PART V

WITH THE FLYING COLUMN TO MAFEKING

XVIII

A STRATEGIC SECRET

It was now more than six weeks since we had hurried from Bloemfontein to

be in time for the expected operations for the relief of Mafeking. When

Lord Methuen had moved from Boshof we had been sure that Mafeking was

the goal, and I think that Lord Methuen himself had at least expected to

conduct a turning movement on the Boer position at Fourteen Streams. It

is easy to see now, when even Lord Roberts's strong march on Pretoria

has been harassed and his communications interrupted, why such a

movement of Methuen's small force could not have been successful; but we

did not see it then. There was a great dearth of information, and the

secret of the Flying Column was kept perfectly until within a few days

of its departure. While we were waiting at Boshof in the blank days that

followed the rear-guard engagement everyone suspected his fellow of some

secret information, and men's most trivial movements were elaborately

construed into indications that they meditated some independent action.

Even Lord Methuen was so much in the dark that he used to say he liked

to see the correspondents coming, as he supposed it meant that he should

have something to do. Those of us who were there knew really nothing,

and had only come prompted by a vague instinct that something was in the

air.

Unavoidable as the delay in despatching a column to the relief of

Mafeking seems to have been, I think that there was one moment at which,

if Lord Methuen had had a slightly stronger force under his command, the

course of the campaign on the north-west frontier might have been

changed, and Mafeking relieved by pressure from the south. After my

accidental discovery of the Boer laager near Spitz Kop there was a long

discussion by Lord Methuen and his staff of the possibilities of

surrounding and attacking the enemy. It was plain that this large force,

commanded by young Cronje, had moved across from Fourteen Streams with

the object of harrying us and perhaps retaking Boshof; and for a few

days there was practically no force at Fourteen Streams. Now if Lord

Methuen could have sent out a light column westward from Boshof to the

rear of the laager, and also held the enemy in front with the remainder

of his force, he might with good fortune have bagged the whole Boer

force, which he knew from my information to be weak in guns. I know he

was urged to do it; I know he wanted to do it; I know what the chance of

a sensational success meant to a man whose successes had hitherto been

unexciting and his one failure a spectacle; and I admired him for not

running the risk. It would have been so easy to yield to the urgency of

his staff and Intelligence Department, and success was almost certainly

assured; but Lord Methuen, who has been foolishly accused of all kinds

of rashness, chose in this case to read in that "almost" an assurance

that he was not justified in taking the risk. He had no Horse Artillery;

and the rapid and secret march to the rear of the laager might have been

impossible with field-guns. So he decided at any rate; and decisions

like these are among not the least important victories of a campaign.

Since the Boers were in the neighbourhood, and might at any moment make

an attack, Major Pollock and I were anxious not to leave Boshof until it

became absolutely necessary. We had a secret agent watching our

interests at Kimberley in the person of a staff officer whose name I

suppose I had better not mention; thus we witnessed, without misgiving,

the sudden and hurried flight of all the other correspondents from

Boshof, mystery written on their faces. Thus we spent two more peaceful

days riding in the shady lanes and lying on the sunburnt kopjes,

sweeping the horizon with the telescopes of Lord Chesham and his

pleasant crew; thus we received a telegram from Kimberley advising us to

"come here and attend to the business yourselves"; thus we rode away and

closed what will remain in my memory as the pleasantest chapter in the

campaign.

The diary that follows was written during the march of the Relief

Column--not always under the most favourable circumstances. The

imperfections of a document of this kind are so closely bound up with

its only merit that I have decided to leave it exactly as it was

written, and not to risk a sacrifice of reality in an attempt to abolish

defects which, I hope, the reader will regard as being in the

circumstances unavoidable.

XIX

THE DEPARTURE FROM KIMBERLEY

BARKLY WEST, _Thursday, May 3rd._

At last!

During the inaction of the past weeks there has been but one question

asked--"Is nothing to be done for Mafeking?" With the gallant little

garrison waiting and keeping the enemy from the door while disease is

busy within, it has been hard to sit still and wait for the orders that

have been so long in coming. But Kimberley, which had been almost

emptied of troops by Lord Methuen's departure, gradually filled again as

General Hunter's division assembled; and a few days ago it became plain

that some movement was imminent.

Tuesday evening--the eve of the mysterious move--was full of romance for

anyone who knew what was about to happen. The dining-room of the club

was gay with yellow and brass and scarlet and the subtler colours of

wine and flowers; but conversation grouped itself into the small low

choruses that indicate far more truly than one united sound indicates

the presence of some common and thrilling interest. Earlier in the day

I had been admitted to a kind of _séance_ in the Press Censor's office,

where an envelope alluringly marked "secret" had been opened, and its

contents read to a "limited number of correspondents of known

discretion." Within it was written that a flying column under Colonel

Mahon would set out at daybreak on the 4th from Barkly West for the

relief of Mafeking; that a certain number of correspondents (of known

discretion) would be invited to accompany it; that the estimated time

was fifteen days; that no provisions or forage would be supplied; that

the correspondents must give their word of honour to divulge nothing

until a certain time: to all of which we set our hands and seals, and

then departed from the office somewhat impressed. It is characteristic

of our Intelligence Department that on leaving the office I was greeted

by a Kimberley resident with the remark--"Well, I hear that Mahon is

going to make a dash for Mafeking on Friday _viâ_ Barkly West; good

business!"

[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL BRYAN MAHON, D.S.O.]

So in the evening, although if you had asked point-blank questions you

would have been told nothing, the forthcoming dash to the rescue was

really the topic. That it is to be the work of the Colonial troops is

fair enough, since no one has a better right than they to help their

besieged comrades. Therefore the British officer has been for once

eclipsed, and the Colonials have had it all their own way. They hovered

and bustled about the club all the evening, taking leave of friends and

settling affairs. Some of them, one knew, would not return; and the

thought never fails to lend a strange kind of solemnity to the eve of a

big enterprise. "We're going to have a tough job," Colonel Peakman had

said, and men had looked grave for a moment, and then gone on talking

and laughing; but the prospect of serious fighting was displeasing to no

one. That is always the way; the excitements and not the horrors of a

battle are remembered; every man thinks that, though all the rest should

fall, he shall stand at the last; a sense of danger in the future is a

trumpet-call. And this is a noble part of warfare, to relieve the

distressed. A duty to be done at all costs; no questions of how or why,

but a clear lead.

There is something in the very words "flying column" to appease the

impatient; wings in the air, a swoop upon the victim. But it is merely a

bold figure of speech, and means in a case like this a rapid march of

twenty miles a day, mules instead of oxen, short rations, starving and

ruined horses. These flying cavalry columns and forced marches (the only

means by which the slippery Boer is to be cornered) demonstrate to how

great an extent this is a campaign of horses. Only the shortest horse

rations can be carried, and even at the best, a fortnight's continuous

work of this kind will so knock up a good horse that he must have three

months' rest before he can be of any further use. So your flying column

must start with fat horses, and use up their reserve of flesh, arriving

at the end with skeletons. It is dreadful enough to see a good beast,

and hundreds of good beasts, starving before your eyes and working hard

all the time; but it is only one of the many horrible and necessary

accompaniments of a war. What is asked of the horses on an expedition of

this kind is that they shall carry a man say twenty-five miles a day on

the march, and at the end perhaps carry him another thirty galloping

about in a fight; and no animal will stand more than a fortnight of

that, even on full rations. So the remount officers have been busy in

Kimberley, buying up every animal that looked as though he would last

for a fortnight; and the private buyer has been hard put to it to

provide for his needs. I was lucky enough in the two hours of yesterday

afternoon that were available for the purpose to light upon a cart and

team that would carry my load of forage and bully beef; and at 5 p.m. to

see the leaders harnessed in for the first time, while my faithful

Kaffir groom gathered up the reins with doubt in his eye. Of course the

leaders turned round and tried to climb up over the wheelers' heads, but

at length they came to an approximate sort of unanimity as to which pair

was to lead. Thereafter I had the fearful joy of seeing the equipage set

forth at speed down the narrow street. A policeman escaped with his life

at one corner, a cripple was snatched from death at another, a nigger

was cannoned off at a third--the proprietor of the public menace riding

diffidently behind the while, trying to look as though he had no hand in

it. But the great thing was that I had got something capable of "flying"

with the column, and I was twice hailed on the way out to know whether I

would sell the horses.

From Kimberley to Barkly (whither the forces comprising the column had

proceeded earlier in the day) the road lies through twenty-five miles

of the loneliest veldt; except at the half-way house I did not see a

human being all the way. The young moon was up, and threw the earth and

sky into sombre night colours--a purple wall of earth meeting the

spangled violet of the sky in one long line. For twenty miles of the

road there was hardly a sound save the beat of horses' feet; but

presently there stole on my ear a kind of music for which one's senses

long in this barren country--the murmur of water over stones. It was the

Vaal river, running here broad and deep, and making Barkly West a

pleasing instead of a dull place. Beside a sharp bend the lights of an

inn shone upon the road, promising rest for tired people, whether they

had four feet or two; and the promise was fulfilled.

To-day has been given up to horse-buying; the place was like a fair;

everyone who owned even the framework of a horse brought it out and

offered it for sale; and officers were competing busily for the purchase

of any decent animal. I found time to go down and listen to the

river--strange sights the water that is flowing so quietly must have

passed this morning! For one of our 6-inch siege guns was sent up to

Warrenton last night, and opened at daybreak on the Boers at Fourteen

Streams. One longs to know something of the result; but the water flows

secretly on into more peaceful scenes.

GUNNING'S FARM, _Saturday, May 5th_.

We did not get away until nearly nine yesterday morning, and for the

first few miles were much delayed by breakdowns in the transport column.

The transport mule is a troublesome creature; sometimes he insists on

stopping to pick up grass; always he is reluctant to do merely what is

required of him. So although our transport column is supposed to take up

only one mile of road, it straggled over a good two miles during

Friday's march. The road was very dangerous, winding through narrow

passes and thick bush country; therefore the scouting was slow and

laborious, and the whole column was halted before every unusually

dangerous place. But we met no Boers; and since we desire to proceed

very quietly and unostentatiously at first this was fortunate. The

column consists of about eleven hundred men of the Kimberley Mounted

Corps and the Imperial Light Horse, a mixed company of picked volunteers

from the Sixth Fusilier Brigade (representing England, Ireland,

Scotland, and Wales), and a four-gun battery of the Royal Horse

Artillery, with two pom-poms in addition. Every man is mounted,

including the infantry men, who ride on waggons. Yesterday we marched

only twelve miles, owing to the difficulties of the ground, but in the

evening our business began in earnest. Lights had to be out at eight

o'clock, and this morning we marched off at two, no lights or fires

being allowed, not even a match for a cigarette. The joys of rising at

1.30 in the cold pitch darkness (for these are winter mornings, in spite

of the summer noonday), and of trying to harness a team, and pick up all

one's kit, exist only in retrospect, where all troubles fade. The

six-hour march this morning was very cold and very tedious; four hours

of it were in darkness, and how late the sun seemed to be in rising! But

he came punctually, in spite of a mild panic amongst us lest something

should have happened to him, and the pageant of his rising was

entertainment for the last two hours. Fifteen miles before breakfast and

fifteen after lunch--a journey almost too heavy for the second day. Two

teams of mules were knocked up, and more will follow if this goes on.

At Spitz Kop, our breakfast outspan, we heard guns in the distance, and

from the top of the high hill we could see the little fluffy clouds of

smoke, that meant so much to someone, bursting on both sides. There was

an alarm that the Boers were coming our way, and the guns were turned

out; but it was a false alarm, and the column came on here to Gunning's

Farm, where we arrived after dark. Camping in the dark after a

thirty-mile march is wild work--such a commotion of hails and calls,

such searching for one's camp, and for the watering-place for horses.

The hour of lamplight is precious, and I am near the end of it now.

MUCHADIN, _Monday, May 7th_.

A day seldom passes on which one does not receive fresh proof that the

world contains foolish people. In the small hours of Sunday morning,

when the camp was astir in the darkness, a rifle-shot rang out quite

close to me. I could hear the bullet going up like a rocket until the

sound was lost. It was the usual thing--some idiot charging his

magazine, and forgetting to close the cut-off--with the result that when

he snapped his trigger the gun went off. Any good result of our

discomfortable regulation as to fires and lights is quite cancelled by

such an act, which proves much more certainly than fires can prove the

presence of armed troops. The same thing happened early this morning,

and the pickets were turned out to find that the alarm was false. It is

a great pity, but where the British soldier is to be found in any force,

there seems invariably to be found also the man who lets off his gun by

mistake. The marvel is that the thing generally hurts no one.

Sunday's march was uneventful, except that trouble began among the

horses. One of my four fellow-correspondents lost a fine pair--the

wheelers of his team--which he had bought in Barkly on Thursday, and

which probably returned to their former owner. But as we have no lines

of communication, he will not see them again. My horse fell sick, and

the three hours of the midday bivouac had to be spent in hastily

breaking in to the saddle one of the leaders of my team. The

headquarters staff lost two horses, and five mules strayed from the

supply park. The fact was rather tersely announced by Corporal Jenkins

of the Army Service Corps, who came up while I was talking to his

officer, saluted, and said in the language of his kind--

"Please, sir, I'm deficient of five mules."

The loss of animals from so small a column is really serious, and

everyone is looking blue over his deficiencies. I am deficient of a

spade and two nose-bags. But then I am to the good by one lame dog, who,

in return for slight services rendered on the road, refuses to allow any

but my own lawful servants to approach the encampment. We did eighteen

miles to-day, and encamped at Greefdal in the evening. We are now well

north of Fourteen Streams, where all day long we have heard the guns

booming. In the afternoon the native scouts (who work far outside the

ground patrolled by our scouts and flankers) reported a party of 500

Boers approaching from the south and east, but they must have turned

northward, for we have heard nothing more of them. This morning we could

see a long line of dust moving about twenty miles to the north-east; but

it has subsided, and the Boers are probably in laager. It is fortunate

that Colonel Mahon is an absolutely careful man, since any little

neglect in the matter of patrolling and choosing bivouac positions might

mean complete disaster to the column, and the frustration of its end.

These little things have often been neglected in this campaign; and

whenever there has been a convoy captured, it has been because someone

has taken for granted that someone else was holding a drift or pass. So

we move warily through a placid country that may become at any moment

full of menace; travelling may at any moment be exchanged for fighting,

and the roadway for the battlefield; even the green slopes that front us

may hide the gravest danger, and the river-bed with its grasses and

lapsing waters become a pit of death. But one knows little of the

future; it is on the knees of the gods.

XX

FROM TAUNGS TO VRYBURG

DRY HARTZ, _Tuesday, May 8th_.

The march of yesterday afternoon was not without its incidents. We came

in sight of the village of Taungs at about four o'clock, our road

passing ten miles to the west of it at the opposite side of the Hartz

valley. I was riding with the advance guard when a man rode up from the

direction of the village.

"I've just come to have a look at the troops," said he; "I'm a British

subject."

"Oh, are you?" said the colonel in command of the guard, and ordered him

to be detained and examined. He told us a great many lies, and is now a

prisoner. We have collected about nine prisoners so far, chiefly

insurgents against whom there is grave evidence; and they ride along in

an ox-waggon quite contentedly, while the dozen men of the Scots

Fusiliers who act as their escort regale them with specimens of northern

wit. To judge by the sounds of hilarity which float from the waggon,

even towards the end of a long march, their efforts are well

appreciated.

A patrol was sent over to Taungs, and we watched the squadron dancing

away until a fold of the green plain hid them. Soon afterwards we came

into camp.

The paramount question at such a moment is always: "What is the water

like?" Last night it was very bad, and there was no officer in charge of

the watering when the rear of the column came in. The only water was a

small, almost stagnant river, and the men were into it, bathing, as soon

as they arrived. Then the horses and mules were watered, and stirred up

the mud with their feet; and then we sent for drinking water. Of course

one has it boiled, but even so----.

While we were having dinner the patrol returned from Taungs, having cut

the wire north and south and destroyed the instrument. They found the

village empty except for women.

Encounters with insurgents are often amusing, although amongst them they

have so far afforded natives of all our three kingdoms reason for shame.

Here is something quite typical.

SCENE: _The veldt road. Enter very slowly from the north, an ox-waggon.

Enter from the south, a cloud of dust, out of which emerges the Mounted

Advance Guard of the column. They meet, and halt._

TROOPER _in charge of ox-waggon, saluting and pointing with his thumb

within_:

"Come to report, sir. Found this woman trekkin' along, and won't give no

account of herself."

_Commanding Officer draws aside tent of waggon and discovers fat and

hearty old woman._

C.O.: "Now, my good woman, what have you to say for yourself?" (_No

answer._)

TROOPER: "Please, sir, she come from that there rebel farm." (_To fat

and hearty old woman_) "Now then, missus, tell the Colonel who you are."

(_Long silence, during which something seems to be working in the mind

of the fat and hearty old woman._)

C.O.: "Can anyone speak Dutch? Here, Evans, ask her what she has to say

for herself." (_Trooper Evans asks her in fluent Dutch--no

answer--question repeated with emphasis._)

F. and H.O.W.: "Whethen now, and shure it's Mrs. McGuire Oi am, and bad

luck to the whole av ye. Glory be to Goodness, but it's a quare place

Oi'd be in if the likes of you was all Oi had to me back, wid all me

bits av sticks and the ould hin herself took be the Boers--bad cess to

'em" (_and much more to the same effect, during which the waggon is

searched and a couple of Martini rifles found in it, and various other

damning evidences, with the result that the waggon is confiscated, and

the fat and hearty old woman bundled off to her farm, protesting

loudly_).

But although such incidents are sometimes amusing they are often

painful, and the burning of houses that has gone on this afternoon has

been a most unpleasant business. We have been marching through a part of

the country where some mischievous person has been collecting and

encouraging insurgents. And this afternoon in the course of about ten

miles we have burned no less than six farmhouses. Care seems to have

been taken that there was proper evidence against the owners who were

absent. In one case the wife of an insurgent who was lying sick at a

friend's farm, watched from her sick husband's bedside the burning of

her home a hundred yards away. I cannot think that punishment need take

this wild form; it seems as though a kind of domestic murder were being

committed while one watches the roof and furniture of a house blazing;

and how many obscure deaths of the soul take place while a woman

watches her home, and all the little valueless possessions that are

precious to her, falling into ruin before her eyes? I stood till late

last night before the red blaze, and saw the flames lick round each

piece of the poor furniture--the chairs and tables, the baby's cradle,

the chest of drawers containing a world of treasure; and when I saw the

poor housewife's face pressed against the window of the neighbouring

house my own heart burned with a sense of outrage. The crime of

insurrection is a serious one, but I never heard yet of a crime for

which the responsibility rested on the criminal alone.

On quite different grounds, this destruction would appear to be worse

than useless. The effect on those of the Colonial troops who, in

carrying out the orders to destroy, are gratifying their feelings of

hatred and revenge, is very bad. Their discipline is far below that of

the Imperial troops, and they soon get out of hand. They swarm into the

houses, looting and destroying, and filling the air with high-sounding

cries of vengeance, and yesterday some of them were complaining bitterly

that a suspected house, against the owner of which there was not

sufficient evidence, was not delivered into their hands. Further, if

these farms are to be confiscated (as the more revengeful loyalists

desire) and given over to settlers, why burn the houses? The new

occupant will only have to build another homestead, and building is a

serious matter where wood and the means of dressing stone are so very

scarce as here. The ends achieved are small--simply an exhibition of

power, and punishment which (if it be really necessary) could be

otherwise inflicted; and the evils, as one sees them on the spot, are

many and great. If I described one-half of the little things which I saw

in the process of destruction I should be accused of sentimentalising;

but the principle of the thing seems clear enough. If one could only

hope that with the conflagration would die down those hotter fires that

burn in the heart of this country, one might accept the manifest

disadvantages. But good feeling will never spring from ashes like these;

every charred spot is the grave of that which neither time nor laws can

revive.

BRAKFONTEIN, _Wednesday, May 9th._

We are not far from Vryburg now, and expect to enter it to-day without

opposition. From several prisoners taken on the way (there are twenty of

them now) we heard that the Boer police in Vryburg knew of our presence

at two o'clock on Sunday, and that they all fled. Another farm was

burned this morning, and much ammunition destroyed. We have now got over

a great and critical part of our journey, which has been admirably made

through very difficult country, and we do not expect opposition until we

approach Mafeking. Cronje, who was reported on Sunday to be moving

westwards with a force to cut us off, has apparently missed us, and he

will hardly attempt a rear-guard action without guns. We have two

pom-poms, and everyone--even the most peaceful of us--who has once been

shot at by these infernal machines is eager to watch them at work from

the right end.

VRYBURG, _Thursday, May 10th._

We occupied Vryburg yesterday at about three o'clock. We made a very

easy march, with a long rest at midday, and as the column wound up to

the summit of a high ridge we saw Vryburg lying green and white on the

farther slope. Half our journey done, and the most dangerous half; it

was a pleasant sight. The Boers had all left the little town, and the

English residents--chiefly women of the artisan and shopkeeper

class--swarmed out to meet us, waving spurious Union Jacks, and

exhibiting all the loyalty that can be displayed by means of dyes and

pigments. It was like Bloemfontein on a smaller scale.

The people here have been in rather a bad way. There has been a great

deal of sickness; the supplies have been very scanty, and meal seems to

be the only thing of which they have plenty. So naturally they welcomed

the column as the sign of an open road to Kimberley.

I went to see the railway station, which has been much damaged. The only

two locomotives here have been outraged; vacuum gauges have been broken,

dome-covers torn, and taps smashed; and bullets have been fired at the

steel-plated boilers, which, however, they did not penetrate. But it is

only outrage, and it seems that with materials left in the workshops

here the engines can be repaired in a couple of days. The Boers have

been very clumsy over this; a dynamite cartridge might have been

strapped under a driving axle in far less time, and its explosion would

have been more effectual.

Our chief joy has been in straying about the town, revelling in the

sense of things to be bought. No man can withstand shops after having

experienced for several days conditions under which money is not of

value. There is really nothing to buy that is of much use, but we stand

agape at the window of an ironmonger's shop, fingering the money in our

pockets, and wondering whether to buy an axe or a mincing machine. On

the whole, the axe has it; one must have fires; and bully beef _can_ be

eaten in the slab form.

XXI

NEARING THE GOAL

JACKAL'S PAN, _Saturday, May 12th_.

Colonel Mahon's column left Vryburg on Thursday at sunset in a cloud of

purple dust, and as long as the light lasted, we could see the rather

pathetic-looking little crowd of residents waving handkerchiefs and

flags. It was intended only to march for three hours; but our

information about water proved to be incorrect, and the column wound

along in the moonlight over mile after mile of the most sterile veldt I

have yet seen in the country. I was riding with Colonel Mahon for the

last few hours, and was to some extent buoyed up by the repeated

assurances of the guide that there was water "just round the bend"; but

even so it was a weary correspondent who got off his horse at 2 a.m.,

after eight hours of walking and riding at a foot-pace. Of course, the

poor mules suffered most. Even four hours in harness without a rest is

considered too much for them; here they had twice that time, over very

rough ground, and in consequence half of them had bad breast-galls. It

was a mistake to go on for so long, especially as we had to halt after

all without water; but the Colonel could not be persuaded to halt until

his transport officer warned him that the mules were at the end of their

endurance. And all through that weary march no lights were permitted; no

smoking even, which gives one something to do; and when we got into the

bivouac at two o'clock, no fires or lights. We had to be up at five and

start in the misery of darkness and intense cold; without even the

comfort of a hot drink; but we reached the water at eight, and had a

long morning of rest and sunshine. No one really grumbles at this sort

of thing, although it is most unpleasant; and as the men are all picked

for health and endurance, no one is any the worse for it.

We marched eighteen miles on Thursday night, and four the next morning;

thirteen yesterday evening, and eight this morning; this afternoon we

expect to do another twelve, and reduce the distance before us to an

easy two days' journey. Of course, all this speed is achieved at a

certain cost in mule and horse flesh, but we hope that the end will

justify it. The authorities at Kimberley have not done so well for us as

they might have done. They did not take the trouble to find out exactly

how many horses were in the force, with the result that the daily horse

ration has been reduced from the inadequate seven pounds to the absurd

four pounds, while the men are on half meat and three-quarter biscuit

rations. Another serious defect in the equipment of the column is that

there is not even a section of engineers with us. The want is the more

felt as water is scarce and bad along the route; often the only water is

a small pan or pond into which the mules wade breast high and churn it

into mud, which the men have to make a shift to drink. A few sappers and

a waggon with the advance guard would ensure a clean supply for

everyone, since water that is quite insufficient in a dam can be made to

go a long way when it is pumped into watering troughs; and a section of

engineers can fix up the whole necessary apparatus in ten minutes.

Far more interesting than the march of a great army corps, where one

gets lost in the miles of transport, is the progress of a small column

like this, where one is more or less in touch with everyone, and can

watch from within the deliberations and methods of the small staff to

whom success or failure means so very much. The little group that rides

in front of the guns discusses minutely many questions of absorbing

interest in the course of a day's march. Whether such and such a ridge

ought to be patrolled; how far the scouts are working in this or that

direction; whether it is advisable to halt now and go on after a rest,

or do a greater distance and have a long rest at the end. And then, when

the time for the five minutes' rest in the hour has arrived, "_Halt_!"

is passed down the column, and one hears the word running down squadron

after squadron until it is lost among the lines of the ammunition

column. The connecting files pass it forward to the advance guard, who

send it out to their scouts and patrols, until the great serpent that

winds over the country is completely at rest. Then follows a sound of

horses cropping grass and men talking. Then "_Stand to your horses_!"

runs down the column, followed by a shuffling of feet as men scramble

from the ground where they have been lying; "_Prepare to mount_!" and

there is a general gathering up of reins; "_Mount_!" and a long rustle

and jingle as the men swing into their saddles; "_Walk march_!" and the

serpent is off again, feeling his way before him.

Three miles in front of us the furthest scouts of the advance guard are

working cautiously in the bush, and from the officer in command of the

guard a note occasionally comes back to the Brigadier, carried from

squadron to squadron and passed along the connecting files until it

reaches the head of the main column. One never becomes accustomed to the

interest and mystery attaching to these notes, and one almost holds

one's breath while they are read; they may contain so much, may carry

news of the gravest or most astonishing nature; for if the advance guard

found the enemy in strength standing on his head in a donga the

information would still be conveyed through the cold propriety of Army

Form No. C 398. It is one of the sanest of cold-blooded regulations; let

a patrol be never so hard pressed and requiring help never so urgently,

the officer commanding it must take time to say so in writing.

I am glad to see that no more farms are being burned, and that we are

not burdening ourselves further with the insurgent prisoners. We have

already twenty-five, but the Brigadier has been content to read the

insurgents who have been taken since a lecture on the folly of their

ways, and to warn them that a day of reckoning is coming. I came up to

a house yesterday where the Dutch farmer, who was known to be disloyal,

had just been arrested and taken away. The troops were making

preparations to burn the house, acting on the general order, which had

not been cancelled. Within, a child had dropped his toys to stare in

astonishment at the strangers, and his mother was weeping alone. I rode

back to the Brigadier and said what I could, with the result that I was

able to return and assure the woman that her house would not be burned,

and in addition to see her husband come back in half an hour. The effect

has really been produced already, and prisoners in a flying column are a

particular nuisance.

BRODIE'S FARM, _Sunday, May 13th_.

The end is drawing near now, and a fight is almost certain this

afternoon or to-morrow. A commando of Boers, 400 strong, was reported

yesterday afternoon about eighteen miles on our right flank, and some

time during last night they pushed on and occupied a kopje at

Koodoesrand, directly in our path, where they laid an ambuscade with

three guns. They expected (as well they might) that we should come on

and butt into their position. But we have learned our lesson, and this

morning we made a detour and have got past them. We have marched nine

miles; we shall reach the next water (twelve miles) this evening, and

to-morrow we must march straight on to Mafeking (twenty-four miles), for

there is no water all the way, and there is the prospect of heavy

fighting at the end of it. The horses will simply be used up, but that

cannot be helped; if we win it will not matter, and if we lose----. It

will be a trying day for everyone, and we shall only have a few hours'

sleep to-night, but I think no one grudges the discomfort. I write on

the eve of what may be a very brilliant, a very disastrous, or a very

simple affair. We are a small force, the march so far has been

brilliant, and success will be a brilliant crown for the expedition and

its leader. Everyone is more than a little anxious, but it is hard to

foretell any result.

I forgot to say that we had a runner from Mafeking, with messages from

Colonel Plumer and Colonel Baden-Powell; they asked us what our numbers

were, how many our guns, and what the state of our supplies. The answer

was most ingenious, as we had no code to which they had a key, and we

could not trust a straightforward statement of such important facts to

the risks of the road. So Colonel Rhodes invented this answer:--

"Our numbers are the Naval and Military multiplied by ten; our guns, the

number of sons in the Ward family; our supplies, the O.C. 9th Lancers."

Excellent as the Boer Intelligence is, I do not suppose that they are

aware that the Naval and Military Club is at 94, Piccadilly; that the

house of Dudley rejoices in six stalwart sons; or that the officer

commanding the 9th Lancers is Colonel Little.

XXII

WE REPEL AN ATTACK AND JOIN FORCES WITH PLUMER

BUCK REEF FARM, _Monday, May 14th_.

A diary is the last place in which to indulge in prophecy; it preserves

too clearly the record of fallacy. In the last twenty-four hours have

been reversed all the expectations of those in charge of this column,

and even the direction of our march has been completely changed. My last

entry was made at midday yesterday, and at 2.30 we resumed the march

northwards, intending to reach a point ten miles distant at which there

was water. The road was very heavy, or rather there was no road at all,

the way lying over rough bush veldt, which consists of long, rank grass,

with thorn bushes at small intervals and hardwood trees at greater

distances--the whole something like an English paddock or park of young

trees, except, of course, for the grass. This was heavy going; the mules

were hot and tired, and the convoy trailed out and straggled; we spent

quite two hours in covering the first four miles.

I have said that the convoy straggled, and there were long intervals

between one part of it and the next. During one such interval, the

afternoon being very hot, I lay down under a tree and left my horse to

graze. A cloud of locusts flying high and beating the air with millions

of wings made a pleasant sound as of wind in a forest, and listening to

these and to the thousand other minute noises that proceed from the

insect life on a few square yards of veldt, I almost fell asleep. There

was not a sound from the column; you could not imagine a more peaceful

spot; and the obvious contrast between the purpose of this little army

and its present circumstances impressed me more vividly than ever. And

in less than half an hour from that moment of absolute peace the bullets

were hailing round us and the air was resonant with the boom of guns.

This is how it happened.

It was half-past three when I left the shade of the tree and joined

Colonel Mahon in front of the Horse Artillery, and at twenty minutes to

four we heard the sound of rifle-shots--three or four--to the

south-east. We had now got into a kind of wood in the bush, and here and

there could see beyond the edge of it eastwards towards a hillside that

sloped up from us to a ridge four miles away. On this ridge we could see

a cloud of dust, and we were looking at it through glasses when a note

came in from the right flank reporting a body of the enemy advancing on

us from the east. Presently we made out on the edge of the dust a line

of horsemen opening out on a kind of glade on the hillside, and the

Brigadier ordered the guns to come into position where we were standing.

It was really no sort of position at all, being merely a wood with no

view from it, and in a hollow at that; but it was all that could be

done.

The guns came galloping up, the horses as keen as mustard; in five

minutes they had unlimbered and were in position; but Major Jackson, who

was in command of the battery, reported that the range was extreme and

that he could not be effective. So we lit pipes and waited, while the

convoy was ordered to be hurried up as much as possible.

Up galloped an orderly with a note, and everyone tried to read the

Brigadier's face. It clouded a little.

"Enemy advancing in strength on our front" was the essence of the note.

But "They've got us in the nastiest place of the whole march" was all he

said.

In a few minutes more Prince Alexander of Teck came up to report that

the convoy was well up, and just as he had finished speaking rifle-fire

broke out on our right, and a minute later, sharply, on our front. It

was then 4.45, and a bewildering moment for the Brigadier, who had a

great, bulky convoy to protect, and had it at the moment in a

defenceless position. I think I would not take any reward to bear the

responsibility of acting at such a moment. The shots were sounding

quicker, but one could see nothing except the surrounding trees. Colonel

Mahon looked coolly round.

"We must try with the guns," he said, and ordered another squadron out

on the right.

The orderly rode away with the order, and at exactly five o'clock the

fire broke out furiously and bullets began to whistle over us. Everyone

put his horse into a canter by instinct, and I think the staff went

round to the guns. I returned to the convoy to look after my cart.

The convoy was moving on now on as broad a front as the shrubs and trees

would permit of; it raised a cloud of dust, which the level rays of the

sun lit like a rainbow, and the bullets began to come in a hail. Well,

that is rather exaggerated--not a hail. But on a summer day after

oppressive heat and dark clouds the big raindrops begin to splash on the

ground; and this fire, which many old stagers who have been through

several fights describe as the hottest they have known, was something

like that. There was no cover; everyone was under fire; so there was

nothing to do but to dismount and lead one's horse along beside the

convoy. Every now and then with the clear high "phit" of the Mauser

bullet would come the hideous twisting whistle of the Martini--really a

horrible sound. There was something like a panic amongst the native

drivers; they walked along bent almost double, taking what shelter they

could; one I saw crawling along on his belly, and the sight made me

laugh, although I had at heart too much sympathy with him to be really

amused. The mules and horses, alarmed by these strange whistlings in the

air, began to neigh and scream, and they added to the general tumult.

One gave up wondering whether or no one would be hit, but merely

wondered if it would be a graze or a "plug." There were the usual number

of miraculous escapes; the driver of the waggon beside which I was

walking tumbled off his seat like a sack, stone dead; a mule in the

waggon behind me leapt and kicked, and sank on the ground; my horse

jumped as a Martini bullet smote the sand at his heel; yet I think there

was never a bullet nearer me than a dozen feet. Major Baden-Powell, who

is accompanying the expedition for his brother's relief, had his watch,

worn in the left breast-pocket, smashed to atoms, but his skin was not

even scratched.

They were ten very long and, to put it frankly, very hateful minutes

that passed until M Battery opened with a roar. It was a welcome sound,

and still more welcome the "pom--pom--pom--_pom_," like the bark of a

good dog, that sounded immediately afterwards. And it was like oil on

water, or water on fire. Immediately the enemy's fire slackened; in two

minutes it had almost ceased; in five it had stopped entirely, and one

began to get one's breath. There were men lying all round and about the

wood, and the small ambulance staff had more work than they could do; my

cart made three trips, carrying wounded men from the column to the

dressing-station. Only ten minutes of fighting, and over thirty

casualties; six killed, twenty-four wounded, one missing.

But when one had been through those ten minutes, it was not the men

lying stark and still in the grass beside the ambulance that made one

astonished; it was the sight of people walking about and talking that

made one wonder whether or no one had been dreaming. It was decided to

halt. Everyone lay down where he stood, and it was a strange, troubled

night, with horses stumbling about in the moonlight and blowing with

astonishment into one's face.

This morning, as some of us more than half expected, the enemy had

cleared, but in consequence of a message received from Colonel Plumer

asking us to meet and join him at a certain place we have turned from

our original direction. We reached a dry river at eight o'clock this

morning, and men had to begin to dig in the sand for water for

themselves and their horses. One of my servants found a well fifty feet

deep, from which the bucket hoist and ropes were missing. I had sixty

feet of rope in my cart, and I went quietly away with two boys carrying

all our buckets and bags and kegs, and leading all the horses. We had

two hours of very hard work at that well; and when the horses had drunk

their fill, and every vessel had been replenished, the fact that there

was a well was reported to the Brigadier. In ten minutes a crowd of

troopers was round the well, trampling down earth into the water; but if

we had only had a few engineers everyone could have been supplied in

half an hour.

JAN MASSIBI'S, _Tuesday, May 15th_.

We marched off at half-past three yesterday, keeping west of north; on

and on, until half-past eight in the evening. Everyone was dog-tired,

and dropped to the ground, only to be roused at one o'clock this morning

by the Brigadier, who personally went round and woke people up. He had

to shake me twice, and I imagine that other people were wrapped in just

as profound an oblivion; nevertheless we were on the march again at

1.30.

Oh, the weariness of that eternal plod through the rough grassy ground,

the coldness, the interminable darkness! It was no better on horseback

than on foot, for the animals kept falling asleep and stumbling. At

every halt one tumbled off one's horse and fell asleep, only to be

awakened by the hateful "Stand to your horses." But at last the light

began to glimmer in the east, the air took an even colder tone, so that

even the grasses seemed to shiver with the breath of dawn, and presently

the whole horizon on our right burned with a red fire. Thereafter the

shedding of greatcoats and sweaters and woollen helmets, and the glad

breathing in of the wine of morning. A little after daylight our advance

patrols came in touch with the pickets of Colonel Plumer's camp, down in

the valley of the Molopo River at Jan Massibi's. The Brigadier and his

staff rode on, and it was a pleasant meeting between the two officers.

And pleasanter still when the cloud of dust that heralded our force

appeared on the crest of the southern ridge and the long column began to

pour down the slope and to cross the drift. Soon it was filling the

valley and mingling with the other force already encamped, and now

everyone is busy washing or eating near the picturesque little cluster

of Kaffir kraals and big shady trees; for the region of karoo and

shadeless plain has been left far behind. Our supplies are practically

exhausted; the horses are eating their last ration to-day; but Mafeking

is only eighteen miles distant, waiting for our help. There is something

inspiring in that knowledge, and in the news of the grand little

garrison's latest success; and everyone is anxious to push on and get

the inevitable fight over.

To-day we rest under the trees and dream through the music of singing

birds, with perhaps a thought for yesterday and the fellow-travellers

whose journey ended so suddenly. But for the soldier, more than for

anyone, the watchword is "No regrets"; and as for to-morrow, who can

tell the issue?

XXIII

THE FIGHTING ON THE MOLOPO

At daybreak on Wednesday, May 16th, the two columns under Colonel

Mahon's command moved from Jan Massibi's in two parallel lines along the

northern bank of the Molopo River. As the sky brightened before us

Mafeking was eagerly looked for, but for a long time each successive

rise only showed us another beyond which hid the desired view. The

country consisted of a succession of ridges lying at right angles to our

line of march, and as each one rose before us the staff galloped forward

to the summit, only to see another lying beyond. But at last, while some

of us were buying eggs at a Kaffir kraal, a more adventurous person

climbed upon a rubbish heap and shouted "There's Mafeking!" There was a

rush for the coign of vantage, and a great levelling of glasses. There

it lay, sure enough, the little town that we had come so far to see--a

tiny cluster of white near the eastward horizon, glistening amid the

yellowish-brown of the flats. We looked at it for a few moments in

silence, and then Colonel Mahon said, "Well, let's be getting on"; and

no one said anything more about Mafeking, but everyone thought a

great deal.

[Illustration: Sketch Map of Fight at ISRAEL'S FARM. on May 16th]

There was a difficulty about water, and it was finally decided to halt

at midday at a point where the Molopo River curved near to the road. We

turned off the road down a slope which sank towards the river on the

right. The ground rose up on all sides round us, but the guns were

placed near the top of the northward rise. The mules were outspanned and

led to water, and we breakfasted. Remember that we had been up since

half-past five and had had nothing to eat, that it was now nearly an

hour after midday, and you will understand how it happened that I was

more interested in the cooking of certain meats than in the galloping

about of orderlies on the hillside.

Breakfast was just over and my horse was being saddled, when a crack of

rifle-fire on our right front warned me that things were about to

happen; and at the same time I saw that the mules were being harnessed

with frantic haste. By the time that I had ridden up the slope the guns

had gone forward into position, but as yet there was no firing except

from rifles, which were banging in a desultory fashion now all along our

right flank. I searched the slope beyond the river with my glasses, but

could not see a man; yet the firing was there sure enough, and

increasing. It was at 1.55 that the first firing broke out, and for half

an hour the same thing continued, during which the convoy was formed up

in what seemed a sheltered part of the hollow. We were in a bad place--a

very shallow saucer; and on the edge of the saucer the Boers had taken

up their position.

During this half-hour little seemed to be done, but there is always this

interval during which a battle develops. We did not as yet know any but

one place in which the Boers were; it was pretty certain that they did

not know what we were going to do; so the right front, where our advance

guard had first come into touch with the enemy, was as yet the only

point of contact. Meanwhile Colonel Plumer, with the whole of his

mounted men, was sent off to the right flank; Colonel Peakman, with the

Kimberley Mounted Corps, was held back to watch the rear; Colonel

Edwards was sent with the Imperial Light Horse to the left flank, with

instructions to work round in advance if possible, and so turn the

enemy's right; and the Royal Horse Artillery and the Canadian guns took

up a position on the front. It was difficult to find a place from which

to look on, especially as we were far from confident that the Boers

were on our right alone. There were folds in the sides of our saucer,

and I found a kind of ridge on the northward slope below our guns. I had

just dismounted and was watching the right ridge through my glasses when

the edge of the horizon at which I was looking was divided by a bright

flash. In a few seconds there was a deep report, followed by the whine

of a shell in the air; the sand spouted up in a great fountain--Heavens!

how close to the convoy; and presently the sound of the burst drowned

the crackling of musketry. The convoy huddled away from the smoking

patch where the shell had fallen, and began--oh, how slowly!--to wind up

the slope towards me. Another shell, still on the same spot, of which

the waggons were now quite clear; and now the shells followed each other

so rapidly that one gave up trying to distinguish between the initial

and the bursting reports, and became absorbed in watching the brown

columns spouting from the earth.

They were now playing all round the moving convoy, and each was a

miracle; wherever there was a blank space, there the fountain rose; and

when the convoy had closed up so completely that one was certain that

the next shell must hit something, it fell quite wide. I was still

watching this beautiful and dreadful sight when the air above me

vibrated to a new song, and on my right a small shell burst with a

disagreeable sound. I cleared away to the northern side of the basin,

only to feel once more obliged to move as a new gun opened and began to

churn up the ground. To be sure, these were long, range-finding shots,

and were not intended to pitch where they did, but it is not always safe

to rely upon the accuracy of shrapnel fire, and I moved again. But it

was of no use; the enemy's pom-pom suddenly began to bark, and played on

the one spot which had seemed but a moment before to be safe.

During this development (which had only occupied about ten minutes) our

artillery had gradually come into action; first the solitary, abrupt

bang of the 12-pound horse gun, then the readier and brisker fusilade of

the Canadian quick-firing Vickers-Maxim, then the clamour of our two

pom-poms, then the rattle of a Maxim somewhere in the rear. And all the

while the area from which the sounds proceeded was spreading like a

bush-fire; beginning on the right, it worked across our front, spread

from the left front along that flank until it seemed almost to meet the

firing on the right rear. When all the guns were going the medley was

terrific, although I suppose it was nothing to the sound produced in a

really big pitched battle. But it was confusing enough, and, what with

the baffling effect of the cross-fire, the whining in the air, and the

continuous noise of the explosions, the rattle and crackle of musketry,

the galloping hither and thither of orderlies and messengers, and the

unpleasantness resulting from the whole thing's happening in so small an

area, provided excitement enough to satisfy the most jaded adventurer.

In colder language what had happened was this. The commando that had

been holding on for days on our right as we marched had got ahead of us

when we diverted towards Plumer, had effected a junction with a force

sent out from Mafeking to oppose us, and had just arrived in position

near Israel's Farm when we came up against them. Fortunately they had

not time to entrench, but they were just going to begin when we turned

them, as we found picks and spades lying about in rear of their

northward artillery position. From the large outline of their attack

there must have been at least 2,000 of them, and from the cleverness

with which they were disposed we at first estimated them at twice that

number. We held them on our right while we sent a strong force working

round on our left, which ultimately got out far enough to turn their

right. Of course we were too few to do more than dislodge them;

surrounding was out of the question; so when we had fairly turned them

we "let go" on the right, and the Boers fled in that direction. The

house at Israel's Farm they held until the very end, shelling our

rear-guard briskly. The engagement lasted close on five hours, during

which our casualties amounted to less than forty.

In even fewer words than these (so concise is his art) the military

despatch-writer might have described those eventful hours; and one takes

a kind of pleasure in trying to imitate him, so supremely inadequate are

such sentences to produce any real impression on people who have never

found themselves in the midst of a battle. Not that any art of written

words is equal to it. One goes through the whole gamut of sensation; one

is charmed, afraid, bewildered; charmed by the scale and magnitude of

the operations, afraid for one's own skin, bewildered with a kind of

dream at the strangeness of it all. One may sit, as I sat, under a tree

listening and watching for hours; and from the grossly and crudely real

the thing fades and changes into an unreal image of the senses. The

gaudy flies and beetles that hum round one, whose noise is so much

louder and nearer than the crash of shells, they fill the foreground of

reality; it is not conceivable that the man with the pleasant face and

kindly eye who is directing a battery should be attempting the lives of

his fellows on so large a scale. Yet it is the scale that makes the

difference: a man who would abhor to kill another will with a smile

direct the machine that destroys twenty; and he, if anyone, has the

right to act upon this reduced estimate of the value of human life, for

he counts his own as lightly as that of his enemy.

But I have forsaken my narrative of the fight, and I am confronted by

the fact that there are five hours of fighting to be accounted for.

Five hours! Was it for so long that one listened to the voices of guns

and rifles? I can hardly believe it, and no bare catalogue of

manoeuvres seems to fill the gap. Our artillery positions were changed

several times, and when the convoy was crowded up into a fold of the

ground the shells no longer reached it, but continued to pound at

Colonel Peakman and his rear-guard. At about five o'clock, the Boers

having cleared from our left front, the convoy was pushed on in that

direction, and we penetrated as far as the position which had been held

by the Boer 15-pounder on our front. Just as we reached that point a

note was brought in from Colonel Plumer on the right reporting that he

was checked by the Boers at Israel's Farm, and accordingly the Horse

Artillery battery was formed up in front of the convoy, and with the two

pom-poms (which followed it about like small dogs barking after a big

one) shelled the farm, which the enemy evacuated. The sun began to sink,

the firing in our rear dropped and died out gradually, and with a few

shots from a Martini, fired by someone on the left who amused himself by

sniping the staff, the fight came to an end.

The fight was over, but as the convoy began to work its way cautiously

through the bush in the dusk we began to talk about it, and to fit it

together from the pieces of our individual experience. What had they

been trying to do? What had So-and-so been doing on the left? Had we

many casualties? Should we go on into Mafeking? Ah, that was the

question. But after about an hour's trekking through the bush it was

decided to halt, as someone reported that the enemy was entrenched ahead

of us. As for the fight, we did not then fully know what had happened,

but we found out afterwards. The Boers had once more given us a lesson

in tactics, and we had given them one in dealing with a nasty situation.

With a comparatively small force (although stronger than ours) they had

bluffed us by extending their attack round a large perimeter, leading us

to suppose their strength to be far greater than it really was. They had

caught us in the one bad bit of country between Jan Massibi's and

Mafeking, and but for the really excellent fighting on our side might

have held us where we were until the want of supplies forced us to

retire or surrender. As we had so few casualties it is probable that

they had not many; but it is possible to have very warm fighting with

few casualties. Our cover was excellent; so was theirs; and Colonel

Peakman, who, with the rear-guard, bore the heaviest burden of the

fight, lost hardly a man, although he lost heavily in horses. Everyone

is agreed that the honours of the day fell chiefly to this gallant

business man, who in his spare time had made himself so good a soldier.

All these matters were talked over until we halted about seven o'clock

and reluctantly heard that we were not to proceed that night. No lights,

of course; but everyone was ready to lie down. While my bed was being

prepared I went over to the ambulance, whither the wounded were being

brought in on stretchers. There were only two small waggons, and the

wretched sufferers were literally heaped inside them, lying in the dark

amid their own blood. The little staff under Surgeon-Captain Davies

worked gallantly, getting the men out, dressing their wounds, making

them as comfortable as possible on blankets over the grass; but it was a

miserable and sordid scene, relieved only by the cheery willingness of

the helpers and the fortitude of the patients. Even here, of course,

there were no lights, but in the recesses of a waggon an orderly was

trying to prepare hot water with a tiny Etna. Dressing about twenty

serious surgical cases out of doors in pitch darkness, with a limited

supply of not over clean water, short-handed, hurried, without proper

appliances--it was a sight that would have startled the artist in

antiseptic surgery. But there they lay; and it was with something like a

sense of shame that I turned into my own comfortable bed.

XXIV

MAFEKING AT LAST

They were twenty-four very exciting hours that began when we moved from

Jan Massibi's at daybreak on Wednesday and ended when we lay down to

snatch a little rest at daybreak on Thursday. Many miles were travelled,

a great enterprise was brought to a successful issue, a tough battle was

fought, men received wounds and died, Mafeking was relieved: enough

incident and adventure to fill months of ordinary life. The bare events

are recorded here, but the emotional history of those twenty-four hours

will probably never be written. But as you read the narrative, put

yourself in the place of those to whom it was not a story but a piece of

life, and then perhaps you will realise something of what it meant to

them.

Not much of the story remains to be told.

At midnight between Wednesday and Thursday I was awakened by a general

stir in the surrounding camp, to find that the moon was shining

brightly, lighting up busy drivers, and the troops getting their horses

ready. We were to advance. Major Karri-Davies had ridden on into

Mafeking, and, with the luck which rewards daring, had found the road

clear, and sent back a messenger with that information to Colonel Mahon.

I think men were never so willingly awakened from sleep; not even the

wounded grumbled, who had also to be roused from their beds on the grass

and repacked into the stuffy ambulance. At about 12.30 we were ready to

start, but during the first mile there were long halts and delays while

the guides argued and boggled about the roads. At last the strain became

too great, and Major Gifford, Captain Smith, and I resolved to ride on

and trust to finding the right road. We knew the direction by the stars,

and started across the veldt a little south of east.

It was bitterly cold, and we were all both sleepy and hungry, but there

was an excitement in the air that kept us easily going. After about half

an hour we heard voices ahead, and descried the shapes of horses and

men. Our hearts sank for a moment, only to rise again when we recognised

Colonel Peakman, who, having been in command of the rear-guard on the

previous day up till nine o'clock at night, was now taking his turn at

advance guard at one o'clock the next morning. As a Kimberley man, it

had long been his ambition to lead the relieving force into Mafeking,

and I think no one grudged him the honour. Amongst all, indeed, there

was a certain amount of competition, and the four correspondents who

survived to the end of the expedition became strangely silent about

their intentions for the evening. I pinned my faith to Peakman, as I

knew he was as anxious as anyone to be in first.

Well, we joined the Advance Guard, which presently went on along the

road pointed out by the guide, and for an hour we jogged on at a fast

walk, until we had clearly "run the distance," as they say at sea. Still

no sign of the trenches or forts which should mark the outward boundary

of the defended area. We pulled up, and the guide was questioned.

"Two miles more," he said.

We rode on for another quarter of an hour, and still found nothing

before us but the rolling veldt; not a light, not a sound except the

beating of the horses' feet. Again we halted, and this time Colonel

Peakman himself questioned the guide, and the man had to admit that he

had mistaken his way, and that we were on the lower road, longer by a

good three miles than that originally intended. We had no connecting

files with the main column, and, as it had a guide of its own, it was

certain that it would take the shorter road, and probably be in before

its own Advance Guard. A bitter moment, in which things were said to the

guide; but some of us hoped that the slow convoy, with its tired and

galled mules, would even yet take a longer time on its short road than

we on our long one. So we went on again, this time at a trot; the

excitement seemed to extend to the horses, so that even they could not

be restrained. In ten minutes we saw men sitting by the roadside, and

found a hundred very weary Fusiliers, who had been sent to take Israel's

Farm at the end of the fight, and told to go on afterwards.

"Had anyone passed along the road before us?" "No"; and with a gasp of

relief we hurried on. In a few moment's the group in advance pulled up,

shouting "'Ware barbed wire!"

We all stopped, and there were frantic calls for wire-cutters. With four

reports like the snapping of big fiddle-strings the last barrier before

Mafeking was removed, and we passed on again, this time at a

hand-canter. In a few minutes we heard the sound of a galloping horse

on the road, and a mounted man challenged us.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Friend."

"Who are you?" (The excitement was too high for the preservation of the

proper formula.)

"Colonel Peakman, in command of the Advance Guard of the Relief Column."

"By Jove, ain't I glad to see you, sir!"

It was an officer sent out by Colonel Baden-Powell to meet us and bring

us in. We left the squadron, and the five of us went on, this time at a

gallop, over trenches, past breastworks and redoubts and little forts,

until we pulled up at the door of the headquarters' mess.

Ah, the narrative is helpless here. No art could describe the

handshaking and the welcome and the smiles on the faces of these

tired-looking men; how they looked with rapt faces at us commonplace

people from the outer world as though we were angels, how we all tried

to speak at once, and only succeeded in gazing at each other and in

saying, "By Jove!" "Well, I'm hanged!" and the like senseless

expressions that sometimes mean much to Englishmen. One man tried to

speak; then he swore; then he buried his face in his arms and sobbed.

We all gulped at nothing, until someone brought in cocoa and we gulped

that instead; then Baden-Powell came in, and one could only gaze at him,

and search in vain on his jolly face for the traces of seven months'

anxiety and strain.

After an hour we went out and found the column safely encamped just

outside the town. Everyone was dog-tired, and although it was half-past

five in the morning and the moon was sinking we lay down and were

immediately asleep--in Mafeking.

We did not know it, but we were in a besieged town. Officially the

relief did not take place until ten o'clock that morning, when the Boers

hurried away with their last gun. I was awakened at eight by the sound

of heavy firing, and as soon as my horse was ready rode away to the

north-east corner of the town (we had entered from the north-west), to

where the greater part of our column was in action. Through glasses one

could see something being drawn up the purple slope of a hill six miles

away--the last gun of the besiegers. Earlier in the morning our troops

had advanced on all the Boer positions which were still occupied (only

the eastern ones were then held), and had shelled the enemy in the

midst of his preparations for flight. It was only a rear-guard action;

indeed the engagement was practically limited to the artillery; and all

I was in time to see was the flight. It was a good sight, the mounted

men galloping in open order up the hillside which the morning sun was

throwing into a thousand patches of light and shade. They were soon out

of range, and we stood watching the disappearing specks of black crawl

like flies up the furthest ridges, here in groups of a dozen, there in

twos and threes, until the last one had vanished from our view; and thus

the siege of Mafeking came to an end.

There was joy in the camps of the relieving column when it was known

that they had also taken part in the siege; "Another bar," said the

medal-hunters.

Colonel Mahon's column consisted of 900 mounted men of the Imperial

Light Horse, under Lieutenant-Colonel Edwardes, and the amalgamation of

local troops known as the Kimberley Mounted Corps, under Colonel King;

100 picked volunteers from the Fusilier Brigade; four guns of M Battery

Royal Horse Artillery, under Major Jackson, and a pom-pom section (two

guns), under Captain Robinson, the whole artillery force consisting

of 100 men; three Maxims, 56 waggons, and several private Cape carts,

660 mules; in all, 1,200 horses and 1,100 men.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF SIGNED MENU OF THE RELIEF DINNER AT

MAFEKING]

The staff was: Colonel Mahon, 8th Hussars, brigadier; Captain

Bell-Smythe, 1st Dragoon Guards, chief staff officer; Colonel Frank

Rhodes, late Royal Dragoons, chief of Intelligence Department; Prince

Alexander of Teck, 7th Hussars, A.D.C.; Major Jackson, commanding Royal

Artillery; Major Sir John Willoughby, late of the Blues; Major the Hon.

Maurice Gifford, attached to the Imperial Yeomanry, general staff; and

Lieutenant F.W. Smith, Kimberley Mounted Corps, galloper. There was not

an officer on the staff whose industry and good sense did not contribute

to the success of the expedition; and we correspondents owe a peculiar

gratitude to Colonel Rhodes, who acted as Press Censor. No doubt his own

experience as a correspondent helped him to fulfil what is always a

responsible and seldom an easy office. He was always considerate, always

interested, always kind and always fair.

Here ends an imperfect narrative of the relief. What the deliverers saw

on Thursday morning was a little white town lying in the midst of a

wide shallow basin of green moorland; and it reminded one of a town that

had been long deserted and in ruins. I am not exaggerating when I say

that by far the greater number of houses in the town had been struck by

shells, and that very nearly all had been struck either by shells or

bullets.

After the engagement on Thursday morning the relieving column formed up

and entered the town, headed by Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Mahon, and

his staff. As one passed house after house, one with a gaping hole in

its side, another with the chimneys overthrown, another with a whole

wall stove in, none with windows completely glazed, all bearing some

mark of assault--as this panorama of destruction unfolded itself one

marvelled that anyone should have lived throughout the siege. And when

the procession formed up in the dilapidated Market Square, and the whole

of the Town Guard mustered--Kaffirs, Parsees, Jews, Arabians,

Englishmen, Dutchmen, nearly every sort and nationality of men--and when

the Mayor read an address expressing in the conventional terms of such

compliments the emotions of this motley crowd, one asked oneself what it

was that had held these very ordinary-looking people to so heroic an

intention. Remember that the defence of Mafeking had been one big bluff,

that there was nothing to prevent the Boers, with determination and

careful arrangement, from taking the place at almost any time, and you

will realise how startlingly that question asserted itself. I like to

think that there were many men in Mafeking whose courage alone would

have disdained surrender; but there was one man in whose face one found

the answer to the riddle. Brains alone would not have done it; heart

alone would have fainted and failed under those long months of danger;

but the officer commanding this garrison had both brains and heart, and

so he taught his men to endure.

I do not pay the garrison of Mafeking so poor a compliment as to suppose

that the mere hunger for luxuries, serious misfortune though it be, was

the signal trial of its endurance. Ladysmith suffered worse in this

respect and did not complain. In Mafeking there was always a plentiful

supply of green vegetables, of tobacco, and of wine, and it was only

with a smile that the heir to one of the wealthiest estates in England

told me that they had latterly invented a brawn made with glue from the

hides and feet and ears of mules and donkeys.

But nearly 30,000 shells fell into a town covering about the same area

as Cowes; in many streets not a man dared show himself save under the

cloud of a dark night, for they were swept by rifle bullets; hardly one

of the many forts on the circumference of defence held weapons half so

formidable as the stout hearts that served them. Thirty thousand shells!

I have been in the neighbourhood of perhaps a hundred bursting shells,

and every burst will be a memory for a lifetime; but thirty thousand!

The heart stops at the thought. Yet here was the little ruined town;

here were the men with weak bodies and cheery faces to prove that

courage can raise the mind beyond fear and suffering; that, given an

ideal and a chance in the leadership, men may be counted on for

something far greater even than bravery.

XXV

A MEMORIAL OF THE SIEGE

There is nothing pretty about the place where the dead defenders of

Mafeking are laid. It lies in a little square of brown stone wall,

planted amid the dreary waste outside the town. There are no green

lawns, no twisted yews, no weeping willows; the few fir trees hold

themselves stiffly up, as though in pride at this triumph of the

vegetable over the animal; and the great bushes of faded geranium only

throw into relief the regular lines of limestone mounds, each with its

prim wooden cross of advertisement. Always an ugly and a dreary place,

it was, when I saw it a few days after the relief, more dreary than

ever; for the sun, whose presence makes the difference of a season in

this bare land, was hidden behind dark stacks of cloud flying westward

before a cold gale.

From a sandbag protection at one corner of the cemetery there is a view

on all sides to the horizon. The town, the empty railway station, the

hospital, the network of shelter trenches, connecting earth-works,

redans, redoubts, forts, and emplacements; the straight line of

railway-ruled across the plain to the horizon--these make the view.

Hardly anything is moving except the white flag on the hospital and the

colours on the forts. Sometimes a figure crosses the open stretch

between the hospital and the town, but outside the cemetery itself

hardly a man is to be seen. The wind hums in the empty hearth of a

locomotive, through the stiff trees of the cemetery, past the signal,

standing like a sentinel gone to sleep with his head sunk on his breast,

waiting in an attitude of invitation for the train that is seven months

overdue.

One's eye returns along the shining rails until it rests again within

the yard, in a far corner of which a couple of orderlies detailed for

burial fatigue are hacking with picks at the hard, white earth. The

graves are in prim, uniform rows--the soldiers' graves, I mean, for even

here the military element swamps the civilian, and one hardly takes note

of the private graves, they are so few. But the soldiers' graves are

arranged with military precision, row behind row, each row containing

twenty graves or more. And at least seven or eight rows of graves are

marked by the regulation cross, while there are many rows on which as

yet no crosses have been erected. The painted words on the crosses

become monotonous as one reads from the head of the first row down to

where the mounds give place to gaping caverns--five or six--prepared for

the dying, whom even now the doctor is plying with physic in the

hospital. Trooper A, Private B, Colour-Sergeant C; the names vary,

indeed, but there are only three versions of the manner of death--"Died

of wounds," "Died of enteric fever," "Killed in action"--the three

epitaphs for soldiers in South Africa.

It was strange, amid the dreariness and stagnation of this place, to

think of the jubilations at home. What cheering, what toasting, what

hilarity! But here the sparkle in the wine had died, leaving the cup

that had brimmed flat and dull and only half full after all. Food was

scanty and of the plainest quality, there was no news from the outside

world, disease was still busy; and here, set forth in the hard

limestone, was the bill for all the glory and excitement. The bill, but

not the payment; that was being made at home by the people who cared for

what lies beneath the limestone.

The evils of a war are so direct and obvious that they are apt to be

discounted or accepted as Fate, and classed among the thousand

unavoidable ills beneath which we must patiently sit. But are they? In a

war, the necessity and even justice of which are doubted honestly by

many, where all share the responsibility and few the personal cost, it

is hard to see the hand of an impartial Fate.

A strange place, you may say, in which to attempt the adjustment of

mingled impressions. Yet in the midst of our crude existence at

Mafeking, where life was shorn of all the impalpable things that make it

real and reduced to a simple material level of food and sleep and noise,

it was a kind of relief to spend an hour in the place where men had gone

down into rest and silence. In normal circumstances one may avoid such

places, but after the din of arms and the shout of victory there was a

sense of companionship to be found in the place that stood for the

ending of disputes. Peaceful, yes; but how was the peace gained? It is

sweet and seemly to die for one's country; but blood and fire, grief and

anguish had filled the vestibule of this sleeping-chamber; and peaceful

though it be, the graveyard of Mafeking is a place to induce in

Englishmen some searchings of heart.

"Oh, surely not," says the music-hall patriot; "the brave fellows who

lie there have died a glorious death, and the glory is ours as their

fellow-countrymen"; and he drops a tear and a shilling into the

particular tambourine which happens at the moment to be raising the

loudest clamour, and honestly believes himself to have achieved some

nobility at second-hand.

Our glory? Hardly that. Those who, justly or unjustly, place the martyr

in his last predicament do not wear his crown; and the glory of Trooper

A's death does not rest with you or me, but with those in whose hearts

his memory is quick and real. To count these scores of deaths, as it

were, to our credit in the war, to esteem them merely as things for

which more vengeance must be taken, would be the last and greatest

mistake. Surely they lie in the scale of responsibility, they are things

for which an account must be rendered, by which an obligation is

incurred to use well the fruits of victory.

There is no need that the wind should moan over this desolate patch, or

that the tattered geranium should scatter its withered leaves on the

unlovely ground. Were it as sweet as a garden in Delos, were the ground

carpeted with violet and primrose and shadows of laburnum, the

burying-ground of Mafeking would still be a sad spot on the chart of

British South Africa.

XXVI

GOOD-BYE TO MAFEKING

A sudden order from General Hunter; a morning of preparation; a

commotion of dismantling, packing, harnessing, saddling; handshaking and

well-wishing; cheers ringing, hoofs clattering, dust rising beneath

wheels and many feet, a backward glance along the road, and--Good-bye to

Mafeking. An episode in the lives of men, and one which, in spite of the

excitement that went before it, will probably leave a small though deep

impression. Life there was dull beyond words, perhaps because there must

be a reaction after seven months of excitement, and because the nature

of man is elastic, springing quickly back to the commonplace when an

unusual element in its circumstances has been withdrawn. I tried hard to

fancy that the people of the garrison bore in their faces or manners

some sign of the strain which they had undergone. But the months seemed

to have left no traces except on the buildings and on the cemetery; or

perhaps their mark upon the besieged men was set beneath the surface

scanned by a casual observer. At any rate, the people of Mafeking could

not successfully be exhibited in a show of wonders, and they took less

interest in their food than did we, their deliverers, who lived with

them for a while in what might be called "poor circumstances." Strange

to say, the only way in which to secure an ample meal in Mafeking was to

give a dinner-party, when all sorts of things were produced from secret

reserves and--charged for.

Brigadier-General Mahon's column left Mafeking on Monday, May 28th,

taking the road that runs southward beside the railway, and I think that

everyone breathed a sigh of satisfaction when we were once more fairly

on the road. "The Happy Family" someone called Mahon's force, and there

was certainly never a more united company. He is the kind of

leader--considerate, strict, careless of unessential formalities,

careful of all essential details, jolly of face, kind of eye, a good

companion on the road, a rock of strength and confidence in the

field--who is obeyed in the spirit as well as the letter, and for whom

men would gladly march their feet to blisters. It need hardly be said

that he is an Irishman--"Ould Pat Mahon God bless 'um!" as a friend of

mine said that morning; and the remark was strangely apt, in spite of

the Brigadier's youth and the fact that his name is Bryan.

For four days we marched southward in easy stages across a stretch of

country that was almost blighted by the scarcity of water; we never had

water through which the bottom of a white cup could be seen; nearly

always we had to share with the mules and horses the vast puddle known

in that country as a pan, and at every puddle or waterhole, as the mules

churned it up into inky mud, the wish was the same--"If only we had some

engineers!"

At Maritsani siding we found the first really serious break in the

railway. For about three miles the line was completely wrecked, and two

culverts, one (over the river) spanned by unusually long girders, had

been blasted in the middle and were lying broken in the gap. Even here

it was easy to distinguish between the work of the trained German or

French engineer and that of the ordinary rank-and-file Boer. The Boer

did not understand dynamite, but he had a very fair idea of destruction

from the spectacular point of view, and his work made by far the finer

show. One might almost think that children had been at work, so

laborious and futile were his efforts. The permanent way for perhaps

two miles was bodily uprooted, each length of rails with the sleepers

attached, and laid along the embankment. Not a thing was destroyed; the

fishplates, four to each joint, were lying at a convenient distance, and

even the bolts and nuts for securing them were disposed in little heaps.

All that the repairing party had to do there was to replace the lengths

of line, couple them, and shovel in the ballast. But the mile on which

the trained engineer had been at work probably took four times as long

to repair. Here a dynamite cap had been attached to the middle of each

rail, with the result that there was a piece about six inches long blown

out of every length, and that meant that all the old way had to be taken

up and an entirely new one laid down. One thing I did envy this

simple-minded enemy of ours, and that was the pleasure he must have

experienced in doing one bit of damage. Towards one culvert the line

sloped down in a long gradient, and on this a couple of trucks and a van

had evidently been placed and allowed to run down to the culvert, where,

the bridge being gone, they plunged into the gap. Think of the glorious

smash! The trucks must have got up considerable speed. And picture the

crowd waiting expectantly for the final catastrophe. I must say that I

should have liked to see it.

The destructive spirit had evidently been satisfied by this gorgeous

sacrifice, for nine miles of the line and telegraph wires running

southward from Maritsani were untouched, and at Kraaipan, where we met

the repairing party from the south, the damage was nearly repaired.

On the Thursday night we marched from Kraaipan to a point four miles

north of Maribogo station, and during the march we heard a whistle in

the far distance. A message was sent to the advance guard, and the train

was "held up" while we gleaned some news from the officer in charge. To

us who had been living in the wild for more than a month the great hot,

hissing, bubbling engine was a strange sight, and we stood gazing at it

open-mouthed like yokels, and stretching out our hands towards its warm

body. When we had learned the news it moved off into the darkness with a

shriek, and we resumed our march with a strange sense of cold and

silence. Early next morning (June 1st) the column marched into Maribogo,

where it was to receive ten days' provisions and a complete supply of

remounts--new wings for the flying column. Hunter and the components of

his force were to rendezvous at Lichtenburg on June 7th.

Setting out from Maribogo on Sunday morning, June 3rd, we entered the

Transvaal at about midday, and reached Geysdorp in the afternoon. Hart's

brigade had left Maribogo a few hours before us, and we passed ahead of

it at Geysdorp. After having been long with only mounted troops we

thought the infantry brigade a slow and primitive thing; but we envied

it the drums and fifes, to the music of which the Irishmen were stepping

along bravely when we passed. Although their destination, like ours, was

Lichtenburg, we marched at different times of the day, for even in this

large country there was not room on the road for both brigades. While

they were yet asleep in their bivouacs we were at breakfast, and their

reveille generally found us setting out on the march.

The awaking of a column on these dark, cold mornings is ghostly and

mysterious. The first trumpet-call trembling through the chill starlight

brings one back from dreams to the world. The cavalry trumpeter plays a

longer and more ornate flourish than that sounded by the infantry

bugler, but reveille is all too short on a winter morning. From under

one's shelter one sees the camp return to life--first a match glowing

here, then the smoke and crackle of a fire there, until acres of ground

are scattered with flame. Then the sound of voices begins to insinuate

itself--one never knows exactly when it begins--until the air is lively

with the cries of the cheerful Kaffir. Darkness still on the ground and

cold starlight in the upper air; but eastwards a very sharp eye might

notice a kind of lightening of the gloom. And cold, bitterly cold, one

gratefully withdraws beneath blankets the hand that was experimentally

stretched out. In one's own little camp the stir is also beginning;

fires being kindled, shadowy figures moving through the gloom, the sound

of horses munching corn. Presently the air vibrates to another

trumpet-call--"Stables"; and the few horses (chiefly among the

artillery) that know the calls begin to neigh and paw the ground. Now

the sky above the eastward horizon has faded to the palest blue,

revealing the heads of horses and men where one thought there were only

trees, and along the lower edge of the blue comes another line, like a

fine silver wire. It grows broader and fades into the blue, but in its

place comes a sheet of dull crimson. Millions of miles away God sets it

on fire, and it kindles, glows, flushes to scarlet, melts into gold,

until from the gold flows amber, and from amber the pure white wine of

daylight. All the old colours rush westward across the sky; the veldt

glows with tints that have no name nor description in our dull tongue;

yet these are the mere drip and overflow of the dayspring.

Small wonder if amid such an entertainment one forgets the bustle in the

now visible camp, and smaller still if one forgets that one ever wanted

to sleep. Another trumpet sounds--"Boot and saddle"--and the bustle

becomes acute as the mules are harnessed and horses saddled. And from

some near squadron which is to form the advance guard are heard the few

sharp orders that are necessary to transform it from a crowd of men and

horses to a military unit. "Fall in. Number!" And the numbers run down a

switchback of sound as each man shouts his own. "Stand to your horses.

Prepare to mount. Mount. Advance by sections from the right.

Walk--march!" And with the last word the day's work begins.

On Tuesday morning I had ridden on far in advance of the column in

search of buck. There was very little cover, and at the first shot they

were off like the wind, so I gave it up. Just beyond the ridge where I

had been shooting I came upon the pan of water that was to be our

outspan, and beside the pan was a farmhouse, outside of which stood a

little group of people. An old woman, a young man, a girl, two

middle-aged matrons, a man horribly deformed--people of different ages

and manners, yet having in common one startling thing: they were all

shaking with terror. It was startling because they were the only living

creatures except birds and springbuck that I had seen for miles of that

lonely march. The heath stretching to the sky north and south and east

and west; the muddy pan; the poor house and outbuildings; the solitary

horseman; the terrified group--these filled the picture; and it was not

without misgivings that I approached the house.

"Oh, sir" (it was one of the matrons speaking English with the pleasant

deliberation of a Dutchwoman), "was it you whom we heard shooting on the

hill?"

When I said that it was they all gasped with relief, and the women broke

out into a clamour of talk and questioning. Was the army coming? Were

there many troops? Where were the Kaffirs? Was I sure that there were no

Kaffirs about? When I had reassured them on the point the deformed man

spoke.

"The Kaffirs are jumping about. Ja! They have looted my farm. All my

stock also. We are afraid. I am waiting to go to my farm, which is one

hour over the hill, but when I heard your gun I was afraid the Kaffirs

were near. They know we are only women or sick men here, and they have

guns, and they are jumping about. Your Colonel at Mafeking gave them

guns, and now they run about stealing and murdering. All last night I

dared not move from here, although we have no food. I was afraid, and so

were these ladies, knowing they were jumping about. Now I go to my

farm."

He called a black boy, who presently brought round a miserable cart

drawn by two skeleton ponies. One of the women got in. There was no need

to ask the fierce little cripple why he had not been on commando, and I

was wondering how he was going to get into the cart, when he gave a

great leap, and, climbing nimbly into his seat, drove away.

When he had gone the woman of the house began to pour out a woeful tale.

Her husband--was he dead or alive? No news for three months; no letters

or telegrams. Even the casualty lists had ceased to reach them. Her babe

was dying for want of milk food. Could I give her a tin? General

Hunter's men had broken up her kraal to use the wood for burning, and

all her goats had wandered off and she had no one to send to look for

them. These few logs of wood were all she had to bake bread with; would

I ask the General to see that the soldiers did not take them? And then

the Kaffirs! It was a piteous tale launched on a flood of tears.

Possibly it was exaggerated; people have different ways of asking for

help; but the terror in the woman's eye when she spoke of the Kaffirs

was genuine. And I remembered the cripple's phrase--"The Kaffirs are

jumping about."

Captain Bell-Smythe, the brigade major, came up presently, and I found

him willing, as he and General Mahon had always been, to listen with

patience to the long recital of woe. A sentry was put over the house

and gardens to protect them from the desecrating foot of Tommy, and I

know that a tin of milk was furnished out of the scanty stores of the

headquarters' mess.

As for the Kaffirs, that trouble turned out to be a very real one. On

the next day's march four were captured by a patrol of General Barton

and shot, and it almost seems as though their blood were upon the heads

of those who failed to disarm them after the siege of Mafeking was

raised. I heard that the reason given was that it would offend the

Barralongs, who had fought so bravely in defence of their staadt; but

surely it had been better to offend them than allow them to run their

heads into a noose. The Kaffir trouble was like a shadow on our march;

they imagined that they had old scores to pay off; they paid them with

remarkable fidelity to their own austere sense of justice; and it was

felt that in suffering death they were bearing the punishment for more

than their own misdeeds.

Incidents such as these marked the days of our march to Lichtenburg. But

our family was breaking up; Colonel Rhodes and Sir John Willoughby, who

had worked so hard on the relieving march, left us at Maribogo; one by

one my fellow-correspondents were departing; one officer after another

who had been with us on some special service was being withdrawn.

And suddenly my own summons came. Over thousands of miles of sea-bed it

found me at a spot where the telegraph instruments never spoke before,

and may never speak again until the end of Time. We were encamped

fifteen miles from Lichtenburg, in a place made green by a clear and

brimming river. I had wished to send a telegram, and the obliging

orderly had undertaken to tap the temporary wire and "call up"

Lichtenburg. So the instruments were connected in the green field, and

soon the voice of the man at Lichtenburg was heard. The first thing he

did was to ask if anyone of my name was with the column, and when he

found I was there he said there was a cable for me. He read it to me

over the wire, with the result that I did not send my telegram. And

presently the voice ceased, the wire was disconnected, and (although I

had been hoping that the message would come) I went about like one under

sentence of death.

We came on into Lichtenburg the next day, once more passing the Irish

Brigade with its childish pipes. General Hunter's division was now

complete, and I had not seen so great an encampment of tents since

leaving Lord Methuen at Boshof. They surrounded the pretty town--long

lanes arched by great willows trembling over streams such as run clearly

through the streets of all South African villages. On the next day

Mahon's column, proceeding in advance of the Division, was to set out

towards Rustenburg, while I rode forty miles westward into Mafeking.

The day at Lichtenburg was very busy, occupied by those miserable duties

that affront the softer feelings. To dismantle and sell the moving home

that, as though by a miracle, has been nightly disposed through hundreds

of miles of road travel, and to part from horses that have served you

well and shared your dangers, if not your alarms, is to suffer a new and

painful damage to the affections. It was here, also, that I had to say

good-bye to Major Pollock, with whom I had been living for the last five

months. Some correspondents live always alone, and some like to join

with several of their fellows in a large mess; but I think that our

arrangement (when one is so fortunate in one's companion as I was) is by

far the best. Of course the newspaper correspondent has to remember that

he is the rival and not the ally of all his fellows; but in the South

African war there were many occasions when two correspondents might work

together to the advantage of both newspapers, and there were few

occasions when a correspondent could obtain any advantage or information

which was not shared by all the rest. At such times, of course, when

they did arise, we used to become very silent as to our immediate

intentions, and the subject which was uppermost in both our minds was

shunned. But so long as my companion was with me I never lacked a home

on the veldt.

The happiest endings and the lightest farewells are indeed serious; they

punctuate life, and set a period upon chapters that may not be revised.

Out of the dust of preparation rose once more the pillar of cloud that

had hovered over the column for hundreds of dusty miles; and soon to an

accompaniment of stamping feet and jingling harness it moved on, leaving

me behind as it had left so many others--not all to go home, but some to

sleep beneath the roadside bushes. General Mahon waited, chatting, until

the last waggon had passed, and then he also, who had been the

pleasantest of companions as well as the most respected of commanding

officers, rode away with that stiffening of the back with which your

true soldier ever turns from private to public affairs. I looked after

the vanishing column, and felt as though every prop of existence had

been knocked from under me. I had been one amongst a thousand, a mere

molecule in a large mass, moved hither and thither without reference to

my desires or efforts; and I resented the restoration of independence.

Strange contradiction! We crave and struggle for individuality; here was

mine restored to me, and I looked at it askance. The tail of the column

disappeared round a bend in the road. Was this indeed the end of the

chapter?

Not quite the end. As I set out on the westward road I met a

half-battalion of the Scots Fusiliers returning to camp from exercise,

marching at ease. Each company was headed by a piper who swung and

swaggered, blowing deep into the lungs of his instrument. As one company

passed, the measured bleat and squeal of the pipes faded and merged into

a sound heralding the approach of another. The gorgeous uniforms were

absent; but even the shabby khaki, stained with the soil of long marches

and hard fights, could not obliterate that perfect harmony of movement

which marks the first-class regiment.

I stood to watch them go by. The last company approached; the piper, his

head thrown back, so deeply drunk of sound that his soul seemed to float

on the steady hum of the chanter, set the rhythm to ranks of men

stepping out to the inspiring discord. I turned my horse's head; before

me the road stretched long and lonely; behind was the bustle and stir of

the camp. A file of officers marching behind the column hailed me with

envious congratulation when they heard where I was going. But they did

not know that, just for one moment, I would have given the world to turn

and follow the piper.

PLYMOUTH

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON

PRINTERS