, and I said no more.