To-day we rest under the trees and dream through the music of singing birds, with perhaps a thought for yesterday and the fellow-travellers whose journey ended so suddenly. But for the soldier, more than for anyone, the watchword is "No regrets"; and as for to-morrow, who can tell the issue?



XXIII

THE FIGHTING ON THE MOLOPO

At daybreak on Wednesday, May 16th, the two columns under Colonel Mahon's command moved from Jan Massibi's in two parallel lines along the northern bank of the Molopo River. As the sky brightened before us Mafeking was eagerly looked for, but for a long time each successive rise only showed us another beyond which hid the desired view. The country consisted of a succession of ridges lying at right angles to our line of march, and as each one rose before us the staff galloped forward to the summit, only to see another lying beyond. But at last, while some of us were buying eggs at a Kaffir kraal, a more adventurous person climbed upon a rubbish heap and shouted "There's Mafeking!" There was a rush for the coign of vantage, and a great levelling of glasses. There it lay, sure enough, the little town that we had come so far to see—a tiny cluster of white near the eastward horizon, glistening amid the yellowish-brown of the flats. We looked at it for a few moments in silence, and then Colonel Mahon said, "Well, let's be getting on"; and no one said anything more about Mafeking, but everyone thought a great deal.



There was a difficulty about water, and it was finally decided to halt at midday at a point where the Molopo River curved near to the road. We turned off the road down a slope which sank towards the river on the right. The ground rose up on all sides round us, but the guns were placed near the top of the northward rise. The mules were outspanned and led to water, and we breakfasted. Remember that we had been up since half-past five and had had nothing to eat, that it was now nearly an hour after midday, and you will understand how it happened that I was more interested in the cooking of certain meats than in the galloping about of orderlies on the hillside.

Breakfast was just over and my horse was being saddled, when a crack of rifle-fire on our right front warned me that things were about to happen; and at the same time I saw that the mules were being harnessed with frantic haste. By the time that I had ridden up the slope the guns had gone forward into position, but as yet there was no firing except from rifles, which were banging in a desultory fashion now all along our right flank. I searched the slope beyond the river with my glasses, but could not see a man; yet the firing was there sure enough, and increasing. It was at 1.55 that the first firing broke out, and for half an hour the same thing continued, during which the convoy was formed up in what seemed a sheltered part of the hollow. We were in a bad place—a very shallow saucer; and on the edge of the saucer the Boers had taken up their position.

During this half-hour little seemed to be done, but there is always this interval during which a battle develops. We did not as yet know any but one place in which the Boers were; it was pretty certain that they did not know what we were going to do; so the right front, where our advance guard had first come into touch with the enemy, was as yet the only point of contact. Meanwhile Colonel Plumer, with the whole of his mounted men, was sent off to the right flank; Colonel Peakman, with the Kimberley Mounted Corps, was held back to watch the rear; Colonel Edwards was sent with the Imperial Light Horse to the left flank, with instructions to work round in advance if possible, and so turn the enemy's right; and the Royal Horse Artillery and the Canadian guns took up a position on the front. It was difficult to find a place from which to look on, especially as we were far from confident that the Boers were on our right alone. There were folds in the sides of our saucer, and I found a kind of ridge on the northward slope below our guns. I had just dismounted and was watching the right ridge through my glasses when the edge of the horizon at which I was looking was divided by a bright flash. In a few seconds there was a deep report, followed by the whine of a shell in the air; the sand spouted up in a great fountain—Heavens! how close to the convoy; and presently the sound of the burst drowned the crackling of musketry. The convoy huddled away from the smoking patch where the shell had fallen, and began—oh, how slowly!—to wind up the slope towards me. Another shell, still on the same spot, of which the waggons were now quite clear; and now the shells followed each other so rapidly that one gave up trying to distinguish between the initial and the bursting reports, and became absorbed in watching the brown columns spouting from the earth.

They were now playing all round the moving convoy, and each was a miracle; wherever there was a blank space, there the fountain rose; and when the convoy had closed up so completely that one was certain that the next shell must hit something, it fell quite wide. I was still watching this beautiful and dreadful sight when the air above me vibrated to a new song, and on my right a small shell burst with a disagreeable sound. I cleared away to the northern side of the basin, only to feel once more obliged to move as a new gun opened and began to churn up the ground. To be sure, these were long, range-finding shots, and were not intended to pitch where they did, but it is not always safe to rely upon the accuracy of shrapnel fire, and I moved again. But it was of no use; the enemy's pom-pom suddenly began to bark, and played on the one spot which had seemed but a moment before to be safe.

During this development (which had only occupied about ten minutes) our artillery had gradually come into action; first the solitary, abrupt bang of the 12-pound horse gun, then the readier and brisker fusilade of the Canadian quick-firing Vickers-Maxim, then the clamour of our two pom-poms, then the rattle of a Maxim somewhere in the rear. And all the while the area from which the sounds proceeded was spreading like a bush-fire; beginning on the right, it worked across our front, spread from the left front along that flank until it seemed almost to meet the firing on the right rear. When all the guns were going the medley was terrific, although I suppose it was nothing to the sound produced in a really big pitched battle. But it was confusing enough, and, what with the baffling effect of the cross-fire, the whining in the air, and the continuous noise of the explosions, the rattle and crackle of musketry, the galloping hither and thither of orderlies and messengers, and the unpleasantness resulting from the whole thing's happening in so small an area, provided excitement enough to satisfy the most jaded adventurer.

In colder language what had happened was this. The commando that had been holding on for days on our right as we marched had got ahead of us when we diverted towards Plumer, had effected a junction with a force sent out from Mafeking to oppose us, and had just arrived in position near Israel's Farm when we came up against them. Fortunately they had not time to entrench, but they were just going to begin when we turned them, as we found picks and spades lying about in rear of their northward artillery position. From the large outline of their attack there must have been at least 2,000 of them, and from the cleverness with which they were disposed we at first estimated them at twice that number. We held them on our right while we sent a strong force working round on our left, which ultimately got out far enough to turn their right. Of course we were too few to do more than dislodge them; surrounding was out of the question; so when we had fairly turned them we "let go" on the right, and the Boers fled in that direction. The house at Israel's Farm they held until the very end, shelling our rear-guard briskly. The engagement lasted close on five hours, during which our casualties amounted to less than forty.

In even fewer words than these (so concise is his art) the military despatch-writer might have described those eventful hours; and one takes a kind of pleasure in trying to imitate him, so supremely inadequate are such sentences to produce any real impression on people who have never found themselves in the midst of a battle. Not that any art of written words is equal to it. One goes through the whole gamut of sensation; one is charmed, afraid, bewildered; charmed by the scale and magnitude of the operations, afraid for one's own skin, bewildered with a kind of dream at the strangeness of it all. One may sit, as I sat, under a tree listening and watching for hours; and from the grossly and crudely real the thing fades and changes into an unreal image of the senses. The gaudy flies and beetles that hum round one, whose noise is so much louder and nearer than the crash of shells, they fill the foreground of reality; it is not conceivable that the man with the pleasant face and kindly eye who is directing a battery should be attempting the lives of his fellows on so large a scale. Yet it is the scale that makes the difference: a man who would abhor to kill another will with a smile direct the machine that destroys twenty; and he, if anyone, has the right to act upon this reduced estimate of the value of human life, for he counts his own as lightly as that of his enemy.

But I have forsaken my narrative of the fight, and I am confronted by the fact that there are five hours of fighting to be accounted for.

Five hours! Was it for so long that one listened to the voices of guns and rifles? I can hardly believe it, and no bare catalogue of manoeuvres seems to fill the gap. Our artillery positions were changed several times, and when the convoy was crowded up into a fold of the ground the shells no longer reached it, but continued to pound at Colonel Peakman and his rear-guard. At about five o'clock, the Boers having cleared from our left front, the convoy was pushed on in that direction, and we penetrated as far as the position which had been held by the Boer 15-pounder on our front. Just as we reached that point a note was brought in from Colonel Plumer on the right reporting that he was checked by the Boers at Israel's Farm, and accordingly the Horse Artillery battery was formed up in front of the convoy, and with the two pom-poms (which followed it about like small dogs barking after a big one) shelled the farm, which the enemy evacuated. The sun began to sink, the firing in our rear dropped and died out gradually, and with a few shots from a Martini, fired by someone on the left who amused himself by sniping the staff, the fight came to an end.

The fight was over, but as the convoy began to work its way cautiously through the bush in the dusk we began to talk about it, and to fit it together from the pieces of our individual experience. What had they been trying to do? What had So-and-so been doing on the left? Had we many casualties? Should we go on into Mafeking? Ah, that was the question. But after about an hour's trekking through the bush it was decided to halt, as someone reported that the enemy was entrenched ahead of us. As for the fight, we did not then fully know what had happened, but we found out afterwards. The Boers had once more given us a lesson in tactics, and we had given them one in dealing with a nasty situation. With a comparatively small force (although stronger than ours) they had bluffed us by extending their attack round a large perimeter, leading us to suppose their strength to be far greater than it really was. They had caught us in the one bad bit of country between Jan Massibi's and Mafeking, and but for the really excellent fighting on our side might have held us where we were until the want of supplies forced us to retire or surrender. As we had so few casualties it is probable that they had not many; but it is possible to have very warm fighting with few casualties. Our cover was excellent; so was theirs; and Colonel Peakman, who, with the rear-guard, bore the heaviest burden of the fight, lost hardly a man, although he lost heavily in horses. Everyone is agreed that the honours of the day fell chiefly to this gallant business man, who in his spare time had made himself so good a soldier.

All these matters were talked over until we halted about seven o'clock and reluctantly heard that we were not to proceed that night. No lights, of course; but everyone was ready to lie down. While my bed was being prepared I went over to the ambulance, whither the wounded were being brought in on stretchers. There were only two small waggons, and the wretched sufferers were literally heaped inside them, lying in the dark amid their own blood. The little staff under Surgeon-Captain Davies worked gallantly, getting the men out, dressing their wounds, making them as comfortable as possible on blankets over the grass; but it was a miserable and sordid scene, relieved only by the cheery willingness of the helpers and the fortitude of the patients. Even here, of course, there were no lights, but in the recesses of a waggon an orderly was trying to prepare hot water with a tiny Etna. Dressing about twenty serious surgical cases out of doors in pitch darkness, with a limited supply of not over clean water, short-handed, hurried, without proper appliances—it was a sight that would have startled the artist in antiseptic surgery. But there they lay; and it was with something like a sense of shame that I turned into my own comfortable bed.



XXIV

MAFEKING AT LAST

They were twenty-four very exciting hours that began when we moved from Jan Massibi's at daybreak on Wednesday and ended when we lay down to snatch a little rest at daybreak on Thursday. Many miles were travelled, a great enterprise was brought to a successful issue, a tough battle was fought, men received wounds and died, Mafeking was relieved: enough incident and adventure to fill months of ordinary life. The bare events are recorded here, but the emotional history of those twenty-four hours will probably never be written. But as you read the narrative, put yourself in the place of those to whom it was not a story but a piece of life, and then perhaps you will realise something of what it meant to them.

Not much of the story remains to be told.

At midnight between Wednesday and Thursday I was awakened by a general stir in the surrounding camp, to find that the moon was shining brightly, lighting up busy drivers, and the troops getting their horses ready. We were to advance. Major Karri-Davies had ridden on into Mafeking, and, with the luck which rewards daring, had found the road clear, and sent back a messenger with that information to Colonel Mahon. I think men were never so willingly awakened from sleep; not even the wounded grumbled, who had also to be roused from their beds on the grass and repacked into the stuffy ambulance. At about 12.30 we were ready to start, but during the first mile there were long halts and delays while the guides argued and boggled about the roads. At last the strain became too great, and Major Gifford, Captain Smith, and I resolved to ride on and trust to finding the right road. We knew the direction by the stars, and started across the veldt a little south of east.

It was bitterly cold, and we were all both sleepy and hungry, but there was an excitement in the air that kept us easily going. After about half an hour we heard voices ahead, and descried the shapes of horses and men. Our hearts sank for a moment, only to rise again when we recognised Colonel Peakman, who, having been in command of the rear-guard on the previous day up till nine o'clock at night, was now taking his turn at advance guard at one o'clock the next morning. As a Kimberley man, it had long been his ambition to lead the relieving force into Mafeking, and I think no one grudged him the honour. Amongst all, indeed, there was a certain amount of competition, and the four correspondents who survived to the end of the expedition became strangely silent about their intentions for the evening. I pinned my faith to Peakman, as I knew he was as anxious as anyone to be in first.

Well, we joined the Advance Guard, which presently went on along the road pointed out by the guide, and for an hour we jogged on at a fast walk, until we had clearly "run the distance," as they say at sea. Still no sign of the trenches or forts which should mark the outward boundary of the defended area. We pulled up, and the guide was questioned.

"Two miles more," he said.

We rode on for another quarter of an hour, and still found nothing before us but the rolling veldt; not a light, not a sound except the beating of the horses' feet. Again we halted, and this time Colonel Peakman himself questioned the guide, and the man had to admit that he had mistaken his way, and that we were on the lower road, longer by a good three miles than that originally intended. We had no connecting files with the main column, and, as it had a guide of its own, it was certain that it would take the shorter road, and probably be in before its own Advance Guard. A bitter moment, in which things were said to the guide; but some of us hoped that the slow convoy, with its tired and galled mules, would even yet take a longer time on its short road than we on our long one. So we went on again, this time at a trot; the excitement seemed to extend to the horses, so that even they could not be restrained. In ten minutes we saw men sitting by the roadside, and found a hundred very weary Fusiliers, who had been sent to take Israel's Farm at the end of the fight, and told to go on afterwards.

"Had anyone passed along the road before us?" "No"; and with a gasp of relief we hurried on. In a few moment's the group in advance pulled up, shouting "'Ware barbed wire!"

We all stopped, and there were frantic calls for wire-cutters. With four reports like the snapping of big fiddle-strings the last barrier before Mafeking was removed, and we passed on again, this time at a hand-canter. In a few minutes we heard the sound of a galloping horse on the road, and a mounted man challenged us.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Friend."

"Who are you?" (The excitement was too high for the preservation of the proper formula.)

"Colonel Peakman, in command of the Advance Guard of the Relief Column."

"By Jove, ain't I glad to see you, sir!"

It was an officer sent out by Colonel Baden-Powell to meet us and bring us in. We left the squadron, and the five of us went on, this time at a gallop, over trenches, past breastworks and redoubts and little forts, until we pulled up at the door of the headquarters' mess.

Ah, the narrative is helpless here. No art could describe the handshaking and the welcome and the smiles on the faces of these tired-looking men; how they looked with rapt faces at us commonplace people from the outer world as though we were angels, how we all tried to speak at once, and only succeeded in gazing at each other and in saying, "By Jove!" "Well, I'm hanged!" and the like senseless expressions that sometimes mean much to Englishmen. One man tried to speak; then he swore; then he buried his face in his arms and sobbed. We all gulped at nothing, until someone brought in cocoa and we gulped that instead; then Baden-Powell came in, and one could only gaze at him, and search in vain on his jolly face for the traces of seven months' anxiety and strain.

After an hour we went out and found the column safely encamped just outside the town. Everyone was dog-tired, and although it was half-past five in the morning and the moon was sinking we lay down and were immediately asleep—in Mafeking.

We did not know it, but we were in a besieged town. Officially the relief did not take place until ten o'clock that morning, when the Boers hurried away with their last gun. I was awakened at eight by the sound of heavy firing, and as soon as my horse was ready rode away to the north-east corner of the town (we had entered from the north-west), to where the greater part of our column was in action. Through glasses one could see something being drawn up the purple slope of a hill six miles away—the last gun of the besiegers. Earlier in the morning our troops had advanced on all the Boer positions which were still occupied (only the eastern ones were then held), and had shelled the enemy in the midst of his preparations for flight. It was only a rear-guard action; indeed the engagement was practically limited to the artillery; and all I was in time to see was the flight. It was a good sight, the mounted men galloping in open order up the hillside which the morning sun was throwing into a thousand patches of light and shade. They were soon out of range, and we stood watching the disappearing specks of black crawl like flies up the furthest ridges, here in groups of a dozen, there in twos and threes, until the last one had vanished from our view; and thus the siege of Mafeking came to an end.

There was joy in the camps of the relieving column when it was known that they had also taken part in the siege; "Another bar," said the medal-hunters.

Colonel Mahon's column consisted of 900 mounted men of the Imperial Light Horse, under Lieutenant-Colonel Edwardes, and the amalgamation of local troops known as the Kimberley Mounted Corps, under Colonel King; 100 picked volunteers from the Fusilier Brigade; four guns of M Battery Royal Horse Artillery, under Major Jackson, and a pom-pom section (two guns), under Captain Robinson, the whole artillery force consisting of 100 men; three Maxims, 56 waggons, and several private Cape carts, 660 mules; in all, 1,200 horses and 1,100 men.



The staff was: Colonel Mahon, 8th Hussars, brigadier; Captain Bell-Smythe, 1st Dragoon Guards, chief staff officer; Colonel Frank Rhodes, late Royal Dragoons, chief of Intelligence Department; Prince Alexander of Teck, 7th Hussars, A.D.C.; Major Jackson, commanding Royal Artillery; Major Sir John Willoughby, late of the Blues; Major the Hon. Maurice Gifford, attached to the Imperial Yeomanry, general staff; and Lieutenant F.W. Smith, Kimberley Mounted Corps, galloper. There was not an officer on the staff whose industry and good sense did not contribute to the success of the expedition; and we correspondents owe a peculiar gratitude to Colonel Rhodes, who acted as Press Censor. No doubt his own experience as a correspondent helped him to fulfil what is always a responsible and seldom an easy office. He was always considerate, always interested, always kind and always fair.

Here ends an imperfect narrative of the relief. What the deliverers saw on Thursday morning was a little white town lying in the midst of a wide shallow basin of green moorland; and it reminded one of a town that had been long deserted and in ruins. I am not exaggerating when I say that by far the greater number of houses in the town had been struck by shells, and that very nearly all had been struck either by shells or bullets.

After the engagement on Thursday morning the relieving column formed up and entered the town, headed by Colonel Baden-Powell, Colonel Mahon, and his staff. As one passed house after house, one with a gaping hole in its side, another with the chimneys overthrown, another with a whole wall stove in, none with windows completely glazed, all bearing some mark of assault—as this panorama of destruction unfolded itself one marvelled that anyone should have lived throughout the siege. And when the procession formed up in the dilapidated Market Square, and the whole of the Town Guard mustered—Kaffirs, Parsees, Jews, Arabians, Englishmen, Dutchmen, nearly every sort and nationality of men—and when the Mayor read an address expressing in the conventional terms of such compliments the emotions of this motley crowd, one asked oneself what it was that had held these very ordinary-looking people to so heroic an intention. Remember that the defence of Mafeking had been one big bluff, that there was nothing to prevent the Boers, with determination and careful arrangement, from taking the place at almost any time, and you will realise how startlingly that question asserted itself. I like to think that there were many men in Mafeking whose courage alone would have disdained surrender; but there was one man in whose face one found the answer to the riddle. Brains alone would not have done it; heart alone would have fainted and failed under those long months of danger; but the officer commanding this garrison had both brains and heart, and so he taught his men to endure.

I do not pay the garrison of Mafeking so poor a compliment as to suppose that the mere hunger for luxuries, serious misfortune though it be, was the signal trial of its endurance. Ladysmith suffered worse in this respect and did not complain. In Mafeking there was always a plentiful supply of green vegetables, of tobacco, and of wine, and it was only with a smile that the heir to one of the wealthiest estates in England told me that they had latterly invented a brawn made with glue from the hides and feet and ears of mules and donkeys.

But nearly 30,000 shells fell into a town covering about the same area as Cowes; in many streets not a man dared show himself save under the cloud of a dark night, for they were swept by rifle bullets; hardly one of the many forts on the circumference of defence held weapons half so formidable as the stout hearts that served them. Thirty thousand shells! I have been in the neighbourhood of perhaps a hundred bursting shells, and every burst will be a memory for a lifetime; but thirty thousand! The heart stops at the thought. Yet here was the little ruined town; here were the men with weak bodies and cheery faces to prove that courage can raise the mind beyond fear and suffering; that, given an ideal and a chance in the leadership, men may be counted on for something far greater even than bravery.



XXV

A MEMORIAL OF THE SIEGE

There is nothing pretty about the place where the dead defenders of Mafeking are laid. It lies in a little square of brown stone wall, planted amid the dreary waste outside the town. There are no green lawns, no twisted yews, no weeping willows; the few fir trees hold themselves stiffly up, as though in pride at this triumph of the vegetable over the animal; and the great bushes of faded geranium only throw into relief the regular lines of limestone mounds, each with its prim wooden cross of advertisement. Always an ugly and a dreary place, it was, when I saw it a few days after the relief, more dreary than ever; for the sun, whose presence makes the difference of a season in this bare land, was hidden behind dark stacks of cloud flying westward before a cold gale.

From a sandbag protection at one corner of the cemetery there is a view on all sides to the horizon. The town, the empty railway station, the hospital, the network of shelter trenches, connecting earth-works, redans, redoubts, forts, and emplacements; the straight line of railway-ruled across the plain to the horizon—these make the view. Hardly anything is moving except the white flag on the hospital and the colours on the forts. Sometimes a figure crosses the open stretch between the hospital and the town, but outside the cemetery itself hardly a man is to be seen. The wind hums in the empty hearth of a locomotive, through the stiff trees of the cemetery, past the signal, standing like a sentinel gone to sleep with his head sunk on his breast, waiting in an attitude of invitation for the train that is seven months overdue.

One's eye returns along the shining rails until it rests again within the yard, in a far corner of which a couple of orderlies detailed for burial fatigue are hacking with picks at the hard, white earth. The graves are in prim, uniform rows—the soldiers' graves, I mean, for even here the military element swamps the civilian, and one hardly takes note of the private graves, they are so few. But the soldiers' graves are arranged with military precision, row behind row, each row containing twenty graves or more. And at least seven or eight rows of graves are marked by the regulation cross, while there are many rows on which as yet no crosses have been erected. The painted words on the crosses become monotonous as one reads from the head of the first row down to where the mounds give place to gaping caverns—five or six—prepared for the dying, whom even now the doctor is plying with physic in the hospital. Trooper A, Private B, Colour-Sergeant C; the names vary, indeed, but there are only three versions of the manner of death—"Died of wounds," "Died of enteric fever," "Killed in action"—the three epitaphs for soldiers in South Africa.

It was strange, amid the dreariness and stagnation of this place, to think of the jubilations at home. What cheering, what toasting, what hilarity! But here the sparkle in the wine had died, leaving the cup that had brimmed flat and dull and only half full after all. Food was scanty and of the plainest quality, there was no news from the outside world, disease was still busy; and here, set forth in the hard limestone, was the bill for all the glory and excitement. The bill, but not the payment; that was being made at home by the people who cared for what lies beneath the limestone.

The evils of a war are so direct and obvious that they are apt to be discounted or accepted as Fate, and classed among the thousand unavoidable ills beneath which we must patiently sit. But are they? In a war, the necessity and even justice of which are doubted honestly by many, where all share the responsibility and few the personal cost, it is hard to see the hand of an impartial Fate.

A strange place, you may say, in which to attempt the adjustment of mingled impressions. Yet in the midst of our crude existence at Mafeking, where life was shorn of all the impalpable things that make it real and reduced to a simple material level of food and sleep and noise, it was a kind of relief to spend an hour in the place where men had gone down into rest and silence. In normal circumstances one may avoid such places, but after the din of arms and the shout of victory there was a sense of companionship to be found in the place that stood for the ending of disputes. Peaceful, yes; but how was the peace gained? It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country; but blood and fire, grief and anguish had filled the vestibule of this sleeping-chamber; and peaceful though it be, the graveyard of Mafeking is a place to induce in Englishmen some searchings of heart.

"Oh, surely not," says the music-hall patriot; "the brave fellows who lie there have died a glorious death, and the glory is ours as their fellow-countrymen"; and he drops a tear and a shilling into the particular tambourine which happens at the moment to be raising the loudest clamour, and honestly believes himself to have achieved some nobility at second-hand.

Our glory? Hardly that. Those who, justly or unjustly, place the martyr in his last predicament do not wear his crown; and the glory of Trooper A's death does not rest with you or me, but with those in whose hearts his memory is quick and real. To count these scores of deaths, as it were, to our credit in the war, to esteem them merely as things for which more vengeance must be taken, would be the last and greatest mistake. Surely they lie in the scale of responsibility, they are things for which an account must be rendered, by which an obligation is incurred to use well the fruits of victory.

There is no need that the wind should moan over this desolate patch, or that the tattered geranium should scatter its withered leaves on the unlovely ground. Were it as sweet as a garden in Delos, were the ground carpeted with violet and primrose and shadows of laburnum, the burying-ground of Mafeking would still be a sad spot on the chart of British South Africa.



XXVI

GOOD-BYE TO MAFEKING

A sudden order from General Hunter; a morning of preparation; a commotion of dismantling, packing, harnessing, saddling; handshaking and well-wishing; cheers ringing, hoofs clattering, dust rising beneath wheels and many feet, a backward glance along the road, and—Good-bye to Mafeking. An episode in the lives of men, and one which, in spite of the excitement that went before it, will probably leave a small though deep impression. Life there was dull beyond words, perhaps because there must be a reaction after seven months of excitement, and because the nature of man is elastic, springing quickly back to the commonplace when an unusual element in its circumstances has been withdrawn. I tried hard to fancy that the people of the garrison bore in their faces or manners some sign of the strain which they had undergone. But the months seemed to have left no traces except on the buildings and on the cemetery; or perhaps their mark upon the besieged men was set beneath the surface scanned by a casual observer. At any rate, the people of Mafeking could not successfully be exhibited in a show of wonders, and they took less interest in their food than did we, their deliverers, who lived with them for a while in what might be called "poor circumstances." Strange to say, the only way in which to secure an ample meal in Mafeking was to give a dinner-party, when all sorts of things were produced from secret reserves and—charged for.

Brigadier-General Mahon's column left Mafeking on Monday, May 28th, taking the road that runs southward beside the railway, and I think that everyone breathed a sigh of satisfaction when we were once more fairly on the road. "The Happy Family" someone called Mahon's force, and there was certainly never a more united company. He is the kind of leader—considerate, strict, careless of unessential formalities, careful of all essential details, jolly of face, kind of eye, a good companion on the road, a rock of strength and confidence in the field—who is obeyed in the spirit as well as the letter, and for whom men would gladly march their feet to blisters. It need hardly be said that he is an Irishman—"Ould Pat Mahon God bless 'um!" as a friend of mine said that morning; and the remark was strangely apt, in spite of the Brigadier's youth and the fact that his name is Bryan.

For four days we marched southward in easy stages across a stretch of country that was almost blighted by the scarcity of water; we never had water through which the bottom of a white cup could be seen; nearly always we had to share with the mules and horses the vast puddle known in that country as a pan, and at every puddle or waterhole, as the mules churned it up into inky mud, the wish was the same—"If only we had some engineers!"

At Maritsani siding we found the first really serious break in the railway. For about three miles the line was completely wrecked, and two culverts, one (over the river) spanned by unusually long girders, had been blasted in the middle and were lying broken in the gap. Even here it was easy to distinguish between the work of the trained German or French engineer and that of the ordinary rank-and-file Boer. The Boer did not understand dynamite, but he had a very fair idea of destruction from the spectacular point of view, and his work made by far the finer show. One might almost think that children had been at work, so laborious and futile were his efforts. The permanent way for perhaps two miles was bodily uprooted, each length of rails with the sleepers attached, and laid along the embankment. Not a thing was destroyed; the fishplates, four to each joint, were lying at a convenient distance, and even the bolts and nuts for securing them were disposed in little heaps. All that the repairing party had to do there was to replace the lengths of line, couple them, and shovel in the ballast. But the mile on which the trained engineer had been at work probably took four times as long to repair. Here a dynamite cap had been attached to the middle of each rail, with the result that there was a piece about six inches long blown out of every length, and that meant that all the old way had to be taken up and an entirely new one laid down. One thing I did envy this simple-minded enemy of ours, and that was the pleasure he must have experienced in doing one bit of damage. Towards one culvert the line sloped down in a long gradient, and on this a couple of trucks and a van had evidently been placed and allowed to run down to the culvert, where, the bridge being gone, they plunged into the gap. Think of the glorious smash! The trucks must have got up considerable speed. And picture the crowd waiting expectantly for the final catastrophe. I must say that I should have liked to see it.

The destructive spirit had evidently been satisfied by this gorgeous sacrifice, for nine miles of the line and telegraph wires running southward from Maritsani were untouched, and at Kraaipan, where we met the repairing party from the south, the damage was nearly repaired.

On the Thursday night we marched from Kraaipan to a point four miles north of Maribogo station, and during the march we heard a whistle in the far distance. A message was sent to the advance guard, and the train was "held up" while we gleaned some news from the officer in charge. To us who had been living in the wild for more than a month the great hot, hissing, bubbling engine was a strange sight, and we stood gazing at it open-mouthed like yokels, and stretching out our hands towards its warm body. When we had learned the news it moved off into the darkness with a shriek, and we resumed our march with a strange sense of cold and silence. Early next morning (June 1st) the column marched into Maribogo, where it was to receive ten days' provisions and a complete supply of remounts—new wings for the flying column. Hunter and the components of his force were to rendezvous at Lichtenburg on June 7th.

Setting out from Maribogo on Sunday morning, June 3rd, we entered the Transvaal at about midday, and reached Geysdorp in the afternoon. Hart's brigade had left Maribogo a few hours before us, and we passed ahead of it at Geysdorp. After having been long with only mounted troops we thought the infantry brigade a slow and primitive thing; but we envied it the drums and fifes, to the music of which the Irishmen were stepping along bravely when we passed. Although their destination, like ours, was Lichtenburg, we marched at different times of the day, for even in this large country there was not room on the road for both brigades. While they were yet asleep in their bivouacs we were at breakfast, and their reveille generally found us setting out on the march.

The awaking of a column on these dark, cold mornings is ghostly and mysterious. The first trumpet-call trembling through the chill starlight brings one back from dreams to the world. The cavalry trumpeter plays a longer and more ornate flourish than that sounded by the infantry bugler, but reveille is all too short on a winter morning. From under one's shelter one sees the camp return to life—first a match glowing here, then the smoke and crackle of a fire there, until acres of ground are scattered with flame. Then the sound of voices begins to insinuate itself—one never knows exactly when it begins—until the air is lively with the cries of the cheerful Kaffir. Darkness still on the ground and cold starlight in the upper air; but eastwards a very sharp eye might notice a kind of lightening of the gloom. And cold, bitterly cold, one gratefully withdraws beneath blankets the hand that was experimentally stretched out. In one's own little camp the stir is also beginning; fires being kindled, shadowy figures moving through the gloom, the sound of horses munching corn. Presently the air vibrates to another trumpet-call—"Stables"; and the few horses (chiefly among the artillery) that know the calls begin to neigh and paw the ground. Now the sky above the eastward horizon has faded to the palest blue, revealing the heads of horses and men where one thought there were only trees, and along the lower edge of the blue comes another line, like a fine silver wire. It grows broader and fades into the blue, but in its place comes a sheet of dull crimson. Millions of miles away God sets it on fire, and it kindles, glows, flushes to scarlet, melts into gold, until from the gold flows amber, and from amber the pure white wine of daylight. All the old colours rush westward across the sky; the veldt glows with tints that have no name nor description in our dull tongue; yet these are the mere drip and overflow of the dayspring.

Small wonder if amid such an entertainment one forgets the bustle in the now visible camp, and smaller still if one forgets that one ever wanted to sleep. Another trumpet sounds—"Boot and saddle"—and the bustle becomes acute as the mules are harnessed and horses saddled. And from some near squadron which is to form the advance guard are heard the few sharp orders that are necessary to transform it from a crowd of men and horses to a military unit. "Fall in. Number!" And the numbers run down a switchback of sound as each man shouts his own. "Stand to your horses. Prepare to mount. Mount. Advance by sections from the right. Walk—march!" And with the last word the day's work begins.

On Tuesday morning I had ridden on far in advance of the column in search of buck. There was very little cover, and at the first shot they were off like the wind, so I gave it up. Just beyond the ridge where I had been shooting I came upon the pan of water that was to be our outspan, and beside the pan was a farmhouse, outside of which stood a little group of people. An old woman, a young man, a girl, two middle-aged matrons, a man horribly deformed—people of different ages and manners, yet having in common one startling thing: they were all shaking with terror. It was startling because they were the only living creatures except birds and springbuck that I had seen for miles of that lonely march. The heath stretching to the sky north and south and east and west; the muddy pan; the poor house and outbuildings; the solitary horseman; the terrified group—these filled the picture; and it was not without misgivings that I approached the house.

"Oh, sir" (it was one of the matrons speaking English with the pleasant deliberation of a Dutchwoman), "was it you whom we heard shooting on the hill?"

When I said that it was they all gasped with relief, and the women broke out into a clamour of talk and questioning. Was the army coming? Were there many troops? Where were the Kaffirs? Was I sure that there were no Kaffirs about? When I had reassured them on the point the deformed man spoke.

"The Kaffirs are jumping about. Ja! They have looted my farm. All my stock also. We are afraid. I am waiting to go to my farm, which is one hour over the hill, but when I heard your gun I was afraid the Kaffirs were near. They know we are only women or sick men here, and they have guns, and they are jumping about. Your Colonel at Mafeking gave them guns, and now they run about stealing and murdering. All last night I dared not move from here, although we have no food. I was afraid, and so were these ladies, knowing they were jumping about. Now I go to my farm."

He called a black boy, who presently brought round a miserable cart drawn by two skeleton ponies. One of the women got in. There was no need to ask the fierce little cripple why he had not been on commando, and I was wondering how he was going to get into the cart, when he gave a great leap, and, climbing nimbly into his seat, drove away.

When he had gone the woman of the house began to pour out a woeful tale. Her husband—was he dead or alive? No news for three months; no letters or telegrams. Even the casualty lists had ceased to reach them. Her babe was dying for want of milk food. Could I give her a tin? General Hunter's men had broken up her kraal to use the wood for burning, and all her goats had wandered off and she had no one to send to look for them. These few logs of wood were all she had to bake bread with; would I ask the General to see that the soldiers did not take them? And then the Kaffirs! It was a piteous tale launched on a flood of tears. Possibly it was exaggerated; people have different ways of asking for help; but the terror in the woman's eye when she spoke of the Kaffirs was genuine. And I remembered the cripple's phrase—"The Kaffirs are jumping about."

Captain Bell-Smythe, the brigade major, came up presently, and I found him willing, as he and General Mahon had always been, to listen with patience to the long recital of woe. A sentry was put over the house and gardens to protect them from the desecrating foot of Tommy, and I know that a tin of milk was furnished out of the scanty stores of the headquarters' mess.

As for the Kaffirs, that trouble turned out to be a very real one. On the next day's march four were captured by a patrol of General Barton and shot, and it almost seems as though their blood were upon the heads of those who failed to disarm them after the siege of Mafeking was raised. I heard that the reason given was that it would offend the Barralongs, who had fought so bravely in defence of their staadt; but surely it had been better to offend them than allow them to run their heads into a noose. The Kaffir trouble was like a shadow on our march; they imagined that they had old scores to pay off; they paid them with remarkable fidelity to their own austere sense of justice; and it was felt that in suffering death they were bearing the punishment for more than their own misdeeds.

Incidents such as these marked the days of our march to Lichtenburg. But our family was breaking up; Colonel Rhodes and Sir John Willoughby, who had worked so hard on the relieving march, left us at Maribogo; one by one my fellow-correspondents were departing; one officer after another who had been with us on some special service was being withdrawn.

And suddenly my own summons came. Over thousands of miles of sea-bed it found me at a spot where the telegraph instruments never spoke before, and may never speak again until the end of Time. We were encamped fifteen miles from Lichtenburg, in a place made green by a clear and brimming river. I had wished to send a telegram, and the obliging orderly had undertaken to tap the temporary wire and "call up" Lichtenburg. So the instruments were connected in the green field, and soon the voice of the man at Lichtenburg was heard. The first thing he did was to ask if anyone of my name was with the column, and when he found I was there he said there was a cable for me. He read it to me over the wire, with the result that I did not send my telegram. And presently the voice ceased, the wire was disconnected, and (although I had been hoping that the message would come) I went about like one under sentence of death.

We came on into Lichtenburg the next day, once more passing the Irish Brigade with its childish pipes. General Hunter's division was now complete, and I had not seen so great an encampment of tents since leaving Lord Methuen at Boshof. They surrounded the pretty town—long lanes arched by great willows trembling over streams such as run clearly through the streets of all South African villages. On the next day Mahon's column, proceeding in advance of the Division, was to set out towards Rustenburg, while I rode forty miles westward into Mafeking.

The day at Lichtenburg was very busy, occupied by those miserable duties that affront the softer feelings. To dismantle and sell the moving home that, as though by a miracle, has been nightly disposed through hundreds of miles of road travel, and to part from horses that have served you well and shared your dangers, if not your alarms, is to suffer a new and painful damage to the affections. It was here, also, that I had to say good-bye to Major Pollock, with whom I had been living for the last five months. Some correspondents live always alone, and some like to join with several of their fellows in a large mess; but I think that our arrangement (when one is so fortunate in one's companion as I was) is by far the best. Of course the newspaper correspondent has to remember that he is the rival and not the ally of all his fellows; but in the South African war there were many occasions when two correspondents might work together to the advantage of both newspapers, and there were few occasions when a correspondent could obtain any advantage or information which was not shared by all the rest. At such times, of course, when they did arise, we used to become very silent as to our immediate intentions, and the subject which was uppermost in both our minds was shunned. But so long as my companion was with me I never lacked a home on the veldt.

The happiest endings and the lightest farewells are indeed serious; they punctuate life, and set a period upon chapters that may not be revised. Out of the dust of preparation rose once more the pillar of cloud that had hovered over the column for hundreds of dusty miles; and soon to an accompaniment of stamping feet and jingling harness it moved on, leaving me behind as it had left so many others—not all to go home, but some to sleep beneath the roadside bushes. General Mahon waited, chatting, until the last waggon had passed, and then he also, who had been the pleasantest of companions as well as the most respected of commanding officers, rode away with that stiffening of the back with which your true soldier ever turns from private to public affairs. I looked after the vanishing column, and felt as though every prop of existence had been knocked from under me. I had been one amongst a thousand, a mere molecule in a large mass, moved hither and thither without reference to my desires or efforts; and I resented the restoration of independence. Strange contradiction! We crave and struggle for individuality; here was mine restored to me, and I looked at it askance. The tail of the column disappeared round a bend in the road. Was this indeed the end of the chapter?

Not quite the end. As I set out on the westward road I met a half-battalion of the Scots Fusiliers returning to camp from exercise, marching at ease. Each company was headed by a piper who swung and swaggered, blowing deep into the lungs of his instrument. As one company passed, the measured bleat and squeal of the pipes faded and merged into a sound heralding the approach of another. The gorgeous uniforms were absent; but even the shabby khaki, stained with the soil of long marches and hard fights, could not obliterate that perfect harmony of movement which marks the first-class regiment.

I stood to watch them go by. The last company approached; the piper, his head thrown back, so deeply drunk of sound that his soul seemed to float on the steady hum of the chanter, set the rhythm to ranks of men stepping out to the inspiring discord. I turned my horse's head; before me the road stretched long and lonely; behind was the bustle and stir of the camp. A file of officers marching behind the column hailed me with envious congratulation when they heard where I was going. But they did not know that, just for one moment, I would have given the world to turn and follow the piper.



PLYMOUTH WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON PRINTERS