THE WEST AUSTRALIANS.
BETHANY.
I was feeling miserable as I sat in the hospital garden, and I rather fancy I looked pretty much as I felt, for a cheery-faced Boer nurse, with her black hair, blacker eyes, and rose-blossom lips, came up to where I sat, bringing with her two or three slightly wounded Boers. "I have brought some Boers who know something of your countrymen, Mr. Australian," she said. "I thought you would be glad to hear all about them." "By Jove! yes, nurse. If I were not a married man, I should try to thank you gracefully." "Oh, yees; oh, yees," she answered, tossing back her head; "that is all right. You say those pretty things; then, when you go away from here, you tell your wife, and you write in your papers we Boer girls are fat old things, who never use soap and water. All the Rooibaatjes do that." And off she went, laughing merrily, whilst my friends the enemy grinned and enjoyed the little comedy. So we fell to talking, and-half a dozen wounded "Tommies" gathered round and chipped into the conversation, which by degrees worked round to a deed which the West Australians did; and as I listened to the tale so simply told by those rough farmer men, I felt my face flush with pride, and my shoulders fell back square and solid once more, whilst every drop of blood in my veins seemed to run warm and strong, like the red wine they grow on the hillside in my own sunny land; for the story concerned men whom I knew well, men who were bred with the scent of the wattle in the first breath they drew, men who grew from childhood to manhood where the silver sentinel stars form the cross in the rich blue midnight sky. My countrymen—Australians—men with whom I had hunted for silver in the desolate backblocks of New South Wales; men with whom I had scoured the interior of West Australia seeking for gold; men who had been with me on the tin fields and opal fields. I had never doubted that they would keep their country's name unsullied when they met the foe on the field of war, yet when I heard the tale the enemy told I felt my eyes fill as they have seldom filled since childhood, for I was proud of the western diggers, proud of my blood; and at that moment, with British "Tommies" sprawling on the grass at my feet, and the Boer farmers grouped amongst them, I would sooner have called myself an Australian commoner than the son of any peer in any other land under high heaven.
I will take the story from the Boer's mouth and tell it to you, as I hope to tell it round a hundred camp fires when the war is over, and I go back to the Australian bush once more. "It happened round Colesberg way," he said; "we thought we had the British beaten, and our commandant gave us the word to press on and cut them to pieces. Our big guns had been grandly handled, and our rifle fire had told its tale. We saw the British falling back from the kopjes they had held, and we thought that there was nothing between us and victory; but there was, and we found it out before we were many minutes older. There was one big kopje that was the very key of the position. Our spies had told us that this was held by an Australian force. We looked at it very anxiously, for it was a hard position to take, but even as we watched we saw that nearly all the Australians were leaving it. They, too, were falling back with the British troops. If we once got that kopje there was nothing on earth could stop us. We could pass on and sweep around the retiring foe, and wipe them off the earth, as a child wipes dirt from its hands, and we laughed when we saw that only about twenty Australians had been left to guard the kopje.
"There were about four hundred of us, all picked men, and when the commandant called to us to go and take the kopje, we sprang up eagerly, and dashed down over some hills, meaning to cross the gully and charge up the kopje where those twenty men were waiting for us. But we did not know the Australians—then. We know them now. Scarcely had we risen to our feet when they loosed their rifles on us, and not a shot was wasted. They did not fire, as regular soldiers nearly always do, volley after volley, straight in front of them, but every one picked his man, and shot to kill. They fired like lightning, too, never dwelling on the trigger, yet never wildly wasting lead, and all around us our best and boldest dropped, until we dared not face them. We dropped to cover, and tried to pick them off, but they were cool and watchful, throwing no chance away. We tried to crawl from rock to rock to hem them in, but they, holding their fire until our burghers moved, plugged us with lead, until we dared not stir a step ahead; and all the time the British troops, with all their convoy, were slowly, but safely, falling back through the kopjes, where we had hoped to hem them in. We gnawed our beards and cursed those fellows who played our game as we had thought no living men could play it Then, once again, we tried to rush the hill, and once again they drove us back, though our guns were playing on the heights they held. We could not face their fire. To move upright to cross a dozen yards meant certain death, and many a Boer wife was widowed and many a child left fatherless by those silent men who held the heights above us. They did not cheer as we came onward. They did not play wild music, they only clung close as climbing weeds to the rocks, and shot as we never saw men shoot before, and never hope to see men shoot again.
"Then we got ready to sweep the hill with guns, but our commandant, admiring those brave few who would not budge before us in spite of our numbers, sent an officer to them to ask them to surrender, promising them all the honours of war. But they sent us word to come and take them if we could. And then our officer asked them three times if they would hold up their hands, and at the third time a grim sergeant rose and answered him: 'Aye, we will hold up our hands, but when we do, by God, you'll find a bayonet in 'em. Go back and tell your commandant that Australia's here to stay.' And there they stayed, and fought us hour by hour, holding us back, when but for them victory would have been with us. We shelled them all along their scattered line, and tried to rush them under cover of the artillery fire; but they only held their posts with stouter hearts, and shot the straighter when the fire was hottest, and we could do nothing but lie there and swear at them, though we admired them for their stubborn pluck. They held the hill till all their men were safe, and then, dashing down the other side, they jumped into their saddles and made off, carrying their wounded with them. They were but twenty men, and we four hundred"
A "Tommy" sitting at the speaker's feet looked up and said: "What are yer makin' sich a song abart it far? Lumme, them Horstraliars are as Hinglish has hi ham!"
IN A BOER TOWN.
BETHANY.
A Boer town is not laid out on systematic lines, as one sees towns in America, or Canada, or Australia. The streets seem to run much as they please, or as the exigencies of traffic have caused them to run. I doubt if the plan of a town is ever drawn in this country. People arrive and settle down in a happy-go-lucky manner, and straightway build themselves a home. Their homes are places to live in; not to look at. There is an almost utter absence of architectural adornment everywhere. My eyes range over a large number of dwellings. They are nearly all alike—plain, square structures, plastered snow white. There is a double door in the centre of the front, and a window at each side of the door. A stoep, about six feet wide, rises a foot from the pathway, and there is nothing else to be seen from the outside front. These houses look bare and bald, and are as expressionless as a blind baby. To me most houses have an expression of their own. In an English town a quiet walk in the dawning, making a survey of the dwelling-places, always leaves the impression that I have gleaned an insight into the character of the dwellers therein. The cheeky-looking villa, with its superabundance of ornament, is a monument in masonry to the successful mining jobber on a small scale. The solemn-looking, solid dwelling, standing in its own grounds, where every flower bush has its individual prop, where the lawn is trimmed with mathematical exactitude, and not one vagrant leaf is allowed to stray, speaks with a kind of brick-and-mortar eloquence of virtue that has never grasped the sublime fulness of the Scriptural text which saith: "The way of transgressors is hard!" That is the home of the middle-aged Churchman, whose feet from infancy have fallen amidst roses. He has never erred, because he has never known enough of human sympathy and human toil and struggle to feel temptation. The coy little cottage further on, surrounded by climbing roses and sweet-smelling herbs, where the gate is left just a little bit open, as if inviting a welcome, seems to advertise itself as the home of two maiden sisters, who, though past the giddy girlhood stage, still have hopes of being somebody's darling by-and-by.
But in a Boer town most of the piety is knocked out of a man. You stare at the houses, and they stare back at you dumbly. There is nothing pretentious or rakish about any of them; no matter how riotous a man's imagination might be, he could never conjure up a "wink" from a Boer house, though I have seen houses in other parts of the world that seemed to "cock an eye" at a passing traveller and invite him to try the door.
They have only two styles of roofing their dwellings—either the old-fashioned gable roof, or the still older kind of "lean-to," the latter being nothing but a flat top, high at the front and running lower towards the back, in order that the rain water may carry off rapidly. They paint their doors and windows a sober reddish brown, for your true Boer has an utter contempt for anything gaudy or gay. He leaves that sort of thing to his nigger servants, who make up for their master's lack of appreciation in the matter of colour by rigging themselves out in anything that is startling in the way of contrasts, for if the white master is a Puritan in such things, the nigger servant, male and female, is a perfect sybarite.
Right opposite where I am sitting a family group, or all that is left of the family, is sitting, as the custom is at evening, out on the stoep. On the side nearest me is a young widow. I have made inquiries concerning her. Her husband was killed fighting against our troops at Graspan. She, poor thing, is dressed in deepest mourning. Her dress is made of some heavy black material, and has no touch of white or any colour anywhere to relieve its sombre shades. On her head she wears a jet black cap, which rises high and wide, and falls around her neck and shoulders. The cap is fashioned much after the style of the sun bonnets worn by the peasant women of Normandy, but hers is black, black as the grave. She has rather a nice face, a good woman's face, pale and refined by suffering. No one looking at her can doubt that she has suffered, and suffered as only such women can, through this brutal, bloody war. I thought of the widows away in our own land as I looked at her sitting there, so silently and sadly, with her thin white hands clasped on the black folds of her lap. On one hand I plainly saw the gold circle shining, which a few months ago had meant so much to her; now, alas! only the outward and visible sign of all she had been and of all that she had lost. Behind her the snow-white wall of the house, sparkling in the red rays of the setting sun; at her feet only the white slate of the stoep. And well enough I knew that under the proud Empire flag many a widow as young and as heart-broken as this Dutch girl would watch the sun go down as hopelessly as she, and I could not help the thought which sprang to my soul—God's bitter curse rest on the head of the man, be he Boer or Briton, who brought about this cruel war.
On the street in front of the house where the widow sat I noticed a group of niggers. Some of them were merely local "boys," who worked for the townspeople. They were dressed in the usual nigger fashion, in old store clothing, patched or ventilated according to the wearer's taste. One fellow had on a pair of pants that had at some former stage belonged to a man about four times his size. The portion of those pants which is usually hidden when a man is sitting in the saddle had been worn into a huge hole, which the nigger had picturesquely filled by tacking on a scarlet shawl. As the pants were made of navy blue serge the effect was unquestionably artistic, especially as the amateur tailor had done his sewing with string, most of the stitches running from an inch to an inch and a half in length. Still, he was only one of many in similar case, so that he did not feel in the least degree lonely. There were other niggers there—"boys" belonging to the mule-drivers of the army. These "boys" nearly all sported a military jacket and some sort of field service cap, which they had picked up somehow in camp. The "side" these niggers put on when they get inside odds and ends of military wearing apparel is something appalling. They swagger around amongst the civilian niggers, and treat them as beings of a very inferior mould, whilst the lies they tell concerning their individual acts of heroism would set the author of "Deadwood Dick" blushing out of simple envy.
The nigger girls cluster round these black veterans like flies around a western water hole in midsummer, and their shrill laughter makes the air fairly vibrate as they bandy jests with the cheeky herds. The girls are rather pleasing in appearance, though far from being pretty. As a rule, they wear clean print dresses and white aprons; they never wear hats of any kind, but coil a showy kerchief around their heads in coquettish fashion. They are not particular as to colour, red, blue, yellow, or pink, anything will do as long as it is brilliant. The skins of the girls are almost as varied as the headgear. The Kaffir girl is very dark, almost black. The bushman's daughter is dirty yellow, like river water in flood time. Some of the other tribes are as black as the record of a first-class burglar, but they have bright black eyes, which they roll about as a kitten rolls a ball of wool in playtime.
But whether they are black, brown, or coffee-coloured, they are all alike in one respect—every daughter of them has a mouth that is as boundless as a mother's blessing, and as limitless as the imagination of a spring poet in love. When they are vexed they purse that mouth up into a bunch until it looks like a crumpled saddle-flap hanging on a hedge. When they are pleased the mouth opens and expands like an indiarubber portmanteau ready for packing; that is when they smile, but when they laugh their ears have to shift to give the mouth a chance to get comfortably to its destination. They have beautiful teeth, the white ivory showing against the black foreground like fresh tombstones in an old cemetery on a dark night. It is amusing to watch them flirting with the soldier niggers. They try to look coy, but soon fall victims to the skilful blandishments of the vain-glorious warriors, and after a little manoeuvring they put out their lips to be kissed, a sight which might well make even a Scotch Covenanter grin. They suck their lips in with a sharp hissing breath; then push them out suddenly, ready for the osculatory seance, the lips moving as if they were pushed from the inside by a pole. The "boys" enjoy the picnic immensely. As a matter of fact, these "boys" always seem to me to be doing one of four things. They are either eating, smoking, sleeping, or making love; and they do enough love-making in twenty-four hours to last an ordinary everyday sort of white man four months, even if he puts in a little overtime. One of the most charming things noticeable about a Boer town is the plenitude of trees in the streets. They are often ornamental, always useful for purposes of shade. There is no regularity about their distribution; they seem to have been planted spasmodically at odd times and at odd positions. There is little about them to lead one to the belief that they receive over much care after they have been put into the soil. I have found a very creditable library in pretty nearly every Boer town that I have visited, and it is a noteworthy fact that all of our most cherished authors find a place on their book-shelves. One other thing I have also noticed, which, though a small thing in itself, is yet very significant. In nearly every hotel, and in many of the public places, portraits of our Queen and members of the Royal Family have been hanging side by side with portraits of notable men, such as Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Rhodes. During the course of the war all kinds and conditions of Boers have had free access to the rooms where those portraits were to be seen, but now I find that no damage has been done to any of those pictures, excepting those of Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Chamberlain. This has not been an oversight on the part of the Boers, for I defy any person to find a solitary picture of the two last-named gentlemen that has not been hacked with knives. But the Queen and Royal Family photos have in every case been treated with respect.
BEHIND THE SCENES.
STORMBERG.
I am writing this from Stormberg, a tremendously important military position, which was taken on Monday, the 5th, by General Gatacre, without a blow, the enemy falling back cowed by the British general's tactics. Had they remained here another twenty-four hours Gatacre would have had them in a ring of iron, but the Boer general is no fool. He saw his danger, and, like a wise man, he dodged it. Gatacre's generalship was simply superb. Let the idiotic band of critics who sit in safety in England howl to their heart's content; Gatacre deserves well of his country. Had he dashed recklessly into this hornet's nest he would have sacrificed four-fifths of his gallant officers and a host of his men. Had I to write his military epitaph to-day I should say that "he won with brains what most generals would have won with blood."
Strangely enough, I was a prisoner in the very room where I am penning this epistle only last Saturday night. I left here in the centre of a Boer commando, with a bandage over my eyes, on Sunday morning, and returned to the spot surrounded by British "Tommies" a few days later.
All the glory of this bloodless victory does not rest with the general who commands the column. To Captain Tennant no small meed of praise is due. This officer was here on secret service before hostilities commenced, and he did his work so thoroughly that the country is as familiar to him as paint to a barmaid. He is one of those men, unfortunately so rare in the British Army, combining dash and dauntless pluck with a cool, level head. If he gets his opportunity, England will hear more of this officer. I have been intensely struck by the class of officers by whom General Gatacre is surrounded. They all look like soldiers. I have not seen a single dude, not one of those wretched fops of whom I have seen only too many in South Africa. They speak like soldiers too. No idiotic drawl, no effeminate lisp, no bullying, ill-bred, coarseness of tongue; they are neither drawing-room dandies nor camp swashbucklers, but officers and gentlemen—and, I can assure you, the terms are not always synonymous, even under the Queen's cloth. I have seen mere lads in this country leading men into action who in point of brains were not fit to lead a mule to water, and others who, in regard to manners, were scarcely fit to follow the mule. But, thank God, the Boers have taught our nation this, if they have taught us nought else—that it needs something more than an eye-glass, a lisp, a pair of kid gloves, and an insolent, overbearing manner to make a successful soldier.
But let me get amongst the Boers. I was only a prisoner in their hands for about a month, yet every moment of that time was so fraught with interest that I fancy I picked up more of the real nature of the Boers than I should have done under ordinary circumstances in a couple of years. I was moved from laager to laager along their fighting line, saw them at work with their rifles, saw them come in from more than one tough skirmish, bringing their dead and wounded with them, saw them when they had triumphed, and saw them when they had been whipped; saw them going to their farms, to be welcomed by wife and children; saw them leaving home with a wife's sobs in their ears, and children's loving kisses on their lips. I saw some of these old greyheads shattered by our shells, dying grimly, with knitted brows and fiercely clenched jaws; saw some of their beardless boys sobbing their souls out as the life blood dyed the African heath. I saw some passing over the border line which divides life and death, with a ring of stern-browed comrades round them, leaning upon their rifles, whilst a brother or a father knelt and pressed the hand of him whose feet were on the very threshold of the land beyond the shadows. I saw others smiling up into the faces of women—the poor, pain-drawn faces of the dying looking less haggard and worn than the anguish-stricken features of their womanhood who knelt to comfort them in that last awful hour—in the hour which divides time from eternity, the sunlight of lusty life from the shadows of unsearchable death. Those things I have seen, and in the ears of English men and English women, let me say, as one who knows, and fain would speak the plain, ungilded truth concerning friend and foe, that, not alone beneath the British flag are heroes found. Not alone at the breasts of British matrons are brave men suckled; for, as my soul liveth—whether their cause be just or unjust, whether the right or the wrong of this war be with them, whether the blood of the hundreds who have fallen since the first rifle spoke defiance shall speak for or against them at the day of judgment—they at least know how to die; and when a man has given his life for the cause he believes in he is proven worthy even of his worst enemy's respect. And it seems to me that the British nation, with its long roll of heroic deeds, wrought the whole world over, from Africa to Iceland, can well afford to honour the splendid bravery and self-sacrifice of these rude, untutored tillers of the soil. I have seen them die.
Once, as I lay a prisoner in a rocky ravine all through the hot afternoon, I heard the rifles snapping like hounds around a cornered beast. I watched the Boers as they moved from cover to cover, one here, one there, a little farther on a couple in a place of vantage, again, in a natural fortress, a group of eight; so they were placed as far as my eye could reach. The British force I could not see at all; they were out on the veldt, and the kopjes hid them from me; but I could hear the regular roll and ripple of their disciplined volleys, and in course of time, by watching the actions of the Boers, I could anticipate the sound. They watched our officers, and when the signal to fire was given they dropped behind cover with such speed and certainty that seldom a man was hit. Then, when the leaden hail had ceased to fall upon the rocks, they sprang out again, and gave our fellows lead for lead. After a while our gunners seemed to locate them, and the shells came through the air, snarling savagely, as leopards snarl before they spring, and the flying shrapnel reached many of the Boers, wounding, maiming, or killing them; yet they held their position with indomitable pluck, those who were not hit leaping out, regardless of personal danger, to pick up those who were wounded. They were a strange, motley-looking crowd, dressed in all kinds of common farming apparel, just such a crowd as one is apt to see in a far inland shearing shed in Australia, but no man with a man's heart in his body could help admiring their devotion to one another or their loyalty to the cause they were risking their lives for.
One sight I saw which will stay with me whilst memory lasts. They had placed me under a waggon under a mass of overhanging rock for safety, and there they brought two wounded men. One was a man of fifty, a hard old veteran, with a complexion as dark as a New Zealand Maori; the beard that framed the rugged face was three-fourths grey, his hands were as rough and knotted by open air toil as the hoofs of a working steer.
He looked what he was—a Boer of mixed Dutch and French lineage. Later on I got into conversation with him, and he told me a good deal of his life. His father was descended from one of the old Dutch families who had emigrated to South Africa in search of religious liberty in the old days, when the country was a wilderness. His mother had come in an unbroken line from one of the noble families of France who fled from home in the days of the terrible persecution of the Huguenots. He himself had been many things—hunter, trader, farmer, fighting man. He had fought against the natives, and he had fought against our people. The younger man was his son, a tall, fair fellow, scarcely more than a stripling, and I had no need to be a prophet or a prophet's son to tell that his very hours were numbered. Both the father and the lad had been wounded by one of our shells, and it was pitiful to watch them as they lay side by side, the elder man holding the hand of the younger in a loving clasp, whilst with his other hand he stroked the boyish face with gestures that were infinitely pathetic. Just as the stars were coming out that night between the clouds that floated over us the Boer boy sobbed his young life out, and all through the long watches of that mournful darkness the father lay with his dead laddie's hand in his. The pain of his own wounds must have been dreadful, but I heard no moan of anguish from his lips. When, at the dawning, they came to take the dead boy from the living man, the stern old warrior simply pressed his grizzled lips to the cold face, and then turned his grey beard to the hard earth and made no further sign; but I knew well that, had the sacrifice been possible, he would gladly have given his life to save the young one's.
A BOER FIGHTING LAAGER.
BURGHERSDORP.
Many and wonderful are the stories written and published concerning the Boer and his habits when on the war-path. Most of these stories are written by men who take good care never to get within a hundred miles of the fighting line, but content themselves with an easy chair, a cigar, a bottle of whisky, and carpet slippers on the stoep of some good hotel in a pretty little Boer town. To scribes of this calibre flock a certain class of British resident, who is always full to the very ears of his own dauntless courage, his deathless loyalty to the Queen and Empire, his love for the soldier, and his hatred of the Boer. This gallant class of British resident has half a million excuses ready to his hand to explain why he did not take a rifle and fight when the war summons rang clarion-like through the land. Then he grits his teeth, knits his eyebrows, clenches his hands in spasmodic wrath, throws out his chest, and tells his auditors, in a voice husky with concentrated wrath and whisky, what he intends to do the next time the damnable Boer rises to fight. The old British pioneer may have whelped a few million good fighting stock in his time, but this class of animal is no lion's whelp; it is a thing all mouth and no manners, a shallow-brained, cowardly creature, always howling about the Boer, but too discreet to go out and fight him, though ready at all times to malign him, to ridicule him as a farmer or a fighter, and it is a perfect bear's feast to this hybrid animal to get hold of a gullible newspaper correspondent to tell him gruesome tales relative to Boer fighting laagers.
I had one of this peculiar species at me the other day in Burghersdorp, and he painted a Boer laager so vividly, between nips at my flask, that if I had not seen a few laagers myself I should have felt bad over the matter. He pictured the smell of that laager in language so intense, with gestures so graphic, that some of his auditors had to hold their nostrils with handkerchiefs, whilst they stirred the circumambient atmosphere with cardboard fans, and I could not help wondering, if the portrait of the smell was so awful, what the thing itself must be like. Flushed with success, the narrator pursued his subject to the bitter extremity. He conjured up scenes of half-buried men lying amongst the rocks surrounding the laager: here a leg, there an arm, further on a ghastly human head protruding from amidst the scattered boulders, until I had only to close my eyes to fancy I was in a charnel-house, where Goths and Huns were holding devilish revelry. The B.R. paused, and dropped his voice two octaves lower, and the crowd on the balcony craned their heads further forward, so that they might not miss a single word. He told of the women in the laagers, the wild, unholy mirth of women, who moved from camp fire to camp fire, with dishevelled hair streaming down their backs, with tossing arms, bare to the shoulders, and blood besmeared, not the blood of goats or kine, but the blood of soldiers—our soldiers. Thomas Atkins defunct, and done for by the she-furies.
He waded in again when the shudder which shook the crowd had died away, and hinted, as that class of shallow-souled creature loves to hint, of orgies under the dim light of the stars, or between the flickering light of smoking camp fires, until the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah seemed to be crowding all around us in a peculiarly beastly and uncomfortable fashion. Then he lay back in his chair and sighed; but anon he sprang upright, and, with flashing eyes and extended arms, wanted to know what the —— Roberts meant by offering peace with honour to such a people. "Mow them down!" he yelled. "Shoot them on sight—no quarter for such devils! Kill 'em off! kill 'em off! kill 'em off!" and he half sobbed, half sighed himself into silence, whilst the audience gazed on him as on one who knew what war, wild, red, carmine war, was. I broke in on his stillness, as newspaper men who know the game are apt to do, for I wanted data, I wanted facts, and I had not swallowed his yarn as freely as he had swallowed my whisky.
"Born in this country?" I asked.
"Yorkshire," he answered laconically.
"Been in Africa long?"
"'Bout five years."
"Where did you put in most of your time before the war?"
"Johannesburg."
"Mines?"
"No."
"Merchant?"
"No."
"Hotel-keeper, perhaps?"
"No."
"Shopkeeper?"
"No."
"What was your calling, or profession, or business, or means of livelihood?"
"General agent, sharebroker, correspondent for some local papers."
H'm; I knew the class of animal well—general jackal; do the dirty work of any trade, and master of none.
"Where were you when the war broke out?"
He scowled savagely: "Johannesburg."
"Have the same hatred for the Boers before the war as you have now?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you pick up a rifle and have a hand in the fighting?"
"I'm not a blessed 'Tommy,' sir! Do you take me for a d—— 'Tommy,' sir?"
"No; oh, no, I assure you I did nothing of the kind. But—er, have you been in the hands of the Boers since the war started?"
"Yes, until our troops marched in here a day or two ago."
"H'm. Did they rob you?"
"No."
"Did they ill-treat you—knock you about, and that sort of thing?"
"No."
"Why do you hate them so bitterly, then?"
"Oh, I can't stand a cursed Boer at any price. Thinks he's as good as a Britisher all the time, and puts on side; and he's a cursed tyrant in his heart, and would rub us out if he could."
"Yes, the Boer thought himself as good a man as the Britishers he met out this way," I replied, "and he backed his opinion with his life and his rifle. Why didn't you do the same if you reckoned yourself a better man?"
"Why should I; don't we pay 'Tommy' to do that for us?"
"Perhaps we do; but, concerning those Boer laagers you have been telling us about: where, when, and how did you see them; what was the name of the place; who was the Boer general in command, or the field cornet, or landdrost? I did not know the Boers gave British refugees the free run of their war laagers, and I'm interested in the matter, being a scribe myself and a man of peace. Just give me a few names and dates and facts, will you?"
"No, I won't," he snarled. "You seem to doubt my word, you do, and I'm as good a Britisher as you are any day, and you think you can come along and pump information out of me for nothing; but I'm too fly for that—they don't breed fools in Yorkshire."
"Well, sir, as it seems to suit your temper," I said as sweetly as I could, "I'll make it a business proposition. I'll bet you fifty pounds to five you have never put your head inside a Boer laager in war time in your life. If you have, just name it and give me a few facts."
The B.R. rose wrathfully and muttered something about it being a d—— good job for me that I was a wounded man and had one arm in a sling, or he'd show me a heap of things in the fistic line which I should remember for the rest of my life; but as I only laughed he slouched off, and now, when we meet in the street, we pass without speaking. But I got his history, all the same, from one of the Cape Police, who told me the beggar had refused to join a volunteer regiment when the war broke out, and had remained the whole time in a quiet little Boer village as a British refugee, and had not seen the outside, let alone the inside, of a Boer fighting laager in all his lying life. Yet such cravens at times help to make history—of a kind.
Possibly it may interest Englishmen—and women, too, for that matter—to know what a fighting laager is like, and as I have seen half a dozen of them from the enemies' side of the wall, a rough pen and ink sketch may not be amiss. In war time the Boer never, under any circumstances, makes his laager in the open country if there are any kopjes about. No matter how secure he may fancy himself from attack, no matter if there is not a foe within fifty miles of him, the Boer commander always pitches his laager in a place of safety between two parallel lines of hills, so that no attack can be made upon him, either front or rear, without giving him an immense advantage over the attacking force, even if the enemy is ten times as strong in numbers. By this means the Boers make their laagers almost impregnable. If they have a choice of ground, they pick a narrow ravine, or gully, with a line of hills front and rear, covered with small rocky boulders and bushes. They drive their waggons along the ravine, and make a sort of rude breastwork across the gully with the waggons. In between these waggons the women are placed for safety, for it is a noticeable fact that very large numbers of women have followed their husbands and fathers to the war, not to act as viragoes, not to play the wanton, not to unsex themselves, not to handle the rifle, but to nurse the wounded, to comfort the dying, and to lay out the dead. I have heard them singing round the camp fires in the starlight, but it was hymns that they sang, not ribald songs. I have seen them kneeling by the side of men in the moonlight, not in wantonness, but in mercy, and many a man who wears the British uniform to-day can bear me witness that I speak the truth.
The Boer never, if he can help it, allows himself to be separated from his horse; and these hardy little animals, mostly about fifteen hands high, and very lightly framed, are picketed close to the spot where the rider deposits his rifle and blankets. If they allow them to graze on the hillsides during the day, they run a rope through the halter near the horse's muzzle, and tie it close above the knee-joint of the near fore-leg. By this means the horse can graze in comfort, but cannot move away at any pace beyond a slow walk, and so are easily caught and saddled if required in a hurry. The oxen and sheep to be used for slaughtering purposes are driven up close to the camp; a waggon or two is drawn across the ravine above and below them, and they cannot then stampede if frightened by anything, unless they climb the rocky heights on either side of them, which they have small chance of doing, as the Kaffir herdsmen sleep on the hills above them. Having pitched his laager, the commander sends out his scouts; some amble off on horseback at a pace they call a "tripple"—a gait which all the Boers educate their nags to adopt. It is not exactly an amble, but a cousin to it, marvellously easy to the rider, whilst it enables the nag to get over a wonderful lot of ground without knocking up. It also allows the horse to pick his way amongst rocky ground, and so save his legs, where an English, Indian, or Australian horse would be apt to cripple himself in very short order. As soon as the mounted scouts set off on their journey, holding the reins carelessly in the left hand, their handy little Mauser rifles in their right, swaying carelessly in the saddle after the fashion of all bush-riders the world over, the foot scouts take up their positions amongst the rocks and shrubs on the hills in front and rear of the laager. Each scout has his rifle in his hand, his pipe in his teeth, his bandolier full of cartridges over his shoulder, and his scanty blanket under his left arm. No fear of his sleeping at his post. He is fighting for honour, not for pay; for home, not for glory; and he knows that on his acuteness the lives of all may depend. He knows that his comrades and the women trust him, and he values the trust as dearly as British soldier ever did. No matter how tired he may be, no matter how famished, the Boer sentinel is never faithless to his orders.
When the scouts are out the laager is fixed for the night—not a very exhaustive proceeding, as the Boers do not go in for luxuries of any kind. Here a tarpaulin is stretched over a kind of temporary ridge pole, blankets are tossed down on the hard earth, saddles are used for pillows, and the couch is complete. A little way farther down the line a rude canvas screen is thrown over the wheels of a waggon, and a family, or rather husband and wife, make themselves at home under the waggon; whilst the single men simply throw themselves at full length on the ground, wrap their one thin, small blanket round them, and smoke and jest merrily enough, whilst the Kaffirs light the fires and make the coffee. There is scarcely any timber in this part of Africa, and the fuel used is the dried manure of cattle pressed into slabs about fifteen inches long, eight inches wide, and three inches thick. The smoke from the fires is very dense, and soon fills the air with a pungent odour, which is not unpleasant in the open, but would be simply intolerable in a building. The coffee is soon made, and the simple meal begins; it consists of "rusks," a kind of bread baked until it becomes crisp and hard, and plenty of steaming hot coffee. I never saw any people so fond of this beverage as the Boers are. The Australian bushman and digger loves tea, and can almost exist upon it; but these Boers cling to coffee. They live, when out in laager, like Spartans, they dress anyhow, sleep anyhow, and eat just rusks and precious little else. Talk about "Tommy" and his hard times, why a private soldier at the front sleeps better, dresses better, and eats better than a Boer general; yet never once did I hear a Boer complain of hardships. After tea the Boers sit about and clean their rifles; the women move from one little group to another, chatting cheerfully, but I saw nothing in their conduct, or in the conduct of any man towards one of them, that would cause the most chaste matron in Great Britain to blush or droop her eyes. There is in the laager an utter absence of what we term soldierly discipline; men moved about, went and came in a free and easy fashion, just as I have seen them do a thousand times in diggers' camps. There was no saluting of officers, no stiffness, no starch anywhere. The general lounges about with hands in pockets and pipe in mouth; no one pays him any special deference. He talks to the men, the striplings, and the women, and they talk back to him in a manner which seems strange to a Britisher familiar to the ways of military camps. After the chatting, the pridikant, or parson, if there is one in the laager, raises his hands, and all listen with reverent faces whilst the man of God utters a few words in a solemn, earnest tone; then all kneel, and a prayer floats up towards the skies, and a few moments later the whole camp is wrapped in sleep, nothing is heard but the neighing of horses, the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, and the occasional barking of a dog. There is no clatter of arms, no ringing of bugles, no deep-toned challenge of sentries, no footfall of changing pickets.
At regular intervals men rise silently from the ranks of the sleepers, pick up their rifles noiselessly, and silently, like ghosts, slip out into the deep shadows of the kopjes, and other men, equally silent, glide in from posts they have been guarding, and stretch themselves out to snatch slumber whilst they may. At dawn the men toss their blankets aside, and spring up ready dressed, and move amongst their horses; the Kaffirs attend to the morning meal, the everlasting rusks and coffee are served up, horses are saddled, cattle are yoked to waggons, and in the twinkling of an eye the camp is broken up, and the irregular army is on the march again, with scouts guarding every pass in front, scouts watching (themselves unseen) on every height. They travel fast, because they travel light; they use very little water, because they find it impossible to move it from place to place. Many critics charge them with habits of personal uncleanliness. It is true that in their laagers one does not see as much soap and water used as in our camps, but this is possibly due to want of opportunity as much as to want of inclination. In sanitary matters they are neglectful. I did not see a single latrine in any of their laagers, nor do I think they are in the habit of making them, and to this cause and to no other I attribute the large amount of fever in their ranks. They do not seem to understand the first principles of the laws of sanitation, and had this season been a wet, instead of a peculiarly dry one, I venture to assert that typhoid fever would have wrought far more havoc amongst them than our rifles.
I saw no literature in laager except Bibles. I witnessed no sports of any kind, and the only sport I heard them talk about was horse-racing. I saw no gambling, heard no blasphemy, noticed no quarrelling or bickering, and can only say, from my slight acquaintance with life in Boer laager in war time, that it may be rough, it may be irksome, it may not be so fastidiously clean as a feather-bed soldier might like it, but I have been in many tougher, rougher places, and never heard anyone cry about it.
THROUGH BOER GLASSES.
BURGHERSDORP.
I had a good many opportunities of chatting with Boers during the time which elapsed between my capture and liberation, and had a long talk with the President of the Orange Free State, Mr. Steyn; also with several of his ministerial colleagues. Their ministers of religion, whom they call pridikants, also chatted to me freely, as occasion offered. I had more than one interview with their fighting generals. Medical men in their service I found very much akin to medical men the world over. They patched up the wounded and asked no questions concerning nationality, just as our own medicos do. Personally, I must say that I found the Boers first-class subjects for Press interviews. They did not know much about journalists and the ways of journalism. Possibly had they had more experience in regard to "interviews," I should not have found them quite so easy to manage, but it never seemed to enter their heads that a man might make good "copy" out of a quiet chat over pipes and tobacco. One of their stock subjects of conversation was their great General, the man of Magersfontein—General Cronje.
"What do you Britishers and Australians think of Cronje?" was a stock question with them. "Do you think him a good fighter?"
"Well, yes, unquestionably he is a good fighting man."
"Do you think him as good as Lord Roberts?"
"No. We men of British blood don't think there are many men on earth as good as the hero of Candahar."
"Do you think him as good a man as Lord Kitchener?"
"No. Very many of us consider the conqueror of the Soudan to be one who, if he lives, will make as great a mark in history as Wellington."
At this a joyous smile would illuminate the face of the Boer. He would reply, "Yes, yes; Roberts is a great man, a very great man indeed. So is Kitchener, so is General French, so is General Macdonald, so is General Methuen. Yet all those five men are attempting to get Cronje into a corner where they can capture him. They have ten times as many soldiers as Cronje has, ten times as many guns; therefore, what a really great man Cronje must be on your own showing."
That was before the fatal 27th of February on which Cronje surrendered.
I often asked them how they, representing a couple of small States, came to get hold of the idea that they could whip a colossal Power like Great Britain in a life or death struggle; and almost invariably they informed me that they had expected that one of the great European Powers would take an active part in the struggle on their behalf, and, furthermore, they had been taught to think that Britain's Empire was rotten to the core, so much so that as soon as war commenced in earnest all her colonies would fall away from her and hoist the flag of independence, and that India would leap once again into open and bloody mutiny. They expressed themselves as being dumbfounded when they heard that Australian troops were rallying under the Union Jack, and seemed to feel most bitterly that the men from the land of the Southern Cross were in arms against them. "We fell out with England, and we thought we had to fight England. Instead we find we have to fight people from all parts of the world, Colonials like ourselves. Surely Australia and Canada might have kept out of this fight, and allowed us to battle it out with the country we had a quarrel with."
"The Canadians and Australians are of British blood."
"Well, what if they are? Ain't plenty of the Cape Volunteers who are fighting under President Kruger's banner born of Dutch parents? Yet, because they fight against Englishmen, you call them all rebels, and talk of punishing them when the war is over, if you win, just because they lived on your side of the border and not on ours. Would you ask one Boer to fight against another Boer simply because he lived on one side of a river and his blood relation lived on the other? You Britishers brag of your pride of blood, and draw your fighting stock from all parts of the world in war time, but you have no generosity; you won't allow other people to be proud of their blood too."
I tried to persuade them that I did not for one moment think that Britain would be vindictive towards so-called rebels in the hour of victory, and pointed out that, in my small opinion, such a course would be foreign to the traditions of the Motherland; and was often met with the retort that if England did so the shame would be hers, not theirs. Many a time I was told to remember the Jameson raid and the manner in which the Boers treated not only the leaders of that band of adventurers, but the men also. "Look here," said one old fighting man to me, as he leant with negligent grace on his rifle, "I was one of those who helped to corner Jameson and his men, and I can tell you that we Boers knew very well that we would have been acting within our rights if we had shot Jameson and every man he had with him, because his was not an act of war—it was an act of piracy; and had we done so, and England had attempted to avenge the deed, half the civilised world would have ranged themselves on our side; but we did not seek those men's blood; we gave them quarter as soon as they asked for it, and after that, though we knew very well they had done all that men could do to involve us in a war of extermination with a great nation, we sent their leader home to his own country to be tried by his own countrymen, and the rank and file we forgave freely. We may be a nation of white savages, but our past does not prove it, and if Britain wins in the war now going on she will have to be very generous indeed before we will need to blush for our conduct."
"Why should not the white population of South Africa be ready to live under the protection of Britain? The yoke cannot be so heavy when men of all creeds, colours, and nationalities who have lived under that rule for years are now ready to volunteer to fight for her, even against you, who have admittedly done them no direct wrong?"
"Why should we live under any flag but our own?" replied the old fighting man passionately. "We came here and found the country a wilderness in the hands of savages; we fought our way into the land step by step, holding our own with our rifles; we had to live lives of fearful hardships, facing wild beasts and wilder men; we won with the strong hand the land we live in. Why should we bow our necks to Britain's yoke, even if it be a yoke of silk?" And as he spoke a murmur of deep and earnest sympathy ran through the ranks of the Boers who were standing around him.
"You, of course, blame all the Colonials, Australians and others, for coming to fight against you?" I asked. "I don't know that I do, or that my people do, in a sense," the veteran replied. "It all depends upon the spirit which animated them. If your Australians, who are of British blood, came here to fight for your Motherland, believing that her cause was a just and a holy one, and that she needed your aid, you did right, for a son will help his mother, if he be a son worth having; but if the Australians came here merely for the sake of adventure, merely for sport, as men come in time of peace to shoot buck on the veldt, then woe to that land, for though God may make no sign to-day nor to-morrow, yet, in His own time, He will surely wring from Australia a full recompense in sweat and blood and tears; for whether we be right or wrong, our God knows that we are giving our lives freely for what we in our hearts believe to be a holy cause."
"What do you fellows think of Australians as fighters?"
I asked the question carelessly, but the answer that I got brought me to my bearings quickly, for then I learnt that more than one gallant Australian officer dear to me had fallen, never to rise again, since I had been taken prisoner. The man who spoke was little more than a lad, a pale-faced, slenderly built son of the veldt. He had tangled curly hair, and big, pathetic blue eyes, soft as a girl's, and limbs that lacked the rugged strength of the old Boer stock; but there was that nameless "something," that indefinable expression in his face which warranted him a brave man. He carried one arm in a sling, and the bandage round his neck hid a bullet wound. "The Australians can fight," he said simply. "They wounded me, and—they killed my father." Perhaps it was the wind sighing through the hospital trees that made the Boer lad's voice grow strangely husky; possibly the same cause filled the blue eyes with unshed tears.
"It was in fair fight, lad," I said gently; "it was the fortune of war."
"Yes," he murmured, "it was in fair fight, an awful fight—I hope I'll never look upon another like it. Damn the fighting," he broke out fiercely. "Damn the fighting. I didn't hate your Australians. I didn't want to kill any of them. My father had no ill-will to them, nor they to him, yet he is out there—out there between two great kopjes—where the wind always blows cold and dreary at night-time." The laddie shuddered. "It makes a man doubt the love of the Christ," he said. "My father was a good man, a kind man, who never turned the stranger empty-handed from his door, even the Kaffirs on the farm loved him; and now he is lying where no one can weep over his grave. We piled great rocks on his grave. My cousin and I buried him. We had no shovels; we scooped a hole in the hard earth as well as we could, a long, shallow hole, and we laid him in it. I took his head and Cousin Gustave carried his feet. We folded his hands on his breast, laid his old rifle by his side, because he had always loved that gun, and never used any other when out hunting. Then we pushed the earth in on him gently with our hands, breaking the hard lumps up and crumbling them in our palms, so that they should not bruise his poor flesh. He had always been so kind, we could not hurt him, even though we knew he was dead, for he had been gentle to all of us in life; even the cows and the oxen at home loved him—and now who will go back and tell mother and little Yacoba that he is dead, that he will come to them no more? Oh, damn the war," the lad called again in his pain. "I don't know—only God knows—which side is right or wrong, but I do know that the curse of the Christ will rest on the heads of those who have made this war for ambition's sake or the greed of gold, and the good God will not let the widow and the orphan child go unavenged; blood will yet speak for blood, and it must rest either on the heads of Kruger and Steyn, or Chamberlain and Rhodes."
"Tell me, comrade, of the Australians who fell. They were my countrymen."
"It was a cruel fight," he said. "We had ambushed a lot of the British troops—the Worcesters, I think, they called them. They could neither advance nor retire; we had penned them in like sheep, and our field cornet, Van Leyden, was beseeching them to throw down their rifles to save being slaughtered, for they had no chance. Just then we saw about a hundred Australians come bounding over the rocks in the gully behind us. There were two great big men in front cheering them on. We turned and gave them a volley, but it did not stop them. They rushed over everything, firing as they came, not wildly, but as men who know the use of a rifle, with the quick, sharp, upward jerk to the shoulder, the rapid sight, and then the shot. They knocked over a lot of our men, but we had a splendid position. They had to expose themselves to get to us, and we shot them as they came at us. They were rushing to the rescue of the English. It was splendid, but it was madness. On they came, and we lay behind the boulders, and our rifles snapped and snapped again at pistol range, but we did not stop those wild men until they charged right into a little basin which was fringed around all its edges by rocks covered with bushes. Our men lay there as thick as locusts, and the Australians were fairly trapped. They were far worse off than the Worcesters, up high in the ravine.
"Our field cornet gave the order to cease firing, and called on them to throw down their rifles or die. Then one of the big officers—a, great, rough-looking man, with a voice like a bull—roared out, 'Forward Australia!—no surrender!' Those were the last words he ever uttered, for a man on my right put a bullet clean between his eyes, and he fell forward dead. We found later that his name was Major Eddy, of the Victorian Rifles. He was as brave as a lion, but a Mauser bullet will stop the bravest. His men dashed at the rocks like wolves; it was awful to see them. They smashed at our heads with clubbed rifles, or thrust their rifles up against us through the rocks and fired. One after another their leaders fell. The second big man went down early, but he was not killed. He was shot through the groin, but not dangerously. His name was Captain McInnerny. There was another one, a little man named Lieutenant Roberts; he was shot through the heart. Some of the others I forget. The men would not throw down their rifles; they fought like furies. One man I saw climb right on to the rocky ledge where Big Jan Albrecht was stationed. Just as he got there a bullet took him, and he staggered and dropped his rifle. Big Jan jumped forward to catch him before he toppled over the ledge, but the Australian struck Jan in the mouth with his clenched fist, and fell over into the ravine below and was killed.
"We killed and wounded an awful lot of them, but some got away; they fought their way out. I saw a long row of their dead and wounded laid out on the slope of a farmhouse that evening—they were all young men, fine big fellows. I could have cried to look at them lying so cold and still. They had been so brave in the morning, so strong; but in the evening, a few little hours, they were dead, and we had not hated them, nor they us. Yes, I could have cried as I thought of the women who would wait for them in Australia. Yes, I could have shed tears, though they had wounded me, but then I thought of my father, and of the mother, and little Yacoba on the farm, who would wait in vain for him, and then I could feel sorry for those, the wives and children of the dead men, no longer."