Chapter VII: Part V: With the Flying Column to Mafeking (1)

XVIII

A STRATEGIC SECRET

It was now more than six weeks since we had hurried from Bloemfontein to be in time for the expected operations for the relief of Mafeking. When Lord Methuen had moved from Boshof we had been sure that Mafeking was the goal, and I think that Lord Methuen himself had at least expected to conduct a turning movement on the Boer position at Fourteen Streams. It is easy to see now, when even Lord Roberts's strong march on Pretoria has been harassed and his communications interrupted, why such a movement of Methuen's small force could not have been successful; but we did not see it then. There was a great dearth of information, and the secret of the Flying Column was kept perfectly until within a few days of its departure. While we were waiting at Boshof in the blank days that followed the rear-guard engagement everyone suspected his fellow of some secret information, and men's most trivial movements were elaborately construed into indications that they meditated some independent action. Even Lord Methuen was so much in the dark that he used to say he liked to see the correspondents coming, as he supposed it meant that he should have something to do. Those of us who were there knew really nothing, and had only come prompted by a vague instinct that something was in the air.

Unavoidable as the delay in despatching a column to the relief of Mafeking seems to have been, I think that there was one moment at which, if Lord Methuen had had a slightly stronger force under his command, the course of the campaign on the north-west frontier might have been changed, and Mafeking relieved by pressure from the south. After my accidental discovery of the Boer laager near Spitz Kop there was a long discussion by Lord Methuen and his staff of the possibilities of surrounding and attacking the enemy. It was plain that this large force, commanded by young Cronje, had moved across from Fourteen Streams with the object of harrying us and perhaps retaking Boshof; and for a few days there was practically no force at Fourteen Streams. Now if Lord Methuen could have sent out a light column westward from Boshof to the rear of the laager, and also held the enemy in front with the remainder of his force, he might with good fortune have bagged the whole Boer force, which he knew from my information to be weak in guns. I know he was urged to do it; I know he wanted to do it; I know what the chance of a sensational success meant to a man whose successes had hitherto been unexciting and his one failure a spectacle; and I admired him for not running the risk. It would have been so easy to yield to the urgency of his staff and Intelligence Department, and success was almost certainly assured; but Lord Methuen, who has been foolishly accused of all kinds of rashness, chose in this case to read in that "almost" an assurance that he was not justified in taking the risk. He had no Horse Artillery; and the rapid and secret march to the rear of the laager might have been impossible with field-guns. So he decided at any rate; and decisions like these are among not the least important victories of a campaign.

Since the Boers were in the neighbourhood, and might at any moment make an attack, Major Pollock and I were anxious not to leave Boshof until it became absolutely necessary. We had a secret agent watching our interests at Kimberley in the person of a staff officer whose name I suppose I had better not mention; thus we witnessed, without misgiving, the sudden and hurried flight of all the other correspondents from Boshof, mystery written on their faces. Thus we spent two more peaceful days riding in the shady lanes and lying on the sunburnt kopjes, sweeping the horizon with the telescopes of Lord Chesham and his pleasant crew; thus we received a telegram from Kimberley advising us to "come here and attend to the business yourselves"; thus we rode away and closed what will remain in my memory as the pleasantest chapter in the campaign.

The diary that follows was written during the march of the Relief Column--not always under the most favourable circumstances. The imperfections of a document of this kind are so closely bound up with its only merit that I have decided to leave it exactly as it was written, and not to risk a sacrifice of reality in an attempt to abolish defects which, I hope, the reader will regard as being in the circumstances unavoidable.

XIX

THE DEPARTURE FROM KIMBERLEY

BARKLY WEST, _Thursday, May 3rd._

At last!

During the inaction of the past weeks there has been but one question asked--"Is nothing to be done for Mafeking?" With the gallant little garrison waiting and keeping the enemy from the door while disease is busy within, it has been hard to sit still and wait for the orders that have been so long in coming. But Kimberley, which had been almost emptied of troops by Lord Methuen's departure, gradually filled again as General Hunter's division assembled; and a few days ago it became plain that some movement was imminent.

Tuesday evening--the eve of the mysterious move--was full of romance for anyone who knew what was about to happen. The dining-room of the club was gay with yellow and brass and scarlet and the subtler colours of wine and flowers; but conversation grouped itself into the small low choruses that indicate far more truly than one united sound indicates the presence of some common and thrilling interest. Earlier in the day I had been admitted to a kind of _séance_ in the Press Censor's office, where an envelope alluringly marked "secret" had been opened, and its contents read to a "limited number of correspondents of known discretion." Within it was written that a flying column under Colonel Mahon would set out at daybreak on the 4th from Barkly West for the relief of Mafeking; that a certain number of correspondents (of known discretion) would be invited to accompany it; that the estimated time was fifteen days; that no provisions or forage would be supplied; that the correspondents must give their word of honour to divulge nothing until a certain time: to all of which we set our hands and seals, and then departed from the office somewhat impressed. It is characteristic of our Intelligence Department that on leaving the office I was greeted by a Kimberley resident with the remark--"Well, I hear that Mahon is going to make a dash for Mafeking on Friday _viâ_ Barkly West; good business!"

So in the evening, although if you had asked point-blank questions you would have been told nothing, the forthcoming dash to the rescue was really the topic. That it is to be the work of the Colonial troops is fair enough, since no one has a better right than they to help their besieged comrades. Therefore the British officer has been for once eclipsed, and the Colonials have had it all their own way. They hovered and bustled about the club all the evening, taking leave of friends and settling affairs. Some of them, one knew, would not return; and the thought never fails to lend a strange kind of solemnity to the eve of a big enterprise. "We're going to have a tough job," Colonel Peakman had said, and men had looked grave for a moment, and then gone on talking and laughing; but the prospect of serious fighting was displeasing to no one. That is always the way; the excitements and not the horrors of a battle are remembered; every man thinks that, though all the rest should fall, he shall stand at the last; a sense of danger in the future is a trumpet-call. And this is a noble part of warfare, to relieve the distressed. A duty to be done at all costs; no questions of how or why, but a clear lead.

There is something in the very words "flying column" to appease the impatient; wings in the air, a swoop upon the victim. But it is merely a bold figure of speech, and means in a case like this a rapid march of twenty miles a day, mules instead of oxen, short rations, starving and ruined horses. These flying cavalry columns and forced marches (the only means by which the slippery Boer is to be cornered) demonstrate to how great an extent this is a campaign of horses. Only the shortest horse rations can be carried, and even at the best, a fortnight's continuous work of this kind will so knock up a good horse that he must have three months' rest before he can be of any further use. So your flying column must start with fat horses, and use up their reserve of flesh, arriving at the end with skeletons. It is dreadful enough to see a good beast, and hundreds of good beasts, starving before your eyes and working hard all the time; but it is only one of the many horrible and necessary accompaniments of a war. What is asked of the horses on an expedition of this kind is that they shall carry a man say twenty-five miles a day on the march, and at the end perhaps carry him another thirty galloping about in a fight; and no animal will stand more than a fortnight of that, even on full rations. So the remount officers have been busy in Kimberley, buying up every animal that looked as though he would last for a fortnight; and the private buyer has been hard put to it to provide for his needs. I was lucky enough in the two hours of yesterday afternoon that were available for the purpose to light upon a cart and team that would carry my load of forage and bully beef; and at 5 p.m. to see the leaders harnessed in for the first time, while my faithful Kaffir groom gathered up the reins with doubt in his eye. Of course the leaders turned round and tried to climb up over the wheelers' heads, but at length they came to an approximate sort of unanimity as to which pair was to lead. Thereafter I had the fearful joy of seeing the equipage set forth at speed down the narrow street. A policeman escaped with his life at one corner, a cripple was snatched from death at another, a nigger was cannoned off at a third--the proprietor of the public menace riding diffidently behind the while, trying to look as though he had no hand in it. But the great thing was that I had got something capable of "flying" with the column, and I was twice hailed on the way out to know whether I would sell the horses.

From Kimberley to Barkly (whither the forces comprising the column had proceeded earlier in the day) the road lies through twenty-five miles of the loneliest veldt; except at the half-way house I did not see a human being all the way. The young moon was up, and threw the earth and sky into sombre night colours--a purple wall of earth meeting the spangled violet of the sky in one long line. For twenty miles of the road there was hardly a sound save the beat of horses' feet; but presently there stole on my ear a kind of music for which one's senses long in this barren country--the murmur of water over stones. It was the Vaal river, running here broad and deep, and making Barkly West a pleasing instead of a dull place. Beside a sharp bend the lights of an inn shone upon the road, promising rest for tired people, whether they had four feet or two; and the promise was fulfilled.

To-day has been given up to horse-buying; the place was like a fair; everyone who owned even the framework of a horse brought it out and offered it for sale; and officers were competing busily for the purchase of any decent animal. I found time to go down and listen to the river--strange sights the water that is flowing so quietly must have passed this morning! For one of our 6-inch siege guns was sent up to Warrenton last night, and opened at daybreak on the Boers at Fourteen Streams. One longs to know something of the result; but the water flows secretly on into more peaceful scenes.

GUNNING'S FARM, _Saturday, May 5th_.

We did not get away until nearly nine yesterday morning, and for the first few miles were much delayed by breakdowns in the transport column. The transport mule is a troublesome creature; sometimes he insists on stopping to pick up grass; always he is reluctant to do merely what is required of him. So although our transport column is supposed to take up only one mile of road, it straggled over a good two miles during Friday's march. The road was very dangerous, winding through narrow passes and thick bush country; therefore the scouting was slow and laborious, and the whole column was halted before every unusually dangerous place. But we met no Boers; and since we desire to proceed very quietly and unostentatiously at first this was fortunate. The column consists of about eleven hundred men of the Kimberley Mounted Corps and the Imperial Light Horse, a mixed company of picked volunteers from the Sixth Fusilier Brigade (representing England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), and a four-gun battery of the Royal Horse Artillery, with two pom-poms in addition. Every man is mounted, including the infantry men, who ride on waggons. Yesterday we marched only twelve miles, owing to the difficulties of the ground, but in the evening our business began in earnest. Lights had to be out at eight o'clock, and this morning we marched off at two, no lights or fires being allowed, not even a match for a cigarette. The joys of rising at 1.30 in the cold pitch darkness (for these are winter mornings, in spite of the summer noonday), and of trying to harness a team, and pick up all one's kit, exist only in retrospect, where all troubles fade. The six-hour march this morning was very cold and very tedious; four hours of it were in darkness, and how late the sun seemed to be in rising! But he came punctually, in spite of a mild panic amongst us lest something should have happened to him, and the pageant of his rising was entertainment for the last two hours. Fifteen miles before breakfast and fifteen after lunch--a journey almost too heavy for the second day. Two teams of mules were knocked up, and more will follow if this goes on.

At Spitz Kop, our breakfast outspan, we heard guns in the distance, and from the top of the high hill we could see the little fluffy clouds of smoke, that meant so much to someone, bursting on both sides. There was an alarm that the Boers were coming our way, and the guns were turned out; but it was a false alarm, and the column came on here to Gunning's Farm, where we arrived after dark. Camping in the dark after a thirty-mile march is wild work--such a commotion of hails and calls, such searching for one's camp, and for the watering-place for horses. The hour of lamplight is precious, and I am near the end of it now.

MUCHADIN, _Monday, May 7th_.

A day seldom passes on which one does not receive fresh proof that the world contains foolish people. In the small hours of Sunday morning, when the camp was astir in the darkness, a rifle-shot rang out quite close to me. I could hear the bullet going up like a rocket until the sound was lost. It was the usual thing--some idiot charging his magazine, and forgetting to close the cut-off--with the result that when he snapped his trigger the gun went off. Any good result of our discomfortable regulation as to fires and lights is quite cancelled by such an act, which proves much more certainly than fires can prove the presence of armed troops. The same thing happened early this morning, and the pickets were turned out to find that the alarm was false. It is a great pity, but where the British soldier is to be found in any force, there seems invariably to be found also the man who lets off his gun by mistake. The marvel is that the thing generally hurts no one.

Sunday's march was uneventful, except that trouble began among the horses. One of my four fellow-correspondents lost a fine pair--the wheelers of his team--which he had bought in Barkly on Thursday, and which probably returned to their former owner. But as we have no lines of communication, he will not see them again. My horse fell sick, and the three hours of the midday bivouac had to be spent in hastily breaking in to the saddle one of the leaders of my team. The headquarters staff lost two horses, and five mules strayed from the supply park. The fact was rather tersely announced by Corporal Jenkins of the Army Service Corps, who came up while I was talking to his officer, saluted, and said in the language of his kind--

"Please, sir, I'm deficient of five mules."

The loss of animals from so small a column is really serious, and everyone is looking blue over his deficiencies. I am deficient of a spade and two nose-bags. But then I am to the good by one lame dog, who, in return for slight services rendered on the road, refuses to allow any but my own lawful servants to approach the encampment. We did eighteen miles to-day, and encamped at Greefdal in the evening. We are now well north of Fourteen Streams, where all day long we have heard the guns booming. In the afternoon the native scouts (who work far outside the ground patrolled by our scouts and flankers) reported a party of 500 Boers approaching from the south and east, but they must have turned northward, for we have heard nothing more of them. This morning we could see a long line of dust moving about twenty miles to the north-east; but it has subsided, and the Boers are probably in laager. It is fortunate that Colonel Mahon is an absolutely careful man, since any little neglect in the matter of patrolling and choosing bivouac positions might mean complete disaster to the column, and the frustration of its end. These little things have often been neglected in this campaign; and whenever there has been a convoy captured, it has been because someone has taken for granted that someone else was holding a drift or pass. So we move warily through a placid country that may become at any moment full of menace; travelling may at any moment be exchanged for fighting, and the roadway for the battlefield; even the green slopes that front us may hide the gravest danger, and the river-bed with its grasses and lapsing waters become a pit of death. But one knows little of the future; it is on the knees of the gods.

XX

FROM TAUNGS TO VRYBURG

DRY HARTZ, _Tuesday, May 8th_.

The march of yesterday afternoon was not without its incidents. We came in sight of the village of Taungs at about four o'clock, our road passing ten miles to the west of it at the opposite side of the Hartz valley. I was riding with the advance guard when a man rode up from the direction of the village.

"I've just come to have a look at the troops," said he; "I'm a British subject."

"Oh, are you?" said the colonel in command of the guard, and ordered him to be detained and examined. He told us a great many lies, and is now a prisoner. We have collected about nine prisoners so far, chiefly insurgents against whom there is grave evidence; and they ride along in an ox-waggon quite contentedly, while the dozen men of the Scots Fusiliers who act as their escort regale them with specimens of northern wit. To judge by the sounds of hilarity which float from the waggon, even towards the end of a long march, their efforts are well appreciated.

A patrol was sent over to Taungs, and we watched the squadron dancing away until a fold of the green plain hid them. Soon afterwards we came into camp.

The paramount question at such a moment is always: "What is the water like?" Last night it was very bad, and there was no officer in charge of the watering when the rear of the column came in. The only water was a small, almost stagnant river, and the men were into it, bathing, as soon as they arrived. Then the horses and mules were watered, and stirred up the mud with their feet; and then we sent for drinking water. Of course one has it boiled, but even so----.

While we were having dinner the patrol returned from Taungs, having cut the wire north and south and destroyed the instrument. They found the village empty except for women.

Encounters with insurgents are often amusing, although amongst them they have so far afforded natives of all our three kingdoms reason for shame. Here is something quite typical.

SCENE: _The veldt road. Enter very slowly from the north, an ox-waggon. Enter from the south, a cloud of dust, out of which emerges the Mounted Advance Guard of the column. They meet, and halt._

TROOPER _in charge of ox-waggon, saluting and pointing with his thumb within_:

"Come to report, sir. Found this woman trekkin' along, and won't give no account of herself."

_Commanding Officer draws aside tent of waggon and discovers fat and hearty old woman._

C.O.: "Now, my good woman, what have you to say for yourself?" (_No answer._)

TROOPER: "Please, sir, she come from that there rebel farm." (_To fat and hearty old woman_) "Now then, missus, tell the Colonel who you are." (_Long silence, during which something seems to be working in the mind of the fat and hearty old woman._)

C.O.: "Can anyone speak Dutch? Here, Evans, ask her what she has to say for herself." (_Trooper Evans asks her in fluent Dutch--no answer--question repeated with emphasis._)

F. and H.O.W.: "Whethen now, and shure it's Mrs. McGuire Oi am, and bad luck to the whole av ye. Glory be to Goodness, but it's a quare place Oi'd be in if the likes of you was all Oi had to me back, wid all me bits av sticks and the ould hin herself took be the Boers--bad cess to 'em" (_and much more to the same effect, during which the waggon is searched and a couple of Martini rifles found in it, and various other damning evidences, with the result that the waggon is confiscated, and the fat and hearty old woman bundled off to her farm, protesting loudly_).

But although such incidents are sometimes amusing they are often painful, and the burning of houses that has gone on this afternoon has been a most unpleasant business. We have been marching through a part of the country where some mischievous person has been collecting and encouraging insurgents. And this afternoon in the course of about ten miles we have burned no less than six farmhouses. Care seems to have been taken that there was proper evidence against the owners who were absent. In one case the wife of an insurgent who was lying sick at a friend's farm, watched from her sick husband's bedside the burning of her home a hundred yards away. I cannot think that punishment need take this wild form; it seems as though a kind of domestic murder were being committed while one watches the roof and furniture of a house blazing; and how many obscure deaths of the soul take place while a woman watches her home, and all the little valueless possessions that are precious to her, falling into ruin before her eyes? I stood till late last night before the red blaze, and saw the flames lick round each piece of the poor furniture--the chairs and tables, the baby's cradle, the chest of drawers containing a world of treasure; and when I saw the poor housewife's face pressed against the window of the neighbouring house my own heart burned with a sense of outrage. The crime of insurrection is a serious one, but I never heard yet of a crime for which the responsibility rested on the criminal alone.

On quite different grounds, this destruction would appear to be worse than useless. The effect on those of the Colonial troops who, in carrying out the orders to destroy, are gratifying their feelings of hatred and revenge, is very bad. Their discipline is far below that of the Imperial troops, and they soon get out of hand. They swarm into the houses, looting and destroying, and filling the air with high-sounding cries of vengeance, and yesterday some of them were complaining bitterly that a suspected house, against the owner of which there was not sufficient evidence, was not delivered into their hands. Further, if these farms are to be confiscated (as the more revengeful loyalists desire) and given over to settlers, why burn the houses? The new occupant will only have to build another homestead, and building is a serious matter where wood and the means of dressing stone are so very scarce as here. The ends achieved are small--simply an exhibition of power, and punishment which (if it be really necessary) could be otherwise inflicted; and the evils, as one sees them on the spot, are many and great. If I described one-half of the little things which I saw in the process of destruction I should be accused of sentimentalising; but the principle of the thing seems clear enough. If one could only hope that with the conflagration would die down those hotter fires that burn in the heart of this country, one might accept the manifest disadvantages. But good feeling will never spring from ashes like these; every charred spot is the grave of that which neither time nor laws can revive.

BRAKFONTEIN, _Wednesday, May 9th._

We are not far from Vryburg now, and expect to enter it to-day without opposition. From several prisoners taken on the way (there are twenty of them now) we heard that the Boer police in Vryburg knew of our presence at two o'clock on Sunday, and that they all fled. Another farm was burned this morning, and much ammunition destroyed. We have now got over a great and critical part of our journey, which has been admirably made through very difficult country, and we do not expect opposition until we approach Mafeking. Cronje, who was reported on Sunday to be moving westwards with a force to cut us off, has apparently missed us, and he will hardly attempt a rear-guard action without guns. We have two pom-poms, and everyone--even the most peaceful of us--who has once been shot at by these infernal machines is eager to watch them at work from the right end.

VRYBURG, _Thursday, May 10th._

We occupied Vryburg yesterday at about three o'clock. We made a very easy march, with a long rest at midday, and as the column wound up to the summit of a high ridge we saw Vryburg lying green and white on the farther slope. Half our journey done, and the most dangerous half; it was a pleasant sight. The Boers had all left the little town, and the English residents--chiefly women of the artisan and shopkeeper class--swarmed out to meet us, waving spurious Union Jacks, and exhibiting all the loyalty that can be displayed by means of dyes and pigments. It was like Bloemfontein on a smaller scale.

The people here have been in rather a bad way. There has been a great deal of sickness; the supplies have been very scanty, and meal seems to be the only thing of which they have plenty. So naturally they welcomed the column as the sign of an open road to Kimberley.

I went to see the railway station, which has been much damaged. The only two locomotives here have been outraged; vacuum gauges have been broken, dome-covers torn, and taps smashed; and bullets have been fired at the steel-plated boilers, which, however, they did not penetrate. But it is only outrage, and it seems that with materials left in the workshops here the engines can be repaired in a couple of days. The Boers have been very clumsy over this; a dynamite cartridge might have been strapped under a driving axle in far less time, and its explosion would have been more effectual.

Our chief joy has been in straying about the town, revelling in the sense of things to be bought. No man can withstand shops after having experienced for several days conditions under which money is not of value. There is really nothing to buy that is of much use, but we stand agape at the window of an ironmonger's shop, fingering the money in our pockets, and wondering whether to buy an axe or a mincing machine. On the whole, the axe has it; one must have fires; and bully beef _can_ be eaten in the slab form.

XXI

NEARING THE GOAL

JACKAL'S PAN, _Saturday, May 12th_.

Colonel Mahon's column left Vryburg on Thursday at sunset in a cloud of purple dust, and as long as the light lasted, we could see the rather pathetic-looking little crowd of residents waving handkerchiefs and flags. It was intended only to march for three hours; but our information about water proved to be incorrect, and the column wound along in the moonlight over mile after mile of the most sterile veldt I have yet seen in the country. I was riding with Colonel Mahon for the last few hours, and was to some extent buoyed up by the repeated assurances of the guide that there was water "just round the bend"; but even so it was a weary correspondent who got off his horse at 2 a.m., after eight hours of walking and riding at a foot-pace. Of course, the poor mules suffered most. Even four hours in harness without a rest is considered too much for them; here they had twice that time, over very rough ground, and in consequence half of them had bad breast-galls. It was a mistake to go on for so long, especially as we had to halt after all without water; but the Colonel could not be persuaded to halt until his transport officer warned him that the mules were at the end of their endurance. And all through that weary march no lights were permitted; no smoking even, which gives one something to do; and when we got into the bivouac at two o'clock, no fires or lights. We had to be up at five and start in the misery of darkness and intense cold; without even the comfort of a hot drink; but we reached the water at eight, and had a long morning of rest and sunshine. No one really grumbles at this sort of thing, although it is most unpleasant; and as the men are all picked for health and endurance, no one is any the worse for it.

We marched eighteen miles on Thursday night, and four the next morning; thirteen yesterday evening, and eight this morning; this afternoon we expect to do another twelve, and reduce the distance before us to an easy two days' journey. Of course, all this speed is achieved at a certain cost in mule and horse flesh, but we hope that the end will justify it. The authorities at Kimberley have not done so well for us as they might have done. They did not take the trouble to find out exactly how many horses were in the force, with the result that the daily horse ration has been reduced from the inadequate seven pounds to the absurd four pounds, while the men are on half meat and three-quarter biscuit rations. Another serious defect in the equipment of the column is that there is not even a section of engineers with us. The want is the more felt as water is scarce and bad along the route; often the only water is a small pan or pond into which the mules wade breast high and churn it into mud, which the men have to make a shift to drink. A few sappers and a waggon with the advance guard would ensure a clean supply for everyone, since water that is quite insufficient in a dam can be made to go a long way when it is pumped into watering troughs; and a section of engineers can fix up the whole necessary apparatus in ten minutes.

Far more interesting than the march of a great army corps, where one gets lost in the miles of transport, is the progress of a small column like this, where one is more or less in touch with everyone, and can watch from within the deliberations and methods of the small staff to whom success or failure means so very much. The little group that rides in front of the guns discusses minutely many questions of absorbing interest in the course of a day's march. Whether such and such a ridge ought to be patrolled; how far the scouts are working in this or that direction; whether it is advisable to halt now and go on after a rest, or do a greater distance and have a long rest at the end. And then, when the time for the five minutes' rest in the hour has arrived, "_Halt_!" is passed down the column, and one hears the word running down squadron after squadron until it is lost among the lines of the ammunition column. The connecting files pass it forward to the advance guard, who send it out to their scouts and patrols, until the great serpent that winds over the country is completely at rest. Then follows a sound of horses cropping grass and men talking. Then "_Stand to your horses_!" runs down the column, followed by a shuffling of feet as men scramble from the ground where they have been lying; "_Prepare to mount_!" and there is a general gathering up of reins; "_Mount_!" and a long rustle and jingle as the men swing into their saddles; "_Walk march_!" and the serpent is off again, feeling his way before him.

Three miles in front of us the furthest scouts of the advance guard are working cautiously in the bush, and from the officer in command of the guard a note occasionally comes back to the Brigadier, carried from squadron to squadron and passed along the connecting files until it reaches the head of the main column. One never becomes accustomed to the interest and mystery attaching to these notes, and one almost holds one's breath while they are read; they may contain so much, may carry news of the gravest or most astonishing nature; for if the advance guard found the enemy in strength standing on his head in a donga the information would still be conveyed through the cold propriety of Army Form No. C 398. It is one of the sanest of cold-blooded regulations; let a patrol be never so hard pressed and requiring help never so urgently, the officer commanding it must take time to say so in writing.

I am glad to see that no more farms are being burned, and that we are not burdening ourselves further with the insurgent prisoners. We have already twenty-five, but the Brigadier has been content to read the insurgents who have been taken since a lecture on the folly of their ways, and to warn them that a day of reckoning is coming. I came up to a house yesterday where the Dutch farmer, who was known to be disloyal, had just been arrested and taken away. The troops were making preparations to burn the house, acting on the general order, which had not been cancelled. Within, a child had dropped his toys to stare in astonishment at the strangers, and his mother was weeping alone. I rode back to the Brigadier and said what I could, with the result that I was able to return and assure the woman that her house would not be burned, and in addition to see her husband come back in half an hour. The effect has really been produced already, and prisoners in a flying column are a particular nuisance.

BRODIE'S FARM, _Sunday, May 13th_.

The end is drawing near now, and a fight is almost certain this afternoon or to-morrow. A commando of Boers, 400 strong, was reported yesterday afternoon about eighteen miles on our right flank, and some time during last night they pushed on and occupied a kopje at Koodoesrand, directly in our path, where they laid an ambuscade with three guns. They expected (as well they might) that we should come on and butt into their position. But we have learned our lesson, and this morning we made a detour and have got past them. We have marched nine miles; we shall reach the next water (twelve miles) this evening, and to-morrow we must march straight on to Mafeking (twenty-four miles), for there is no water all the way, and there is the prospect of heavy fighting at the end of it. The horses will simply be used up, but that cannot be helped; if we win it will not matter, and if we lose----. It will be a trying day for everyone, and we shall only have a few hours' sleep to-night, but I think no one grudges the discomfort. I write on the eve of what may be a very brilliant, a very disastrous, or a very simple affair. We are a small force, the march so far has been brilliant, and success will be a brilliant crown for the expedition and its leader. Everyone is more than a little anxious, but it is hard to foretell any result.

I forgot to say that we had a runner from Mafeking, with messages from Colonel Plumer and Colonel Baden-Powell; they asked us what our numbers were, how many our guns, and what the state of our supplies. The answer was most ingenious, as we had no code to which they had a key, and we could not trust a straightforward statement of such important facts to the risks of the road. So Colonel Rhodes invented this answer:--

"Our numbers are the Naval and Military multiplied by ten; our guns, the number of sons in the Ward family; our supplies, the O.C. 9th Lancers."

Excellent as the Boer Intelligence is, I do not suppose that they are aware that the Naval and Military Club is at 94, Piccadilly; that the house of Dudley rejoices in six stalwart sons; or that the officer commanding the 9th Lancers is Colonel Little.

XXII

WE REPEL AN ATTACK AND JOIN FORCES WITH PLUMER

BUCK REEF FARM, _Monday, May 14th_.

A diary is the last place in which to indulge in prophecy; it preserves too clearly the record of fallacy. In the last twenty-four hours have been reversed all the expectations of those in charge of this column, and even the direction of our march has been completely changed. My last entry was made at midday yesterday, and at 2.30 we resumed the march northwards, intending to reach a point ten miles distant at which there was water. The road was very heavy, or rather there was no road at all, the way lying over rough bush veldt, which consists of long, rank grass, with thorn bushes at small intervals and hardwood trees at greater distances--the whole something like an English paddock or park of young trees, except, of course, for the grass. This was heavy going; the mules were hot and tired, and the convoy trailed out and straggled; we spent quite two hours in covering the first four miles.

I have said that the convoy straggled, and there were long intervals between one part of it and the next. During one such interval, the afternoon being very hot, I lay down under a tree and left my horse to graze. A cloud of locusts flying high and beating the air with millions of wings made a pleasant sound as of wind in a forest, and listening to these and to the thousand other minute noises that proceed from the insect life on a few square yards of veldt, I almost fell asleep. There was not a sound from the column; you could not imagine a more peaceful spot; and the obvious contrast between the purpose of this little army and its present circumstances impressed me more vividly than ever. And in less than half an hour from that moment of absolute peace the bullets were hailing round us and the air was resonant with the boom of guns. This is how it happened.

It was half-past three when I left the shade of the tree and joined Colonel Mahon in front of the Horse Artillery, and at twenty minutes to four we heard the sound of rifle-shots--three or four--to the south-east. We had now got into a kind of wood in the bush, and here and there could see beyond the edge of it eastwards towards a hillside that sloped up from us to a ridge four miles away. On this ridge we could see a cloud of dust, and we were looking at it through glasses when a note came in from the right flank reporting a body of the enemy advancing on us from the east. Presently we made out on the edge of the dust a line of horsemen opening out on a kind of glade on the hillside, and the Brigadier ordered the guns to come into position where we were standing. It was really no sort of position at all, being merely a wood with no view from it, and in a hollow at that; but it was all that could be done.

The guns came galloping up, the horses as keen as mustard; in five minutes they had unlimbered and were in position; but Major Jackson, who was in command of the battery, reported that the range was extreme and that he could not be effective. So we lit pipes and waited, while the convoy was ordered to be hurried up as much as possible.

Up galloped an orderly with a note, and everyone tried to read the Brigadier's face. It clouded a little.

"Enemy advancing in strength on our front" was the essence of the note. But "They've got us in the nastiest place of the whole march" was all he said.

In a few minutes more Prince Alexander of Teck came up to report that the convoy was well up, and just as he had finished speaking rifle-fire broke out on our right, and a minute later, sharply, on our front. It was then 4.45, and a bewildering moment for the Brigadier, who had a great, bulky convoy to protect, and had it at the moment in a defenceless position. I think I would not take any reward to bear the responsibility of acting at such a moment. The shots were sounding quicker, but one could see nothing except the surrounding trees. Colonel Mahon looked coolly round.

"We must try with the guns," he said, and ordered another squadron out on the right.

The orderly rode away with the order, and at exactly five o'clock the fire broke out furiously and bullets began to whistle over us. Everyone put his horse into a canter by instinct, and I think the staff went round to the guns. I returned to the convoy to look after my cart.

The convoy was moving on now on as broad a front as the shrubs and trees would permit of; it raised a cloud of dust, which the level rays of the sun lit like a rainbow, and the bullets began to come in a hail. Well, that is rather exaggerated--not a hail. But on a summer day after oppressive heat and dark clouds the big raindrops begin to splash on the ground; and this fire, which many old stagers who have been through several fights describe as the hottest they have known, was something like that. There was no cover; everyone was under fire; so there was nothing to do but to dismount and lead one's horse along beside the convoy. Every now and then with the clear high "phit" of the Mauser bullet would come the hideous twisting whistle of the Martini--really a horrible sound. There was something like a panic amongst the native drivers; they walked along bent almost double, taking what shelter they could; one I saw crawling along on his belly, and the sight made me laugh, although I had at heart too much sympathy with him to be really amused. The mules and horses, alarmed by these strange whistlings in the air, began to neigh and scream, and they added to the general tumult. One gave up wondering whether or no one would be hit, but merely wondered if it would be a graze or a "plug." There were the usual number of miraculous escapes; the driver of the waggon beside which I was walking tumbled off his seat like a sack, stone dead; a mule in the waggon behind me leapt and kicked, and sank on the ground; my horse jumped as a Martini bullet smote the sand at his heel; yet I think there was never a bullet nearer me than a dozen feet. Major Baden-Powell, who is accompanying the expedition for his brother's relief, had his watch, worn in the left breast-pocket, smashed to atoms, but his skin was not even scratched.

They were ten very long and, to put it frankly, very hateful minutes that passed until M Battery opened with a roar. It was a welcome sound, and still more welcome the "pom--pom--pom--_pom_," like the bark of a good dog, that sounded immediately afterwards. And it was like oil on water, or water on fire. Immediately the enemy's fire slackened; in two minutes it had almost ceased; in five it had stopped entirely, and one began to get one's breath. There were men lying all round and about the wood, and the small ambulance staff had more work than they could do; my cart made three trips, carrying wounded men from the column to the dressing-station. Only ten minutes of fighting, and over thirty casualties; six killed, twenty-four wounded, one missing.

But when one had been through those ten minutes, it was not the men lying stark and still in the grass beside the ambulance that made one astonished; it was the sight of people walking about and talking that made one wonder whether or no one had been dreaming. It was decided to halt. Everyone lay down where he stood, and it was a strange, troubled night, with horses stumbling about in the moonlight and blowing with astonishment into one's face.

This morning, as some of us more than half expected, the enemy had cleared, but in consequence of a message received from Colonel Plumer asking us to meet and join him at a certain place we have turned from our original direction. We reached a dry river at eight o'clock this morning, and men had to begin to dig in the sand for water for themselves and their horses. One of my servants found a well fifty feet deep, from which the bucket hoist and ropes were missing. I had sixty feet of rope in my cart, and I went quietly away with two boys carrying all our buckets and bags and kegs, and leading all the horses. We had two hours of very hard work at that well; and when the horses had drunk their fill, and every vessel had been replenished, the fact that there was a well was reported to the Brigadier. In ten minutes a crowd of troopers was round the well, trampling down earth into the water; but if we had only had a few engineers everyone could have been supplied in half an hour.

JAN MASSIBI'S, _Tuesday, May 15th_.

We marched off at half-past three yesterday, keeping west of north; on and on, until half-past eight in the evening. Everyone was dog-tired, and dropped to the ground, only to be roused at one o'clock this morning by the Brigadier, who personally went round and woke people up. He had to shake me twice, and I imagine that other people were wrapped in just as profound an oblivion; nevertheless we were on the march again at 1.30.

Oh, the weariness of that eternal plod through the rough grassy ground, the coldness, the interminable darkness! It was no better on horseback than on foot, for the animals kept falling asleep and stumbling. At every halt one tumbled off one's horse and fell asleep, only to be awakened by the hateful "Stand to your horses." But at last the light began to glimmer in the east, the air took an even colder tone, so that even the grasses seemed to shiver with the breath of dawn, and presently the whole horizon on our right burned with a red fire. Thereafter the shedding of greatcoats and sweaters and woollen helmets, and the glad breathing in of the wine of morning. A little after daylight our advance patrols came in touch with the pickets of Colonel Plumer's camp, down in the valley of the Molopo River at Jan Massibi's. The Brigadier and his staff rode on, and it was a pleasant meeting between the two officers. And pleasanter still when the cloud of dust that heralded our force appeared on the crest of the southern ridge and the long column began to pour down the slope and to cross the drift. Soon it was filling the valley and mingling with the other force already encamped, and now everyone is busy washing or eating near the picturesque little cluster of Kaffir kraals and big shady trees; for the region of karoo and shadeless plain has been left far behind. Our supplies are practically exhausted; the horses are eating their last ration to-day; but Mafeking is only eighteen miles distant, waiting for our help. There is something inspiring in that knowledge, and in the news of the grand little garrison's latest success; and everyone is anxious to push on and get the inevitable fight over.

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.