FROM CAPETOWN TO LADYSMITH

AN UNFINISHED RECORD OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

BY

G. W. STEEVENS

AUTHOR OF 'WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM, ' 'IN INDIA, ' ETC. , ETC. 

EDITED BY VERNON BLACKBURN

_THIRD IMPRESSION_

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCC

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

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CONTENTS. 

 PAGE

I. FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE STRUGGLE. 

First impressions--Denver with a dash of Delhi--Government House--The Legislative Assembly--A wrangling debate--A demonstration ofthe unemployed--The menace of coming war 1

II. THE ARMY CORPS--HAS NOT LEFT ENGLAND!

A little patch of white tents--A dream of distance--The desert ofthe Karroo--War at last--A campaign without headquarters--Waitingfor the Army Corps 10

III. A PASTOR'S POINT OF VIEW. 

An ideal of Arcady--Rebel Burghersdorp--Its monuments--Doppertheology--An interview with one of its professors 19

IV. WILL IT BE CIVIL WAR?

On the border of the Free State--An appeal to the Colonial Boers--The beginning of warlike rumours--A commercial and social boycott--The Boer secret service--The Basutos and their mother, the Queen--Boer brutality to Kaffirs 28

V. LOYAL ALIWAL: A TRAGI-COMEDY. 

The Cape Police--A garrison of six men--Merry-go-rounds and naphthaflares--A clamant want of fifty men--Where are the troops?--"It'llbe just the same as it was in '81" 35

VI. THE BATTLE OF ELANDSLAAGTE. 

French's reconnaissance--An artillery duel--Beginning of the attack--Ridge after ridge--A crowded half-hour 43

VII. THE BIVOUAC. 

A victorious and helpless mob--A break-neck hillside--Bringing downthe wounded--A hard-worked doctor--Boer prisoners--Indian bearers--An Irish Highlander in trouble 56

VIII. THE HOME-COMING FROM DUNDEE. 

Superfluous assistance--A smiling valley--The Border Mounted Rifles--A rain-storm--A thirty-two miles' march--How the troops came intoLadysmith 66

IX. THE STORY OF NICHOLSON'S NEK. 

An attenuated mess--A regiment 220 strong--A miserable story--Thewhite flag--Boer kindness--Ashamed for England 74

X. THE GUNS AT RIETFONTEIN. 

A column on the move--The nimble guns--Garrison gunners at work--The veldt on fire--Effective shrapnel--The value of the engagement 81

XI. THE BOMBARDMENT. 

Long Tom--A family of harmless monsters--Our inferiority in guns--The sensations of a bombardment--A little custom blunts sensibility 92

XII. THE DEVIL'S TIN-TACKS. 

The excitement of a rifle fusilade--A six-hours' fight--The pickingoff of officers--A display of infernal fireworks--"God bless thePrince of Wales" 106

XIII. A DIARY OF DULNESS. 

The mythopoeic faculty--A miserable day--The voice of the pompom--Learning the Boer game--The end of Fiddling Jimmy--Melinite atclose quarters--A lake of mud 114

XIV. NEARING THE END. 

Dulness interminable--Ladysmith in 2099 A. D. --Sieges obsoletehardships--Dead to the world--The appalling features of abombardment 124

XV. IN A CONNING-TOWER. 

The self-respecting bluejacket--A German atheist--The sailors'telephone--What the naval guns meant to Ladysmith--The salt ofthe earth 134

THE LAST CHAPTER. By VERNON BLACKBURN 144

MAPS. 

 PAGE

MAP OF THE COUNTRY ROUND LADYSMITH 95

MAP ILLUSTRATING THE SEAT OF WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA _At end_

FROM CAPETOWN TO LADYSMITH

I. 

FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE STRUGGLE. 

 FIRST IMPRESSIONS--DENVER WITH A DASH OF DELHI--GOVERNMENT HOUSE--THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--A WRANGLING DEBATE--A DEMONSTRATION OF THE UNEMPLOYED--THE MENACE OF COMING WAR. 

CAPETOWN, _Oct. 10. _

This morning I awoke, and behold the _Norman_ was lying alongside awharf at Capetown. I had expected it, and yet it was a shock. In thisbreathless age ten days out of sight of land is enough to make you amerman: I looked with pleased curiosity at the grass and the horses. 

After the surprise of being ashore again, the first thing to notice wasthe air. It was as clear--but there is nothing else in existence clearenough with which to compare it. You felt that all your life hithertoyou had been breathing mud and looking out on the world through fog. This, at last, was air, was ether. 

Right in front rose three purple-brown mountains--the two supporterspeaked, and Table Mountain flat in the centre. More like a coffin than atable, sheer steep and dead flat, he was exactly as he is in pictures;and as I gazed, I saw his tablecloth of white cloud gather and hang onhis brow. 

It was enough: the white line of houses nestling hardly visible betweenhis foot and the sea must indeed be Capetown. 

Presently I came into it, and began to wonder what it looked like. Itseemed half Western American with a faint smell of India--Denver with adash of Delhi. The broad streets fronted with new-looking, ornatebuildings of irregular heights and fronts were Western America; thebattle of warming sun with the stabbing morning cold was NorthernIndia. The handsome, blood-like electric cars, with their impatientgongs and racing trolleys, were pure America (the motor-men wereactually imported from that hustling clime to run them). For Capetownitself--you saw it in a moment--does not hustle. The machinery is theWest's, the spirit is the East's or the South's. In other cities withtrolley-cars they rush; here they saunter. In other new countries theyhave no time to be polite; here they are suave and kindly and evenanxious to gossip. I am speaking, understand, on a twelve hours'acquaintance--mainly with that large section of Capetown's inhabitantsthat handled my baggage between dock and rail way-station. The niggersare very good-humoured, like the darkies of America. The Dutch tonguesounds like German spoken by people who will not take the trouble tofinish pronouncing it. 

All in all, Capetown gives you the idea of being neither very rich norvery poor, neither over-industrious nor over-lazy, decently successful, reasonably happy, whole-heartedly easy-going. 

The public buildings--what I saw of them--confirm the idea of a placidhalf-prosperity. The place is not a baby, but it has hardly taken thetrouble to grow up. It has a post-office of truly German stability andmagnitude. It has a well-organised railway station, and it has the meritof being in Adderley Street, the main thoroughfare of the city: imagineit even possible to bring Euston into the Strand, and you will get anidea of the absence of push and crush in Capetown. 

When you go on to look at Government House the place keeps itscharacter: Government House is half a country house and half a countryinn. One sentry tramps outside the door, and you pay your respects tothe Governor in shepherd's plaid. 

Over everything brooded peace, except over one flamboyant many-wingedbuilding of red brick and white stone with a garden about it, anavenue--a Capetown avenue, shady trees and cool but not large:attractive and not imposing--at one side of it, with a statue of theQueen before and broad-flagged stairs behind. It was the ParliamentHouse. The Legislative Assembly--their House of Commons--wascharacteristically small, yet characteristically roomy andcharacteristically comfortable. The members sit on flat green-leathercushions, two or three on a bench, and each man's name is above hisseat: no jostling for Capetown. The slip of Press gallery is above theSpeaker's head; the sloping uncrowded public gallery is at the otherend, private boxes on one side, big windows on the other. Altogether itlooks like a copy of the Westminster original, improved by leavingnine-tenths of the members and press and public out. 

Yet here--alas, for placid Capetown!--they were wrangling. They were wrangling about the commandeering of gold and thesjamboking--shamboking, you pronounce it--of Johannesburg refugees. There was Sir Gordon Sprigg, thrice Premier, grey-bearded, dignified, and responsible in bearing and speech, conversationally reasonable intone. There was Mr Schreiner, the Premier, almost boyish with plump, smooth cheeks and a dark moustache. He looks capable, and looks as if heknows it: he, too, is conversational, almost jerky, in speech, but witha flavour of bitterness added to his reason. 

Everything sounded quiet and calm enough for Capetown--yet plainlyfeeling was strained tight to snapping. A member rose to put a question, and prefaced it with a brief invective against all Boers and theirfriends. He would go on for about ten minutes, when suddenly angry criesof "Order!" in English and Dutch would rise. The questioner commentedwith acidity on the manners of his opponents. They appealed to thechair: the Speaker blandly pronounced that the hon. Gentleman had beenout of order from the first word he uttered. The hon. Gentleman thereonindignantly refused to put his question at all; but, being prevailed todo so, gave an opening to a Minister, who devoted ten minutes to abrief invective against all Uitlanders and their friends. Then up gotone of the other side--and so on for an hour. Most delicious of all wasa white-haired German, once colonel in the Hanoverian Legion which wassettled in the Eastern Province, and which to this day remains theloyallest of her Majesty's subjects. When the Speaker ruled against hisside he counselled defiance in a resounding whisper; when an opponentwas speaking he snorted thunderous derision; when an opponent retortedhe smiled blandly and admonished him: "Ton't lose yer demper. "

In the Assembly, if nowhere else, rumbled the menace of coming war. 

One other feature there was that was not Capetown. Along AdderleyStreet, before the steamship companies' offices, loafed a thick stringof sun-reddened, unshaven, flannel-shirted, corduroy-trousered Britishworking-men. Inside the offices they thronged the counters six deep. Down to the docks they filed steadily with bundles to be penned in theblack hulls of homeward liners. Their words were few and sullen. Thesewere the miners of the Rand--who floated no companies, held no shares, made no fortunes, who only wanted to make a hundred pounds to furnish acottage and marry a girl. 

They had been turned out of work, packed in cattle-trucks, and had comedown in sun by day and icy wind by night, empty-bellied, to pack offhome again. Faster than the ship-loads could steam out the trainloadssteamed in. They choked the lodging-houses, the bars, the streets. Capetown was one huge demonstration of the unemployed. In the hotels andstreets wandered the pale, distracted employers. They hurried hither andthither and arrived nowhither; they let their cigars go out, left theirglasses half full, broke off their talk in the middle of a word. Theyspoke now of intolerable grievance and hoarded revenge, now of silentmines, rusting machinery, stolen gold. They held their houses inJohannesburg as gone beyond the reach of insurance. They hatedCapetown, they could not tear themselves away to England, they dared notreturn to the Rand. 

This little quiet corner of Capetown held the throbbing hopes and fearsof all Johannesburg and more than half the two Republics and the mass ofall South Africa. 

None doubted--though many tried to doubt--that at last it was--war! Theypaused an instant before they said the word, and spoke it softly. It hadcome at last--the moment they had worked and waited for--and they knewnot whether to exult or to despair. 

II. 

THE ARMY CORPS--HAS NOT LEFT ENGLAND!

 A LITTLE PATCH OF WHITE TENTS--A DREAM OF DISTANCE--THE DESERT OF THE KARROO--WAR AT LAST--A CAMPAIGN WITHOUT HEADQUARTERS--WAITING FOR THE ARMY CORPS. 

STORMBERG JUNCTION. 

The wind screams down from the naked hills on to the little junctionstation. A platform with dining-room and telegraph office, a fewcorrugated iron sheds, the station-master's corrugated ironbungalow--and there is nothing else of Stormberg but veldt and, kopje, wind and sky. Only these last day's there has sprung up a little patchof white tents a quarter of a mile from the station, and about them movemen in putties and khaki. Signal flags blink from the rises, picketswith fixed bayonets dot the ridges, mounted men in couples patrol theplain and the dip and the slope. Four companies of the BerkshireRegiment and the mounted infantry section--in all they may count 400men. Fifty miles north is the Orange river, and beyond it, maybe by nowthis side of it, thousands of armed and mounted burghers--and war. 

I wonder if it is all real? By the clock I have been travellingsomething over forty hours in South Africa, but it might just as well bea minute or a lifetime. It is a minute of experience prolonged to alifetime. South Africa is a dream--one of those dreams in which you liveyears in the instant of waking--a dream of distance. 

Departing from Capetown by night, I awoke in the Karroo. Between nineand six in the morning we had made less than a hundred and eighty miles. Now we were climbing the vast desert of the Karroo, the dusty stairwaythat leads on to the highlands of South Africa. Once you have seen onedesert, all the others are like it; and yet once you have loved thedesert, each is lovable in a new way. In the Karroo you seem to begoing up a winding ascent, like the ramps that lead to an Indianfortress. You are ever pulling up an incline between hills, making for acorner round one of the ranges. You feel that when you get round thatcorner you will at last see something: you arrive and only see anotherincline, two more ranges, and another corner--surely this time withsomething to arrive at beyond. You arrive and arrive, and once more youarrive--and once more you see the same vast nothing you are coming from. Believe it or not, that is the very charm of a desert--the unfencedemptiness, the space, the freedom, the unbroken arch of the sky. It isfor ever fooling you, and yet you for ever pursue it. And then it isonly to the eye that cannot do without green that the Karroo isunbeautiful. Every other colour meets others in harmony--tawny sand, silver-grey scrub, crimson-tufted flowers like heather, black ribs ofrock, puce shoots of screes, violet mountains in the middle distance, blue fairy battlements guarding the horizon. And above all broods theintense purity of the South African azure--not a coloured thing, likethe plants and the hills, but sheer colour existing by and for itself. 

It is sheer witching desert for five hundred miles, and for aught I knowfive hundred miles after that. At the rare stations you see perhaps onecorrugated-iron store, perhaps a score of little stone houses with acouple of churches. The land carries little enough stock--here a dozengoats browsing on the withered sticks goats love, there a dozenostriches, high-stepping, supercilious heads in air, wheeling like atroop of cavalry and trotting out of the stink of that beastly train. Ofmen, nothing--only here at the bridge a couple of tents, there at theculvert a black man, grotesque in sombrero and patched trousers, loafing, hands in pockets, lazy pipe in mouth. The last man in theworld, you would have said, to suggest glorious war--yet war he meantand nothing else. On the line from Capetown--that single track throughfive hundred miles of desert--hang Kimberley and Mafeking and Rhodesia:it runs through Dutch country, and the black man was there to watch it. 

War--and war sure enough it was. A telegram at a tea-bar, a whisper, agathering rush, an electric vibration--and all the station and all thetrain and the very niggers on the dunghill outside knew it. War--war atlast! Everybody had predicted it--and now everybody gasped withamazement. One man broke off in a joke about killing Dutchmen, and couldonly say, "My God--my God--my God!"

I too was lost, and lost I remain. Where was I to go? What was I to do?My small experience has been confined to wars you could put your fingerson: for this war I have been looking long enough, and have not found it. I have been accustomed to wars with headquarters, at any rate to warswith a main body and a concerted plan: but this war in Cape Colony hasneither. 

It could not have either. If you look at the map you will see that theTransvaal and Orange Free State are all but lapped in the red ofBritish territory. That would be to our advantage were our fightingforce superior or equal or even not much inferior to that of the enemy. In a general way it is an advantage to have your frontier in the form ofa re-entrant angle; for then you can strike on your enemy's flank andthreaten his communications. That advantage the Boers possess againstNatal, and that is why Sir George White has abandoned Laing's Nek andNewcastle, and holds the line of the Biggarsberg: even so the Boersmight conceivably get between him and his base. The same advantage weshould possess on this western side of the theatre of war, except thatwe are so heavily outnumbered, and have adopted no heroic plan ofabandoning the indefensible. We have an irregular force of mountedinfantry at Mafeking, the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment at Kimberley, the Munster Fusiliers at De Aar, half the Yorkshire Light Infantry at DeAar, half the Berkshire Regiment at Naauwpoort--do not try to pronounceit--and the other half here at Stormberg. The Northumberlands--thefamous Fighting Fifth--came crawling up behind our train, and may now beat Naauwpoort or De Aar. Total: say, 4100 infantry, of whom some 600mounted; no cavalry, no field-guns. The Boer force available againstthese isolated positions might be very reasonably put at 12, 000 mountedinfantry, with perhaps a score of guns. 

Mafeking and Kimberley are fairly well garrisoned, with auxiliaryvolunteers, and may hold their own: at any rate, I have not been thereand can say nothing about them. But along the southern border of theFree State--the three railway junctions of De Aar, Naauwpoort, andStormberg--our position is very dangerous indeed. I say it freely, forby the time the admission reaches England it may be needed to explainfailure, or pleasant to add lustre to success. If the Army Corps were inAfrica, which is still in England, this position would be a splendid onefor it--three lines of supply from Capetown, Port Elizabeth, and EastLondon, and three converging lines of advance by Norval's Pont, Bethulie, and Aliwal North. But with tiny forces of half a battalion infront and no support behind--nothing but long lines of railway withungarrisoned ports hundreds of miles at the far end of them--it is verydangerous. There are at this moment no supports nearer than England. Letthe Free Staters bring down two thousand good shots and resolute mento-morrow morning--it is only fifty miles, with two lines ofrailway--and what will happen to that little patch of white tents by thestation? The loss of any one means the loss of land connection betweenWestern and Eastern Provinces, a line open into the heart of the CapeColony, and nothing to resist an invader short of the sea. 

It is dangerous--and yet nobody cares. There is nothing to do butwait--for the Army Corps that has not yet left England. Even to-day--aday's ride from the frontier--the war seems hardly real. All will bedone that man can do. In the mean time the good lady of therefreshment-room says: "Dinner? There's been twenty-one to-day anddinner got ready for fifteen; but you're welcome to it, such as it is. We must take things as they come in war-time. " Her children play withtheir cats in the passage. The railway man busies himself about the newtriangles and sidings that are to be laid down against the beginning ofDecember for the Army Corps that has not yet left England. 

III. 

A PASTOR'S POINT OF VIEW. 

 AN IDEAL OF ARCADY--REBEL BURGHERSDORP--ITS MONUMENTS--DOPPER THEOLOGY--AN INTERVIEW WITH ONE OF ITS PROFESSORS. 

BURGHERSDORP, _Oct. 14. _

The village lies compact and clean-cut, a dot in the wilderness. Nofields or orchards break the transition from man to nature; step out ofthe street and you are at once on rock-ribbed kopje or raw veldt. As youstand on one of the bare lines of hill that squeeze it into a narrowvalley, Burghersdorp is a chequer-board of white house, green tree, andgrey iron roof; beyond its edges everything is the changeless yellowbrown of South African landscape. 

Go down into the streets, and Burghersdorp is an ideal of Arcady. Thebroad, dusty, unmetalled roads are steeped in sunshine. The houses areall one-storeyed, some brick, some mud, some the eternal corrugatediron, most faced with whitewash, many fronted with shady verandahs. Asblinds against the sun they have lattices of trees down everystreet--white-blossoming laburnum, poplars, sycamores. 

Despite verandahs and trees, the sunshine soaks down into everycorner--genially, languorously warm. All Burghersdorp basks. You seehalf-a-dozen yoke of bullocks with a waggon, standing placidly in thestreet, too lazy even to swish their tails against the flies; pass by anhour later, and they are still there, and the black man lounging by theleaders has hardly shifted one leg; pass by at evening, and they havemoved on three hundred yards, and are resting again. In the daytime henspeck and cackle in every street; at nightfall the bordering veldt humswith crickets and bullfrogs. At morn come a flight of locusts--first, yellow-white scouts whirring down every street, then a peltingsnowstorm of them high up over the houses, spangling the blue heaven. But Burghersdorp cared nothing. "There is nothing for them, " said afarmer, with cosy satisfaction; "the frost killed everything last week. "

British and Dutch salute and exchange the news with lazy mutualtolerance. The British are storekeepers and men of business; the Boersride in from their farms. They are big, bearded men, loose of limb, shabbily dressed in broad-brimmed hats, corduroy trousers, and brownshoes; they sit their ponies at a rocking-chair canter erect and easy;unkempt, rough, half-savage, their tanned faces and blue eyes expresslazy good-nature, sluggish stubbornness, dormant fierceness. They askthe news in soft, lisping Dutch that might be a woman's; but the lazyimperiousness of their bearing stamps them as free men. A people hard torouse, you say--and as hard, when roused, to subdue. 

A loitering Arcady--and then you hear with astonishment thatBurghersdorp is famous throughout South Africa as a stronghold ofbitter Dutch partisanship. "Rebel Burghersdorp" they call it in theBritish centres, and Capetown turns anxious ears towards it for thefirst muttering of insurrection. What history its stagnant annals recordis purely anti-British. Its two principal monuments, after the Jubileefountain, are the tombstone of the founder of the Dopper Church--theIronsides of South Africa--and a statue with inscribed pedestal completeput up to commemorate the introduction of the Dutch tongue into the CapeParliament. Malicious comments add that Afrikander patriotism swindledthe stone-mason out of £30, and it is certain that one of the gentlemenwhose names appear thereon most prominently, now languishes in jail forfraud. Leaving that point for thought, I find that the rest ofBurghersdorp's history consists in the fact that the Afrikander Bond wasfounded here in 1881. And at this moment Burghersdorp is out-Bonding theBond: the reverend gentleman who edits its Dutch paper and dictates itsDutch policy sluices out weekly vials of wrath upon Hofmeyr andSchreiner for machinating to keep patriot Afrikanders off the oppressingBriton's throat. 

I went to see this reverend pastor, who is professor of a school ofDopper theology. He was short, but thick-set, with a short but shaggygrey beard; in deference to his calling, he wore a collar over his greyflannel shirt, but no tie. Nevertheless, he turned out a very charming, courteous old gentleman, well informed, and his political bias wasmellowed with an irresistible sense of humour. He took his own sidestrongly, and allowed that it was most proper for a Briton to be equallystrong on his own. And this is more or less what he said:--

"Information? No, I shall not give you any; you are the enemy, you see. Ha, ha! They call me rebel. But I ask you, my friend, is it natural thatI--I, Hollander born, Dutch Afrikander since '60--should be as loyal tothe British Government as a Britisher should be? No, I say; one can beloyal only to one's own country. I am law-abiding subject of the Queen, and that is all that they can ask of me. 

"How will the war go? That it is impossible, quite impossible, to say. The Boer might run away at the first shot and he might fight to thedeath. All troops are liable to panic; even regular troop; much morethan irregular. But I have been on commando many times with Boer, and Icannot think him other than brave man. Fighting is not his business; hewishes always to be back on his farm with his people; but he is braveman. 

"I look on this war as the sequel of 1881. I have told them all theseyears, it is not finish; war must come. Mr Gladstone, whom I look on asgreatest British statesman, did wrong in 1881. If he had kept promisesand given back country before the war, we would have been grateful; buthe only give it after war, and we were not grateful. And English did notfeel that they were generous, only giving independence after war, though they had a large army in Natal; they have always wished torecommence. 

"The trouble is because the Boer have never had confidence in theEnglish Government, just as you have never had confidence in us. TheBoer have no feeling about Cape Colony, but they have about Natal; theywere driven out of it, and they think it still their own country. Thenyou took the diamond-fields from the Free State. You gave the Free Stateindependence only because you did not want trouble of Basuto war; thenwe beat the Basutos--I myself was there, and it was very hard, and itlasted three years--and then you would not let us take Basutoland. Thencame annexation of the Transvaal; up to that I was strong advocate offederation, but after that I was one of founders of the Bond. After thatthe Afrikander trusted Rhodes--not I, though; I always write I distrustRhodes--and so came the Jameson raid. Now how could we have confidenceafter all this in British Government?

"I do not think Transvaal Government have been wise; I have many timestold them so. They made great mistake when they let people come in tothe mines. I told them, 'This gold will be your ruin; to remainindependent you must remain poor. ' But when that was done, what couldthey do? If they gave the franchise, then the Republic is governed bythree four men from Johannesburg, and they will govern it for their ownpocket. The Transvaal Boer would rather be British colony thanJohannesburg Republic. 

"Well, well; it is the law of South Africa that the Boer drive thenative north and the English drive the Boer north. But now the Boer cango north no more; two things stop him: the tsetse fly and the fever. Soif he must perish, it is his duty--yes, I, minister, say it is hisduty--to perish fighting. 

"But here in the Colony we have no race hatred. Not between man and man;but when many men get together there is race hatred. If we fight hereon this border it is civil war--the same Dutch and English are acrossthe Orange as here in Albert. My son is on commando in Free State; theother day he ride thirteen hours and have no food for two days. I say tohim, 'You are Free State burgher; you have the benefit of the country;your wife is Boer girl; it is your duty to fight for it. ' I amlaw-abiding British subject, but I hope my son will not be hurt. You, sir, I wish you good luck--good luck for yourself and yourcorresponding. Not for your side: that I cannot wish you. "

IV. 

WILL IT BE CIVIL WAR?[1]

 ON THE BORDER OF THE FREE STATE--AN APPEAL TO THE COLONIAL BOERS--THE BEGINNING OF WARLIKE RUMOURS--A COMMERCIAL AND SOCIAL BOYCOTT--THE BOER SECRET SERVICE--THE BASUTOS AND THEIR MOTHER, THE QUEEN--BOER BRUTALITY TO KAFFIRS. 

_Oct. 14 (9. 55 p. M. )_

The most conspicuous feature of the war on this frontier has hithertobeen its absence. 

The Free State forces about Bethulie, which is just over the Free Stateborder, and Aliwal North, which is on our side of the frontier, make nosign of an advance. The reason for this is, doubtless, that hostilitieshere would amount to civil war. There is the same mixed English andDutch population on each side of the Orange river, united by ties ofkinship and friendship. Many law-abiding Dutch burghers here have sonsand brothers who are citizens of the Free State, and therefore out withthe forces. 

In the mean time the English doctor attends patients on the other sideof the border, and Boer riflemen ride across to buy goods at the Britishstores. 

The proclamation published yesterday morning forbidding trade with theRepublics is thus difficult and impolitic to enforce hereabouts. 

Railway and postal communication is now stopped, but the last mailbrought a copy of the Bloemfontein 'Express, ' with an appeal to theColonial Boers concluding with the words:--

"We shall continue the war to the bloody end. You will assist us. OurGod, who has so often helped us, will not forsake us. "

What effect this may have is yet doubtful, but it is certain that anyrising of the Colonial Dutch would send the Colonial British into thefield in full strength. 

Burghersdorp, through which I passed yesterday, is a village of 2000inhabitants, and, as I have already put on record, the centre of themost disaffected district in the colony. If there be any Dutch rising insympathy with the Free State it will begin here. 

_Later. _

And so there's warlike news at last. 

A Boer force, reported to be 350 strong, shifted camp to-day to withinthree miles of the bridge across the Orange river. Well-informed Dutchinhabitants assert that these are to be reinforced, and will marchthrough Aliwal North to-night on their way to attack Stormberg Junction, sixty miles south. 

The bridge is defended by two Cape policemen with four others inreserve. 

The loyal inhabitants are boiling with indignation, declaring themselvessacrificed, as usual, by the dilatoriness of the Government. 

Besides the Boer force near here, there is another, reported to be 450strong, at Greatheads Drift, forty miles up the river. 

The Boers at Bethulie, in the Free State, are believed to be pulling upthe railway on their side of the frontier, and to be marching to NorvalsPont, which is the ferry over the Orange river on the way to Colesberg, with the intention of attacking Naauwpoort Junction, on theCapetown-Kimberley line; but as there are no trains now running toBethulie it is difficult to verify these reports, and, indeed, allreports must be received with caution. 

The feeling here between the English and Dutch extends to a commercialand social boycott, and is therefore far more bitter than elsewhere. Several burghers here have sent their sons over the border, and promisethat the loyal inhabitants will be "sjambokked" (you remember how topronounce it?) when the Boer force passes through. 

So far things are quiet. The broad, sunny, dusty streets, fringed withsmall trees and lined with single-storeyed houses, are dotted withstrolling inhabitants, both Dutch and natives, engrossed in theirordinary pursuits. The whole thing looks more like Arcady thanrevolution. 

The only sign of movement is that eight young Boers, theologicalstudents of the Dopper or strict Lutheran college here, left last nightfor the Free State for active service. 

The Boers across the Orange river so far make no sign of raiding. Manyhave sent their wives and families here into Aliwal North, on our sideof the border, in imitation, perhaps, of President Steyn, whose wife atthis moment is staying with her sister at King William's Town, in theCape Colony. 

Many British farmers, of whom there are a couple of hundred in thisdistrict, refuse to believe that the Free State will take the offensiveon this border, considering that such aggression would be impious, andthat the Free State will restrict itself to defending its own frontier, or the Transvaal, if invaded, in fulfilment of the terms of theoffensive and defensive alliance. 

Nevertheless there is, of course, very acute tension between the Dutchand English here. No Boers are to be seen talking to Englishmen. TheBoers are very close as to their feelings and intentions, which thosewho know them interpret as a bad sign, because, as a rule, they areinclined to irresponsible garrulity. A point in which Dutch feeling heretells is that every Dutch man, woman, or child is more or less of a Boersecret service agent, revealing our movements and concealing those ofthe Boers. 

If there be any rising it may be expected by November 9, when the Boershold their "wappenschouwing, " or rifle contest--the local Bisley, infact--which every man for miles around attends armed. Also theAfrikander Bond Congress is to be held next month; but probably theleaders will do their best to keep the people together. 

The Transvaal agents are naturally doing their utmost to provokerebellion. A lieutenant of their police is known to be hidinghereabouts, and a warrant is out for his arrest. All depends, say theexperts, on the results of the first few weeks of fighting. 

The attitude of the natives causes some uneasiness. Every Basutoemployed on the line here has returned to his tribe, one saying: "Besure we shall not harm our mother the Queen. "

Many Transkei Kaffirs also have passed through here, owing to theclosing of the mines. Sixty-six crammed truckloads of them came by onetrain. They had been treated with great brutality by the Boers, havingbeen flogged to the station and robbed of their wages. 

[Footnote 1: This chapter has been deliberately included in this volumenotwithstanding its obviously fragmentary nature. The swift picturewhich it gives of flying events is the excuse for this decision. ]

V. 

LOYAL ALIWAL: A TRAGI-COMEDY. 

 THE CAPE POLICE--A GARRISON OF SIX MEN--MERRY-GO-ROUNDS AND NAPHTHA FLARES--A CLAMANT WANT OF FIFTY MEN--WHERE ARE THE TROOPS?--"IT'LL BE JUST THE SAME AS IT WAS IN '81. "

ALIWAL NORTH, _Oct. 15. _

"Halt! Who goes there?" The trim figure, black in the moonlight, inbreeches and putties, with a broad-brimmed hat looped up at the side, brought up his carbine and barred the entrance to the bridge. Twentyyards beyond a second trim black figure with a carbine stamped to andfro over the planking. They were of the Cape Police, and there were fourmore of them somewhere in reserve; across the bridge was the Orange FreeState; behind us was the little frontier town of Aliwal North, andthese were its sole garrison. 

The river shone silver under its high banks. Beyond it, in the enemy'scountry, the veldt too was silvered over with moonlight and was blottedinkily with shadow from the kopjes. Three miles to the right, over arise and down in a dip, they said there lay the Rouxville commando of350 men. That night they were to receive 700 or 800 more fromSmithfield, and thereon would ride through Aliwal on their way to eat upthe British half-battalion at Stormberg. On our side of the bridgeslouched a score of Boers--waiting, they said, to join and conduct theirkinsmen. In the very middle of these twirled a batteredmerry-go-round--an island of garish naphtha light in the silver, a jarrof wheeze and squeak in the swishing of trees and river. Up the hill, through the town, in the bar of the ultra-English hotel, proceeded thisdialogue. 

_A fat man_ (_thunderously, nursing a Lee-Metford sporting rifle_). Well, you've yourselves to blame. I've done my best. With fifty men I'dhave held this place against a thousand Boers, and not ten men'd join. 

_A thin-faced man_ (_piping_). We haven't got the rifles. EveryDutchman's armed, and how many rifles will you find among the English?

_Fat man_ (_shooting home bolt of Lee-Metford_). And who's fault's that?I've left my property in the Free State, and odds are I shall lose everypenny I've got--what part? all over--and come here on to British soil, and what do I find? With fifty men I'd hold this place--

_Thin-faced man. _ They'll be here to-night, old De Wet says, and they'reto come here and sjambok the Englishmen who've been talking too much. That's what comes of being loyal!

_Fat man. _ Loyal! With fifty men--

_Brown-faced, grey-haired man_ (_smoking deep-bowled pipe in corner_). No, you wouldn't. 

_Fat man_ (_playing with sights of Lee-Metford_). What! Not keep thebridge with fifty men--

_Brown-faced, grey-haired man. _ And they'd cross by the old drift, andbe on every side of you in ten minutes. 

_Fat man_ (_grounding Lee-Metford_). Ah! Well--h'm!

_Thick-set man. _ But we're safe enough. Has not the Government sent us agarrison? Six policemen! Six policemen, gentlemen, and the Boers are atPieter's farrm, and they'll be here to-night and sjambok--

_Thin-faced man. _ Where are the troops? Where are the volunteers? Whereare the--

_Brown-faced, grey-haired man. _ There are no troops, and the better foryou. The strength of Aliwal is in its weakness. (_To fat man_. ) Put thatgun away. 

_Thin-faced man, thick-set man, and general chorus. _ Yes, put it away. 

_Thin-faced man. _ But I want to know why the Boers are armed and wearen't? Why does our Government--

_Brown-faced man. _ Are you accustomed to shoot?

_Thin-faced man_ (_faintly_). No. 

_Fat man_ (_returning from putting away Lee-Metford_). But where do youcome from?

_Brown-faced man. _ Free State, same as you do. Lived therefive-and-twenty years. 

_Thin-faced man. _ Any trouble in getting away?

_Brown-faced man. _ No. Field-cornet was a good old fellow and an oldfriend of mine, and he gave me the hint--

_Thin-faced man. _ Not much like ours! Why, there's a lady staying herethat's friendly with his daughters, and she went out to see them theother day, and the old man said they'd stop here and sjam--

_Fat man. _ Gentlemen, drinks all round! Here's success to the Britisharms!

_All. _ Success to the British arms!

_Thick-set man. _ And may the British Government not desert us again!

_Fat man. _ I'll take a shade of odds about it. They will. I've no trustin Chamberlain. It'll be just the same as it was in '81. A few reversesand you'll find they'll begin to talk about terms. I know them. Everyloyal man in South Africa knows them. (_General murmur of assent. _)

_Hotel-keeper. _ Gentlemen, drinks all round! Here's success to theBritish arms!

_All. _ Success to the British arms!

_Thick-set man. _ And where are the British arms? Where's the Army Corps?Has a man of that Army Corps left England? Shilly-shally, as usual. South Africa's no place for an Englishman to live in. Armoured trainblown up, Mafeking cut off, Kimberley in danger, and GeneralButler--what? Oh yes--General Buller leaves England to-day. Why didnathey send the Army Corps out three months ago?

_Brown-faced man. _ It's six thousand miles--

_Thick-set man. _ Why didna they send them just after the Bloemfonteinconference, before the Boers were ready? British Gov--

_Brown-faced man. _ They've had three rifles a man with ammunition since1896. 

_I_ (_timidly_). Well, then, if the Army Corps had left three monthsago, wouldn't the Boers have declared war three months ago too?

_All except brown-faced man_ (_loudly_). No!

_Brown-faced man_ (_quietly_). Yes. Gentlemen, bedtime! As Brand used tosay, "Al zal rijt komen!"

_All_ (_fervently_). Al zal rijt komen! Success to the British arms!Good night!

(All go to bed. In the night somebody on the Boer side--orelsewhere--goes out shooting, or looses off his rifle on generalgrounds; two loyalists and a refugee spring up and grasp theirrevolvers. In the morning everybody wakes up unsjamboked. Thehotel-keeper takes me out to numerous points whence Pieter's farm can bereconnoitred: there is not a single tent to be seen, and no sign of asingle Boer. )

It is a shame to smile at them. They are really very, very loyal, andthey are excellent fellows and most desirable colonists. Aliwal is anest of green on the yellow veldt, speckless, well-furnished, withMaréchal Niel roses growing over trellises, and a scheme to dam theOrange river for water-supply, and electric light. They were quiteunprotected, and their position was certainly humiliating. 

VI. 

THE BATTLE OF ELANDSLAAGTE. 

 FRENCH'S RECONNAISSANCE--AN ARTILLERY DUEL--BEGINNING OF THE ATTACK--RIDGE AFTER RIDGE--A CROWDED HALF-HOUR. 

LADYSMITH, _Oct. 22. _

From a billow of the rolling veldt we looked back, and black columnswere coming up behind us. 

Along the road from Ladysmith moved cavalry and guns. Along the railwayline to right of it crept trains--one, two, three of them--packed withkhaki, bristling with the rifles of infantry. We knew then that weshould fight before nightfall. 

Major-General French, who commanded, had been out from before daybreakwith the Imperial Light Horse and the battery of the Natal VolunteerArtillery reconnoitring towards Elandslaagte. The armouredtrain--slate-colour plated engine, a slate-colour plated loopholedcattle-truck before and behind, an open truck with a Maxim at the tailof all--puffed along on his right. Elandslaagte is a little village andrailway station seventeen miles north-east of Ladysmith, where two daysbefore the Boers had blown up a culvert and captured a train. That cutour direct communication with the force at Dundee. Moreover, it wasknown that the Free State commandoes were massing to the north-west ofLadysmith and the Transvaalers to attack Dundee again. On all grounds itwas desirable to smash the Elandslaagte lot while they were still weakand alone. 

The reconnaissance stole forward until it came in sight of the littleblue-roofed village and the little red tree-girt station. It wasoccupied. The Natal battery unlimbered and opened fire. A round ortwo--and then suddenly came a flash from a kopje two thousand yardsbeyond the station on the right. The Boer guns! And the next thing wasthe hissing shriek of a shell--and plump it dropped, just under one ofthe Natal limbers. By luck it did not burst; but if the Boer ammunitioncontractor was suspect, it was plain that the Boer artillerist could laya gun. Plump: plump: they came right into the battery; down went ahorse; over went an ammunition-waggon. At that range the Volunteers'little old 7-pounders were pea-shooters; you might as well have spat atthe enemy. The guns limbered up and were off. Next came the vicious_phutt!_ of a bursting shell not fifty yards from the armouredtrain--and the armoured train was puffing back for its life. Everybodywent back half-a-dozen miles on the Ladysmith road to Modder SpruitStation. 

The men on reconnaissance duty retired, as is their business. They haddiscovered that the enemy had guns and meant fighting. Lest he shouldfollow, they sent out from Ladysmith, about nine in the morning, half abattalion apiece of the Devonshire and Manchester Regiments by train, and the 42nd Field Battery, with a squadron of the 5th Dragoon Guards, by road. They arrived, and there fell on us the common lot ofreconnaissances. We dismounted, loosened girths, ate tinned meat, andwondered what we should do next. We were on a billow of veldt thatheaved across the valley: up it ran, road and rail; on the left rosetiers of hills, in front a huge green hill blocked our view, with atangle of other hills crowding behind to peep over its shoulders. On theright, across the line, were meadows; up from them rose a wall ofred-brown kopje; up over that a wall of grass-green veldt; over that wasthe enemy. We ate and sat and wondered what we should do next. Presentlywe saw the troopers mounting and the trains getting up steam; wemounted; and scouts, advance-guard, flanking patrols--everybody creptslowly, slowly, cautiously forward. Then, about half-past two, we turnedand beheld the columns coming up behind us. The 21st Field Battery, the5th Lancers, the Natal Mounted Volunteers on the road; the other halfof the Devons and half the Gordon Highlanders on the trains--total, withwhat we had, say something short of 3000 men and eighteen guns. It wasbattle!

The trains drew up and vomited khaki into the meadow. The mass separatedand ordered itself. A line of little dots began to draw across it; athicker line of dots followed; a continuous line followed them, thenother lines, then a mass of khaki topping a dark foundation--the kiltsof the Highlanders. From our billow we could not see them move; but thegreen on the side of the line grew broader, and the green between themand the kopje grew narrower. Now the first dots were at the base--nowhardly discernible on the brown hill flanks. Presently the second lineof dots was at the base. Then the third line and the second were lost onthe brown, and the third--where? There, bold on the sky-line. Away ontheir right, round the hill, stole the black column of the ImperialLight Horse. The hill was crowned, was turned--but where were the Bo--

A hop, a splutter, a rattle, and then a snarling roll of musketry brokeon the question, --not from the hill, but far on our left front, wherethe Dragoon Guards were scouting. On that the thunder of gallopingorderlies and hoarse yells of command--advance!--in line!--waggonsupply!--and with rattle and thunder the batteries tore past, wheeled, unlimbered as if they broke in halves. Then rattled and thundered thewaggons, men gathered round the guns like the groups round a patient inan operation. And the first gun barked death. And then after all it wasa false alarm. At the first shell you could see through glasses mountedmen scurrying up the slopes of the big opposite hill; by the third theywere gone. And then, as our guns still thudded--thud came the answer. Only where? Away, away on the right, from the green kopje over the brownone where still struggled the reserves of our infantry. 

Limbers! From halves the guns were whole again, and wheeled away overploughland to the railway. Down went a length of wire-fencing, and gunafter gun leaped ringing over the metals, scoring the soft pasturebeyond. We passed round the leftward edge of the brown hill and joinedour infantry in a broad green valley. The head of it was the secondskyline we had seen; beyond was a dip, a swell of kopje, a deep valley, and beyond that a small sugar-loaf kopje to the left and a longhog-backed one on the right--a saw of small ridges above, a harsh facebelow, freckled with innumerable boulders. Below the small kopje weretents and waggons; from the leftward shoulder of the big one flashedonce more the Boer guns. 

This time the shell came. Faint whirr waxed presently to furious scream, and the white cloud flung itself on to the very line of our batteriesunlimbering on the brow. Whirr and scream--another dashed itself intothe field between the guns and limbers. Another and another, only nowthey fell harmlessly behind the guns, seeking vainly for the waggonsand teams which were drawn snugly away under a hillside on the right. Another and another--bursting now on the clear space in rear of the gunsbetween our right and left infantry columns. All the infantry were lyingdown, so well folded in the ground that I could only see the Devons onthe left. The Manchesters and Gordons on the right seemed to beswallowed by the veldt. 

Then between the bangs of their artillery struck the hoarser bay of ourown. Ball after ball of white smoke alighted on the kopje--the first atthe base, the second over, the third jump on the Boer gun. By the fourththe Boer gun flashed no more. Then our guns sent forth little whiteballoons of shrapnel, to right, to left, higher, lower, peppering thewhole face. Now came rifle-fire--a few reports, and then a roll like theungreased wheels of a farm cart. The Imperial Light Horse was at work onthe extreme right. And now as the guns pealed faster and faster we sawmounted men riding up the nearer swell of kopje and diving over theedge. Shrapnel followed; some dived and came up no more. 

The guns limbered up and moved across to a nearer position towards theright. As they moved the Boer gun opened again--Lord, but the Germangunners knew their business!--punctuating the intervals and distances ofthe pieces with scattering destruction. The third or fourth shellpitched clean into a labouring waggon with its double team of eighthorses. It was full of shells. We held our breath for an explosion. But, when the smoke cleared, only the near wheeler was on his side, and thewaggon had a wheel in the air. The batteries unlimbered and bayed again, and again the Boer guns were silent. Now for the attack. 

The attack was to be made on their front and their left flank--along thehog-back of the big kopje. The Devons on our left formed for the frontattack; the Manchesters went on the right, the Gordons edged out to theextreme rightward base, with the long, long boulder-freckled face abovethem. The guns flung shrapnel across the valley; the watchful cavalrywere in leash, straining towards the enemy's flanks. It was about aquarter to five, and it seemed curiously dark for the time of day. 

No wonder--for as the men moved forward before the enemy the heavenswere opened. From the eastern sky swept a sheer sheet of rain. With thefirst stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and nowhip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes asif they were blotting-paper. The air was filled with hissing; underfootyou could see solid earth melting into mud, and mud flowing away inwater. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one grey curtain ofswooping water. You would have said that the heavens had opened to drownthe wrath of man. And through it the guns still thundered and the khakicolumns pushed doggedly on. 

The infantry came among the boulders and began to open out. The supportsand reserves followed up. And then, in a twinkling, on the stone-pittedhill-face burst loose that other storm--the storm of lead, of blood, ofdeath. In a twinkling the first line was down behind rocks firing fast, and the bullets came flicking round them. Men stopped and started, staggered and dropped limply as if the string were cut that held themupright. The line pushed on; the supports and reserves followed up. Acolonel fell, shot in the arm; the regiment pushed on. 

They came to a rocky ridge about twenty feet high. They clung to cover, firing, then rose, and were among the shrill bullets again. A major wasleft at the bottom of that ridge, with his pipe in his mouth and aMauser bullet through his leg; his company pushed on. Down again, fireagain, up again, and on! Another ridge won and passed--and only a morehellish hail of bullets beyond it. More men down, more men pushed intothe firing line--more death-piping bullets than ever. The air was asieve of them; they beat on the boulders like a million hammers; theytore the turf like a harrow. 

Another ridge crowned, another welcoming, whistling gust of perdition, more men down, more pushed into the firing line. Half the officers weredown; the men puffed and stumbled on. Another ridge--God! Would thiscursed hill never end? It was sown with bleeding and dead behind; it wasedged with stinging fire before. God! Would it never end? On, and get tothe end of it! And now it was surely the end. The merry bugles rang outlike cock-crow on a fine morning. The pipes shrieked of blood and thelust of glorious death. Fix bayonets! Staff officers rushed shoutingfrom the rear, imploring, cajoling, cursing, slamming every man whocould move into the line. Line--but it was a line no longer. It was asurging wave of men--Devons and Gordons, Manchester and Light Horse allmixed, inextricably; subalterns commanding regiments, soldiers yellingadvice, officers firing carbines, stumbling, leaping, killing, falling, all drunk with battle, shoving through hell to the throat of the enemy. And there beneath our feet was the Boer camp and the last Boersgalloping out of it. There also--thank Heaven, thank Heaven!--weresquadrons of Lancers and Dragoon Guards storming in among them, shouting, spearing, stamping them into the ground. Cease fire!

It was over--twelve hours of march, of reconnaissance, of waiting, ofpreparation, and half an hour of attack. But half an hour crammed withthe life of half a lifetime. 

VII. 

THE BIVOUAC. 

 A VICTORIOUS AND HELPLESS MOB--A BREAK-NECK HILLSIDE--BRINGING DOWN THE WOUNDED--A HARD-WORKED DOCTOR--BOER PRISONERS--INDIAN BEARERS--AN IRISH HIGHLANDER IN TROUBLE. 

LADYSMITH, _Oct. 23. _

Pursuing cavalry and pursued enemy faded out of our sight; abruptly werealised that it was night. A mob of unassorted soldiers stood on therock-sown, man-sown hillside, victorious and helpless. 

Out of every quarter of the blackness leaped rough voices. "G Company!""Devons here!" "Imperial Light Horse?" "Over here!" "Over where?" Then atrip and a heavy stumble and an oath. "Doctor wanted 'ere! 'Elp for awounded orficer! Damn you there! who are you fallin' up against? Thisis the Gordon 'Ighlanders--what's left of 'em. "

Here and there an inkier blackness moving showed a unit that had begunto find itself again. 

But for half an hour the hillside was still a maze--a maze of bodies ofmen wandering they knew not whither, crossing and recrossing, circling, stopping and returning on their stumbles, slipping on smooth rock-faces, breaking shins on rough boulders, treading with hobnailed boots onwounded fingers. 

At length underfoot twinkled lights, and a strong, clear voice sailedinto the confusion, "All wounded men are to be brought down to the Boercamp between the two hills. " Towards the lights and the Boer camp weturned down the face of jumbled stumbling-block. A wary kick forward, afeel below--firm rock. Stop--and the firm rock spun and the leg shotinto an ankle-wrenching hole. Scramble out and feel again; here is aflat face--forward! And then a tug that jerks you on to your back again:you forgot you had a horse to lead, and he does not like the look ofthis bit. Climb back again and take him by the head; still he will notbudge. Try again to the right. Bang! goes your knee into a boulder. Circle cannily round the horse to the left; here at last is somethinglike a slope. Forward horse--so, gently! Hurrah! Two minutes gone--ayard descended. 

By the time we stumbled down that precipice there had already passed aweek of nights--and it was not yet eight o'clock. At the bottom werehalf-a-dozen tents, a couple of lanterns, and a dozen waggons--huge, heavy veldt-ships lumbered up with cargo. It was at least possible totie a horse up and turn round in the sliding mud to see what next. 

What next? Little enough question of that! Off the break-neck hillsidestill dropped hoarse importunate cries. "Wounded man here! Doctorwanted! Three of 'em here! A stretcher, for God's sake!" "A stretcherthere! Is there no stretcher?" There was not one stretcher withinvoice-shot. 

Already the men were bringing down the first of their wounded. Slung ina blanket came a captain, his wet hair matted over his forehead, browand teeth set, lips twitching as they put him down, gripping his wholesoul to keep it from crying out. He turned with the beginning of a smilethat would not finish: "Would you mind straightening out my arm?" Thearm was bandaged above the elbow, and the forearm was hooked under him. A man bent over--and suddenly it was dark. "Here, bring back thatlantern!" But the lantern was staggering up-hill again to fetch thenext. "Oh, do straighten out my arm, " wailed the voice from the ground. "And cover me up. I'm perishing with cold. " "Here's matches!" "And 'ere;I've got a bit of candle. " "Where?" "Oh, do straighten out my arm!""'Ere, 'old out your 'and. " "Got it, " and the light flickered up againround the broken figure, and the arm was laid straight. As the touchcame on to the clammy fingers it met something wet and red, and theprone body quivered all over. "What, " said the weak voice--the smilestruggled to come out again, but dropped back even sooner thanbefore--"have they got my finger too?" Then they covered up the bodywith a blanket, wringing wet, and left it to soak and shiver. And thatwas one out of more than two hundred. 

For hours--and by now it was a month of nights--every man with hands andlegs toiled up and down, up and down, that ladder of pain. By Heaven'sgrace the Boers had filled their waggons with the loot of many stores;there were blankets to carry men in and mattresses whereon to lay them. They came down with sprawling bearers, with jolts and groans, with "Oh, put me down; I can't stand it! I'm done anyhow; let me die quiet. " Andalways would come back the cheery voice from doctor or officer orpal, --"Done, colour-sergeant! Nonsense, man! Why, you'll be back to dutyin a fortnight. " And the answer was another choked groan. 

Hour by hour--would day never break? Not yet; it was just twenty minutesto ten--man by man they brought them down. The tent was carpeted nowwith limp bodies. With breaking backs they heaved some shoulder-highinto waggons; others they laid on mattresses on the ground. In therain-blurred light of the lantern--could it not cease, that piercingdrizzle to-night of all nights at least? The doctor, the one doctor, toiled buoyantly on. Cutting up their clothes with scissors, feelingwith light firm fingers over torn chest or thigh, cunningly slippinground the bandage, tenderly covering up the crimson ruin of strongmen--hour by hour, man by man, he toiled on. 

And mark--and remember for the rest of your lives--that Tommy Atkinsmade no distinction between the wounded enemy and his dearest friend. Tothe men who in the afternoon were lying down behind rocks with riflespointed to kill him, who had shot, may be, the comrade of his heart, hegave the last drop of his water, the last drop of his melting strength, the last drop of comfort he could wring out of his seared, gallantsoul. In war, they say, --and it is true, --men grow callous: an afternoonof shooting and the loss of your brother hurts you less than a weekbefore did a thorn in your dog's foot. But it is only compassion for thedead that dries up; and as it dries, the spring wells up among good menof sympathy with all the living. A few men had made a fire in thegnawing damp and cold, and round it they sat, even the unwounded Boerprisoners. For themselves they took the outer ring, and not a word didany man say that could mortify the wound of defeat. In the afternoonTommy was a hero, in the evening he was a gentleman. 

Do not forget, either, the doctors of the enemy. We found their woundedwith our own, and it was pardonable to be glad that whereas our men settheir teeth in silence, some of theirs wept and groaned. Not all, though: we found Mr Kok, father of the Boer general and member of theTransvaal Executive, lying high up on the hill--a massive, white-beardedpatriarch, in a black frock-coat and trousers. With simple dignity, with the right of a dying man to command, he said in his strong voice, "Take me down the hill and lay me in a tent; I am wounded by threebullets. " It was a bad day for the Kok family: four were on the field, and all were hit. They found Commandant Schiel, too, the Germanfree-lance, lying with a bullet through his thigh, near the two gunswhich he had served so well, and which no German or Dutchman would everserve again. Then there were three field-cornets out of four, members ofVolksraad, two public prosecutors--Heaven only knows whom! But their owndoctors were among them almost as soon as were ours. 

Under the Red Cross--under the black sky, too, and the drizzle, and thecreeping cold--we stood and kicked numbed feet in the mud, and talkedtogether of the fight. A prisoner or two, allowed out to look forwounded, came and joined in. We were all most friendly, and naturallycongratulated each other on having done so well. These Boers wereneither sullen nor complaisant. They had fought their best, and lost;they were neither ashamed nor angry. They were manly and courteous, andthrough their untrimmed beards and rough corduroys a voice said veryplainly, "Ruling race. " These Boers might be brutal, might betreacherous; but they held their heads like gentlemen. Tommy and theveldt peasant--a comedy of good manners in wet and cold and mud andblood!

And so the long, long night wore on. At midnight came outlandish Indiansstaggering under the green-curtained palanquins they call doolies: thesewere filled up and taken away to the Elandslaagte Station. At oneo'clock we had the rare sight of a general under a waggon trying tosleep, and two privates on top of it rummaging for loot. One foundhimself a stock of gent's underwear, and contrived comforters and glovestherewith; one got his fingers into a case and ate cooking raisins. Once, when a few were as near sleep as any were that night, there was arattle and there was a clash that brought a hundred men springing up andreaching for their rifles. On the ground lay a bucket, a cooking-pot, acouple of tin plates, and knives and forks--all emptied out of a sack. On top of them descended from the waggon on high a flame-coloured shockof hair surmounting a freckled face, a covert coat, a kummerbund, andcloth gaiters. Were we mad? Was it an apparition, or was that under thekummerbund a bit of kilt and an end of sporran? Then said a voice, "OuldOireland in throuble again! Oi'm an Oirish Highlander; I beg yourpardon, sorr--and in throuble again. They tould me there was a box ofcigars here; do ye know, sorr, if the bhoys have shmoked them all?"

VIII. 

THE HOME-COMING FROM DUNDEE. 

 SUPERFLUOUS ASSISTANCE--A SMILING VALLEY--THE BORDER MOUNTED RIFLES--A RAIN-STORM--A THIRTY-TWO MILES' MARCH--HOW THE TROOPS CAME INTO LADYSMITH. 

LADYSMITH, _Oct. 27. _

"Come to meet us!" cried the staff officer with amazement in his voice;"what on earth for?"

It was on October 25, about five miles out on the Helpmakaar road, whichruns east from Ladysmith. By the stream below the hill he had justtrotted down, and choking the pass beyond, wriggled the familiar tail ofwaggons and water-carts, ambulances, and doolies, and spare teams of oldmules in new harness. A couple of squadrons of Lancers had off-saddledby the roadside, a phalanx of horses topped with furled red and whitepennons. Behind them stood a battery of artillery. Half a battalion ofgreen-kilted Gordons sunned their bare knees a little lower down; acompany or two of Manchesters back-boned the flabby convoy. The staffofficer could not make out what in the world it meant. 

He had pushed on from the Dundee column, but it was a childishsuperstition to imagine that the Dundee column could possibly needassistance. They had only marched thirty odd miles on Monday andTuesday; starting at four in the morning, they would by two o'clock orso have covered the seventeen miles that would bring them into camp, fifteen miles outside Ladysmith. They were coming to help Ladysmith, ifyou like; but the idea of Ladysmith helping them!

At his urgency they sent the convoy back. I rode on miles through theopenest country I had yet seen hereabouts--a basin of wave-like veldt, just growing thinly green under the spring rains, spangled with buddingmimosa-thorn. Scarred here and there with the dry water-courses theycall sluits, patched with heaves of wire-fenced down, livened with averandah, blue cactus-hedged farmhouse or two, losing itself finally ina mazy fairyland of azure mountains--this valley was the nearestapproach to what you would call a smiling country I had seen in Africa. 

Eight miles or so along the road I came upon the Border Mounted Rifles, saddles off, and lolling on the grass. All farmers and transport ridersfrom the northern frontier, lean, bearded, sun-dried, framed of steeland whipcord, sitting their horses like the riders of the Elgin marbles, swift and cunning as Boers, and far braver, they are the heaven-senttype of irregular troopers. It was they who had ridden out and madeconnection with the returning column an hour before. 

Two miles on I dipped over a ridge--and here was the camp. Bugles sangcheerily; mules, linked in fives, were being zigzagged frowardly down towater. The Royal Irish Fusiliers had loosened their belts, but not theirsturdy bearing. Under their horses' bellies lay the diminished 18thHussars. Presently came up a subaltern of the regiment, who had been onleave and returned just too late to rejoin before the line was cut. Theyhad put him in command of the advanced troop of the Lancers, and how hecursed the infantry and the convoy, and how he shoved the troop alongwhen the drag was taken off! Now he was laughing and talking andlistening all at once, like a long wanderer at his home-coming. 

No use waiting for sensational stories among these men, going abouttheir daily camp duties as if battles and sieges and forced marches withthe enemy on your flank were the most ordinary business of life. No usewaiting for fighting either; in open country the force could haveknocked thousands of Boers to pieces, and there was not the least chanceof the Boers coming to be knocked. So I rode back through the rollingveldt basin. As I passed the stream and the nek beyond the battery ofartillery, the Gordons and Manchesters were lighting their bivouacfires. This pass, crevicing under the solid feet of two great stonykopjes, was the only place the Boers would be likely to try their luckat. It was covered; already the Dundee column was all right. 

Presently I met the rest of the Gordons, swinging along the road tocrown the heights on either side the nek. Coming through I noticed--andthe kilted Highlanders noticed, too, they were staying out allnight--that the sky over Ladysmith was very black. The great inky stainof cloud spread and ran up the heavens, then down to the wholecircumference. In five minutes it was night and rain-storm. It stunglike a whip-lash; to meet it was like riding into a wall. Ladysmithstreets were ankle deep in half an hour; the camps were morass and pond. And listening to the ever-fresh bursts hammering all the evening on todeepening pools, we learned that the Dundee men had not camped afterall, had marched at six, and were coming on all night into Ladysmith. Thirty-two miles without rest, through stinging cataract and spongyloam and glassy slime!

Before next morning was grey in came the 1st Rifles. They plashed uphillto their blue-roofed huts on the south-west side of the town. By thetime the sun was up they were fed by their sister battalion, the 2nd, and had begun to unwind their putties. But what a sight! Their puttieswere not soaked and not caked; say, rather, that there may have been acore of puttie inside, but that the men's legs were embedded in aserpentine cast of clay. As for their boots, you could only infer themfrom the huge balls of stratified mud men bore round their feet. Redmud, yellow mud, black mud, brown mud--they lifted their feettoilsomely; they were land plummets that had sucked up specimens of allthe heavy, sticky soils for fifteen miles. Officers and men alikebristled stiff with a week's beard. Rents in their khaki showed whiteskin; from their grimed hands and heads you might have judged them halfred men, half soot-black. Eyelids hung fat and heavy over hollow cheeksand pointed cheek-bones. Only the eye remained--the sky-blue, steel-keen, hard, clear, unconquerable English eye--to tell thatthirty-two miles without rest, four days without a square meal, sixnights--for many--without a stretch of sleep, still found them soldiersat the end. 

That was the beginning of them; but they were not all in till the middleof the afternoon--which made thirty-six hours on their legs. The IrishFusiliers tramped in at lunch-time, going a bit short some of them, nearly all a trifle stiff on the feet, but solid, square, and sturdyfrom the knees upward. They straightened up to the cheers that met them, and stepped out on scorching feet as if they were ready to go intoaction again on the instant. After them came the guns--not the sleekcreatures of Laffan's Plain, rough with earth and spinning mud fromtheir wheels, but war-worn and fresh from slaughter; you might imaginetheir damp muzzles were dripping blood. You could count the horses'ribs; they looked as if you could break them in half before thequarters. But they, too, knew they were being cheered; they threw theirears up and flung all the weight left them into the traces. 

Through fire, water, and earth, the Dundee column had come home again. 

IX. 

THE STORY OF NICHOLSON'S NEK. 

 AN ATTENUATED MESS--A REGIMENT 220 STRONG--A MISERABLE STORY--THE WHITE FLAG--BOER KINDNESS--ASHAMED FOR ENGLAND. 

LADYSMITH, _Nov. 1_. 

The sodden tents hung dankly, black-grey in the gusty, rainy morning. Atthe entrance to the camp stood a sentry; half-a-dozen privates moved toand fro. Perhaps half-a-dozen were to be seen in all--the same hard, thick-set bodies that Ladysmith had cheered six days before as theymarched in, square-shouldered through the mud, from Dundee. The samebodies--but the elastic was out of them and the brightness was not intheir eyes. But for these few, though it was an hour after _reveillé_, the camp was cold and empty. It was the camp of the Royal IrishFusiliers. 

An officer appeared from the mess-tent--pale and pinched. I saw him whenhe came in from Dundee with four sleepless nights behind him; thismorning he was far more haggard. Inside were one other officer, thedoctor, and the quarter-master. That was all the mess, except a secondlieutenant, a boy just green from Sandhurst. He had just arrived fromEngland, aflame for his first regiment and his first campaign. And thiswas the regiment he found. 

They had been busy half the night packing up the lost officers' kits tosend down to Durban. Now they were packing their own; a regiment 220strong could do with a smaller camp. The mess stores laid in atLadysmith stood in open cases round the tent. All the small luxuries thecareful mess-president had provided against the hard campaign had beenlost at Dundee. Now it was the regiment was lost, and there was nobodyto eat the tinned meats and pickles. The common words "Natal FieldForce" on the boxes cut like a knife. In the middle of the tent, on atable of cases, so low that to reach it you must sit on the ground, werethe japanned tin plates and mugs for five men's breakfast--five out offive-and-twenty. Tied up in a waterproof sheet were the officers'letters--the letters of their wives and mothers that had arrived thatmorning seven thousand miles from home. The men they wrote to were ontheir way to the prisoners' camp on Pretoria racecourse. 

A miserable tale is best told badly. On the night of Sunday, October 29, No. 10 Mountain Battery, four and a half companies of theGloucestershire Regiment, and six of the Royal Irish Fusiliers--some1000 men in all--were sent out to seize a nek some seven milesnorth-west of Ladysmith. At daybreak they were to operate on the enemy'sright flank--the parallel with Majuba is grimly obvious--in conjunctionwith an attack from Ladysmith on his centre and right. They started. Athalf-past ten they passed through a kind of defile, the Boers athousand feet above them following every movement by ear, if not by eye. By some means--either by rocks rolled down on them or other hostileagency, or by sheer bad luck--the small-arm ammunition mules werestampeded. They dashed back on to the battery mules; there was alarm, confusion, shots flying--and the battery mules stampeded also. 

On that the officer in command appears to have resolved to occupy thenearest hill. He did so, and the men spent the hours before dawn inprotecting themselves by _schanzes_ or breastworks of stones. At dawn, about half-past four, they were attacked, at first lightly. There weretwo companies of the Gloucesters in an advanced position; the rest, inclose order, occupied a high point on the kopje; to line the wholesummit, they say, would have needed 10, 000 men. Behind the schanzes themen, shooting sparely because of the loss of the reserve ammunition, atfirst held their own with little loss. 

But then, as our ill-luck or Boer good management would have it, thereappeared over a hill a new Boer commando, which a cool eye-witness putat over 2000 strong. They divided and came into action, half in front, half from the kopjes in rear, shooting at 1000 yards into the open rearof the schanzes. Men began to fall. The two advanced companies wereordered to fall back; up to now they had lost hardly a man, but once inthe open they suffered. The Boers in rear picked up the range with greataccuracy. 

And then--and then again, that cursed white flag!

It is some sneaking consolation that for a long time the soldiersrefused to heed it. Careless now of life, they were sitting up wellbehind their breastworks, altering their sights, aiming coolly by thehalf-minute together. At the nadir of their humiliation they could stillsting--as that new-come Boer found who, desiring one Englishman to hisbag before the end, thrust up his incautious head to see where theywere, and got a bullet through it. Some of them said they lost theirwhole firing-line; others no more than nine killed and sixteen wounded. 

But what matters it whether they lost one or one million? The cursedwhite flag was up again over a British force in South Africa. The bestpart of a thousand British soldiers, with all their arms and equipmentand four mountain guns, were captured by the enemy. The Boers had theirrevenge for Dundee and Elandslaagte in war; now they took it, fullmeasure, in kindness. As Atkins had tended their wounded and succouredtheir prisoners there, so they tended and succoured him here. Onecommandant wished to send the wounded to Pretoria; the others, moreprudent as well as more humane, decided to send them back intoLadysmith. They gave the whole men the water out of their own bottles;they gave the wounded the blankets off their own saddles and sleptthemselves on the naked veldt. They were short of transport, and theywere mostly armed with Martinis; yet they gave captured mules for thehospital panniers and captured Lee-Metfords for splints. A man wasrubbing a hot sore on his head with a half-crown; nobody offered to takeit from him. Some of them asked soldiers for their embroideredwaist-belts as mementoes of the day. "It's got my money in it, " repliedTommy--a little surly, small wonder--and the captor said no more. 

Then they set to singing doleful hymns of praise under trees. Apparentlythey were not especially elated. They believed that Sir George White wasa prisoner, and that we were flying in rout from Ladysmith. They saidthat they had Rhodes shut up in Kimberley, and would hang him when theycaught him. That on their side--and on ours? We fought them all thatmorning in a fight that for the moment may wait. At the end, when thetardy truth could be withheld no more--what shame! What bitter shame forall the camp! All ashamed for England! Not of her--never that!--but forher. Once more she was a laughter to her enemies. 

X. 

THE GUNS AT RIETFONTEIN. 

 A COLUMN ON THE MOVE--THE NIMBLE GUNS--GARRISON GUNNERS AT WORK--THE VELDT ON FIRE--EFFECTIVE SHRAPNEL--THE VALUE OF THE ENGAGEMENT. 

LADYSMITH, _Oct. 26. _

The business of the last few days has been to secure the retreat of thecolumn from Dundee. On Monday, the 23rd, the whisper began to fly roundLadysmith that Colonel Yule's force had left town and camp, and wasendeavouring to join us. On Tuesday it became certainty. 

At four in the dim morning guns began to roll and rattle through themud-greased streets of Ladysmith. By six the whole northern road wasjammed tight with bearer company, field hospital, ammunition column, supply column--all the stiff, unwieldy, crawling tail of an army. Indians tottered and staggered under green-curtained doolies; Kaffirboys guided spans of four and five and six mules drawing ambulances, like bakers' vans; others walked beside waggons curling whips that woulddwarf the biggest salmon-rod round the flanks of small-bodied, huge-horned oxen. This tail of the army alone covered three miles ofroad. At length emerging in front of them you found two clankingfield-batteries, and sections of mountain guns jingling on mules. Aheadof these again long khaki lines of infantry sat beside the road orpounded it under their even tramp. Then the General himself and hisStaff; then best part of a regiment of infantry; then a company, thereserve of the advanced-guard; then a half-company, the support; then abroken group of men, the advanced party; then, in the very front, thepoint, a sergeant and half-a-dozen privates trudging sturdily along theroad, the scenting nose of the column. Away out of sight were thehorsemen. 

Altogether, two regiments of cavalry--5th Lancers and 19th Hussars--the42nd and 53rd Field Batteries and 10th Mountain Battery, four infantrybattalions--Devons, Liverpools, Gloucesters, and 2nd King's RoyalRifles--the Imperial Light Horse, and the Natal Volunteers. Once more, it was fighting. The head of the column had come within three miles orso of Modderspruit station. The valley there is broad and open. On theleft runs the wire-fenced railway; beyond it the land rises to a highgreen mountain called Tinta Inyoni. On the left front is a yet highergreen mountain, double-peaked, called Matawana's Hoek. Some call theplace Jonono's, others Rietfontein; the last is perhaps the leastoutlandish. 

The force moved steadily on towards Modderspruit, one battalion in frontof the guns. "Tell Hamilton to watch his left flank, " said one inauthority. "The enemy are on both those hills. " Sure enough, there onthe crest, there dotted on the sides, were the moving black mannikinsthat we have already come to know afar as Boers. Presently the dottedhead and open files of a battalion emerged from behind the guns, changing direction half-left to cover their flank. The batteries pushedon with the one battalion ahead of them. It was half-past eight, andbrilliant sunshine; the air was dead still; through the clefts of thenearer hills the blue peaks of the Drakensberg looked as if you couldshout across to them. 

Boom! The sound we knew well enough; the place it came from was the leftshoulder of Matawana's Hoek; the place it would arrive at we waited, half anxious, half idly curious, to see. Whirr--whizz--e-e-e-e--phutt!Heavens, on to the very top of a gun! For a second the gun was a whirlof blue-white smoke, with grey-black figures struggling and plunginginside it. Then the figures grew blacker and the smoke cleared--and inthe name of wonder the gun was still there. Only a subaltern had hishorse's blood on his boot, and his haversack ripped to rags. 

But there was no time to look on that or anything else but the amazingnimbleness of the guns. At the shell--even before it--they flew apartlike ants from a watering-can. From, crawling reptiles they leaped intoscurrying insects--the legs of the eight horses pattering as if theybelonged all to one creature, the deadly sting in the tail leaping andtwitching with every movement. One battery had wheeled about, and wasdrawn back at wide intervals facing the Boer hill. Another was patteringswiftly under cover of a ridge leftward; the leading gun had crossed therailway; the last had followed; the battery had utterly disappeared. Boom! Whirr--whizz--e-e-e-e--phutt! The second Boer shell fell stupidly, and burst in the empty veldt. Then bang!--from across therailway--e-e-e-e--whizz--whirr--silence--and then the little whiteballoon just over the place the Boer shell came from. It was twenty-fiveminutes to nine. 

In a double chorus of bangs and booms the infantry began to deploy. Gloucesters and Devons wheeled half left off the road, split intofiring line and supports in open order, trampled through the wire fencesover the railway. In front of the Boer position, slightly commanded onthe left flank by Tinta Inyoni, was a low, stony ridge; this theGloucesters lined on the left. The Devons, who led the column, fellnaturally on to the right of the line; Liverpools and Rifles backed upright and left. But almost before they were there arrived theirrepressible, ubiquitous guns. They had silenced the enemy's guns; theyhad circled round the left till they came under cover of the ridge; nowthey strolled up, unlimbered, and thrust their grim noses over the brow. And then--whew! Their appearance was the signal for a cataract ofbullets that for the moment in places almost equalled the high-lead markof Elandslaagte. The air whistled and hummed with them--and then theguns began. 

The mountain guns came up on their mules--a drove of stupid, uncontrolled creatures, you would have said, lumbered up with the oddsand ends of an ironworks and a waggon-factory. But the moment they werein position the gunners swarmed upon them, and till you have seen thegarrison gunners working you do not know what work means. In a minutethe scrap-heaps had flow together into little guns, hugging the stoneswith their low bellies, jumping at the enemy as the men lay on to theropes. The detachments all cuddled down to their guns; a man knelt bythe ammunition twenty paces in rear; the mules by now were snug undercover. "Two thousand, " sang out the major. The No. 1 of each gun held upsomething like a cross, as if he were going through a religious rite, altered the elevation delicately, then flung up his hand and headstiffly, like a dog pointing. "Number 4"--and Number 4 gun hurled outfire and filmy smoke, then leaped back, half frightened at its own fury, half anxious to get a better view of what it had done. It was a littleover. "Nineteen hundred, " cried the major. Same ritual, only a littleshort. "Nineteen fifty"--and it was just right. Therewith field andmountain guns, yard by yard, up and down, right and left, carefully, methodically, though roughly, sowed the whole of Matawana's Hoek withbullets. 

It was almost magical the way the Boer fire dropped. The guns came intoaction about a quarter-past nine, and for an hour you would hardly haveknown they were there. Whenever a group put their heads over thesky-line 1950 yards away there came a round of shrapnel to drive them toearth again. Presently the hillside turned pale blue--blue with thesmoke of burning veldt. Then in the middle of the blue came a patch ofblack, and spread and spread till the huge expanse was all black, pockedwith the khaki-coloured boulders and bordered with the blue of theever-extending fire. God help any wounded enemy who lay there!

Crushed into the face of the earth by the guns, the enemy tried to workround our left from Tinta Inyoni. They tried first at about aquarter-past ten, but the Natal Volunteers and some of the ImperialLight Horse met them. We heard the rattle of their rifles; we heard therap-rap-rap-rap-rap of their Maxim knocking at the door, and the Boerfire stilled again. The Boer gun had had another try at the Volunteersbefore, but a round or two of shrapnel sent it to kennel again. So farwe had seemed to be losing nothing, and it was natural to suppose thatthe Boers were losing a good deal. But at a quarter-past eleven theGloucesters pushed a little too far between the two hills, and learnedthat the Boers, if their bark was silent for the moment, could stillbite. Suddenly there shot into them a cross-fire at a few hundred yards. Down went the colonel dead; down went fifty men. 

For a second a few of the rawer hands in the regiment wavered; it mighthave been serious. But the rest clung doggedly to their position undercover; the officers brought the flurried men up to the bit again. Themountain guns turned vengeful towards the spot whence the fire came, andin a few minutes there was another spreading, blackening patch ofveldt--and silence. 

From then the action nickered on till half-past one. Time on time theenemy tried to be at us, but the imperious guns rebuked him, and he wasstill. At length the regiments withdrew. The hot guns limbered up andleft Rietfontein to burn itself out. The sweating gunners covered thelast retiring detachment, then lit their pipes. The Boers made ahalf-hearted attempt to get in both on left and right; but theVolunteers on the left, the cavalry on the right, a shell or two fromthe centre, checked them as by machinery. We went back to campunhampered. 

And at the end of it all we found that in those five hours of stragglingbursts of fighting we had lost, killed and wounded, 116 men. And whatwas the good? asked doubting Thomas. Much. To begin with, the Boers musthave lost heavily; they confessed that aloud by the fact that, for alltheir pluck in standing up to the guns, they made no attempt to followus home. Second, and more important, this commando was driven westward, and others were drawn westward to aid it--and the Dundee force wasmarching in from the east. Dragging sore feet along the miry roads theyheard the guns at Rietfontein and were glad. The seeming objectlesscannonade secured the unharassed home-coming of the 4000 way-wearymarchers from Dundee. 

XI. 

THE BOMBARDMENT. 

 LONG TOM--A FAMILY OF HARMLESS MONSTERS--OUR INFERIORITY IN GUNS--THE SENSATIONS OF A BOMBARDMENT--A LITTLE CUSTOM BLUNTS SENSIBILITY. 

LADYSMITH, _Nov. 10. _

"Good morning, " banged four-point-seven; "have you used Long Tom?"

"Crack-k--whiz-z-z, " came the riving answer, "we have. "

"Whish-h--patter, patter, " chimed in a cloud-high shrapnel from Bulwan. It was half-past seven in the morning of November 7; the realbombardment, the terrific symphony, had begun. 

During the first movement the leading performer was Long Tom. He is afriendly old gun, and for my part I have none but the kindest feelingstowards him. It was his duty to shell us, and he did; but he did it inan open, manly way. 

Behind the half-country of light red soil they had piled up round himyou could see his ugly phiz thrust up and look hungrily around. A jet offlame and a spreading toad-stool of thick white smoke told us he hadfired. On the flash four-point-seven banged his punctilious reply. Youwaited until you saw the black smoke jump behind the red mound, and thenTom was due in a second or two. A red flash--a jump of red-brown dustand smoke--a rending-crash: he had arrived. Then sang slowly through theair his fragments, like wounded birds. You could hear them coming, andthey came with dignified slowness: there was plenty of time to get outof the way. 

Until we capture Long Tom--when he will be treated with the utmostconsideration--I am not able to tell you exactly what brand of gun hemay be. It is evident from his conservative use of black powder, andthe old-gentlemanly staidness of his movements, that he is an elderlygun. His calibre appears to be six inches. From the plunging nature ofhis fire, some have conjectured him a sort of howitzer, but it is nextto certain he is one of the sixteen 15-cm. Creusot guns bought for theforts of Pretoria and Johannesburg. Anyhow, he conducted his enforcedtask with all possible humanity. 

On this same 7th a brother Long Tom, by the name of Fiddling Jimmy, opened on the Manchesters and Cęsar's Camp from a flat-topped kopjethree or four miles south of them. This gun had been there certainlysince the 3rd, when it shelled our returning reconnaissance; but he, too, was a gentle creature, and did little harm to anybody. Next day athird brother, Puffing Billy, made a somewhat bashful first appearanceon Bulwan. Four rounds from the four-point-seven silenced him for theday. Later came other brothers, of whom you will hear in due course. 

[Illustration: THE COUNTRY ROUND LADYSMITH. ]

In general you may say of the Long Tom family that their favouritehabitat is among loose soil on the tops of open hills; they are slowand unwieldy, and very open in all their actions. They are good shootingguns; Tom on the 7th made a day's lovely practice all round our battery. They are impossible to disable behind their huge epaulements unless youactually hit the gun, and they are so harmless as hardly to be worthdisabling. 

The four 12-pounder field-guns on Bulwana--I say four, because one daythere were four; but the Boers continually shifted their lighter gunsfrom hill to hill--were very different. These creatures are stealthy intheir habits, lurking among woods, firing smokeless powder with verylittle flash; consequently they are very difficult guns to locate. Theirfavourite diet appeared to be balloons; or, failing them, the Devons inthe Helpmakaar Road or the Manchesters in Cęsar's Camp. Both of thesethey enfiladed; also they peppered the roads whenever troops werevisible moving in or out. 

Altogether they were very judiciously handled, though erring perhaps innot firing persistently enough at any one target. But, despite theirgreat altitude, the range--at least 6000 yards--and the great height atwhich they burst their time shrapnel made them also comparativelyharmless. 

There were also one or two of their field-guns opposite the Manchesterson the flat-topped hill, one, I fancy, with Long Tom on Pepworth's Hill, and a few others on the northern part of Lombard's Kop and on SurpriseHill to the north-westward. 

Westward, on Telegraph Hill, was a gun which appeared to preyexclusively on cattle. I am afraid it was one of our own mountain gunsturned cannibal. The cattle, during the siege, had of course to pastureon any waste land inside the lines they could find, and gathered indense, distractingly noisy herds; but though this gun was never tired offiring on the mobs, I do not think he ever got more than one calf. 

There was a gun on Lombard's Kop called Silent Susan--so called becausethe shell arrived before the report--a disgusting habit in a gun. Themenagerie was completed by the pompons, of which there were at leastthree. This noisome beast always lurks in thick bush, whence it barkschains of shell at the unsuspecting stranger. Fortunately its shell issmall, and it is as timid as it is poisonous. 

Altogether, with three Long Toms, a 5-inch howitzer, Silent Susan, abouta dozen 12-pounders, four of our screw guns, and three Maxim automatics, they had about two dozen guns on us. Against that we had two47-inch--named respectively Lady Ann and Bloody Mary--four naval12-pounders, thirty-six field-guns, the two remaining mountain guns, anold 64-pounder, and a 3-inch quickfirer--these two on Cęsar's Camp incharge of the Durban Naval Volunteers--two old howitzers, and twoMaxim-Nordenfeldts taken at Krugersdorp in the Jameson raid, and retakenat Elandslaagte, --fifty pieces in all. 

On paper, therefore, we had a great advantage. But we had to economiseammunition, not knowing when we should get more, and also to keep areserve of field-guns to assist any threatened point. Also their guns, being newer, better pieces, mounted on higher ground, outranged ours. Wehad more guns, but they were as useless as catapults: only the six navalguns could touch Pepworth's Hill or Bulwan. 

For these reasons we only fired, I suppose, one shell to their twenty, or thereabouts; so that though we actually had far more guns, we yetenjoyed all the sensations of a true bombardment. 

What were they? That bombardments were a hollow terror I had alwaysunderstood; but how hollow, not till I experienced the bombardment ofLadysmith. Hollow things make the most noise, to be sure, and thisbombardment could at times be a monstrous symphony indeed. 

The first heavy day was November 3: while the troops were moving in andout on the Van Keenen's road the shells traced an aerial cobweb all overus. After that was a lull till the 7th, which was another clatteringday. November 8 brought a tumultuous morning and a still afternoon. The9th brought a very tumultuous morning indeed; the 10th was calm; the11th patchy; the 12th, Sunday. 

It must be said that the Boers made war like gentlemen of leisure; theyrestricted their hours of work with trade-unionist punctuality. Sundaywas always a holiday; so was the day after any particularly busyshooting. They seldom began before breakfast; knocked off regularly formeals--the luncheon interval was 11. 30 to 12 for riflemen, and 12 to12. 30 for gunners--hardly ever fired after tea-time, and never when itrained. I believe that an enterprising enemy of the Boer strength--itmay have been anything from 10, 000 to 20, 000; and remember that theirmobility made one man of them equal to at least two of our reduced11, 000--could, if not have taken Ladysmith, at least have put us togreat loss and discomfort. But the Boers have the great defect of allamateur soldiers: they love their ease, and do not mean to be killed. Now, without toil and hazard they could not take Ladysmith. 

To do them justice, they did not at first try to do wanton damage intown. They fired almost exclusively on the batteries, the camps, theballoon, and moving bodies of troops. In a day or two the troops werefar too snugly protected behind schanzes and reverse slopes, and grownfar too cunning to expose themselves to much loss. 

The inhabitants were mostly underground, so that there was nothingreally to suffer except casual passengers, beasts, and empty buildings. Few shells fell in town, and of the few many were half-charged withcoal-dust, and many never burst at all. The casualties in Ladysmithduring a fortnight were one white civilian, two natives, a horse, twomules, a waggon, and about half-a-dozen houses. And of the last only onewas actually wrecked; one--of course the most desirable habitation inLadysmith--received no less than three shells, and remained habitableand inhabited to the end. 

And now what does it feel like to be bombarded?

At first, and especially as early as can be in the morning, it is quitean uncomfortable sensation. 

You know that gunners are looking for you through telescopes; that everyspot is commanded by one big gun and most by a dozen. You hear thesqueal of the things all above, the crash and pop all about, and wonderwhen your turn will come. Perhaps one falls quite near you, swoopingirresistibly, as if the devil had kicked it. You come to watch forshells--to listen to the deafening rattle of the big guns, the shrillingwhistle of the small, to guess at their pace and their direction. Yousee now a house smashed in, a heap of chips and rubble; now you see asplinter kicking up a fountain of clinking stone-shivers; presently youmeet a wounded man on a stretcher. This is your dangerous time. If youhave nothing else to do, and especially if you listen and calculate, youare done: you get shells on the brain, think and talk of nothing else, and finish by going into a hole in the ground before daylight, andhiring better men than yourself to bring you down your meals. Wheneveryou put your head out of the hole you have a nose-breadth escape. If ahundredth part of the providential deliverances told in Ladysmith weretrue, it was a miracle that anybody in the place was alive after thefirst quarter of an hour. A day of this and you are a nervelesssemi-corpse, twitching at a fly-buzz, a misery to yourself and a scornto your neighbours. 

If, on the other hand, you go about your ordinary business, confidencerevives immediately. You see what a prodigious weight of metal can bethrown into a small place and yet leave plenty of room for everybodyelse. You realise that a shell which makes a great noise may yet behundreds of yards away. You learn to distinguish between a gun's reportand an overturned water-tank's. You perceive that the most awful noiseof all is the throat-ripping cough of your own guns firing over yourhead at an enemy four miles away. So you leave the matter to Allah, andby the middle of the morning do not even turn your head to see where thebang came from. 

XII. 

THE DEVIL'S TIN-TACKS. 

 THE EXCITEMENT OF A RIFLE FUSILADE--A SIX-HOURS' FIGHT--THE PICKING OFF OF OFFICERS--A DISPLAY OF INFERNAL FIREWORKS--"GOD BLESS THE PRINCE OF WALES. "

When all is said, there is nothing to stir the blood like rifle-fire. Rifle-fire wins or loses decisive actions; rifle-fire sends the heartgalloping. At five in the morning of the 9th I turned on my mattress andheard guns; I got up. 

Then I heard the bubble of distant musketry, and I hurried out. It camefrom the north, and it was languidly echoed from Cęsar's Camp. Tack-tap, tack-tap--each shot echoed a little muffled from the hills. Tack-tap, tack-tap, tack, tack, tack, tack, tap--as if the devil was hammeringnails into the hills. Then a hurricane of tacking, running round allLadysmith, running together into a scrunching roar. From the hill aboveMulberry Grove you can see every shell drop; but of this there was nosign--only noise and furious heart-beats. 

I went out to the strongest firing, and toiled up a ladder of boulders. I came up on to the sky-line, and bent and stole forward. To the rightwas Cave Redoubt with the 4·7; to the left two field-guns, unlimberedand left alone, and some of the Rifle Brigade snug behind their stoneand earth schanzes. In front was the low, woody, stony crest ofObservation Hill; behind was the tall table-top of Surprise Hill--thefirst ours, the second the enemy's. Under the slope of Observation Hillwere long, dark lines of horses; up to the sky-line, prolonging thefront leftward, stole half-a-dozen of the 5th Lancers. From just beyondthem came the tack, tack, tack, tap. 

Tack, tap; tack, tap--it went on minute by minute, hour by hour. 

The sun warmed the air to an oven; painted butterflies, azure andcrimson, came flitting over the stones; still the devil went onhammering nails into the hills. Down leftward a black-powder gun waspopping on the film-cut ridge of Bluebank. A Boer shell came fizzingfrom the right, and dived into a whirl of red dust, where nothing was. Another--another--another, each pitched with mathematical accuracy intothe same nothing. Our gunners ran out to their guns, and flung fourrounds on to the shoulder of Surprise Hill. Billy puffed fromBulwan--came 10, 000 yards jarring and clattering loud overhead--thenflung a red earthquake just beyond the Lancers' horses. Again andagain, --it looked as if he could not miss them; but the horses onlytwitched their tails, as if he were a new kind of fly. The 4·7 crashedhoarsely back, and a black nimbus flung up far above the trees on themountain. And still the steady tack and tap--from the right among theDevons and Liverpools, from the right centre, where the Leicesters were, from the left centre, among the 60th, and the extreme left, fromCęsar's Camp. 

The fight tacked on six mortal hours and then guttered out. From theearly hour they began and from the number of shells and cartridges theyburned I suppose the Boers meant to do something. But at not one pointdid they gain an inch. We were playing with them--playing with them attheir own game. One of our men would fire and lie down behind a rock;the Boers answered furiously for three minutes. When they began to diedown, another man fired, and for another three minutes the Boershammered the blind rocks. On six hours' fighting along a front of ten ortwelve miles we lost three killed and seventeen wounded. And, do youknow, I really believe that this tack-tapping among the rocks was theattack after all. They had said--or it was among the million things theywere said to have said--that they would be in Ladysmith on November 9, and I believe they half believed themselves. At any rate I make nodoubt that all this morning they were feeling--feeling our thin linesall round for a weak spot to break in by. 

They did not find it, and they gave over; but they would have come hadthey thought they could come safely. They began before it was fullylight with the Manchesters. The Manchesters on Cęsar's Camp were, in away, isolated: they were connected by telephone with headquarters, butit took half an hour to ride up to their eyrie. They were shelledreligiously for a part of every day by Puffing Billy from Bulwan andFiddling Jimmy from Middle Hill. 

Every officer who showed got a round of shrapnel at him. Their riflemenwould follow an officer about all day with shots at 2200 yards; the daybefore they had hit Major Grant, of the Intelligence, as he wassketching the country. Tommy, on the other hand, could swagger along thesky-line unmolested. No doubt the Boers thought that exposed Cęsar'sCamp lay within their hands. 

But they were very wrong. Snug behind their _schanzes_, the Manchesterscared as much for shells as for butterflies. Most of them were posted onthe inner edge of the flat top with a quarter of a mile of naked veldtto fire across. They had been reinforced the day before by a fieldbattery and a squadron and a half of the Light Horse. And they had one_schanze_ on the outer edge of the hill as an advanced post. 

In the dim of dawn, the officer in charge of this post saw the Boerscreeping down behind a stone wall to the left, gathering in the bottom, advancing in, for them, close order. He welted them with rifle-fire:they scattered and scurried back. 

The guns got to work, silenced the field-guns on Flat Top Hill, andadded scatter and scurry to the assailing riflemen. Certainly somenumber were killed; half-a-dozen bodies, they said, lay in the open allday; lanterns moved to and fro among the rocks and bushes all night; anew field hospital and graveyard were opened next day at Bester'sStation. On the other horn of our position the Devons had a briskmorning. They had in most places at least a mile of clear ground infront of them. But beyond that, and approaching within a few hundredyards of the extreme horn of the position, is scrub, which ought to havebeen cut down. 

Out of this scrub the enemy began to snipe. We had there, tucked intofolds of the hills, a couple of tubby old black-powdered howitzers, andthey let fly three rounds which should have been very effective. But theblack powder gave away their position in a moment, and from everyside--Pepworth's, Lombard's Nek, Bulwan--came spouting inquirers to seewho made that noise. The Lord Mayor's show was a fool to that display ofinfernal fireworks. The pompon added his bark, but he has never yetbitten anybody: him the Devons despise, and have christened with acoarse name. They weathered the storm without a man touched. 

Not a point had the Boers gained. And then came twelve o'clock, and, ifthe Boers had fixed the date of the 9th of November, so had we. We hadit in mind whose birthday it was. A trumpet-major went forth, andpresently, golden-tongued, rang out, "God bless the Prince of Wales. "The general up at Cove Redoubt led the cheers. The sailors' champagne, like their shells, is being saved for Christmas, but there was no stintof it to drink the Prince's health withal. And then the Royalsalute--bang on bang on bang--twenty-one shotted guns, as quick as thequickfirer can fire, plump into the enemy. 

That finished it. What with the guns and the cheering, each Boercommando must have thought the next was pounded to mincemeat. Therifle-fire dropped. 

The devil had driven home all his tin-tacks, and for the rest of the daywe had calm. 

XIII. 

A DIARY OF DULNESS. 

 THE MYTHOPOEIC FACULTY--A MISERABLE DAY--THE VOICE OF THE POMPOM--LEARNING THE BOER GAME--THE END OF FIDDLING JIMMY--MELINITE AT CLOSE QUARTERS--A LAKE OF MUD. 

_Nov. 11. _--Ugh! What a day! Dull, cold, dank, and misty--the spit of an11th of November at home. Not even a shell from Long Tom to liven it. The High Street looks doubly dead; only a sodden orderly plashes up itsspreading emptiness on a sodden horse. The roads are like rice-puddingalready, and the paths like treacle. Ugh! Outside the hotel drip theusual loafers with the usual fables. Yesterday, I hear, the Leicestersenticed the enemy to parade across their front at 410 yards; each manemptied his magazine, and the smarter got in a round or two ofindependent firing besides. Then they went out and counted thecorpses--230. It is certainly true: the narrator had it from a man whowas drinking a whisky, while a private of the regiment, who was notthere himself, but had it from a friend, told the barman. 

The Helpmakaar road is as safe as Regent Street to-day: a curtain ofweeping cloud veils it from the haunting gunners on Bulwan. Up in theschanzes the men huddle under waterproof sheets to escape the pitilessdrizzle. Only one sentry stands up in long black overcoat and greywoollen nightcap pulled down over his ears, and peers out towardsLombard's Kop. This position is safe enough with the bare green field offire before it, and the sturdy, shell-hardened soldiers behind. 

But Lord, O poor Tommy! His waterproof sheet is spread out, mud-slimed, over the top of the wall of stone and earth and sandbag, and pegged downinside the schanz. He crouches at the base of the wall, in a miry hole. Nothing can keep out this film of water. He sops and sneezes, runs atthe eyes and nose, half manful, half miserable. He is earning theshilling a-day. 

At lunch-time they began to shell us a bit, and it was almost a relief. At anyrate it was something to see and listen to. They were dead-offMulberry Grove to-day, but they dotted a line of shells elegantly downthe High Street. The bag was unusually good--a couple of mules and acart, a tennis-lawn, and a water-tank. Towards evening the voice of thepompom was heard in the land; but he bagged nothing--never does. 

_Nov. 12. _--Sunday, and the few rifle-shots, but in the main the usualcalm. The sky is neither obscured by clouds nor streaked with shells. Inote that the Sunday population of Ladysmith, unlike that of the City ofLondon, is double and treble that of week-days. 

Long Tom chipped a corner off the church yesterday; to-day thearchdeacon preached a sermon pointing out that we are theheaven-appointed instrument to scourge the Boers. Very sound, butperhaps a thought premature. 

_Nov. 13. _--Laid three sovs. To one with the 'Graphic' yesterday againstto-day being the most eventful of the siege. He dragged me out of bed inaching cold at four, to see the events. 

At daybreak Observation Hill and King's Post were being shelled andshelling back. Half battalions of the 1st, 60th, and Rifle Brigade takeday and day about on Observation Hill and King's Post, which is thecontinuation of Cove Redoubts. To-day the 60th were on Leicester Post. When shells came over them they merely laughed. One ring shell burst, fizzing inside a schanz, with a steamy curly tail, and splinters thatwailed a quarter of a mile on to the road below us; the men only racedto pick up the pieces. 

When this siege is over this force ought to be the best fighting men inthe world. We are learning lessons every day from the Boer. We aregetting to know his game, and learning to play it ourselves. 

Our infantry are already nearly as patient and cunning as he; nothingbut being shot at will ever teach men the art of using cover, but theyget plenty of that nowadays. 

Another lesson is the use of very, very thin firing-lines of good shots, with the supports snugly concealed: the other day fourteen men of theManchesters repulsed 200 Boers. The gunners have momentarily thrown overtheir first commandment and cheerfully split up batteries. They also liebeneath the schanzes and let the enemy bombard the dumb guns if hewill--till the moment comes to fire; that moment you need never beafraid that the R. A. Will be anywhere but with the guns. 

The enemy's shell and long-range rifle-fire dropped at half-past six. The guns had breached a new epaulement on Thornhill's Kop--to the leftof Surprise Hill and a few hundred yards nearer--and perhaps knockedover a Boer or two, --perhaps not. None of our people hurt, and a goodappetite for breakfast. 

In the afternoon one of our guns on Cęsar's Camp smashed a pompom. Fiddling Jimmy has been waved away, it seems. The Manchesters are cosybehind the best built schanzes in the environs of Ladysmith. Above thewall they have a double course of sandbags--the lower placed endwiseacross the stone, the upper lengthwise, which forms a series ofloopholes at the height of a man's shoulder. 

The subaltern in command sits on the highest rock inside; the men sitand lie about him, sleeping, smoking, reading, sewing, knitting. Itmight almost be a Dorcas meeting. 

I won the bet. 

_Nov. 14. _--The liveliest day's bombardment yet. 

A party of officers who live in the main street were waiting forbreakfast. The new president, in the next room, was just swearing at theservants for being late, when a shell came in at the foot of the outsidewall and burst under the breakfast-room. The whole place was dust andthunder and the half-acrid, half-fat, all-sickly smell of melinite. Halfthe floor was chips; one plank was hurled up and stuck in the ceiling. All the crockery was smashed, and the clock thrown down; the pictures onthe wall continued to survey the scene through unbroken glasses. 

Much the same thing happened later in the day to the smoking-room of theRoyal Hotel. It also was inhabited the minute before, would have beeninhabited the minute after, but just then was quite empty. We had acheerful lunch, as there were guns returning from a reconnaissance, andthey have adopted a thoughtless habit of coming home past our house. Briefly, from six till two you would have said that the earth was beingshivered to matchwood and fine powder. But, alas! man accustoms himselfso quickly to all things, that a bombardment to us, unless stonesactually tinkle on the roof, is now as an egg without salt. 

The said reconnaissance I did not attend, knowing exactly what it wouldbe. I mounted a hill, to get warm and to make sure, and it was exactlywhat I knew it would be. Our guns fired at the Boer guns till they weresilent; and then the Boer dismounted men fired at our dismounted men;then we came home. We had one wounded, but they say they discovered theBoer strength on Bluebank, outside Range Post, to be 500 or 600. I doubtif it is as much; but, in any case, I think two men and a boy could havefound out all that three batteries and three regiments did. With alittle dash, they could have taken the Boer guns on Bluebank; but ofdash there was not even a little. 

_Nov. 15. _--I wake at 12. 25 this morning, apparently dreaming ofshell-fire. 

"Fool, " says I to myself, and turn over, when--swish-h! pop-p!--by thepiper, it is shell-fire! Thud--thud--thud--ten or a dozen, I should say, counting the ones that woke me. What in the name of gunpowder is it allabout? But there is no rifle-fire that I can hear, and there are no moreshells now: I sleep again. 

In the morning they asked the Director of Military Intelligence what theshelling was; he replied, "What shelling?" Nobody knew what it was, andnobody knows yet. They had a pretty fable that the Boers, in a falsealarm, fired on each other: if they did, it was very lucky for themthat the shells all hit Ladysmith. My own notion is that they only didit to annoy--in which they failed. They were reported in the morning, as usual, searching for bodies with white flags; but I think thatis their way of reconnoitring. Exhausted with this effort, theBoers--heigho!--did nothing all day. Level downpour all the afternoon, and Ladysmith a lake of mud. 

_Nov. 16. _--Five civilians and two natives hit by a shrapnel at therailway station; a railway guard and a native died. Languid shellingduring morning. 

_Nov. 17. _--During morning, languid shelling. Afternoon, raining--Ladysmith wallowing deeper than ever. 

And that--heigh-h-ho!--makes a week of it. Relieve us, in Heaven's name, good countrymen, or we die of dulness!

XIV. 

NEARING THE END. 

 DULNESS INTERMINABLE--LADYSMITH IN 2099 A. D. --SIEGES OBSOLETE HARDSHIPS--DEAD TO THE WORLD--THE APPALLING FEATURES OF A BOMBARDMENT. 

_November 26, 1899. _

I was going to give you another dose of the dull diary. But I haven'tthe heart. It would weary you, and I cannot say how horribly it wouldweary me. 

I am sick of it. Everybody is sick of it. They said the force whichwould open the line and set us going against the enemy would begin toland at Durban on the 11th, and get into touch with us by the 16th. Nowit is the 26th; the force, they tell us, has landed, and is somewhere onthe line between Maritzburg and Estcourt; but of advance not a sign. 

Buller, they tell us one day, is at Bloemfontein; next day he is cominground to Durban; the next he is a prisoner in Pretoria. 

The only thing certain is that, whatever is happening, we are out of it. We know nothing of the outside; and of the inside there is nothing toknow. 

Weary, stale, flat, unprofitable, the whole thing. At first, to bebesieged and bombarded was a thrill; then it was a joke; now it isnothing but a weary, weary, weary bore. We do nothing but eat and drinkand sleep--just exist dismally. We have forgotten when the siege began;and now we are beginning not to care when it ends. 

For my part, I feel it will never end. 

It will go on just as now, languid fighting, languid cessation, for everand ever. We shall drop off one by one, and listlessly die of old age. 

And in the year 2099 the New Zealander antiquarian, digging among theburied cities of Natal, will come upon the forgotten town of Ladysmith. And he will find a handful of Rip Van Winkle Boers with white beardsdown to their knees, behind quaint, antique guns shelling a cactus-grownruin. Inside, sheltering in holes, he will find a few decrepitcreatures, very, very old, the children born during the bombardment. Hewill take these links with the past home to New Zealand. But they willbe afraid at the silence and security of peace. Having never knownanything but bombardment, they will die of terror without it. 

So be it. I shall not be there to see. But I shall wrap these lines upin a Red Cross flag and bury them among the ruins of Mulberry Grove, that, after the excavations, the unnumbered readers of the 'Daily Mail'may in the enlightened year 2100 know what a siege and a bombardmentwere like. 

Sometimes I think the siege would be just as bad without thebombardment. 

In some ways it would be even worse; for the bombardment is something tonotice and talk of, albeit languidly. But the siege is an unredeemedcurse. Sieges are out of date. In the days of Troy, to be besieged orbesieger was the natural lot of man; to give ten years at a stretch toit was all in a life's work; there was nothing else to do. In the dayswhen a great victory was gained one year, and a fast frigate arrivedwith the news the next, a man still had leisure in his life for a year'ssiege now and again. 

But to the man of 1899--or, by'r Lady, inclining to 1900--with fiveeditions of the evening papers every day, a siege is a thousand-fold ahardship. We make it a grievance nowadays if we are a day behind thenews--news that concerns us nothing. 

And here are we with the enemy all round us, splashing melinite among usin most hours of the day, and for the best part of a month we have noteven had any definite news about the men for whom we must wait to getout of it. We wait and wonder, first expectant, presently apathetic, andfeel ourselves grow old. 

Furthermore, we are in prison. We know now what Dartmoor feels like. Thepractised vagabond tires in a fortnight of a European capital; ofLadysmith he sickens in three hours. 

Even when we could ride out ten or a dozen miles into the country, therewas little that was new, nothing that was interesting. Now we lie in thebottom of the saucer, and stare up at the pitiless ring of hills thatbark death. Always the same stiff, naked ridges, flat-capped with ourintrenchments--always, always the same. As morning hardens to the brutalclearness of South African mid-day, they march in on you till Bulwanseems to tower over your very heads. There it is close over you, shady, and of wide prospect; and if you try to go up you are a dead man. 

Beyond is the world--war and love. Clery marching on Colenso, and allthat a man holds dear in a little island under the north star. But yousit here to be idly shot at. You are of it, but not in it--clean out ofthe world. To your world and to yourself you are every bit as good asdead--except that dead men have no time to fill in. 

I know now how a monk without a vocation feels. I know how a fly in abeer-bottle feels. 

I know how it tastes, too. 

And with it all there is the melinite and the shrapnel. To be sure theygive us the only pin-prick of interest to be had in Ladysmith. It issomething novel to live in this town turned inside out. 

Where people should be, the long, long day from dawn to daylight showsonly a dead blank. 

Where business should be, the sleepy shop-blinds droop. But where nobusiness should be--along the crumbling ruts that lead nowhither--clatters waggon after waggon, with curling whip-lashes andpiles of bread and hay. 

Where no people should be--in the clefts at the river-bank, in baldpatches of veldt ringed with rocks, in overgrown ditches--all these youfind alive with men and beasts. 

The place that a month ago was only fit to pitch empty meat-tins into isnow priceless stable-room; two squadrons of troop-horses pack flank toflank inside its shelter. A scrub-entangled hole, which perhaps nobodysave runaway Kaffirs ever set foot in before, is now the enviedhabitation of the balloon. The most worthless rock-heap below aperpendicular slope is now the choicest of town lots. 

The whole centre of gravity of Ladysmith is changed. Its belly lies nolonger in the multifarious emporia along the High Street, but in theearth-reddened, half-in visible tents that bashfully mark thecommissariat stores. Its brain is not the Town Hall, the best target inLadysmith, but Headquarters under the stone-pocked hill. The riddledRoyal Hotel is its social centre no longer; it is to the trench-seamedSailors' Camp or the wind-swept shoulders of Cęsar's Camp that men go tohear and tell the news. 

Poor Ladysmith! Deserted in its markets, repeopled in its wastes; hereripped with iron splinters, there rising again into rail-roofed, rock-walled caves; trampled down in its gardens, manured where nothingcan ever grow; skirts hemmed with sandbags and bowels bored withtunnels--the Boers may not have hurt us, but they have left their markfor years on her. 

They have not hurt us much--and yet the casualties mount up. Threeto-day, two yesterday, four dead or dying and seven wounded with oneshell--they are nothing at all, but they mount up. I suppose we stand atabout fifty now, and there will be more before we are done with it. 

And then there are moments when even this dribbling bombardment can beappalling. 

I happened into the centre of the town one day when the two big gunswere concentrating a cross-fire upon it. 

First from one side the shell came tearing madly in, with a shrill, ablast. A mountain of earth, and a hailstorm of stones on iron roofs. Houses winced at the buffet. Men ran madly away from it. A dog rushedout yelping--and on the yelp, from the other quarter, came the nextshell. Along the broad straight street not a vehicle, not a white manwas to be seen. Only a herd of niggers cowering under flimsy fences at acorner. 

Another crash and quaking, and this time in a cloud of dust anoutbuilding jumped and tumbled asunder. A horse streaked down the streetwith trailing halter. Round the corner scurried the niggers: the nextwas due from Pepworth's. 

Then the tearing scream: horror! it was coming from Bulwan. 

Again the annihilating blast, and not ten yards away. A roof gaped and ahouse leaped to pieces. A black reeled over, then terror plucked him upagain, and sent him running. 

Head down, hands over ears, they tore down the street, and from theother side swooped down the implacable, irresistible next. 

You come out of the dust and the stench of melinite, not knowing whereyou were, hardly knowing whether you were hit--only knowing that thenext was rushing on its way. No eyes to see it, no limbs to escape, nobulwark to protect, no army to avenge. You squirm between iron fingers. 

Nothing to do but endure. 

XV. 

IN A CONNING-TOWER. 

 THE SELF-RESPECTING BLUEJACKET--A GERMAN ATHEIST--THE SAILORS' TELEPHONE--WHAT THE NAVAL GUNS MEANT TO LADYSMITH--THE SALT OF THE EARTH. 

LADYSMITH, _Dec. 6. _

"There goes that stinker on Gun Hill, " said the captain. "No, don't getup; have some draught beer. "

I did have some draught beer. 

"Wait and see if he fires again. If he does we'll go up into theconning-tower, and have both guns in action toge--"

Boom! The captain picked up his stick. 

"Come on, " he said. 

We got up out of the rocking-chairs, and went out past the swingingmeat-safe, under the big canvas of the ward-room, with its table piledwith stuff to read. Trust the sailor to make himself at home. As wepassed through the camp the bluejackets rose to a man and lined uptrimly on either side. Trust the sailor to keep his self-respect, evenin five weeks' beleaguered Ladysmith. 

Up a knee-loosening ladder of rock, and we came out on to the greenhill-top, where they first had their camp. Among the orderly trenches, the sites of the deported tents, were rougher irregular blotches ofhole--footprints of shell. 

"That gunner, " said the captain, waving his stick at Surprise Hill, "isa German. Nobody but a German atheist would have fired on us atbreakfast, lunch, and dinner the same Sunday. It got too hot when he putone ten yards from the cook. Anybody else we could have spared; then wehad to go. "

We come to what looks like a sandbag redoubt, but in the eyes of heavenis a conning-tower. On either side, from behind a sandbag epaulement, a12-pounder and a Maxim thrust forth vigilant eyes. The sandbag platingof the conning-tower was six feet thick and shoulder-high; the rivetswere red earth, loose but binding; on the parapets sprouted tufts ofgrass, unabashed and rejoicing in the summer weather. Against theparapet leaned a couple of men with the clean-cut, clean-shaven jaw andchin of the naval officer, and half-a-dozen bearded bluejackets. Theystared hard out of sun-puckered eyes over the billows of kopje andveldt. 

Forward we looked down on the one 4·7; aft we looked up to the other. Onbow and beam and quarter we looked out to the enemy's fleet. DesertedPepworth's was on the port-bow, Gun Hill, under Lombard's Kop, on thestarboard, Bulwan abeam, Middle Hill astern, Surprise Hill on theport-quarter. 

Every outline was cut in adamant. 

The Helpmakaar Ridge, with its little black ants a-crawl on their hill, was crushed flat beneath us. 

A couple of vedettes racing over the pale green plain northward lookedas if we could jump on to their heads. We could have tossed a biscuitover to Lombard's Kop. The great yellow emplacement of their fourth bigpiece on Gun Hill stood up like a Spit-head Fort. Through the bigtelescope that swings on its pivot in the centre of the tower you couldsee that the Boers were loafing round it dressed in dirtymustard-colour. 

"Left-hand Gun Hill fired, sir, " said a bluejacket, with his eyes gluedto binoculars. "At the balloon"--and presently we heard the wearypinions of the shell, and saw the little puff of white below. 

"Ring up Mr Halsey, " said the captain. 

Then I was aware of a sort of tarpaulin cupboard under the breastwork, of creeping trails of wire on the ground, and of a couple of sappers. 

The corporal turned down his page of 'Harmsworth's Magazine, ' laid it onthe parapet, and dived under the tarpaulin. 

Ting-a-ling-a-ling! buzzed the telephone bell. 

The gaunt up-towering mountains, the long, smooth, deadly guns--and thetelephone bell!

The mountains and the guns went out, and there floated in that roaringoffice of the 'Daily Mail' instead, and the warm, rustling vestibule ofthe playhouse on a December night. This is the way we make war now; onlyfor the instant it was half joke and half home-sickness. Where were we?What were we doing?

"Right-hand Gun Hill fired, sir, " came the even voice of the bluejacket. "At the balloon. "

"Captain wants to speak to you, sir, " came the voice of the sapper fromunder the tarpaulin. 

Whistle and rattle and pop went the shell in the valley below. 

"Give him a round both guns together, " said the captain to thetelephone. 

"Left-hand Gun Hill fired, sir, " said the bluejacket to the captain. 

Nobody cared about left-hand Gun Hill; he was only a 47 howitzer; everyglass was clamped on the big yellow emplacement. 

"Right-hand Gun Hill is up, sir. "

Bang coughs the forward gun below us; bang-g-g coughs the after-gunoverhead. Every glass clamped on the emplacement. 

"What a time they take!" sighs a lieutenant--then a leaping cloud alittle in front and to the right. 

"Damn!" sighs a peach-cheeked midshipman, who--

"Oh, good shot!" For the second has landed just over and behind theepaulement. "Has it hit the gun?"

"No such luck, " says the captain: he was down again five seconds afterwe fired. 

And the men had all gone to earth, of course. 

Ting-a-ling-a-ling!

Down dives the sapper, and presently his face reappears, with"Headquarters to speak to you, sir. " What the captain said toHeadquarters is not to be repeated by the profane: the captain knowshis mind, and speaks it. As soon as that was over, ting-a-ling again. 

"Mr Halsey wants to know if he may fire again, sir. "

"He may have one more"--for shell is still being saved for Christmas. 

It was all quite unimportant and probably quite ineffective. At first itstaggers you to think that mountain-shaking bang can have no result; butafter a little experience and thought you see it would be a miracle ifit had. The emplacement is a small mountain in itself; the men have runout into holes. Once in a thousand shots you might hit the actual gunand destroy it--but shell is being saved for Christmas. 

If the natives and deserters are not lying, and the sailors really hitPepworth's Long Tom, then that gunner may live on his exploit for therest of his life. 

"We trust we've killed a few men, " says the captain cheerily; "but wecan't hope for much more. "

And yet, if they never hit a man, this handful of sailors have been thesaving of Ladysmith. You don't know, till you have tried it, what a wormyou feel when the enemy is plugging shell into you and you can'tpossibly plug back. Even though they spared their shell, it made all theworld of difference to know that the sailors could reach the big guns ifthey ever became unbearable. It makes all the difference to the Boers, too, I suspect; for as sure as Lady Anne or Bloody Mary gets on to themthey shut up in a round or two. To have the very men among you makes thedifference between rain-water and brine. 

The other day they sent a 12-pounder up to Cęsar's Camp under a boy who, if he were not commanding big men round a big gun in a big war, mightwith luck be in the fifth form. 

"There's a 94-pounder up there, " said a high officer, who might justhave been his grandfather. 

"All right, sir, " said the child serenely; "we'll knock him out. "

He hasn't knocked him out yet, but he is going to next shot, which in asiege is the next best thing. 

In the meantime he has had his gun's name, "Lady Ellen, " neatly carvedon a stone and put up on his emplacement. Another gun-pit bears thegolden legend "Princess Victoria Battery, " on a board elegant beyond thedreams of suburban preparatory schools. A regiment would have had nopaint or gold-leaf; the sailors always have everything. They carry theirhome with them, self-subsisting, self-relying. Even as the constantbluejacket says, "Right Gun Hill up, sir, " there floats from belowting-ting, ting-ting, ting. 

Five bells!

The rock-rending double bang floats over you unheard; the hot iron hillsswim away. 

Five bells--and you are on deck, swishing through cool blue water amongwhite-clad ladies in long chairs, going home. 

O Lord, how long?

But the sailors have not seen home for two years, which is two lessthan their usual spell. This is their holiday. 

"Of course, we enjoy it, " they say, almost apologising for saving us;"we so seldom get a chance. "

The Royal Navy is the salt of the sea and the salt of the earth also. 

THE LAST CHAPTER

BY

VERNON BLACKBURN. 

I will give no number to the last chapter of George Steevens's story ofthe war. There is no reckoning between the work from his and the workfrom this pen. It is the chapter which covers a grave; it does not makea completion. A while back, you have read that surrendering wail fromthe beleaguered city--a wail in what contrast to the humour, thevitality, the quickness, the impulse, the eagerness of expectation withwhich his toil in South Africa began!--wherein he wrote: "Beyond is theworld--war and love. Clery marching on Colenso, and all that a man holdsdear in a little island under the north star. .. . To your world and toyourself you are every bit as good as dead--except that dead men have notime to fill in. " And now he is dead. And I have undertaken the mostdifficult task, at the command--for in such a case the timoroussuggestion, hooped round by poignant apologies, is no less than acommand--of that human creature whom, in the little island under thenorth star, he held most dear of all--his wife, to set a copingstone, amere nothing in the air, upon the last work that came from his pen. Iwill prefer to begin with my own summary, my own intimate view of GeorgeSteevens, as he wandered in and out, visible and invisible, of the pathsof my life. 

"Weep for the dead, for his light hath failed; weep but a little for thedead, for he is at rest. " Ecclesiasticus came to my mind when the newsof his death came to my knowledge. Who would not weep over theextinction of a career set in a promise so golden, in an accomplishmentso rare and splendid? Sad enough thought it is that he is at rest;still--he rests. "Under the wide and starry sky, " words which, as I haveheard him say, in his casual, unambitious manner of speech, he was wontto repeat to himself in the open deserts of the Soudan--"Under the wideand starry sky" the grave has been dug, and "let me lie. "

 "Glad did I live, and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. "

The personality of George Steevens was one which might have been complexand obscure to the ordinary acquaintance, were it not for one shining, one golden key which fitted every ward of his temperament, his conduct, his policy, his work. He was the soul of honour. I use the words in novague sense, in no mere spirit of phrase-making. How could that bepossible at this hour? They are words which explain him, which are thecommentary of his life, which summarise and enlighten every act of everyday, his momentary impulses and his acquired habits. "In Spain, " a greatand noble writer has said, "was the point put upon honour. " The pointof honour was with George Steevens his helmet, his shield, his armour, his flag. That it was which made his lightest word a law, his vaguestpromise a necessity in act, his most facile acceptance an engagement asfixed as the laws of motion. In old, old days I well remember how itcame to be a complacent certainty with everybody associated withSteevens that if he promised an article, an occasional note, areview--whatever it might be--at two, three, four, five in the morning, at that hour the work would be ready. He never flinched; he never madeexcuses, for the obvious reason that there was never any necessity forexcuse. Truthful, clean-minded, nobly unselfish as he was, all thesethings played but the parts of planets revolving around the sun of hislife--the sun of honour. To that point I always return: but a man can beconceived who shall be splendidly honourable, yet not lovable--a man whomight repel friendship. Steevens was not of that race. Not a friend ofhis but loved him with a great and serious affection for thosequalities which are too often separable from the austerity of a finecharacter, the honour of an upright man. His sweetness was exquisite, and this partly because it was so unexpected. A somewhat shy and quietmanner did not prepare men for the urbanity, the tolerance, themagnanimity that lay at the back of his heart. Generosity inthought--the rarest form of generosity that is reared among the flowersof this sorrowful earth--was with him habitual. He could, and did, resent at every point the qualities in men that ran counter to hisprinciples of honour, and he did not spare his keen irony when suchthings crossed his path; but, on the other side, he loved his friendswith a whole and simple heart. I think that very few men who came underhis influence refused him their love, none their admiration. 

Into all that he wrote--and I shall deal later with that point indetail--his true and candid spirit was infused. Just as in his life, inhis daily actions, you were continually surprised by his tendernessturning round the corner of his austere reserve, so in his work hissentiment came with a curious appeal, with tender surprises, with anemotion that was all the keener on account of the contrast that it madewith the courage, the hope, and the fine manliness of all his thoughtand all his word. Children, helplessness of all kinds, touched alwaysthat merciful heart. I can scarcely think of him as a man of the world, although he had had in his few and glorious days experience enough toharden the spirit of any man. He could never, as I think of him, havegrown into your swaggering, money-making, bargaining man of UniversalTrade. Keen and significant his policy, his ordering of his affairs mustever have been; but the keenness and significance were the outcome, notof any cool eye to the main chance, but of a gay sense of the pure needof logic, not only in letters but also in living. 

There, again, I touch another characteristic--his feeling for logic, fordialectic, which made him one of the severest reasoners that it wouldbe possible to meet in argument. He used, in his admirably assumed airof brag, an attitude which he could take with perfect humour and perfectdignity--to protest that he was one of two or three Englishmen who hadever mastered the philosophical systems of Germany, from Kant to Hegel, from Hegel to Schopenhauer. Though he said it with an airy sense of fun, and almost of disparagement, I am strongly inclined to believe that itwas true. He was never satisfied with his knowledge: invariably curious, he was guided by his joy in pure reasoning to the philosophies of theworld, and in his silent, quiet, unobtrusive way he became a master ofmany subjects which life was too brief in his case to permit him to showto his friends, much less to the world. 

This, it will be readily understood, is, as I have said, the merestsummary of a character, as one person has understood it. Others willreach him from other points of view. Meanwhile Ladysmith has him--whatis that phrase of his?--"You squirm between iron fingers. " Fortunate he, so far that he is at rest, squirming no longer; and with the wail on hislips, the catch in the throat, he went down in the embrace of a deadlierenemy than the Bulwan horror, to which he made reference in one of thelast lines he was destined to write in this world. He fell ill in thatpestilent town, as all the world knows. His constitution was strongenough; he had not lived a life of unpropitious preparation for aserious illness; but his heart was a danger. Typhoid is fatal to anyheart-weakness, particularly in convalescence; and he was caughtsuddenly as he was growing towards perfect health. 

I have been privileged to see certain letters written to his wife by thefriend with whom he shared his Ladysmith house during the course of hisillness. "How he contracted enteric fever, " says Mr Maud, "I cannottell. It is unfortunately very prevalent in the camp just now. He beganto be ill on the 13th of December, but on that day the doctor was notquite sure about its being enteric, although he at once commenced withthe treatment for that disease. The following day there was no doubtabout it, and we moved him from our noisy and uncomfortable quarters inthe Imperial Light Horse Camp to our present abode, which is quite thebest house in Ladysmith. Major Henderson of the Intelligence Departmentvery kindly offered his own room, a fine, airy, and well-furnishedapartment, although he was barely recovered of his wound. At first Icould only procure the services of a trained orderly of the 5th DragoonGuards lent to us by the colonel, but a few days later we were luckyenough to find a lady nurse, who has turned out most excellently, andshe takes charge at night. .. . I am happy to tell you that everything hasgone on splendidly". .. . After describing how the fever graduallyapproached a crisis, Mr Maud continues: "When he was at his worst he wasoften delirious, but never violent; the only trouble was to prevent himgetting out of bed. He was continually asking us to go and fetch you, and always thought he was journeying homewards. It never does to halloabefore one gets out of the wood, but I do really think that he is wellon the road to recovery. " Alas!

Not so much as a continued record of Steevens's illness, as in thenature of a pathetic side-issue to the tragedy of his death, I subjoinone or two passages from a letter sent subsequently from Ladysmith bythe same faithful friend before the end: "He has withstood the stormwonderfully well, and he is not very much pulled down. The doctor thinksthat he should be about again in a fortnight"--the letter was written onthe 4th of January--"by which time I trust General Buller will havearrived and reopened the railway. Directly it is possible to move, Ishall take him down to Nottingham Road. .. . There has been little ornothing to do for the last month beyond listening to the bursting of theLong Tom shells. " That touch about General Buller's arrival is surelyone of the most strangely appealing incidents in the recent history ofhuman confidence and human expectation! Another friend, Mr George Lynch, whose name occurred in one of his letters in a passage curiouslycharacteristic of Steevens's drily incisive humour, writes about thedays that must immediately have preceded his illness: "He was as fit andwell as possible when I left Ladysmith last month. " (The letter is datedfrom Durban, January 11. ) "We were drawing rations like the soldiers, but had some '74 port and a plum-pudding which we were keeping forChristmas Day. .. . Shells fell in our vicinity more or less like angels'visits, and I had a bet with him of a dinner. I backed our house to behit against another which he selected; and he won. I am to pay thedinner at the Savoy when we return. "

There is little more to record of the actual facts at this moment. Thefollowing cable, which has till now remained unpublished, tells its owntale too sadly:--

 "Steevens, a few days before death, had recovered so far as to be able to attend to some of his journalistic duties, though still confined to bed. Relapse followed; he died at five in the afternoon. Funeral same night, leaving Carter's house (where Steevens was lying during illness) at 11. 30. Interred in Ladysmith Cemetery at midnight. Night dismal, rain falling, while the moon attempted to pierce the black clouds. Boer searchlight from Umbala flashed over the funeral party, showing the way in the darkness. Large attendance of mourners, several officers, garrison, most correspondents. Chaplain M'Varish officiated. "

When I read that short and simple cablegram, the thought came to my mindthat if only the greater number of modern rioters in language werecompelled to hoard their words out of sheer necessity for the cable, weshould have better results from the attempts at word-painting that nowcumber the ground. And this brings me directly to a consideration ofSteevens's work. In many respects, of course, it was never, even inseparate papers, completed. Journalist and scholar he was, both. But theworld was allowed to see too much of the journalist, too little of thescholar, in what he accomplished. 'The Monologues of the Dead' was abrilliant beginning. It proved the splendid work of the past, itpresaged more splendid work for the future. And then, if you please, hebecame a man of action; and a man of action, if he is to write, mustperforce be a journalist. The preparations had made it impossible thathe should ever be anything else but an extraordinary journalist; andaccordingly it fell out that the combination of a wonderful equipment ofscholarship with a vigorous sense of vitality brought about a uniquething in modern journalism. Unique, I say: the thing may be done again, it is true; but he was the pioneer, he was the inventor, of theparticular method which he practised. 

I began this discussion with a reference to the spare, austere, butquite lucid message of the cablegram announcing the death of Steevens;and I was carried on at once to a deliberate consideration of hisliterary work, because that work had, despite its vigour, its vividness, its brilliance, just the outline, the spareness, the slimness, theausterity which are so painfully inconspicuous in the customary painterof word-pictures. Some have said that Steevens was destined to be theKinglake of the Transvaal. That is patently indemonstrable. His warcorrespondence was not the work of a stately historian. He could, out ofsheer imaginativeness, create for himself the style of the statelyhistorian. His "New Gibbon"--a paper which appeared in 'Blackwood'sMagazine'--is there to prove so much; but that was not the manner inwhich he usually wrote about war. He was essentially a man who hadvisions of things. Without the time to separate his visions into thelanguage of pure classicism--a feat which Tennyson superlativelycontrived to accomplish--he yet took out the right details, and byskilful combination built you, in the briefest possible space, astrongly vivid picture. If you look straight out at any scene, you willsee what all men see when they look straight out; but when you inquirecuriously into all the quarters of the compass, you will see what no manever saw when he simply looked out of his two eyes without regarding thehere, there, and everywhere. When Tennyson wrote of

 "flush'd Ganymede, his rosy thigh Half-buried in the Eagle's down, Sole as a flying star shot thro' the sky Above the pillar'd town"--

you felt the wonder of the picture. Applied in a vastly different way, put to vastly different uses, the visual gift of Steevens belonged tothe same order of things. Consider this passage from his Soudan book:--

 "Black spindle-legs curled up to meet red-gimleted black faces, donkeys headless and legless, or sieves of shrapnel; camels with necks writhed back on to their humps, rotting already in pools of blood and bile-yellow water, heads without faces, and faces without anything below, cobwebbed arms and legs, and black skins grilled to crackling on smouldering palm-leaf--don't look at it. "

The writer, swinging on at the obvious pace with which this writingswings, of course has no chance to make as flawless a picture as thegreat man of leisure; but the pictorial quality of each is precisely thesame. Both understood the fine art of selection. 

I have sometimes wondered if I grudged to journalism what Steevens stolefrom letters. I have not yet quite come to a decision; for, had he neverleft the groves of the academic for the crowded career of the man of theworld, we should never have known his amazing versatility, or even afraction of his noble character as it was published to the world. Certainly the book to which this chapter forms a mere pendant must, inparts, stand as a new revelation no less of the nobility of thatcharacter than of his extraordinary foresight, his wonderful instinctfor the objectiveness of life. I believe that in his earliest childhoodhis feeling for the prose of geography was like Wordsworth'scataract--it "haunted him like a passion. " And all the while thesubjective side of life called for the intrusion of his prying eyes. Sothat you may say it was more or less pure chance that led him to givewhat has proved to be the bulk of his active years to the objective sideof things, the purely actual. Take, in this very book, that whichamounts practically to a prophecy of the difficulty of capturing a pointlike Spion Kop, in the passage where he describes how impossible it isto judge of the value of a hill-top until you get there. (Pope, by theway--and I state the point not from any desire to be pedantic, butbecause Steevens had a classical way with him which would out, disguiseit how he might--Pope, I say, in his "Essay on Criticism, " had beforemade the same remark. ) Then again you have in his chapter on Aliwal thecuriously intimate sketch of the Boer character--"A people hard toarouse, but, you would say, very hard to subdue. " Well, it is by theobjective side of life that we have to judge him. The futility of deathmakes that an absolute necessity; but I like to think of a possibleGeorge Steevens who, when the dust and sand of campaigns and dailyjournalism had been wiped away from his shoon, would have combined in agreat and single-hearted career all the various powers of his fine mind. 

His death, as none needs to be told, came as a great shock and withalmost staggering surprise to the world; and it is for his memory's sakethat I put on record a few of the words that were written of him byresponsible people. An Oxford contemporary has written of him:--

 "I first met him at a meeting of the Russell Club at Oxford. He was a great light there, being hon. Sec. It was in 1890, and Steevens had been head-boy of the City of London School, and then Senior Scholar at Balliol. Even at the Russell Club, then, he was regarded as a great man. The membership was, I think, limited to twenty--all Radical stalwarts. I well remember his witty comments on a paper advocating Women's Rights. He was at his best when opening the debate after some such paper. Little did that band of ardent souls imagine their leader would, in a few short years, be winning fame for a Tory halfpenny paper. 

 "He sat next me at dinner, just before he graduated, and he was in one of those pensive moods which sometimes came over him. I believe he hardly spoke. In '92 he entered himself as a candidate for a Fellowship at Pembroke. I recollect his dropping into the examination-room half an hour late, while all the rest had been eagerly waiting outside the doors to start their papers at once. But what odds? He was miles ahead of them all--an easy first. It was rumoured in Pembroke that the new Fellow had been seen smoking (a pipe, too) in the quad--that the Dean had said it was really shocking, such a bad example to the undergraduates, and against all college rules. How could we expect undergraduates to be moral if Mr Steevens did such things? How, indeed? Then came Mr Oscar Browning from Cambridge, and carried off" Steevens to the 'second university in the kingdom, ' so that we saw but little of him. Some worshipped, others denounced him. The Cambridge papers took sides. One spoke of 'The Shadow' or 'The Fetish, ' _au contraire_: another would praise the great Oxford genius. Whereas at Balliol Steevens was boldly criticised, at Cambridge he was hated or adored. 

 "A few initiated friends knew that Steevens was writing for the 'Pall Mall' and the 'Cambridge Observer, ' and it soon became evident that journalism was to be his life-work. Last February I met him in the Strand, and he was much changed: no more crush hat, and long hair, and Bohemian manners. He was back from the East, and a great man now--married and settled as well--very spruce, and inclined to be enthusiastic about the Empire. But still I remarked his old indifference to criticism. Success had improved him in every way: this seems a common thing with Britishers. In September last I knocked up against him at Rennes during the Dreyfus trial. As I expected, Steevens kept cool: he could always see the other side of a question. We discussed the impending war, and he was eagerly looking forward to going with the troops. I dare not tell his views on the political question of the war. They would surprise most of his friends and admirers. On taking leave I bade him be sure to take care of himself. He said he would. "

What strikes me as being peculiarly significant of a certain aspect ofhis character appeared in 'The Nursing and Hospital World. ' It ran inthis wise--I give merely an extract:--

 "Although George Steevens never used his imperial pen for personal purposes, yet it seems almost as if it were a premonition of death by enteric fever which aroused his intense sympathy for our brave soldiers who died like flies in the Soudan from this terrible scourge, owing to lack of trained nursing skill, during the late war. This sympathy he expressed to those in power, and we believe that it was owing to his representations that one of the most splendid offers of help for our soldiers ever suggested was made by his chief, the editor of the 'Daily Mail, ' when he proposed to equip, regardless of expense, an ambulance to the Soudan, organised on lines which would secure, for our sick and wounded, _skilled nursing on modern lines_, such nursing as the system in vogue at the War Office denies to them. 

 "The fact that the War Office refused this enlightened and generous offer, and that dozens of valuable lives were sacrificed in consequence, is only part of the monstrous incompetence of its management. Who can tell! If Mr Alfred Harmsworth's offer had been accepted in the last war, might not army nursing reform have, to a certain extent, been effected ere we came to blows with the Transvaal, and many of the brave men who have died for us long lingering deaths from enteric and dysentery have been spared to those of whom they are beloved?"

Another writer in the 'Outlook':--

 "As we turn over the astonishing record of George Warrington Steevens's thirty years, we are divided between the balance of loss and gain. The loss to his own intimates must be intolerable. From that, indeed, we somewhat hastily avert our eyes. Remains the loss to the great reading public, which we believe that Steevens must have done a vast deal to educate, not to literature so much as to a pride in our country's imperial destiny. Where the elect chiefly admired a scarcely exampled grasp and power of literary impressionism, the man in the street was learning the scope and aspect of his and our imperial heritage, and gaining a new view of his duties as a British citizen. 

 "A potent influence is thus withdrawn. The pen that had taught us to see and comprehend India and Egypt and the reconquest of the Soudan would have burned in on the most heedless the line which duty marks out for us in South Africa. Men who know South Africa are pretty well united. Now Steevens would have taken all England to South Africa. Nay, more, we are no longer able to blink the truth that all is not for the best in the best of all possible armies, and the one satisfaction in our reverses is that, when the war is over, no Government will dare to resist a vigorous programme of reform. Steevens would not have been too technical for his readers; he would have given his huge public just as many prominent facts and headings as had been good for them, and his return from South Africa with the materials of a book must have strengthened the hands of the intelligent reformer. That journalism which, in a word, really is a living influence in the State is infinitely the poorer. And so we believe is literature. There is much literature in his journalism, but it is in his 'Monologues of the Dead' that you get the rare achievement and rarer promise which made one positive that, his wanderings once over, he would settle down to write something of great and permanent value. Only one impediment could we have foreseen to such a consummation: he might have been drawn into public life. For he spoke far better than the majority of even distinguished contemporary politicians, and to a man of his knowledge of affairs, influence over others, and clearness of conviction, anything might have been open. 

 "Well! he is dead at Ladysmith of enteric fever. Turning over the pages of his famous war-book we find it written of the Soudan: 'Of the men who escaped with their lives, hundreds more will bear the mark of its fangs till they die; hardly one of them but will die the sooner for the Soudan. ' And so he is dead 'the sooner for the Soudan. ' It seems bitter, unjust, a quite superfluous dispensation; and then one's eye falls on the next sentence--'What have we to show in return?' In the answer is set forth the balance of gain, for we love 'to show in return' a wellnigh ideal career. Fame, happiness, friendship, and that which transcends friendship, all came to George Steevens before he was thirty. He did everything, and everything well. He bridged a gulf which was deemed impassable, for from being a head-boy at school and the youngest Balliol scholar and a Fellow of his College and the very type of rising pedagogue, with a career secure to him in these dusty meadows, he chose to step forth into a world where these things were accounted lightly, to glorify the hitherto contemned office of the reporter. Thus within a few years he hurried through America, bringing back, the greatest of living American journalists tells us, the best and most accurate of all pictures of America. Thus he saw the face of war with the conquering Turk in Thessaly, and showed us modern Germany and Egypt and British India, and in two Soudanese campaigns rode for days in the saddle in 'that God-accursed wilderness, ' as though his training had been in a stable, not in the quad of Balliol. These thirty years were packed with the happiness and success which Matthew Arnold desired for them that must die young. He not only succeeded, but he took success modestly, and leaves a name for unselfishness and unbumptiousness. Also he 'did the State some service. '

 "'One paces up and down the shore yet awhile, ' says Thackeray, 'and looks towards the unknown ocean and thinks of the traveller whose boat sailed yesterday. ' And so, thinking of Steevens, we must not altogether repine when, 'trailing clouds of glory, ' an 'ample, full-blooded spirit shoots into the night. '"

I take this passage from 'Literature, ' in connection with Steevens, onaccount of the grave moral which it draws from his life-work:--

 "His career was an object-lesson in the usefulness of those educational endowments which link the humblest with the highest seats of learning in the country. If he had not been able to win scholarships he would have had to begin life as a clerk in a bank or a house of business. But he won them, and a good education with them, wherever they were to be won--at the City of London School, and at Balliol College, Oxford. He was a first-class man (both in 'Mods' and 'Greats'), _proxime accessit_ for the Hertford, and a Fellow of Pembroke. He learnt German, and specialised in metaphysics. A review which he wrote of Mr Balfour's 'Foundations of Religious Belief' showed how much more deeply than the average journalist he had studied the subjects about which philosophers doubt; and his first book--'Monologues of the Dead'--established his claim to scholarship. Some critics called them vulgar, and they certainly were frivolous. But they proved two things--that Mr Steevens had a lively sense of humour, and that he had read the classics to some purpose. The monologue of Xanthippe--in which she gave her candid opinion of Socrates--was, in its way, and within its limits, a masterpiece. 

 "But it was not by this sort of work that Mr Steevens was to win his wide popularity. Few writers, when one comes to think of it, do win wide popularity by means of classical _jeux d'esprit_. At the time when he was throwing them off, he was also throwing off 'Occ. Notes' for the 'Pall Mall Gazette. ' He was reckoned the humorist _par excellence_ of that journal in the years when, under the editorship of Mr Cust, it was almost entirely written by humorists. He was one of the seceders on the occasion of Mr Cust's retirement, and occupied the leisure that then presented itself in writing his book on 'Naval Policy. ' His real chance in life came when he was sent to America for the 'Daily Mail. ' It was a better chance than it might have been, because that newspaper did not publish his letters at irregular intervals, as usually happens, but in an unbroken daily sequence. Other excursions followed--to Egypt, to India, to Turkey, to Germany, to Rennes, to the Soudan--and the letters, in almost every case, quickly reappeared as a book. 

 "A rare combination of gifts contributed to Mr Steevens's success. To begin with, he had a wonderful power of finding his way quickly through a tangle of complicated detail: this he owed, no doubt, in large measure to his Oxford training. He also was one of the few writers who have brought to journalism the talents, and sympathies, and touch hitherto regarded as belonging more properly to the writer of fiction. It was the dream of Mr T. P. O'Connor, when he started the 'Sun, ' to have the happenings of the passing day described in the style of the short-story writer. The experiment failed, because it was tried on an evening paper with printers clamouring for copy, and the beginning of the story generally had to be written before the end of the story was in sight or the place of the incidents could be determined. Mr Steevens tried the same experiment under more favourable conditions, and succeeded. There never were newspaper articles that read more like short stories than his, and at the same time there never were newspaper articles that gave a more convincing impression that the thing happened as the writer described it. "

A more personal note was struck perhaps by a writer in the 'MorningPost':--

 "Few of the reading public can fail to be acquainted with the merits of his purely journalistic work. He had carefully developed a great natural gift of observation until it seemed wellnigh an impossibility that he should miss any important detail, however small, in a scene which he was watching. Moreover, he had a marvellous power of vivid expression, and used it with such a skill that even the dullest of readers could hardly fail to see what he wished them to see. It is given to some journalists to wield great influence, and few have done more to spread the imperial idea than has been done by Mr Steevens during the last four or five years of his brief life. Still it must be remembered that, in order to follow journalism successfully, he had to make sacrifices which he undoubtedly felt to be heavy. His little book, 'Monologues of the Dead, ' can never become popular, since it needs for its appreciation an amount of scholarship which comparatively few possess. Yet it proves none the less conclusively that, had he lived and had leisure, he would have accomplished great things in literature. Those who had the privilege of knowing him, however, and above all those who at one period or another in his career worked side by side with him, will think but little now of his success as journalist and author. The people who may have tried, as they read his almost aggressively brilliant articles, to divine something of the personality behind them, can scarcely have contrived to picture him accurately. They will not imagine the silent, undemonstrative person, invariably kind and ready unasked to do a colleague's work in addition to his own, who dwells in the memory of the friends of Mr Steevens. They will not understand how entirely natural it seemed to these friends that when the long day's work was ended in Ladysmith he should have gone habitually, until this illness struck him down, to labour among the sick and wounded for their amusement, and in order to give them the courage which is as necessary to the soldier facing disease as it is to his colleague who has to storm a difficult position. Those who loved him will presently find some consolation in considering the greatness of his achievement, but nothing that can now be said will mitigate their grief at his untimely loss. "

Another writer says:--

 "What Mr Kipling has done for fiction Mr Steevens did for fact. He was a priest of the Imperialist idea, and the glory of the Empire was ever uppermost in his writings. That alone would not have brought him the position he held, for it was part of the age he lived in. But he was endowed with a curious faculty, an extraordinary gift for recording his impressions. In a scientific age his style may be described as cinematographic. He was able to put vividly before his readers, in a series of smooth-running little pictures, events exactly as he saw them with his own intense eyes. It has been said that on occasion his work contained passages a purist would not have passed. But Mr Steevens wrote for the people, and he knew it. Deliberately and by consummate skill he wrote in the words of his average reader; and had he desired to offer his work for the consideration of a more select class, there is little doubt that he would have displayed the same felicity. His mission was not of that order. He set himself the more difficult task of entertaining the many; and the same thoroughness which made him captain of the school, Balliol scholar, and the best note-writer on the 'Pall Mall Gazette' in its brightest days, taught him, aided by natural gifts, to write 'With Kitchener to Khartum' and his marvellous impressions of travel. "

 * * * * *

This record must close. Innumerable have been the tributes to this braveyouth's power for capturing the human heart and the human mind. Thestatesman and the working man--one of these has written very curtly andsimply, "He served us best of all"--each has felt something of theintimate spirit of his work. 

Lord Roberts cabled from Capetown in the following words:--

 "Deeply regret death of your talented correspondent, Steevens. ROBERTS. "

And a correspondent writes:--

 "To-day I called on Lord Kitchener, in compliance with his request, having yesterday received through his aide-de-camp, Major Watson, the following letter:--

 "'I am anxious to have an opportunity of expressing to you personally my great regret at the loss we have all sustained in the death of Mr Steevens. '

 "Lord Kitchener said to me:--

 "'I was anxious to tell you how very sorry I was to hear of the death of Mr Steevens. He was with me in the Sudan, and, of course, I saw a great deal of him and knew him well. He was such a clever and able man. He did his work as correspondent so brilliantly, and he never gave the slightest trouble--I wish all correspondents were like him. I suppose they will try to follow in his footsteps. I am sure I hope they will. 

 "'He was a model correspondent, the best I have ever known, and I should like you to say how greatly grieved I am at his death. '"

Some "In Memoriam" verses, very beautifully written, for the 'MorningPost, ' may however claim a passing attention:--

 "The pages of the Book quickly he turned. He saw the languid Isis in a dream Flow through the flowery meadows, where the ghosts Of them whose glorious names are Greece and Rome Walked with him. Then the dream must have an end, For London called, and he must go to her, To learn her secrets--why men love her so, Loathing her also. Yet again he learned How God, who cursed us with the need of toil, Relenting, made the very curse a boon. There came a call to wander through the world And watch the ways of men. He saw them die In fiercest fight, the thought of victory Making them drunk like wine; he saw them die Wounded and sick, and struggling still to live, To fight again for England, and again Greet those who loved them. Well indeed he knew How good it is to live, how good to love, How good to watch the wondrous ways of men-- How good to die, if ever there be need. And everywhere our England in his sight Poured out her blood and gold, to share with all Her heritage of freedom won of old. Thus quickly did he turn the pages o'er, And learn the goodness of the gift of life; And when the Book was ended, glad at heart-- The lesson learned, and every labour done-- Find at the end life's ultimate gift of rest. "

There I leave him. Great-hearted, strong-souled, brave without ahesitation, tender as a child, intolerant of wrong because he wasincapable of it, tolerant of every human weakness, slashingcontroversialist in speech, statesman-like in foresight, finely versedin the wisdom of many literatures, a man of genius scarce aware of hisinnumerable gifts, but playing them all with splendid skill, with fullenjoyment of the crowded hours of life, --here was George Steevens. Inthe face of what might have been--think of it--a boy scarce thirty! Andyet he did much, if his days were so few. "Being made perfect in alittle while, he fulfilled long years. "

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. 

[Illustration: MAP OF THE SEAT OF WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA]