The Relief of Mafeking Part 5

"Don't know that there is, sir," he said, "but then I don't know that there isn't, and that's good enough for me. If there _is_ anyone in that garden"--and he pointed to the patch of trees--"you bet they won't send out a flag of truce asking you to get out of the way before they shoot. We've been sent to round up cattle out of that there garden, but I believe the cattle are all a blind. Anyway, I'm not going near it till I'm sure of it. I believe it's a trap."

They must have been watching us from the garden with their eyes on the sights of their rifles, for no sooner had we turned our horses' heads than _bang, bang, bang, bang--phtt, phtt, phtt, phtt_! We doubled ourselves on our saddles and our horses stretched along the road, while for perhaps thirty seconds our ears twitched to a hail of bullets that lasted until we were out of range. While we were still racing my pony, which was last, suddenly jumped into the air and shot past the big cavalry horse, laying herself flat on the ground like a hare; and it was not until she had carried me far out of range that I found the warm blood from a bullet wound running down her leg. I had no further interest that day but to have her attended to. At any rate, I think the shot which was fired at her was one of the last fired in the battle of Dreifontein.

The battle was fought on Sat.u.r.day, March 10th. On Sunday morning we found that the Boers had melted away from before us, and the army marched on twelve miles to Aasvogel's Kop. On Monday the main body was at Venters Vlei; and at four o'clock that afternoon General French, after an artillery engagement, occupied a few hills commanding Bloemfontein, and sent in an ultimatum requiring the surrender of the town within twenty-four hours.

Early on Tuesday morning Mr. Gwynne (Reuter's correspondent), Mr.

Oppenheim, of the _Daily News_, and another correspondent, rode into Bloemfontein and found that President Steyn had departed during the night, that the Boer forces had retired from the immediate neighbourhood of the town, and that the people were willing to surrender. They rode back to Lord Roberts (who was by this time well under weigh with his column), escorting the Landdrost in his Cape cart. The Field Marshal was, I believe, sitting on a low hill having breakfast with his staff when the keys were delivered up to him. This formality was conducted with the utmost courtesy and good-humour, and when it was over the march was resumed. Lord Roberts rode on and joined the cavalry, and a procession was formed about three miles out of the town, Lord Roberts at the head of the cavalry brigade which preceded the army. I shall never forget that ride down the sloping country into Bloemfontein; the little white-haired man sitting his horse like a rock, leading; then the personal staff; then the general staff; then the foreign attaches; then the correspondents; then the cavalry staff; then the cavalry; then the main body of the army--artillery, infantry, engineers, commissariat, and baggage.

As we came into the first street of the town it was apparent that the day was regarded as a festival. One could hardly imagine a stranger reception of an invader. Flags flew at every window, and the people were all decked out as though for a holiday. Half-way towards the Presidency there was a little diversion. Some Kaffirs, thinking that this was a good opportunity of paying off old scores, had begun to loot and pillage a large building like a school-house, which belonged to the Free State Government. As we swung round the corner of the street they were in the act of bundling out mattresses, bedsteads, linen, chairs, desks, and tables, and carrying them off. A few dozen Lancers were let loose amongst them; they dropped their booty and fled, only to be driven back at the point of a lance and made to replace the stolen property. Then the march was resumed until the procession drew up in front of the Presidency. The Federal flag had been struck some time before, and the flagstaff now stood gaunt and undecorated. There was a pause of about ten minutes while Lord Roberts went in and transacted some necessary formalities; then the little silk Union Jack, made by Lady Roberts, was run up to the truck amid a great sound of cheering. The singing of the National Anthem ended the ceremony. The town seemed altogether English--English shops, English manners, the English language, and English faces. All that day enthusiasm bubbled in the town like water boiling in a pot; all day the troops continued to march in; shabby and dusty and dirty and tired, they were nevertheless all stamped with some nameless quality which they had not when they left England. All day the population of Bloemfontein eddied through the streets like a crowd at a fair; all day the sounds of rejoicing continued, and far into the night the streets resounded to the cries of people who made merry.

XII

RETRACING THE STEPS OF THE ARMY

With its independence, handed over amid the imposing circ.u.mstance of arms, Bloemfontein lost something of its charm. The noise and dust and commotion of the army did violence to its pastoral quietness, and the pretty shops put up their shutters at midday as though in maidenly horror at the eagerness of crowds of soldiers running amuck like children with their Sat.u.r.day pennies. I entered the town early enough to see what its normal condition must be, and there was something rude and unkind in the din of the mult.i.tude breaking on this quiet place where the bees sang loud in the streets, and the midday idler slumbered upon the doorstep.

To be sure, one had opportunity for studying the soldier in a new setting, but the study is one that requires time; the average Tommy is an oyster to strangers. He varies to the tune and colour of his surroundings; on the veldt, where hardness is to be endured, he is the "good soldier," the patient, strong man; under fire he is a fierce creature, still obedient to his habit of discipline, but hot for combat; in the town, with money in his pocket, he is a little child. Indeed, after weeks of absence from places where money is of value we all share in this rejuvenation, and if you had been in Bloemfontein on any one of these fine days you would have seen men of every age and rank, from generals to trumpeters, wandering about the streets, agape at the shop windows, c.h.i.n.king their money in their pockets, and buying things for which they had no kind of use.

The British officer afield is a very different creature from the gilded ornament of an English mess. His face is scorched and peeled, he is generally (unless he be a staff officer) very ill-clad; he has a ragged beard; he esteems golden syrup the greatest luxury on earth; he ceases to be ashamed of originality in thought or expression; he altogether fails to disguise what a good fellow he is. But in a very short time the neighbourhood of a club, the possibility of a bath, the presence of barbers and tailors, by a mysterious and marvellous working, reverse his development, and the little graces which endear him to society at home begin to reappear. So long as the sole of his boot was tied to the uppers by a piece of string, he could not look you in the face with any pretending; but when the cobbler has done his office, and the tailor has sewn up the rent breeches, the spell is broken.

We "occupied" Bloemfontein so completely that, after the first few days, I was glad to take the road again. We occupied the club, we occupied the shops and hotels, we occupied even the homes of the simple townspeople; and we occupied the streets, so that all day the town resounded to the din of tramping feet. When one has slept for a month under the stars, sheets and a roof are stifling; so as the railway was not yet open, Major Pollock (of _The Times_) and I decided to go to Kimberley by road, a.s.sured that the moral effect of the proclamation would keep us out of danger from the Queen's enemies.

Our little caravan set forth by moonlight, taking the road travelled by the left-hand column of the three parallel columns that had advanced on Bloemfontein, and somewhat to the north of that taken by Lord Roberts and the central column, with which we had gone in. The journey itself was uneventful enough, full of the little interests and anxieties and pleasures of the road, full of joy for the travellers, but without serious interest to anyone else. There was just enough risk of encountering a commando to give the necessary spice of adventure; two despatch-riders--not mine, by the good fortune of half a mile--had been captured the day before, and we kept a bright look-out. But by the time we came across them the commandos were forlornly[2] dispersing. For the rest, there was the unending charm of the climate and the place; the gorgeous evenings, when sunset and moonrise encircled the horizon in a flame of gold and silver; the spring-cold mornings, with the veldt glowing from violet to purple and crimson; the noonday rest in some deserted farm garden; the bed at nightfall, with the sound of horses munching their corn for a lullaby--all the circ.u.mstances of simple travel accomplished by the means that nature has provided. After having been for so long in the company of 30,000 men we found the loneliness and quietness refres.h.i.+ng, and we pa.s.sed almost unnoticed through the birds and beasts and flowers. We swam once more in the muddy Modder, now quite an old friend. The track of the army was marked for us in two ways--one ludicrous, the other tragic; both unmistakable. For all along the way bright tin biscuit canisters of the Army Service Corps shone like diamonds in the sun; and all along the way, at intervals, tired and sick old cavalry horses stood by the roadside, each surrounded by a crowd of foul aasvogels, the vultures of South Africa, waiting.

[Footnote 2: For the time being.]

The chief party of Boers which we encountered was at Abraham's Kraal.

While we were breakfasting about two dozen of them cantered up, of whom about six were armed. If I had qualms, I hope I did not show them when I said "Good-morning." I fell into conversation with one of the Boers, and mentioned incidentally that, from their point of view, the game was up, and that I supposed he knew that anyone who interfered with peaceful Englishmen would be hanged. He was a sulky fellow, but he took my word for it, and presently we began to talk. These Boers were in low spirits about the war, and spoke of it without enthusiasm or hope. Most of them were Transvaalers, and two spoke with an unmistakable Glasgow accent, but on the whole they were gruff and uncommunicative, and, as they cast envious eyes from their own sorry nags to our well-conditioned mounts, I was glad to wish them good-day. They had come to bury the dead from the Dreifontein fight, and from what they told me of the still unburied Boers both there and at Paardeberg, I gathered that their casualties all along the line had been heavier than we had thought.

I have said that the neighbourhood of the Boers made our journey exciting, and there was one point at which the excitement became very nearly painful. We had made a long stage one day, and at about sundown arrived at the Modder, which we intended to cross at a drift near Koodoesrand. This was the dangerous neighbourhood, and we were anxious to push on and cross the river before encamping for the night. The banks of the Modder at this drift are about forty feet high and almost precipitous, the path down to the drift being little better than a track worn at a long diagonal down the bank. It was steep enough going down, but when we had crossed the shallow river and begun the ascent of the other bank we found the track very soft and almost perpendicular. By fetching a compa.s.s and putting the horses to it at a great pace the two Cape carts managed to reach the top, but a four-wheeled American waggon stuck fast at the bottom and could not be moved. At that moment the last of the daylight ebbed, and darkness began to quench the sunset embers.

We tried unhitching the teams from the Cape carts and hitching them to the waggon, but we only succeeded in breaking harness. It was after the second attempt, when we were all standing hot and angry after our unavailing exertion of whip-cracking and shouting, that we suddenly saw a light s.h.i.+ne out from the edge of a low kopje about two miles in front of us. One of us lost his head, and by speaking his fears communicated the malady.

"There are the Boers," he said, "and if they haven't heard us yelling they must have seen the light from our lanterns. The sooner we get out of this the better."

There was nothing for it but to unload the waggon and carry the contents up by hand, and this we did in an agony of excitement, staggering and sweating up the steep path with portmanteaus, beds, valises, cases of tinned provisions, kettles, bottles, saucepans, bags of harness, oats, and guns. The empty waggon was easily drawn up to the top, and then we must reload it again with a burden which seemed to have swollen enormously since it was unpacked. We were working so frantically that we had not even time to look at the kopje, but when at length I glanced at it I saw that a strange thing had happened.

The light was now suspended about thirty feet above the hill.

Had they a balloon? Major Pollock and I gazed blankly for more than a minute at that mysterious s.h.i.+ning, which seemed to rise higher and higher. More than a minute: just so long did it take us to remember that Orion rises low in the west!

Now for what will remain with me as the crowning impression of this journey. The road we took led through a fairly fertile country, and that in the Free State means that there generally was gra.s.s instead of karoo.

There were many farms; we probably pa.s.sed twenty in the course of ninety miles. Each of those farms I visited, and at each stood aghast at the ruin that had been wrought. Signs of looting one expected--the looting of food-stuffs and livestock and necessaries; that, after all, is but a kind of self-defence, and I suppose it is allowable to live upon an enemy when one invades his land. But the destruction that had here taken place was wanton and savage. One seemed to travel in the footsteps of some fiend who had left his mark upon every home, destroying the things that were probably most prized by the owners, and destroying with a devilish ingenuity that had saved him all unnecessary labour. For example, in one little farmhouse I found a flimsy, showy, London bedroom suite that was clearly the pride of the establishment, with its wardrobe and full-length mirror. The destroyer had smashed just what could not be mended--the mirror and the marble top of the washstand. In another cottage I found an old clock that had ticked, most likely, for years on end in the quietness of the little home; its hands were torn off, and its works strewn upon the floor. In every house the little bits of rubbish that adorn the homes of the poor were destroyed or disfigured; in all were the same signs of violation, the same marks of the beast.

It has always seemed to me that a little farm in a lonely country contains more than anything else the atmosphere of a home. It is self-centred; there you see all the little s.h.i.+fts and contrivances which result from the forced supplying of wants that cannot be satisfied from outside. And when such a homestead is deserted, I think the atmosphere is only the more p.r.o.nounced; the disused implements find voices in the silence and cry aloud for their absent owners. But when all that is personal and human in such a place is ruined, the pathos turns to tragedy. One farm I found absolutely gutted save for a great and old Bible which stood upon a table in the largest room. It was a beautiful folio, full of quaint plates and fine old printing, and bound in a rich leather that time and the sun had tanned to an autumn gold. While I was regarding it the breeze came through the window and stirred the yellow leaves, exposing a pencil-marked verse in the most pastoral of psalms: "_Hy doert my nederliggen in grasige wenden; Hy doert my sachtkens aen seer stille wateren._" There was something impressive in the accident: the old book stoutly reminding the chance pa.s.ser-by that present evil cannot affect the ultimate good, promising amid rude circ.u.mstances a time of quietness. He was an old man who owned that book; his name and age were marked upon the leaf; I think, to judge by the signs of handling, that he had the heart of its contents; and I hope that whatever his bodily circ.u.mstances, his soul retained some of the peace of the "_grasige wenden_."

Who is responsible for all this mischief it is hard to say. I am sure that the English soldiers, thoughtless though they may be, would not stoop to this sort of purposeless outrage. I do not like to accuse the colonial troops as a whole either, although I suspect that some of them, some whose own homes had been destroyed by the enemy, might conceivably have taken vengeance in kind. It is thought by many whose opinion is valuable that the Kaffirs were here, as in Natal, responsible for much of the damage; and that is a view which one would willingly take, for it would acquit English-speaking troops of a miserable suspicion. Perhaps the thing is well-nigh inevitable, for I know what pains Lord Roberts took to prevent it; and it may be as well that we should recognise it as one of the realities of war. For myself, the horrors of actual fighting did not touch me half so nearly; I have seen men killed close to me and been less shocked than I was by these domestic outrages. To die, for the one who dies, is nothing; it affects him not at all; he is absent. But here was not death, but outrage on the foundations of civilised life; outrage upon living people, who suffer and remember.

PART IV

AN EXPEDITION WITH LORD METHUEN

XIII

IN THE FIELD AGAIN

After all, we need not have made so much haste to leave Bloemfontein. We had been told there that a column would start for the relief of Mafeking on March 20th, but when we arrived at Kimberley on the 18th we found that no movement was to take place for several days. The date was constantly s.h.i.+fted farther into the future, and the days of waiting had grown into weeks before an order came that Lord Methuen with his force of about 10,000 men was to march on Boshof. As far as information went we lived from hand to mouth; all the orders came from Bloemfontein, and they seldom provided for more than a day at a time. It was not unnatural, therefore, that when an order to move did at last come we built upon it all kinds of extravagant expectations, and it was a cheerful army that left Kimberley on April 2nd and took the road for Boshof.

After many days of inaction it was indeed good to recommence a moving life among oxen and waggons and guns and soldiers. Kimberley was all very well as a spectacle immediately after the siege; everyone flocked to see the holes in the houses and the ruined buildings. It was all very well (so, at any rate, we persuaded ourselves) to live in a club and to dine again amid damask and flowers and cut gla.s.s after the rude life of the fields; but even this was a novelty only for a day, and one soon became impatient of the poor s.h.i.+ft at living which dwellers in towns are forced to make. I think I never saw a town so lost and drowned beneath the wave of money-getting as Kimberley; even its recent privations were turned to a nimble account, and 6-inch sh.e.l.ls were selling at 10 apiece before I left. The people who fled most readily from the projectiles were of course the most eager to buy them--so highly do we esteem the instruments which make us seem heroes to ourselves. For the moment Kimberley transferred its attentions commercially from diamonds to sh.e.l.ls: a less romantic and (if you will believe it) a more sordid industry; for there were already more storied and pedigreed sh.e.l.ls in private collections and for sale in Kimberley than ever fell into the town.

Boshof, at any rate, provided a welcome change from all this. It is a pretty little town of greensward streets and clear brooks; of white cottages embowered in trees; of rose-gardens and orchards; rather like a remote country town in Ireland--poor and pretty and sleepy. There were few able-bodied men left in it, and aged people looked doubtfully out from their fuchsia-covered doors upon the ranks and regiments of foreign soldiers who came clattering through the streets on some of those hot April afternoons. We were to advance, it was now thought, on the 6th; in what direction we did not know certainly, but we suspected that it would be along the Hoopstad Road. The arguments and speculations with which we occupied ourselves need not be recorded now, but it was at once our hope and fear that we should advance along the north bank of the Vaal. Hope, because there was work to be done there; fear, lest our smaller force should be absorbed by Lord Roberts's larger army and become merely its left flank. Events showed that we might have spared ourselves both hopes and fears, but fortunately we were ignorant, and so found occupation for many an hour that had otherwise been empty.

An interval of inaction in the midst of a war is tedious in some ways, but it is at least of benefit to a mere onlooker, who is thus enabled to disengage himself from the whirl of operations and to discover the results of his unwonted occupation. After having lived amongst soldiers--in some ways and in spite of their profession the most human and civilised of men--it had come upon me as a shock to find in Kimberley the same bloodthirstiness that had distinguished the more thoughtless section of the public at home. Cruel shouting for blood by people who never see it; the iteration of that most illogical demand, a life for a life--and, if possible, two lives for a life; the loud, hectoring, frothy argument that lashes itself into a fury with strong and abusive language--they all came like a clap of thunder after what I am bound to call in comparison the quiet decency of the battlefield.

This is a grave thing to say, but it would be unfair to disguise so clear an impression as this that I received, who went to South Africa with so little political bias that eager partisans of neither colour in Cape Town would own me. To appear lukewarm amongst people who are red-hot is not always pleasant, but it has its compensations; one has at least a foothold--inglorious, perhaps, but safe and desirable in a dizzy world.

It was impossible to be in Kimberley and not to become involved in the endless political discussions of clubs and dinner tables. I used to try very hard to discover what it was that made the average Briton living in South Africa hate the Boers so bitterly. The Colonial despises the Boer, but one does not hate a man only because one despises him. Jealousy is the best blend with contempt, and there is no doubt that the Boer's not unnatural desire to be paramount in his own land was what English colonists with whom I talked chiefly resented. We might talk for an hour or for a day--the same old grievances always came round: the inferior political position of the Uitlanders, the primitive, not to say dirty and slovenly, habits of many Boer farmers, and their lack of energy.

These are the grievances of the man in the street, and they appear grave enough--when once one has invested oneself with the right of censors.h.i.+p.

Then the rebels--wretched, unsuccessful farmers, who found themselves misled and their ideas of duty confounded--these were the chief objects of the l.u.s.t for revenge. A rebel, as a man who has tried unsuccessfully to overthrow by force the Government to which he owes allegiance, must expect to suffer; but even in the case of these miserable creatures there is surely a scale of responsibility to be observed and a measure of justice to be meted. If Kimberley or Cape Town had ruled the matter by their ma.s.s meetings nearly every rebel would have been hanged--a very poor way, one would think, of making loyal subjects. But the reasons that were urged in support of such drastic punishment were astonis.h.i.+ngly frank: "It doesn't pay to be loyal," one was told; "we might as well have been rebels." Not a very lofty form of patriotism.

One came to shrink from using that grand word, so plausible a cloak did it become for much that is mean and degrading. For example, when I was riding from Bloemfontein to Kimberley I and my companion descried a farmhouse two miles in front of us near Koodoesrand Drift; when we had come within about a mile of it a little travesty of a Union Jack was run up on a stick, and when we rode up to the door a farmer came out, smiling, rubbing his hands, sn.i.g.g.e.ring--in a word, truckling. His talk was like the political swagger of the music-hall or the butler's pantry.

"I'm John Bull to the core--eh? No d.a.m.ned Boers for me--eh? Ha, ha, wipe 'em out, gentlemen, wipe 'em out: old England's all right as long as we've got gentlemen like you to defend us--eh?" (He took us for officers.) "John Bull for ever--eh?"

And while he spoke someone inside the house played "G.o.d Save the Queen"

with one finger (incorrectly) on a harmonium. The incident had a more unpleasant flavour than I can well convey; we went away feeling ashamed.

All this belongs to the dark side of the campaign; fortunately there was another, how bright I cannot say, that went far to make one forget the rest. For the soldier the whole moral question had been decided; his duty was so clear that he never needed to hesitate. And his blood would have been sluggish indeed who must not have been stirred to the heart by these inspiring circ.u.mstances: whether in camp, where the population of a town was housed and fed in an hour, every man charged with some duty for the common benefit, the whole a pattern of social administration; or on the march, with the scouts and patrols opening and spreading in advance and covering every patch of ground for miles round, the sweep and imposing measure of the marching troops, the miles of supply and baggage waggons, each in its appointed place; or on the battlefield, where troops were handled and manoeuvred as on a chessboard, where men went to death with light hearts, lying for perhaps hours under fire, stealing a piece of ground here or a bit of cover there, with one eye on their officer and another on the flash before them, and perhaps a thought in the middle of it all for someone at home--there, indeed, where stern duties were faithfully fulfilled was set a great example.

Fortunately for some of us at home the men who direct and conduct our battles are magnanimous, and one had the gratification of seeing, even upon occasions so savage, little acts of courtesy and humanity rendered on both sides that went far to take the sting out of a defeat.

And let there be no mistake about the Boers as soldiers. In spite of the far too numerous abuses of the rules of civilised warfare by detached and independent combatants--abuses, it should be remembered, that have occurred and will occur in every war and in the ranks of every army --our officers and men have a genuine respect and admiration for their enemy. No one looked upon death at their hands as anything but honourable. And as one's admiration and sympathy were stirred for one's own fellow-countrymen, who so unflinchingly performed their duties, could one withhold it from that other army five miles away across the plain--citizen soldiers fighting for their country and their homes? For the soldier politics do not exist; he fights and dies for an idea. This is mere sentiment, you may say, instead of fact about arms and battles; yet the hardest fact that rings beneath your stamp is no more real than poor, flimsy sentiment, which is a living force in the world, and will remain to be reckoned with when pom-poms and Creusots are rusting in archaeological museums--monuments only to the mechanical and political clumsiness of the nineteenth century.

XIV

THE CAPTURE OF BOERS AT TWEEFONTEIN