Perils in the Transvaal and Zululand Part 36

"It seems so to me, certainly," replied Hardy; "but very likely there are reasons for it, of which I know nothing. Well, anyhow, I had better carry President Brandt's letter to Praetorius. It is only carrying out my orders, and cannot do any harm."

"Not to any one but yourself, Hardy," said Margetts; "but I am not sure it would be safe for you to put yourself in the way of these Boers. The leaders among them seem to behave well enough, but many of the subordinate officers, if one may call them so, are rude and brutal, and might shoot any Englishman who approached them, without inquiry and without listening to any representations."

"You are right, Redgy, I am afraid," said Rivers. "I think Hardy had, at all events, better go with us to d.y.k.eman's Hollow and consult Mr Mansen. He might go with him to Praetorius, and he is so well known to the Boers--indeed, he is one of them himself--that there could be no danger in his company."

"Are the Mansens at d.y.k.eman's Hollow?" asked Hardy.

"Yes, they are Mr Rogers' guests; but they are nearer to us than that.

They are up on the Kop yonder, though the trees hide them from our sight. Leave your horse here in Redgy's keeping, and I will go with you up to the Kop."

Hardy accordingly dismounted, and he and George were just commencing the ascent, when three or four men, whose uniform showed that they belonged to the 58th Regiment, came running down one of the narrow pa.s.ses at the utmost of their speed, close to the spot where the three friends were standing. They had evidently just escaped from some great danger.

Their trousers were covered with mud, so that the regimental stripe could hardly be distinguished; their jackets were cut and stained with blood; two of them had lost their caps, and all had thrown away their arms, which would have impeded their flight. As they reached the corner of the road, they came in sight of George and Hardy, and would have turned another way, if the last-named had not called to them.

"Hallo, my lads!" he shouted; "what has happened, and where are you running to?"

Hearing themselves addressed in English, the fugitives stopped, and one of them, a corporal from his dress, answered,--

"There has been a brush with the enemy at Laing's Nek, if you know where that is."

"I know it well enough," returned Hardy; "it is a narrow defile, filled with rocky boulders--just the sort of place where these Dutchmen would take up a position, quite out of sight, and shoot down our soldiers at their leisure. You don't mean to say, I suppose, that you attacked the Boers there?"

"Yes, we did, sir," answered the corporal, "and to our cost. Half our men were killed or wounded in no time, and we couldn't see a single Dutchman to fire at in return. The rest contrived to retreat to the camp, or there wouldn't have been a man left alive. We were cut off by a party of mounted Boers, and offered to surrender to them. But they paid no heed, and fired on us, killing all but two or three. They are after us still, I expect. They couldn't follow us on horseback up the mountain paths, but they are riding round, I believe, by another road.

Can you shelter as?"

"I suppose in strictness we oughtn't to," said Margetts. "But we can't see our countrymen shot down in cold blood; I'd rather take the chance of being shot myself. Come along with me, my lads; you can hide in the caves under Kolman's Kop. The Boers, unless they come from this neighbourhood, won't know anything about them; and they will hardly venture in there after you, if they do. Only we must make all possible haste."

He mounted Hardy's horse and rode off at a trot, the men following him as well as they were able.

Rivers and Hardy watched them as they hurried along under the side of a steep cliff, and then turned into a narrow defile.

"He is right, I suppose," said George; "we are bound not to interfere; but if the laws of civilised warfare are set aside, as it seems they are by these Boers, they cannot expect us to observe them so rigidly as giving these poor fellows up to be shot would amount to. Don't you think so?"

"We have only their word that the Boers would give no quarter," said Hardy, "and it may be that they didn't understand what our fellows said.

Still, I can't blame Margetts, if that is what you mean. But we had better make our way to d.y.k.eman's Hollow, hadn't we? I suppose your friends will have gone home by this time."

"All right!" said Rivers; "come this way."

They began climbing the steep path, and were nearly half-way up when they heard voices calling to them, and looking down saw a party of mounted Boers, who were levelling their rifles at them and shouting to them to descend.

"What do you want with us?" called out Hardy in Dutch. "We are not soldiers, and have nothing to do with this war!"

"You are English--I can tell that by your speech," answered the man who had hailed them. "I want to ask some questions of you, to which I mean to have an answer. You had better come down at once, or we will send some bullets to fetch you."

This was evidently no idle threat Half a dozen Boers had already taken their aim, and the path at the point at which the Englishmen had been stopped was without shelter of any kind. There was no help for it.

They had to retrace their steps, and presently found themselves face to face with the leader of the Boers, who proved to be no other than Rivers' old acquaintance, Rudolf Kransberg.

"Ha! it is you, Mynheer Rivers?" he remarked with a scowl. "You are an English soldier, I think, though your companion said you were not."

"I _was_ an English soldier in the Zulu war," returned George; "but I left the army at its conclusion, and am now a clergyman of the Church of England."

"I don't care for that. I want to know whether you have seen some runaways from the battle that has been fought at Laing's Nek. We are in pursuit of them, and they must, I think, have pa.s.sed this way."

"We have told you that we are not belligerents," replied George; "you have no right to question us."

"Ha! I see you will not answer, because you have seen your countrymen, and know where they are. As to having no right, we will see about that.

We are at war with the English, and the English are our enemies, though they may choose to say they are not. I shall make you my prisoner. And this person," he continued, turning to Hardy, "who is he?"

"I am an Englishman, like Mr Rivers," answered Hardy; "like him, too, not a belligerent. Your President, Mynheer Praetorius, would not, I am sure, approve your proceedings."

"You think so, hey? Well, you may see him at Laing's Nek, and find out how much respect he will have for your rights?"

"We are quite willing to be taken before him," said Hardy. "We will accompany you to the camp, and answer, without objection, any questions he may put to us."

Rudolf appeared to be somewhat puzzled by this suggestion, but saw no reason why he should not agree to it. Indeed, it had already occurred to him that George Rivers was the stepson of Ludwig Mansen, a man well known to, and respected by, the Boer leaders. Any violence used towards a near relative of his would probably be condemned by his superiors.

And he further reflected that he had no kind of evidence that these two Englishmen had really encountered the soldiers, or knew where they were.

It was also evidently no use to attempt any further pursuit of the runaways, every trace of whom had disappeared.

"Very well," he said, after a few minutes of silence, "you shall go with us to Laing's Nek, and if the President is still there, and chooses to see you, he will do so. You can ride on the saddles of two of the men, but, I warn you, you will be shot without mercy if you make the slightest attempt to escape."

They mounted accordingly, and the party rode off. George, who understood Hardy's manoeuvre, by which he would get access to Praetorius without attracting general attention, which it was his special object to avoid, made no demur to the arrangement. He further reflected that, as soon as he reached the Boer camp, he could ask for an interview with Vander Heyden, who would, no doubt, at once set him at liberty and grant him an escort to d.y.k.eman's Hollow. Nothing worse, therefore, was likely to happen to either of them than a ride to the Dutch camp and a few hours of detention there; and to this he was so far from objecting, that he was particularly anxious to learn from an authentic source what had really taken place and was likely to ensue.

They rode in profound silence, the Boers being habitually taciturn, and George and Hardy anxious under present circ.u.mstances to say as little as possible. Presently the narrow defile running between lofty rocks and along the margin of mountain streams was pa.s.sed, and they entered the broken and wild country which extends between Newcastle and the border of the Transvaal. After an hour's ride, which would have been protracted to twice that length but for the Boers' knowledge of the ground, they reached the camp, where some five or six thousand men had established themselves. George was at once struck with the difference between it and the camps to which he had been accustomed. There was an utter absence of the military discipline to which he had been used. It bore more the appearance of a great camp meeting, at which every person provided for his own lodging and maintenance; and yet there was a readiness to carry out the orders of the general officers in command, which seemed to take the place of the regular routine of a camp. As they rode over the ground where the battle had been fought that morning, they pa.s.sed numbers of men employed in the melancholy duties which follow only too surely on an armed encounter. Wounded men were being conveyed on stretchers to the farmhouses and inns, which had been turned into temporary hospitals; others, whose injuries were too severe to permit of removal, were being ministered to on the ground as well as circ.u.mstances allowed; while several parties were engaged in digging graves to receive the dead bodies which lay scattered in all directions.

One of these companies was working under the direction of Henryk Vander Heyden; and the latter no sooner perceived the two Englishmen than he rode up to them, and, after a friendly salutation, inquired what had brought them to Laing's Nek.

"This gentleman, Mynheer Kransberg,--I am not aware of his military rank,--but he has brought us here as his prisoners," replied Rivers.

"Prisoners! You have not been--"

"We have not been interfering in military matters at all," interposed George. "We had given you our parole not to do so, and, I need not say, have not broken it. We told Mr Kransberg so."

"Then how comes this, Lieutenant Kransberg?" said Vander Heyden haughtily. "Mr Rivers holds a protection which at my instance was granted to him by the President, which exempts him from all interference on the part of the military authorities."

"He did not produce it," said Kransberg sullenly.

"He had no time to do so," interposed Hardy. "But if you would grant me one moment, Commandant Vander Heyden,--that, I believe, is your proper t.i.tle,--I will explain why the protection was not shown to Mynheer Kransberg. It was because I wished to avail myself of his escort hither. I am the bearer of a letter from Mr Brandt, the President of the Orange Free State, to your President, Mynheer Praetorius, which he was in hopes would prevent the outbreak of war. I regret to find I have arrived too late for that."

"I regret also, Mr Hardy, to say that you have. We have been attacked, and we have driven back our enemies with heavy loss. But we should have preferred to gain our object without spilling of blood."

"Just so," said Hardy; "and you would prefer to gain it now without further bloodshed?"

"Undoubtedly," a.s.sented Vander Heyden.

"Then will you obtain me an audience with the President, at which I can still present this letter? If the terms it proposes should be acceptable to him, an armistice may be agreed on, and the question of a settlement between the English Government and that of the Transvaal may be discussed."

"I would take you to him this instant," returned the Dutchman, "were it in my power to do so. But he is not at present in the camp. He has to-day gone northwards on business of urgent importance, nor can I say, without inquiry, when he will return. In his absence I fear the Vice-President and the Commandant-General Joubert could not discuss-- certainly could not decide--a question of this importance. But if you will come with me, I will take you to General Joubert's quarters."

"I will go at once; but I should like to ask Rivers what he proposes to do, or rather, what you advise so far as he is concerned."

"He can, of course, return to d.y.k.eman's Hollow if he wishes it, and I will send an escort with him. But I believe they are greatly in want of clergymen to attend the sick and dying in the English camp. Perhaps, if he knew that, he would prefer going there. I need not say he will be at full liberty to do so. But we can speak to him after you have seen Mynheer Joubert. We had better lose no time in going thither."