THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER (continued 2)

I. O. (brutally) "And did you? Look here; you will have to wait until the general comes in for your camping arrangements. All I want is the telegraph-office."

S. O. "Of course we did not surrender. Why, we have made this place impregnable. There are three companies of my regiment here, to say nothing of the local town-guard."

I. O. "Oh, hang the town-guard! You trot along and find the chief of our staff. I have other things to think about. By the way, has the rest of the New Cavalry Brigade come in here? The Mount Nelson Light Horse—they are marching from Hanover Road?"

S. O. "No; but there is some ox-transport for you with the Supply column. How far back is your general?"

I. O. "About three miles. Thanks." (Intelligence Officer and the Tiger canter on.)

Tiger. "Please, sir, did he say that the De Aar column was in?"

I. O. "Yes. Why?"

T. "Only the bulk of Rimington's—that is, Damant's—Guides are with it, and I should like to go and see them as soon as I have shown you the telegraph-office. I will also try and find out what young Pretorius was doing in here last night."

In five minutes a "clear-the-line" message was on its way to "Chief, Pretoria," to tell him that the concentration ordered two days ago had taken place. To us, following the fortunes of one small unit in the great move, it will appear that in our forty-eight hours' association with the New Cavalry Brigade everything has proceeded as could have been desired by the master-mind. But it was not so. Almost before the last of the horses had been detrained at Richmond Road, the whole nature of, and necessity for, the movement had changed. In short, everything had turned out as the brigadier had anticipated. Plumer, with the tenacity for which he is famous, had clung to the rear-guard of De Wet's column, snatching a waggon here and a tumbril there, until he himself could move no farther. De Wet had outlasted him, and had, moreover, seen that it would be useless to carry out his original programme. So he doubled and doubled again, with the result that the cleverly devised scheme of relays of driving columns was out of joint, and a dozen units were uselessly spread out over the veldt a hundred miles from the place in which the invader was catching his breath, within jeering distance of the column which had ran itself stone-cold in his pursuit. So within forty-eight hours of the start the whole plan had to be reconstructed. This reconstruction was explained to the New Cavalry Brigade through the medium of one hundred and four telegrams which were awaiting its arrival at Britstown. As the majority conveyed contradictory instructions, the piecing together of the real meaning partook of the nature of one of those drawing-room after-dinner games with which yawning guests at winter house-parties are beguiled. The first cover that was opened deprived the brigadier of his chief of the staff. That officer was ordered to proceed without delay to take up the command of a mobile column to be formed at Volksrust, the other end of the world—that is, the world with which we are at present concerned.

"Don't open any more till we have fed," said the brigadier. "A man with an empty stomach has no mind. We will have a fat high tea at the local Carlton, and then devise strategy."

A general in the field is a great man. But a general in a town at which half-a-dozen Colonial Corps have concentrated is of no account. In the street men pass him by without recognition, and in hotels private swashbucklers in smasher hats literally hustle him.

"This table is reserved for the commandant," said the ample hostess of the Britstown Carlton.

"Who is the commandant?" queried the brigadier.

"Major Jones," came the answer.

"Well, I'm——! this beats cock-fighting. This is the result of martial law and the control of the liquor licence!—a well-fed major reserves seats, while a hungry general stands!" and the general and staff of the New Cavalry Brigade occupied the reserved table, and became guests of the hotel in common with thirty dishevelled troopers, who had passed into the hotel, representing themselves to the dazed militia sentry at the door as officers. The food may not have been of the best, but it was in abundance; and in a quarter of an hour the brigadier was prepared to study his instructions.

B. "Now, Mr Intelligence, since they see fit to remove my chief of the staff, you have got to be maid-of-all-work. You and I have got to run this brigade until the brigade-major turns up. He must be a bit of a 'slow-bird,' I think, or he would have been here with the rest of my hoplites by this. Do you know anything about staff work?"

Intelligence Officer. "Nothing, sir!"

B. "So much the better; you will then have a mind ripe for tuition. Now I will give you a lesson. You have two pockets in your tunic. The right pocket will be the receptacle for 'business' telegrams, the left for 'bunkum.' Now for the telegrams!"

It would be beyond the scope of this sketch to give the contents of the one hundred and four telegrams which had accumulated in forty-eight hours. It will suffice to state that ninety-seven were relegated to the "bunkum" pocket, and seven retained as conveying intelligent orders worthy of consideration. It is superfluous to mention that the whole of the messages sent by the local intelligence departments and by the De Wet expert were dismissed as "bunkum," often without perusal. As the brigadier pertinently remarked: "I suppose that the poor fellows have to justify their existence as members of the great brain-system of the army. The only means by which they come into prominence is by squandering the public money, and they only hurt those who take their information seriously. They do you no harm if you consistently ignore their existence, and don't worry to read their messages."

The sum-total of the messages of instruction which the brigadier had so quaintly filed as "business-material" was information from the Chief, Pretoria, that the plan of the operations was changed. That our general was to co-operate—a word of very elastic meaning, and responsible for much velvet-covered mutiny during the present campaign—with the columns in his neighbourhood which, over and above the skeleton of the New Cavalry Brigade, had concentrated that day at Britstown. A message in cipher gave an inkling of the plan which had risen phœnix-like out of the ashes of the original dispositions. De Wet, instead of being enticed south, was to be driven north into the loop of the Orange River between Prieska and Hopetown, where Charles Knox's column and a column of Kimberley swashbucklers would be ready for him. The Britstown columns, and the brigadier of the New Cavalry Brigade co-operating, would push north—wheel into line with the panting Plumer, now north of Strydenburg, and then "Forward away!" Now, just as the original scheme had, when on paper, presented a very reasonable and common-sense stratagem, so with the new incubation. But there were three main factors over which the gilt cap at Pretoria had no control, and which dished this, as they have dished ninety-nine out of every hundred of schemes which were undertaken during the guerilla war. The first of these three lay in the fact that the strategy was a conformation to the enemy's movements. This naturally gave him time to think and to develop his counter-move, with all advantages in the balance. No. 2 is to be found in the timidity of certain of the column commanders. Men who proverbially take every opportunity of sacrificing the main issue to pursue some subsidiary policy. Men whom De Wet loves, and whom he plays with, decoys, and bluffs until he achieves his object. Men whose heart will not take them, like Plumer, "slap-bang" along the course which must lead to heavy conclusions, if the enemy will fight; but who prefer to fritter away the morale and efficiency of their columns in pursuing a phantom enemy. Choosing a country in which an enemy as sagacious as the Boer would never operate, these men are careful not to leave the security it affords, though their telegrams to headquarters build up the statistics which have misled our calculations throughout the war. The third reason is just as deplorable. It is the passive resistance evinced between column commanders, who are called upon to co-operate. These leaders, instead of sinking all differences in one common objective, work rather as if they were employed in a business competition. And why is this? Ask of the man in Pretoria with his hand on the tiller. Is not centralisation the cause of it all? Does not the centralisation of the guiding authority mean that all success is judged by personal results,—that the "brave" is selected for preferment who can claim to have the most scalps dangling from his waist-belt. This is the nature of the war for which the British nation is content to pay many millions a-month!

"Please, sir, can I speak to you a moment?" The Tiger stood in the doorway of the hotel dining-room.

"Anything serious?" asked the Intelligence officer.

"I have made a discovery."

"Can you spare me, sir?" (to the Brigadier.)

"For half an hour. I am going down to the commandant's office to see the general. Meet me there in half an hour."

"What is it, Tiger?"

"I will now show you something which will open your eyes. Something which will show you how this game is worked. It is only about two minutes' walk from here."

As the Intelligence officer and the Tiger made their way down the main street, it would have required no great strain upon the imagination to have fancied that the town had recently been carried by assault, and the victorious troops allowed the licence consequent upon street fighting. Even in the few short hours of occupation debauchery had had its way. Drunkenness is the worst attribute of irregular soldiering upon five shillings a-day. If the Colonial has money he will drink. Where the average white man greets a friend and acquaintance with a hand-shake, the South African Colonial calls him to the nearest bar, and they drink their salutation. When half-a-dozen Colonial Corps "off the trek" meet in a wayside township, they turn it into an Inferno. Here they were crowding in and out of the houses in drunken hilarity. The townsfolk, delighted at their opportune arrival when Brand was at their gates, ply them with the spurious spirit which passes for whisky in South Africa. If the spirit is there, no amount of military precaution will prevent the Colonial trooper from securing it. You cannot place whole regiments—officers and men alike—under arrest. And when a Colonial regiment is "going large," in the majority of cases it would baffle any but an expert to distinguish officer from man. And while young men in smasher hats fall over each other in the streets, the sober British troops look solidly on and wonder. Some, it is true, fall away with the rioters. But they are few. Discipline and want of means buoy them at least upon a surface of virtue. Yet, be it said to the credit of these roysterers in town, the man who drinks the hardest in the afternoon will follow you the straightest in the morning!

The Intelligence officer and the Tiger had arrived at a little cottage on the outskirts of the town. A primitive yet pretty dwelling—a toy villa of tin.

"Go in," said the Tiger.

The Intelligence officer knocked and entered. He was met with a smile by the pretty Dutch girl with the great blue eyes, who had so played upon his feelings at Richmond Road.

"Miss Pretorius!"

FOOTNOTES:

V.ToC

A NEW CAST.

For the moment the Intelligence officer could ill disguise his astonishment. Here, standing in front of him, was the girl who had taught him his first lesson in staff jurisprudence. The memory of the incidents at the farmhouse, her petulance with the Tiger, her tears for her lover, had been almost effaced by the vicissitudes of the last forty-eight hours. If he had ever thought of the girl at all, it had been in the same spirit as a mariner recalls a passing ship, whose shapely lines were barely distinguishable in the night. His surprise was such that he could only marvel that while, travel-stained and dishevelled, he had arrived at Britstown with an effort, she had already reached that goal, and, to judge from the studied neatness of her attire, had reached it with consummate ease. Her smile and attitude as she held out her hand to her visitor expressed satisfaction at the meeting—a satisfaction tempered with a determination to show a front which should declare a full measure of resistance. Taking advantage of his officer's surprise, the Tiger discreetly withdrew.

Intelligence Officer. "Miss Pretorius,—how did you get here?"

Miss Pretorius. "Quite simply. Partly on horseback, partly in a Cape cart."

I. O. (recovering somewhat) "Naturally; I did not anticipate that you had walked. But with what object?"

Miss P. (the corners of her pretty mouth sinking in defiance) "I might easily have walked, and arrived before a British column. As to my object in coming here, surely your Africander spy has informed you?"

I. O. "If you mean the Tiger, he has told me nothing!"

Miss P. "And may I also ask something,—What authority have you to put me such a question? At the institution which prided itself in teaching me—an Africander girl—the manners and customs of the English, they were emphatic upon the impertinence of asking personal questions."

I. O. "I must apologise, Miss Pretorius. But the circumstances are hardly normal. We cannot get away from the fact that we are influenced against our better natures by an unfortunate state of war."

Miss P. (petulantly) "Oh, the war! That is just like you Englishmen—you paragons of manly virtue—you make the war a cloak for all your sins. It is such an upright war, therefore in its furtherance you can do no wrong—cannot even be unmannerly. It is this that has made you so beloved in the Republics; but how does your attitude hold good with me? I am a loyal British subject, living at peace with all men in a British colony. What right, therefore, have you to catechise me as to my goings and comings? I do not even live within the legitimate area of your so-called just war. I am only exposed to its rigours—that is, as far as the insolence of those who should be our defenders affects us women—because you English, in spite of your vaunted power and military magnitude, cannot defend us, your Africander dependants, from a few simple farmers. Where is your manhood, where the courtly bearing of the Englishman, of which I have heard so much—and seen so little?"

I. O. "Really, Miss Pretorius, if I may say so, I think that you exaggerate the case. Unfortunately we are at war. You claim consideration on the score of loyalty. Are you astonished that I should have mistaken your attitude towards us? Your two brothers only yesterday were in arms against us. One is wounded, the other a prisoner in our hands. Is it surprising that I regarded you as their accomplice in rebellion?"

Miss P. "I am surprised at nothing that an Englishman may do. But why should I be compromised because my brothers have taken up arms against you. Am I not of an age to formulate opinions of my own? or is it that you consider that we poor Africander girls have no intelligence, that our opinions must of necessity be bound up in those of our men-folk, that we have no mind above the duties of the drudging hausfrau? No, sir; I am an Africander loyalist—more loyal by far than the renegade white who brought you here. And if you wish to know the reason of my presence at Britstown, I am not averse to telling you, provided you will not claim to have the information as a right."

I. O. (with a touch of penitence in his voice, which for a moment caused a smile to flicker round the corners of the girl's mouth) "Of course, Miss Pretorius, I have no right. You will persist in misunderstanding me."

Miss P. "It is a simple problem. I am loyal, as I have said; but I am a daughter and sister first, patriot later. In a fit of meaningless bravado, tempered perhaps by some compulsion from over the border, my old father and brothers had joined a rebel commando. You, with a naïveté which I had hardly expected in you, and for which I liked you, told me the objective of your column—information which meant everything to me, and perhaps to you, for you looked as if you would have liked to have bitten your tongue out after you had parted with it. I, with the honest intention of saving my father and brothers from you, rode out to them that night. I then knew nothing of Lotter's and Hertzog's men. If it had not been for the fighting, I should be now back again at Richmond Road. As it is, my poor wounded father in the next room is sufficient reason for my presence here."

I. O. (who, English-like, was all sympathy at once) "Oh, it was your father then that you brought with you in the Cape cart. I hope that he is not badly wounded. May I see him?"

Miss P. "There would be no object in your seeing him, as he is at present asleep. No; he is, not severely wounded. He is shot through the shoulder,—luckily it has missed his lung."

I. O. (with unaffected solicitude) "I am indeed sorry for you, Miss Pretorius; those last forty-eight hours have been full of trouble for you. But I doubt if you know the worst!"

Miss P. (suddenly paling, and losing for the moment her self-control) "The worst!—surely you have not burned our farm? You are not burning farms in the Colony!"

I. O. "No, not your farm; but I am afraid your sweetheart has been badly hit!"

Miss P. (with evident relief and surprise) "My sweetheart!"

I. O. "Yes; the guide whom we took from your farm. He tried to escape, and was unfortunately shot."

Miss P. (laughing outright) "Oh, Stephanus! He is no sweetheart of mine. How could he be? He is only a bywoner!"

I. O. "But you told me that he was when I first suggested taking him with me!"

Miss P. "Did I? It was not the truth, then; it was only an addition to the part I was then playing."

I. O. "How do I know that you are not still playing a part?"

Miss P. "If I am, then it is a very sad one. No; you may trust me now. I have played my part, and if anything that I could do for you would stop this dreadful war, I would gladly help you!"

I. O. "You can help me, if you will; but after what you have said about my want of manners, I am afraid to ask you a question."

Miss P. "I have forgiven you that; and now that you do not claim the right to question me, I do not mind answering you if I can!"

I. O. "How, if your object was to save your father, did it happen that Lotter was informed of our presence at Richmond Road?"

Miss P. "I expected that you would ask that. I did not tell him personally, nor would I in any circumstances have done so. But the fact that I arrived in great haste in the small hours of the morning had a peculiar meaning to the commando, and it was not necessary for me to open my mouth. I daresay to-night there will be one hundred Africander girls in the saddle in different parts of the Colony. When the urgency is great, a girl is more reliable than a Kaffir. It is one of our means of communication. There; is not that an admission worthy of a loyal Africander?"

I. O. (holding out his hand) "Good-bye, Miss Pretorius."

It would have been difficult to analyse the Intelligence officer's feelings as he strode back along the Britstown main street to keep his appointment with his brigadier. He was at a loss to understand two things,—the anomalism of his second meeting with the Pretorius girl, and the latter's attitude towards the Tiger. He could not divest himself of a feeling of suspicion that all was not quite as it appeared. There is no walk in life which breeds distrust in one's fellows so rapidly as that of military Intelligence. And although the Intelligence officer had only formed an atom in this great structure of British incompetency in South Africa for two days, yet sufficient had been borne in upon him during this period to cause him uneasiness as to the sincerity of motive in those that moved round him. It is said that the only person that a race-horse trainer will trust is his wife, and that as long as he trusts her he remains an unsuccessful man. We cannot say what truth there may be in this ancient turf adage; but we do know that administrative work successfully performed in the Intelligence Department of an army in the field leads a man to place the lowest estimate upon the integrity of his fellows. The first lesson is of an inverse nature, and compels a man, however he may dislike the procedure, to believe those who move about him to be knaves, until he has had opportunity to test their honesty. Young in his knowledge of the people against whom he had been warring for eighteen months, the Intelligence officer was exceedingly puzzled at the strange anomaly presented by the Africander girl he had just left. He could not help feeling that this daughter of a nation which he had led himself, if not to despise, at least to depreciate, had fathomed him in two short interviews, while he had penetrated little beyond the surface of her feminine attractions and lively wit. He was puzzled at the outcome of his interview, even perhaps a little alarmed at the manner in which he had been treated—shocked at the erroneous estimate which he had formed of Dutch women after eighteen months in their midst. But this rebuff had served its purpose: it had sown in him the seeds of that appreciation of our enemy which will have to generally exist if we are ultimately to live in peace and concord, united as fellow-subjects, with the people of South Africa.

It was now already dark, and the Intelligence officer had some little difficulty in finding the house in which the general had taken up his headquarters. The main street was still full of revellers, bursting with Colonial bonhomie, but strangely lacking in topographical information. In fact it seemed doubtful if the general's house would ever be found, and the weary Intelligence officer was rapidly losing his temper, when chance again came to his aid. A horseman came galloping down the street. A little man in civilian attire—all slouch-hat and gaiter. He seemed to be in a desperate hurry, as he was flogging his tired and mud-bespattered animal unmercifully with his sjambok. It was a beaten horse; and just as it came level with the Intelligence officer, it stumbled, half recovered itself, and then fell heavily in a woeful heap. The Intelligence officer pulled the little civilian on to his feet, with a soft admonition about the riding of beaten horses. The civilian shook himself, and turned to his prostrate horse with a curse. But the poor beast had no intention of rising again. It had lain down to die.

"It can't be helped; the news I bring will be worth a horse or two anyhow. I must leave it, saddle and all, until I have seen the general."

"Do you know where to find him?" hazarded the Intelligence officer. "I am looking for his house now."

Civilian. "Well, I ought to; I've not run a store in this town for five years not to know my way about. But who may you be?"

Intelligence Officer. "I'm staff officer to one of the columns which came in to-day. I've been trying to find headquarters this last ten minutes."

Civ. "Come along with me. I must get there at once. I've just come in from Houwater. I was sent out by the commandant to follow up Brand, and I have located him and Hertzog. I tell you I have come in fast—never went faster in my life. Devilish nearly got cut off. My word, I bore a charmed life to-day. Well, here we are. I shall go straight in. The new general doesn't know me, but he soon will. The commandant knows me: he knows that when I come with news there is something worth hearing."

The little civilian bounced up the steps and dived into the lighted hall of the headquarter's villa, before orderly or sentry could stop him. A tall Yeoman stepped up to the Intelligence officer, and saluting with more dignity than alacrity said, "Beg your pardon, sir; but I am the general's orderly, and he told me to tell you that he would only be a few minutes here, and that if you wouldn't mind waiting he would join you immediately."

Waiting for a general is a serious undertaking, and the Intelligence officer was tired. Moreover, he did not know where the camp was, or when he would be expected to take over from the chief staff officer of the column. But on active service all these things work out in their own time, so he just sat down on the whitewashed steps of the verandah and lit a cigarette. The tall Yeoman orderly did likewise on the far side of the entrance. The Intelligence officer smoked in silence for some time, engaged in the occupation most welcomed by tired men on service—thinking of better times—until the nightmare of the column, the orders for the morrow, the supplies and the camp, broke in upon his reverie.

Intelligence Officer. "Do you know where the camp is?"

Orderly. "Yes, sir; it is about half a mile from here."

I. O. "You can find your way there in the dark?"

Ord. "Yes, sir; it is straight down the main street, and then the first to the left. It would be impossible to miss it."

I. O. "What do you belong to?"

Ord. "I don't quite know what I belong to now. I came out originally with the 218th Company Imperial Yeomanry; but they have gone back home."

I. O. "Then what are you doing out here now?"

Ord. "Well, you see, sir, I came to the general as orderly about four months ago, and I liked being with him so much that I did not rejoin the company. As a matter of fact, we were away down in Calvinia District; I don't quite see how I could have got back to them, even if the general would have let me go. I haven't seen the company since I was wounded at Wittebergen seven months ago. I joined the general from Deelfontein Hospital!"

I. O. "I hope that your billet has been kept open for you in England."

Ord. "I sincerely trust it has, sir; but I have missed a season's hunting. I don't intend to miss another if I can help it."

I. O. "The devil you don't. What do you do at home?"

Ord. "I hunt four days a-week in the winter, and in the——"

I. O. "I mean, what is your job?"

Ord. "I haven't much of a job, sir; I'm the junior partner in an engineering firm, and as we do some very big things in contracts, there isn't much left for me to do except amuse myself!"

I. O. "Then whatever made you come out in the ranks?"

Ord. "It suits me, sir. I am not fond of responsibility: besides, if every one who could afford it had taken a commission in our company, we should have been all officers, with no one to command!"

I. O. "I call it most sporting of you."

Ord. "No; not exactly sporting. It was no idea of sport that brought me out here. It was a sense of duty. Were you out here, sir, during the Black Week—the Colenso-Magersfontein period? You were. Then you have not realised, and you never can realise, what we in England went through during that period. I went down to my stables one morning, and my groom came up to me and asked if he might leave at once. In answer to my look of surprise, he said, 'It's this way, sir: I feel that the time has come when we shall want every man who can ride and shoot to defend the country. I can do both, and the country is not going to be defeated because I can ride and shoot, and won't. I want to join the Yeomanry!' I let him go, and thought over his estimate of the situation all day. If the country's honour lay in my groom's hands, how much more must it lie in mine—the employer of labour? I made up my mind before dinner, told my wife before going to bed, and here I am, sir."

Nor was this an extraordinary case. There must have been in South Africa during the second phase of the war many hundreds of men—one might almost say thousands—actuated by the same spirit, impelled by the same feeling, as this rich contractor and his groom. Men who felt that the nation had desperate need of their services; men who voluntarily undertook the risks and perils of a soldier's life, not from any hope of preferment, not from love of adventure or mercenary advancement, but from true patriotism—a sacrifice to meet the nation's call in the hour of her need. But that day soon passed. The tide turned, and clash of arms ceased upon our own frontiers and within our own dependencies, and the din of war sounded faintly from the heart of the enemy's country. Then true patriotism failed; the men who had gone forth with their country's acclamations returned as their obligations expired. There were no patriots of the same class found to take their places. Yet the exigencies of the struggle required even more men than had been in the field when Lord Roberts made his extreme effort to retrieve the earlier misfortunes. Then it was that we committed another of those many errors in judgment which have marked the conduct of the campaign. We believed that in December 1900 the edifice of the Boer resistance was crumbling to its foundations,—that it was like a mighty smoke-stack, already mined at its base, and but requiring fuel at the dummy supports to bring the whole structure in ruins to the ground. We called for the fuel. The cry went forth for men—men—men. Any men; only let there be a sufficient quantity. The war was over. Had not the highest officials said that it was over. The recruiting-sergeant went out into the highways and hedges to collect the fuel for Lord Kitchener's final operation. It mattered not the quality—it was only quantity. The war was over. The gates of the Gold Reef City would again be open. Then the mass of degraded manhood which had fled from Johannesburg at the first muttering of thunder in the war-cloud flocked from their hiding-places on the Cape Colony seaboard and fell upon the recruiting-sergeant's neck. Mean whites that they were, they came out of their burrows at the first gleam of sunshine. Greek, Armenian, Russian, Scandinavian, Levantine, Pole, and Jew. Jail-bird, pickpocket, thief, drunkard, and loafer, they presented themselves to the recruiting-sergeant, and in due course polluted the uniform which they were not fit to salute from a distance. The war was over; there would be no more fighting, only a quick march to Johannesburg, and disbandment within reach of the filthy lucre which they coveted. And so new corps were raised, with spirit-stirring titles, while old, honoured, and existing regiments were sullied beyond recognition by association with the refuse and sweepings from the least manly community in the universe. Such fuel could not even clear the dummy supports at the base of the Boer resistance. It refused to burn. It could never have burned in any circumstances. These men had no intention of fighting. Their appearance in the field gave new life to the enemy. New confidence, and free gifts of rifles, ammunition, clothes, and horses. Men could not be found to command them, for to place confidence in their powers meant professional disgrace. These men had not come to fight. They had enlisted only to reach Johannesburg, and they refused to fight. Surrender to them brought no qualm or disgrace. They possessed no faculty sensible to shame. Then the enemy hardened his heart. And who can blame him? He had ever been told that the supply of British fighting material was limited. He found these creatures in the field against him. He stepped up to them, and disarmed them without an effort. Then he said, we have exhausted their supply of real fighting men. They are now forced to place this spurious article in the field. We will persevere just a little longer. If we persevere till disease shall further destroy their good men, we must win in the long-run. The error in judgment which allowed of the enlistment of these men has perhaps done more than anything else to prolong the war. If any doubts remain, let the curious call upon the Government for a return of arms and ammunition surrendered to and captured by the enemy between November 1900 and November 1901, and then, if the answer be justly given, judge of the necessity of arsenals for our enemy.

The brigadier had finished his interview with his superior, and the clink of glasses had shown that the general had not sent him off without a stirrup-cup. He came out upon the verandah, and called for his orderly.

Brigadier. "Hullo, Mr Intelligence; I thought you were lost. Come along here out into the road. I want to speak to you, but we must be careful not to be overheard; this place simply teems with rebels. (They advanced into the broadway, the orderly following at a respectful distance.) Now, look here, we are to have a big fight to-morrow. You saw that funny little beggar in the hat. Well, he wasn't playing at robbers, though you would never have known it. He was really bringing the good news to Ghent—killing horses all the way. He's a local Burnham, and passing good, according to the commandant. Well, he's located Brand, Pretorius, and our old friend Hedgehog[23] at Houwater, and we are going out to give battle. More, they believe that De Wet has doubled back towards Strydenburg, and is trying to link up with these Houwater gentry, as the latter have collected horses for him. Now, our bushranging robber reports that Brand has an outpost of thirty men at a farm on the Ongers River, twelve miles from here, covering the Houwater-Britstown Road. We are to take a surprise party out to-night and round them up. If we succeed, we will run a very good chance of bringing off quite 'a show' to-morrow. So we must get along now, and get out the invitations for the tea-party. The 'Robber' is to meet us here in two hours, and the old man has lent me fifteen of Rimington's Tigers, who are 'fizzers' for this sort of shikar."

It would be an artist, indeed, who could analyse and adequately describe the feelings of a man parading for his first night-attack. The magnitude or insignificance of the enterprise is immaterial. The feelings of the young soldiers from the New Cavalry Brigade as they paraded with the hard-bitten swashbucklers, Rimington's Tigers, were identical with those of the army advancing across the desert to the assault at Tel-el-Kebir; of Wauchope's Highland Brigade blundering to disaster in the slush and bushes before Magersfontein; and Hunter Weston's handful of mounted sappers, who so boldly penetrated into the heart of the enemy's line to destroy the railway north of Bloemfontein. A night-attack must of necessity always be a delicate operation. Shrouded in the mystery of darkness, men know that their safety and the success of the enterprise is dependent upon the sagacity and coolness of one or, at the most, two men. They must be momentarily prepared to meet the unexpected. The smallest failure or miscarriage—the merest chance—may lead to irretrievable disaster. Men who can face death without flinching in the light of day often quail at the thought of it in the darkness. The mental tension is such that once men have been overwhelmed during a night attack, like the beaten ram of the arena, it must be weeks, even months, before they can be trusted to face a similar situation. No man who has ever taken part in night operations will forget his first sensations. The recurring misgivings bred of intense excitement. The misty hallucinations, outcome of abnormal tension. The awful stillness of the night. The muffled sounds of moving men, exaggerated by the painful silence of the surroundings. You long—with a yearning which can only be felt, not described—that something may happen to break the overpowering monotony of this prelude to success or disaster. Some outlet to your pent-up feelings. If only some one would shout, or the enemy surprise you, or—thank God! relief has come,—it has begun to rain!

As the little column of adventurers from the New Cavalry Brigade trudged on in ghostly silence, great drops of icy rain began to fall—harbingers of a coming storm. A shudder of satisfaction passed through the ranks, from the "Robber" leading the forlorn-hope, with the Intelligence officer and the leader of the Tigers beside him, to little Meadows and his troop of the 20th Dragoons in rear. Then, preceded by a brief ten minutes of inky darkness, the storm broke. It does not rain in South Africa—water is voided from above in solid sheets. A wall of beating rain pours down, obliterating the landscape by day, intensifying the darkness by night. The column came to a halt; the horses, unable to face the downpour, in spite of bridle, bit, and spur, swing round their tails to meet it. And before a collar can be turned or a coat adjusted every man in the column is drenched to the skin. For ten minutes perhaps the deluge lasts, then fades away as rapidly as it came. And as one by one the misty features of veldt reappear, you can hear the passing rainstorm receding from you, still churning the veldt surface into sticky pulp. The officers re-form the column, and the journey is continued. But though the respite has been short, it has been valuable; local inconvenience acts as a sedative to the nerves. Besides, there is less silence. The track that was parched and spongy has now become soft and slippery. Horses flounder and slide. Wet mackintoshes swish against the animals' flanks, and hoofs are raised with a rinsing, sucking sound. But there is man's work afoot. As the rain-mists sufficiently clear, the "Robber" is able to take his bearings. The head of the column has now reached the foot of a long low-lying ridge. The end cannot be seen; but the "Robber" explains that the farm where the Boers should be lies in a small cup at the foot of the farther end of this ridge. The column has already reached the place where it will be advisable to leave the horses. If they are taken farther along, the Boer picket, which is probably stationed on the ridge, may be disturbed. Now, even if a horse should neigh, it would be mistaken for one of the many brood-mares belonging to the farm. The march has been admirably timed; it still wants two hours to daybreak. It will take fully half this time to work along the ridge, overpower the picket if there is one, and surround the farm.

"Dismount—Number threes take over the horses." The word is passed from man to man in whispers. There is some little noise. Exaggerated by the situation, it sounds a babel. Can any enemy within a mile have failed to hear it? A rifle-butt hits against a stone. A horse, either pulled by the bit or terrified at some night-horror, backs and plunges, and disturbs the whole section. A smothered curse, as in the melée some man's foot is trampled. Surely such a noise would wake the dead! No; the men fall in at the foot of the hill. They are told to lie down and wait. The horror of that waiting! There is a sound on the side of the hill. A boulder has been shifted. The men clutch their rifles, the click of a pistol cocking is clearly audible. Then a form looms up. The "Robber" signals silence. The figure is approaching. It is only the Kaffir scout, who had been sent on in advance to locate, if possible, the picket. He comes up and hangs his head upon his hand. He has found the picket, and this is his way of demonstrating that the two Boers comprising it are asleep.

Harvey of Rimington's takes command. He issues his orders, first to his own men, then to the whole. They are simple: "Fix bayonets. I will take the Kaffir with me. When I hold up both my hands, the left section of fours will follow me. You know what to do; mind, not a shot is to be fired. The force will advance up the hill extended to two paces, and halt as soon as it reaches the summit. If we are discovered by more than the picket, Rimington's will rally on me, the 20th on their own officer. Remember, your line of retreat must be to the horses."

Then the advance began. Slowly the men toiled up. It seemed impossible to make the ascent in silence. Men must trip in darkness over rough ground—tripping men with rifles in their hands make what appears to be a fearful clatter. By hypothesis it would seem impossible to surprise even a sleeping picket. But you have only to be on picket duty once to realise how full the night is of deceptive noises. In reality the advance was made with praiseworthy silence. Just as the top was reached, the Kaffir plucked Harvey's arm. His veldt-bred eyes could see that which was still obscured from the white man. "Near, near!" he whispered in the captain's ear. Harvey raised both his hands above his head. Silently, but with the agility of cats, the four lean Colonials followed him. Six paces on, and under the shelter of a rock appear the forms of two men, asleep, and rolled in their blankets. It is not necessary to describe what followed. A leap forward by four lithe figures with shortened arms, a sinuous flash of steel, a sickening thud and gurgle, one choking wail, and all was over, and two farmer-soldiers had paid the extreme penalty for the betrayal of the trust their comrades had placed in them!

Five minutes for breathing-space. Then the little line was reformed diagonally along the table-top of the ridge. Half the game had been won. It now remained to complete the coup. If the unexpected did not happen, there was no reason why the farmhouse should not be surrounded by daybreak. But in war it is the unexpected which does happen. Slowly the thirty men worked along the plateau towards the point of the ridge. Two-thirds had been traversed, when suddenly two figures appeared against the eastern sky.

"Reliefs for the picket,—d——n!" muttered the Rimington captain, and as the truth flashed upon him came the challenge in Dutch—

"Wie dar?"

"Follow me, Rimington's!" and the nearest men joined their captain in a dash to reach the men. But it was too late. Up came the Mausers. Two wild shots, and the relief had turned and was rushing down the hill towards the farm. If it had been day, all might have yet been saved by pace. But in night operations you cannot take these risks, especially when only one man in the force knows the exact position of the objective. Harvey rallied his men on the ridge, and even before he could place them in position, Mausers were popping from below, disclosing the kraals and outhouses of the farm.

"We must stop up here till daybreak. They will be gone before that. Well, there will be no surprise of Hertzog at Houwater to-day, all through a turn of rank bad luck!" and the Rimington captain commenced to fill his pipe, for his long abstinence from tobacco-smoke by reason of the night-march had been his particular grievance since the column had left Britstown.

FOOTNOTES:

VI.ToC

A POOR SCENT.

"There will be no surprise of Hertzog at Houwater to-day."

The Rimington captain had summed up the results consequent upon the night-attack with considerable accuracy, and as his party, in obedience to orders, worked down the banks of the Ongers River covering the right of the combined advance upon Houwater, there was abundance of evidence to show that Hertzog and Company had little intention of becoming enmeshed by the ponderous strategy set in motion against them. Nor was the weather favourable. The storm which had preceded the night-attack was one of those lowly pitched thunder-clouds which, caught in a craterlike valley enclosed by kopjes, revolved in a circle until it had spent itself. It took some hours of morning sun before it was finally dissolved. Consequently when the advance-guard of the force which was formed by the New Cavalry Brigade topped the great sloping glacis, inclining for all the world like an under-feature of the Sussex Downs, into the stagnant morass which is Houwater's most prominent feature, the last Boers were disappearing into the labyrinth of Minie Kloof beyond. But there was just sufficient excitement to take the cold and stiffness, bred of a miserable march, out of the bones of the men. The pom-pom unlimbered above the drift, and spent, at an impossible range, a belt of its tiny bombs. A spare dozen of Rimingtons, who had pushed farther forward than the rest, lightened their bandoliers by a few cartridges, and then, unmolested, the miniature British army marched into possession of its point d'appui.

You who have only seen the British soldier at his worst, that is, when he is buttoned into a tunic little removed in design from a strait-waistcoat, or when the freedom of the man has been subordinated to the lick-and-spittle polish of the dummy,—you who glory in tin-casing for your Horse Guards, and would hoot the Guardsman bold enough to affect a woollen muffler,—would have opened your eyes with amazement if you could have sat on the slopes of the Houwater drift with the staff of the New Cavalry Brigade and watched the arrival of the co-operating columns to their common camping-ground. First came two squadrons of Scarlet Lancers, forming the nucleus of somebody's mobile column. No one would have accused them of being Lancers if they had met them suddenly on the veldt. Helmets they had none. How much time and money and thought has been spent over the service headgear for our men! We have seen it adapted for this climate; altered to suit that; a peak here, a bandage there. But Thomas is the best judge of the helmet in which he prefers to campaign, and you may rest assured that he will choose the most comfortable, if not the most suitable. The Scarlet Lancers had been separated from their helmets for many months. In fact, the manner in which the gay cavalry man rids himself of his legitimate headgear and provides himself with a substitute rather smacks of the supernatural: for instance, our own 20th Dragoon Guards had not been in the country more than ten days, yet there was barely a helmet to be seen amongst them. Substitutes had been found somewhere. The more worn and disreputable the substitute the happier the owner, despite the fact that all his past glories centred round a shining helmet or jaunty lancer cap, irresistible in plume and polish. But it was a great spectacle to see the survival of the fittest squadrons of the Scarlet Lancers filing past. There are half a dozen Cavalry Regiments against whom no one could throw a stone—the 9th and 16th Lancers are of these. But it would be invidious to particularise too much.

"Who the h—ll are these fellows?—are they tame Boers?" chirped a subaltern from the 20th, who for the day was galloper to the brigadier.

A bearded ruffian, whose only costume was a flannel shirt and a pair of seedy check trousers, but whose eye was as keen as a hawk's, and whose shining "matchlock" had seventeen notches[24] along its stock, caught the subaltern's query.

"Yuss," came the answer, "we are tame Boers, the very tamest. My pal 'ere is President Kroojer, this 'ere's Botter, and hi am De—e—Wet!"

Cheery fellows; after fifteen months of war there was little about self-preservation that you could have taught them. Lean, sinewy, and bearded kind—they represented the English fighting man at his best. And well might the inexperienced have asked if they were Boers. Lance and pennon were gone. Barely a tunic or regimental button remained to the two squadrons. Their collective headgear would have disgraced a Kaffir location, and their boots were mostly the raw-hide imitations of the country. But they were men. Rags and dirt could not conceal that fact. Theirs was not the dirt of sloth and sluggard. The essentials were bright and clean. There was not a man of the 150 attempting to represent two service squadrons who had not at some period balanced his life against his proficiency with the rifle, and who had not realised that on service his firelock was the soldier's best and staunchest friend. Nor were the officers easy to distinguish from the men. A shade cleaner, perhaps; but they, too, were rough-bearded, hard bitten by long exposure and responsibility. How different from the exquisites of popular fancy! Gone the beauties of effeminate adornment. Gone the studied insolence of puppyhood—that arrogance of bearing traditional with the British officer in times of peace. These were the men who had been eyes and ears to French's magnificent cavalry, who had ridden unflinchingly to the relief of Kimberley, who had more than held their own against fearsome odds at Diamond Hill. Did you hear that boy give an order? It was a man who spoke, and a man of resolution and understanding, yet judged by a standard in years he should still be a Sandhurst cadet.

The regulars are followed by a squadron of Yeomanry,—the old original yeomanry, and, 'pon one's honour! it is hard to distinguish them from the Lancers. They, too, have been a year in the country. It takes all that to make any mounted regiment, however educated your material. You may make the men in less, but not the officers, and, all told, the officers are the essential in every corps. This is illustrative of another of our mistakes: we have sent back our Volunteers just when they really became efficient. These very men were under orders for home. Knowing what we know of the capabilities of young and green troops in mounted war, we may say with confidence that the authorities were ill advised when they failed to enforce the clause "until the end of the war," which was part of these men's undertaking. It has been the same all through, the exigencies of the service have been sacrificed to satisfy garrulous impatience on the part of home-abiding politicians.

The New Cavalry Brigade had been freshly provided with transport. Half was very excellent mule-transport; the balance was composed of heavy trek-waggons, with lumbering ox-teams. Futile expedient. The disadvantages of the one outweighed the advantages of the other. It is only a matter of weeks since a public outcry was raised—by ignorant critics it is true—because Paris's convoy was overwhelmed in detail, that officer having done what every other successful column commander has done, allowed his ox-waggons to march on ahead of his more mobile transport, in order not to delay the progress of the column. What chance of success lies with the officer content to passively hug ox-waggons instead of pressing on against his mobile foe? None: yet half the column commanders have been content to parade the country as escort to drays packed with merchandise. When a man has been found enterprising enough to leave his ox-transport under escort, and to form a striking arm with such part of his force as is mobile, you turn and rend him if the dead-weight which has cramped and curtailed his action falls into disaster. Thus, in your ignorance, you call for the professional martyrdom of the only men who have served you honestly and well. Why don't you strike at the system, which, when it equips these columns, sends the commanders forth with the millstone of ox-transport round their necks? Do you imagine that an officer, possessed of the same dash which in the past has built up the traditions of our mounted arm, selects to move with heavy transport from choice? With him it can only be a Hobson's choice. He must take what he can get or nothing. And having secured what chance will give him, he must make the most of it or fail. If he takes risks and succeeds, his luck will have been abnormal. If, taking the risks, he fails once, he will, in all probability, be sacrificed to the yapping of the curs who voice the taxpayer, or to the vanity of some less competent senior. These sweaters give no second chances. If he steers the middle way, and is sufficiently plausible in the tale he tells, he may carry on to the end of the war, or the leave season; perhaps even, if he is sufficiently cautious, he may worm his way into an honours list. For it is the good, not the bad, that the modern system breaks.

It is one thing for the mounted men of a column to come into camp, another for the transport. Houwater presented an ideal place for the bivouac, with its running water, its solitary building—half farm, half store—at the drift, and its complement of oat-straw. But the vlei[25] from which the place takes its name was the very deuce for wheeled transport. All is fair in "love and war." This being a creed very staunchly adhered to by the private soldier when campaigning, the mess-servants of the staff of the Cavalry Brigade saw fit in the early morning to steal a span[26] of mules which had strayed from the protection of their rightful owners. Now the Brigade state fourgon with a span of four mules was a big enterprise, and if treated gently might have ministered to the comfort of the staff for many months. But no; the brigadier's servant and the mess-waiter, who was a high-spirited and intelligent dragoon, sought to vary the ennui of the march, and to assert their superiority over the Kaffirs in the matter of stage-driving, by taking the fourgon and its half broken team full gallop down the incline terminating in Houwater vlei. A playful and exhilarating expedient, which ruined the brigadier's spring vehicle for ever and a day, and denied the staff many home comforts for that and some consecutive nights....

The soldier, officer or man, who finds himself without a bivouac in the middle of a camp, experiences for the moment much the same sensations as a "broke" man in the streets of London. Of the two, the officer has the worse time. A private soldier will be able to approach some one or other of the company cooks with the certainty of a rough welcome. If he is wise he will arrive armed with some stray piece of driftwood to add to the stock of fuel. Thus will success be assured, for Thomas of all men is the most unselfish. In the first instance, if he be a staff officer, he has probably too much to get done in a short space of time to think about his creature comforts. Then, if the ordinary channels have failed, he has probably too much diffidence to propose himself upon the hospitality of his fellow-comrades. In this manner is the simile of the "broke" man in midst of London's wealth maintained. Brigadiers, of course, do not starve; they would not, even if they possessed no bandobust[27] of their own. Some squadron mess claimed the chief of the Cavalry Brigade for the evening, and, probably, fed him well. But the juniors of his staff were without home, and it was long past dark before the Intelligence officer could think of food. His first duties were orders for the morrow. The officer in supreme command had been weak enough to have been accompanied by a cable-cart. Lord Wolseley may cavil at correspondents and call them the curse of modern armies; but we are constrained to think that if a tired staff-officer were consulted he would save the cream of condemnatory epithets for the cable-cart, which makes his night horrible with useless telegrams. The nightmare of that midnight message, with its probable four pages of closely written ciphers! Those fine popinjays in starched kerseys and pink frills, who live in luxury at railway centres, think that it adds to their dignity if they convert their most trivial messages into cipher. Little do they consider the poor tired being whom they rob of hard-earned rest to open out that cipher. It pleases them. They have nothing to do in the evenings. The codeing of a message to them is of the nature of an after-dinner game of backgammon. But to the aching head that has to decode it in the small hours of the morning by the fitful light of a grease-wallowing dip it is no game, no pastime. The cable-cart may have its uses; but many a score of worn-out staff-officers must have blessed the grass fire which has destroyed the ground-wire in their rear, and thus given them a few hours of unbroken rest.

After orders and the minutiæ of brigade duties came intelligence. The only building at Houwater Drift is a ramshackle half-way house—a familiar landmark of the veldt. This winkel was managed by a half-bred German; the farm inadequately protected from the elements half-a-dozen greasy Dutch fraus of various ages and a single decrepit black boy. Here indeed was a fund of information,—such being the channels through which the British Intelligence usually is worked. The Divisional Intelligence first took them in hand. Then "A" column, then "B" column, and lastly our own ranged them before the witness-table. It would have taken a veritable K.C. to have sorted the truth from the aggregate of falsehood which had been arrived at by the time it was our turn. The Intelligence officer had taken possession of the showrooms of the winkel to serve him as an office. This Shoolbred of the veldt was but a sordid shelter—walls and counter of mud; floor, sun-dried cow-dung and sand. Ranged upon the shelves was a strange medley of merchandise. All edibles had been removed by the Boers; there only remained what we believe the trade terms hard and soft goods. A pile of stinking sheep-skins, a few rolls of questionable longcloth, two packets of candles, some sheep-shears, gin-traps, and a keg of tar. As the Intelligence officer wearily set about his business of cross-examination, he was interrupted by the entrance of the Supply officer. This youth, as has previously been shown, was possessed of ready resource,—so much so that he annexed the two sole remaining packets of candles before unburdening his mind.

Supply Officer (dropping the candles into the deep recess of the pockets of his "coat-warm-British").[28] "Are you aware, old boy, that we don't get any grub to-night?"

Intelligence Officer (wearily). "And why?"

S. O. "The reason is quite simple. Those mess-servants have driven the mess-cart into the vlei, and in the vlei it will remain all night."

I. O. "I can't help that. I always said that the general's man was a fool. He is not only a fool but a d——d fool!"

S. O. "Now, look here. You may think that you're a useful feller and doing a lot of good. But let me tell you that you are going over the same ground that better men than you have already passed (pointing to the winkel-monger). I have seen, at least, a round dozen of Intelligence officers examining that man. Well, what the deuce is he worth to you after that, either as a framer of fact or flinger of fiction? Try and be useful. We have got to feed to-night. Now, we can't go round to the messes and cadge for food. Nor shall we see our mess-cart. (The Intelligence officer nodded assent.) Then why do you detain our only chance? Here, Mr Squarehead (taking the winkel-monger by the ear), come and provide food. I have got two fowls and some potatoes, and you and the fraus between you have got to make a mess of pottage, and be right quick about it, or you will never see another sun rise."

There were protestations of inability on the part of the forced labourers. But the Supply officer soon overcame all these, and in an hour the staff of the New Cavalry Brigade were able after a full meal to curl up for the night on the high-scented floor of the winkel.

An orderly from the general almost cannoned into the brigadier as he stood shaving by the light of a candle. There was a brusque rejoinder, and the man handed in a note. The brigadier read the slip of paper handed to him while he stropped his razor. The orderly who had brought the message stood stiffly to attention until the brigadier finished his apology for a toilet. Having washed and struggled into his tunic, the officer commanding the Cavalry Brigade was in a position to give his undivided attention to his correspondence. He strode over to the four packing-cases, which in their disguise as tables represented the brigade mess, and called for his Intelligence and acting staff officer. That officer's toilet took even less time than that of his chief, for he just rolled out from between two blankets, and appeared ready made, as it were, for the day's wear and tear.

Brigadier. "Here, you lazy scoundrel, read that" (and he passed the slip of paper over to his subordinate.)

I. O. "These are orders, sir."

B. "It was not necessary to send for you to discover that. But how does it affect the orders you issued last night?"

I. O. "It cancels them. Instead of taking us north-east, it will take us due west toward the Prieska Road as soon as we strike Beer Vlei."

B. "It looks as if Mr Brass Hat over there is going to dry-nurse me. My orders are to co-operate with him—not to follow him about like a dog at heel. I'm not sent here to be at the beck and call of every column commander a day senior to myself. I am here to catch Bojers[29]—not to tramp about roads in the rear of other people. This is not co-operation; it is aiding and abetting 'refusal' tactics. Now look here, Mr Intelligence; just let us examine our information, and if we are right and Brass Hat is wrong, I'll just send him back a note which will keep him halted all day wiring to Pretoria for permission to cast me into irons. Now, what is his information?"

I. O. (reads) "Information arrived late last night that Pretorius and Brand have taken the road to Prieska. This is confirmed by the scouts who went out last night. The enemy retired over Minie Kloof and halted at a farm on the far side of the pass."

B. "Therefore the officer commanding the New Cavalry Brigade, having covered the whole force over Minie Kloof, will halt and allow the brave general to pass through his brigade, and then follow him along a Karoo road into Prieska. So these are this sportsman's ideas on the co-operation of columns. They are about equal with his conception of the military methods most adapted for catching the present edition of 'Brother.' What is our private information?"

I. O. "That Brand, Hertzog, and Pretorius with four hundred men left this yesterday afternoon,—the former with the intention of making for Prieska; the two latter, with the bulk of the force, to fulfil an order from De Wet to concentrate with him upon Strydenburg."

B. "I forget how you came by this information?"

I. O. "From the German storekeeper here, sir. He's a good sort of fellow, and the Supply officer has taken him on as a conductor. The man was present in the store when the messenger arrived with the communication from De Wet."

B. "'M, yes. But may not he have been told to tip us this yarn on purpose? Have you any other information confirming this theory?"

I. O. "Yes, sir, in two places. One of the old dames in the farm here dropped a remark which the Tiger pounced upon at once. Her spring-cart had been sent by Hertzog into Strydenburg to get ammunition, as the orders were then for Brand to attack Britstown, and they expected to use up the available supply in so doing. The ammunition would have arrived with De Wet. That is circumstantial evidence; but last night about 2 P.M. I got the following from the cable-cart. It is from our friend the De Wet expert, dated last night from Orange River Station (takes out paper and reads): 'Despatches captured ordering concentration of all available commandoes at Strydenburg to meet De Wet on the evening of the 26th'—that is to-night, sir."

B. "Will old Stick-in-the-mud have got that, too?"

I. O. "I presume so, sir!"

B. "Then this is a clear case of 'bilk' on his part. I will go over and see him. I will be at Strydenburg, as I intended, by midday to-morrow, if I have to mutiny in doing so. My orders of last night stand until I come back."

The brigadier was returned in ten minutes, by which time the crude mutton chops, fried in bacon fat, which formed the daily staple of the staff breakfast, were laid upon the packing-case. The Brigadier sat down on his biscuit-tin and took a deep draught of tea. He then seemed sufficiently fortified to give expression to his feelings.

B. "Well, of all the electroplated figure-heads with which I have come in contact in a long and varied military career, that man is the most unmentionable. He is eloquent in his estimation of you, Mr Intelligence. I told him that I could not agree with him upon any one point he put forward, and that it would be childish in the extreme to waste 2500 men in chivvying a mythical 200. He then grew angry, and told me he had got his orders and had given me mine. Well, if this is what is meant by co-operation, I'll never get within speaking distance of a column with which I am told to co-operate again. Issued fresh orders! Instead of being within striking distance of Strydenburg to-night, we shall be messing about in the Beer Vlei. Old Stick-in-the-mud does not mean 'going,' that I full well see. What a sin it is!"

And we can readily indorse this comment upon the evils of seniority, which, while giving a cover to impotence at the head, dwarf, handicap, and crush individual energy in the junior. How much separated these two men in age? It may have been a couple of years. Even if in the Army List it had been a single day, the result would have been the same. The so-called experience of seniority—which too often in this war has spelled incompetence or unsoldierly timidity—has been able to subjugate the wiser counsels of the junior, and crush out of his action that fire and energy of purpose which alone could have brought success. As in the present case, the senior deliberately ignored the advice of the man with whom he had been ordered to co-operate, and taking advantage of the few lines which gave him preference in the Army List, ordered him to deviate from a scheme which in his heart of hearts he must have known was the only one which could promise adequate results,—it might also be said any results at all. Perhaps a study of developments such as these will furnish some clue to an explanation of one of the gigantic puzzles of this South African campaign.

FOOTNOTES:

VII.ToC

"POTTERING."

"Well, if that place is held, it would take Lord Bobs and the 'Grand Army' three days to turn it," and the brigadier dropped his glasses to the full length of their lanyard.

The brigade, doing advance-guard to the whole concentration, had crossed the great prairie which lies north of Houwater, and the covering cloud of mounted éclaireurs was already disappearing into the shade of the mountain fastness in front of us. The giant outcrop of volcanic rock which is known as Minie Kloof rises, with that directness peculiar to the vast South African table-land, sheer from a prairie as level as a billiard-table. A succession of rocky flat-topped parallelograms, featureless save for the one sealed pattern of nature's architecture of the veldt. To the nomadic traveller and man of peace, landmarks as barren and bare as the great ironstone belts of Northern Africa, which constrain the power of the unwilling Nile until she surges in angry cataract through such niggard opening as they will allow her. To the man of war, a veritable Gibraltar; a maze of possibilities in defence; a stupendous undertaking in attack, an undertaking which will brook neither error nor miscalculation, and from which nature has eliminated much of the element of chance on the one side to place it to the credit of the other. Of such a kind were our Colenso, Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Spion Kop heights. You at home at your ease, taking in from the map in a second a perfunctory impression of the topography, which it would take a cavalry brigade half a day to verify, talk glibly of turning this position and out-flanking that. Know ye that the lateral problem, which in the pink and green of the atlas would appear so simple, may be for miles a gridiron of parallel and supporting positions. That the well-considered turning movement put in motion at the first streak of dawn may be, and probably will have become, a plain and simple frontal attack by sunrise, through circumstances that no man, not even Napoleon himself, could foresee or control. Then this being given, why not deal leniently with such men as have served you well, and who may be trusted to profit by experience dearly purchased? but the other class, the man who has prostituted the fighting excellence of the British soldier in the shock of war by appealing to the chances of war, without due care and forethought—why, it is your duty to destroy him: your bitterest strictures even will not meet the punishment such a one deserves.

"If a life insurance agent were to turn up now, I should take him on!" And the brigadier had every cause for anxiety, for the under-features of Minie Kloof could swallow a thousand men, and still leave a mocking enemy in possession of the salients. Troop after troop of Dragoons broke into extended order, and spread away to either flank. The front became wider and wider, and yet no rifle-shot. The main body and the guns halted and waited, momentarily expecting to hear that intonation of the double echo, which in a second would change the whole history of the day. But it never came. The little brown specks, which had vanished into the shadow of the mountain, commenced to reappear amongst the stunted vegetation on the crests. At first it needed strong glasses to distinguish the moving bodies from the clumps of blurred bush-shadow. Then out twinkled that little star of light which means so much to the general in the field. Gaily it caught the rising efforts of the sun, and threw to brigadier and staff the welcome news that the summit of Minie Kloof was clear.

"Thank Providence for that! we will be in Strydenburg to-night," and the brigadier cantered on into the pass while the main body of his command moved leisurely after him towards the natural fastness. It must have been from places on the great South African tableland such as this that Rider Haggard drew his inspirations to invent the hidden kingdoms of Central Africa—charming rock-bound empires familiar to us all. How many will there be who have trekked through and through the new British colonies, and not been struck with the many mountain-locked valleys which abound! Valleys as fertile and pleasant as any in the legends of fairy tale; or, to be less fanciful in simile, as bright in being and as difficult of approach as Afridi Tirah in early autumn. Such a valley we found within the outer barrier of Minie Kloof. A valley small in its proportions, it is true, but none the less fertile. A dainty brook of crystal clearness gave life to the barren hillsides. The silt of a thousand years of summer torrents had furnished each niche and recess with a mould Goshen-like in its richness. Here, amongst luxuriant groves of almost tropical splendour, nestled the inevitable farmstead,—a white residence which had once possessed some architectural beauty, and an outcrop of barns and subsidiary mansions unpretentious in design, squalid in arrangement. The staff of the New Cavalry Brigade dismounted before the farmer's door and called for refreshment. For the moment one possessed the mental vision of a pink-cheeked milk-maiden—the panel-picture of civilised imagination—short of skirt, dainty in neck and arm, symmetrical and sweet in person and carriage. It is of such that the thirsty soldier dreams. The vision came. A slovenly hack from the kitchen obeyed the summons. With dirty hands she thrust a still dirtier beaker of milk upon us, and spat ostentatiously to emphasise the spirit of her hospitality. It takes much to stifle the honest thirst of war, but this was more than human nature could support, and the uninviting bowl passed round the staff untouched until it reached the less fastidious signallers. Five minutes at the crystal brook was worth all the ministrations of Dutch milkmaids.

It then became necessary to seek for information. It was a barren field of search. The surly men-folk of the sordid dwelling lounged out and met all inquiry with studied insolence. Even the Tiger could make no headway. He was met with recriminations. The Dutchmen recognised him as a neighbour, and ill disguised their disapprobation of his present circumstances. Information was at a deadlock, though in reality there was little to be learned. The brigadier halted just long enough to water the horses, and then it was forward again for the last climb over Minie Kloof.

It was slow work. The scouting of an outcrop of mountain by cavalry is always slow work, especially if that cavalry is under an officer who will have the work done well. But like all things, good or bad, it came to an end, and as the autumn sun grew vertical, the head of the column passed down into another great plain which sinks northwards into the Beer Vlei.

"Thank Providence the 'push' was not stuck up in that place," said the brigadier as he halted to watch the waggons down the last incline. "If old man De Wet is to be at Strydenburg to-night, with Britstown as his objective, we should have had him here to-morrow morning. I have only seen a worse country in the colony down Calvinia way. That was the most deceptive playground that I was ever inveigled into. But it was as deceptive to 'brother' as it was to us. Both sides lost themselves about twice every half-hour. Hostile pickets and outposts constantly rode into one another. I remember one night we had just settled down in camp when in rode three Boers. They came up to the lines of one of my scallywag corps with utmost unconcern—halted in all good faith right up against the horse-lines. 'What commando is this?—is it Judge Hertzog's?' A Natal corporal was the man nearest to them, and he was a quick-witted fellow. He slipped back the 'cut off' of his rifle as he answered, 'I guess not—but there is our commandant over there. You had best go and ask him whose commando it is; but you must just hold your hands above your head before you speak to him. He is a peculiar man, our commandant!' The men surrendered to him without a murmur, and seemed to think it was a good joke. But I daresay three months of a Bellary sun in the Shiny has caused them to change their opinions."

The column swung out into the great dry Karoo prairie. It was a comfortless trek. Earth and sky seemed to have forgotten the rain of preceding days; or it may have been that the storms which had distressed us had been purely local, for we had struck a great waterless plain which showed not the slightest sign of moisture. The shuffling mules and lumbering waggons churned up a pungent dust; a great spiral pillar of brown cloud mushroomed out above the column; no breath of air gave relief from the vertical rigour of the sun; the great snake-like column sweated and panted across the open, reporting its presence to every keen-sighted Dutchman within a radius of fifteen miles.

We have seen the beauties of the Karoo; but we cannot blind ourselves to its defects, for they are the more numerous. At its best it is a great stagnant desert, studded here and there with some redeeming oases. Its verdure smacks of the wilderness. Stunted brown and grey, the heather from which these rolling steppes take their name is stranger to the more clement tinge of green, which is the sign of a soil less sapless. Yet a peculiar fascination militates against a general condemnation of the pitiless Karoo. One cannot altogether banish from one's mind the memories of a summer night upon those wastes. Those of you who have laboured in the desert of the Egyptian Soudan will realise what is meant—can feel as we feel towards the veldt of the Karoo. There is in that mysterious, almost uncanny, fascination of those cool nights which succeed a grilling day a something which you always look back upon with delight. What this influence is, you can never precisely say; but it is impossible to forget it....

At midday the New Cavalry Brigade came to a halt at some mud holes, which furnished sufficient clayey water to allow the sobbing gun-teams and transport animals to moisten their mouths. Water for the men there was little, except the pittance which they were allowed to draw from the regimental water-carts. Neither was there shade from the merciless sun. The six inches of spare Karoo bush, though it served as a nibble for the less fastidious of animals, was useless either as bed or shade; other vegetable growth there was none within sight. Men crawled under waggons and water-carts if they were fortunate enough to find themselves near them, or, unrolling their blankets, extended them as an awning, and burrowed underneath. The oppression of that still heat! Fifty yards away the atmosphere became a simmering mirage; the outposts lost all semblance of nature's form, and stood out exaggerated in the middle distance as great blurs of brown and black. But it is only a passing inconvenience. In an hour or two the strength of that great, fiery, pitiless sun will be on the wane: if it were otherwise, then, indeed, would the Karoo be a desert. So you doze—it is too hot to sleep—and thank Fortune that you have not to march during the furnace hours of the day. And as you doze, parched and sweating, a little blue-grey lizard pops out from beneath the cart beside you, and, climbing gingerly up the stem of a solitary karoo-bush, surveys you with great, thoughtful, unblinking eyes. He is a complacent little beast, of wonderful skin and marking; and if it were not for the palpitation of his white waistcoat, it had been difficult to say he lived. You wonder if he too feels the heat. You think he does; for he opens his pink maw and sways his sprig of heather, to make for himself that breeze in the still air for which you are panting. You close your eyes, and smile to think that such a little thing as a karoo-blended lizard can interest you. A sound catches your ear: it is the upbraiding note of the bustard. Again and again you hear it. A covey of these birds must have been raised. As the clatter of their cry dies away, you distinguish the muffled strokes of a galloping horse. This is significant. No man in his senses would gallop in this heat unless his mission was serious. Nearer and nearer comes the horseman. You hate to move, though you hear the rapid breathing of the horse and the complaints of chafing leather.

"Where is headquarters?" demands a voice in authority.

Your dream and rest is over; for are you not the general's flunkey? You jump to your feet.

"Where have you come from?"

Orderly (as he hands in a written message). "From the officer commanding the advance-guard." The message runs: "Patrol on left front reports large force of Boers, estimated 500 strong, to be behind the rise three miles to the right of the solitary flat-topped kopje on our left front. Patrol has fallen back upon me."

This information is laid before the brigadier, who is half asleep under the mess-cart.

Brigadier. "How far is the flat kopje from us?"

Intelligence Officer. "About four miles, sir."

B. "Intervening country?"

I. O. "Flat as a polo-ground, sir."

B. "Oh, send out a troop to get touch with them. I'll bet it's only a flock of ostriches or a mirage. Tell the troop not to get compromised if they should find Boers in greater strength than themselves. Hold another troop and the pom-pom in readiness to support, if there should be anything. But it's not reasonable that there should be 500 Boers so near us at this hour. It is too late for our Houwater friends, and too early for ole man Christian.[30]"

I. O. "Very good, sir."...

Almost immediately upon the despatch of the troop, the main body of the co-operating command marched up to the clay pools. The two generals met to discuss the situation. The meeting of generals in the field nearly always lends itself to the picturesque. We know that it is a favourite theme for the artist's brush. And even in this utilitarian age, when the genius of man has shorn war of much of the panoply with which the calling of arms is associated in peace, there is something attractive in the sight of the communion of great soldiers in the field. The glory of war is not all cock-feathers and steel scabbards. In fact, the brilliant colours which blend so well with the pasture-green and brick-red of Europe would offend the eye if grouped upon the russet veldt—would seem as incongruous as a flamingo perching upon a hay-rick. It is an interesting picture. The two generals standing together a little apart from their staffs, which mingle in friendly intercourse. The lines of dismounted orderlies holding the horses from which the officers have just dismounted. The senior general is a tall spare man, just overlapping the prime of life. It is more than the powdered dust that makes his moustaches appear so fair. He is a man careful of his personal appearance. From head to foot his uniform of modest brown fits him as would a glove—to borrow from the sayings of a fair cousin across the Atlantic,—the fit of everything is so perfect that it looks as if he had been melted and poured molten into a khaki casing. The sombre dirt colour is relieved by the scarlet and gold upon his peaked cap and collar, and the long string of kaleidoscopic ribbons on his breast which tells of many tented fields—and maybe as many "fields of cloth-of-gold," for it does not take war alone now to decorate the breast, or to bind spur-straps across the instep of a knight. The brigadier stands in contrast to his senior. He is as tall a man, more commanding in carriage, but of very different temperament and gait. It is no studied negligence which has arranged the careless inconsistency of his dress. It is but the mind speaking through the person. He wears nothing that has cost a tailor a minute's thought to shape. His staff cap is set askew; his badges of staff distinction have obviously been sewn into position by some unskilled craftsman—probably his soldier servant. His tunic tells its own story of two years' campaigning in the rough; while the Mauser pistol strapped to the nut-brown belt which Wilkinson designed to carry a sword, speaks eloquently of the wearer's appreciation of the latter weapon as part of a general officer's service equipment. But as you look at the two—the one dandy and smart, the other rough and workmanlike—you can feel the personality of the junior, while the senior means no more to you than a clothier's model. This may not convey much to the average layman. But men—illiterate, uncultured, fighting men—see and appreciate all this, and it means much to them. Know, therefore, that there is no keener judge of human character and human mind than the cherub of the gutter. It is from these gutter-snipe, grown into men, that the fighting ranks of the great British army are filled.

The generals were discussing the situation, as far as their respective staffs could discern from their speech and attitude, amicably enough, though the brigadier was pressing some point. In reality he had renewed his protest against his senior's decision of the morning, and was endeavouring to influence him into a change of policy and plan. But the stern usage of the service decrees that the public convenience should be ordered by the man whose name ranges first upon the Army List schedule, and that the junior should press his arguments in deferential rather than aggressive language. But by dint of argument, and some short reference to the senior members of the staff, a compromise was arrived at in order to meet the wishes of the brigadier.

General. "I tell you that I don't like it; neither do I see any object in the move. After the handling which he has had from Plumer, Prieska can be the only line open to De Wet."

Brigadier. "But all my information is in an opposite direction, sir. It distinctly——"

G. "I don't think that your information is worth much. What can that boy know about it? He has been gulled by all the old wives' fables on the line of march."

B. "Well, sir, leaving De Wet out of the question—I have been promised a convoy at Strydenburg, and I have yet to pick up my brigade. A squadron of the 21st Dragoon Guards and the whole of the Mount Nelson Light Horse, which Plumer has not assimilated, is now straining every nerve to catch me up."

G. "When do you meet your convoy, and how far behind you are your details?"

(Now the brigadier had invented the convoy on the spur of the moment. It was true that he had been promised a convoy, but that promise had not indicated Strydenburg as the rendezvous. But seeing that he had scored a point he turned at once to the Intelligence officer.)

B. "When is our convoy due at Strydenburg?"

Intelligence Officer. "Possibly to-morrow evening, sir. The day after to-morrow at the latest." (Luckily the Intelligence officer had been following the conversation, and the answer came glibly enough.)

G. "H'm, that places another complexion upon it. But it is suicidal, reckless, to allow convoys to meander about the veldt in this inconsequent manner. What about your details?"

(The brigadier having struck a "lead," had wasted no time in figuring out his estimates.)

B. "Well, sir, I would suggest that you let me halt here for to-day. My details are just one day behind me now. They will catch me up to-morrow. In the meantime I will send a strong patrol—a reconnaissance rather—into Strydenburg, starting this afternoon, pick up the convoy, after which I will join you at any point you may select. I shall then be a useful fighting body; now I am only a gun escort!"

G. "Yes, yes; it would be dangerous for either you or your details to be wandering about in this disturbed country alone. I agree with you, Colonel; but you must allow that in view of the present circumstances it would be inadvisable for us to be caught in detail."

One cannot blind oneself to the fact that all this is very childish. But then the man who undertakes life in the army must be prepared to be a schoolboy to the end of his service. It ill becomes a brigadier or any officer wearing his Majesty's uniform—as the expression goes—to practise small deceits even to bring about a situation calculated to be for the public convenience. Yet what other course was open to the brigadier! For reasons which are evident from his conversation, his senior had determined not to recognise him as an independent force, but to hug him until all danger real or imaginary was past. It is the trammels of discipline such as this that breaks the hearts of the stalwarts in our service, and racks the national war-chest to the bottom. Can you blame the brigadier, alive to the pressing exigency of the situation, when, having exhausted the man-to-man arguments of common reason, he descended to the practice of a subterfuge to defeat the purpose of a man whose only object appeared to be to satisfy his own personal peace of mind? Yet we doubt if the senior was conscious of the futility of his direction. He had one object in view. He was possessed with the single desire to avoid disaster. In its limited sense his action was laudable enough; but what would the owner of a racehorse say to the jockey who, after having ridden a sound horse in a race, volunteered the information that he had never extended his mount out of consideration for its sinews? The care of the jockey is parallel to that of fifty per cent of the men who have led columns in this war—except that there has been no judge in the box to balance the merits of each case. The judge has been far away in Pretoria, and the jockey has furnished his own estimate of the running....

So the New Cavalry Brigade remained out-spanned by the mud-holes, while the other column passed through it and bore away in search of the Prieska Road. The rearguard of the moving force was brought up by a Colonial corps, which had originally been raised in Natal by the brigadier of the New Cavalry Brigade. Of course the personnel in the ranks had long since changed. Changed, be it said with regret, for the worse. But there was still remaining a small percentage of the original stock—stock that had been second to none. As the rearguard passed through, a great burly corporal cantered to the packing-case table at which the staff of the New Cavalry Brigade had just settled down to lunch, shouting, "Say, where is the ole man?"

The brigadier rose with a smile.

Corporal. "I heard that you were here, sir, and I couldn't go by without speaking. Lord, what a sight for sore eyes it is to see you again!—if there were only more like you. (Then extending his hand.) Come, sir, put your hand right here—it is a good day's work to have again shaken hands with a man." And then the corporal was off in a cloud of dust. But it had been an interesting and instructive incident. Without a doubt the man was Yankee; but he had served all through the Natal campaign, from Willow Grange to Bergendal, and his honest appreciation of his old chief almost brought tears to our eyes, and was of more value than all the ribbon and tinsel that a crowned head can bestow.

"That," said the brigadier, "is one of the finest men, amongst many fine men, whom I have enlisted. I was recruiting for my 'push' down in Durban. I used to go and get the fellows off the ships as they came in. That fellow came over with a man who was running a cargo of mules. I well remember when I broached the subject to him. His answer was characteristic: 'Say, colonel, what do you want us for? Is it for a straight scrapping with Boers, or is it to meander about as a town garrison?' 'If you join me you shall be "scrapping" in a week from to-day.' 'Will you give me your hand on that, colonel?' I acquiesced, and straightway was able to enlist practically the whole ship's company—and I never want to command a better lot. Did I ever tell you about the Boer spies? Well, in the early days of recruiting in Natal several Dutch agents were enlisted. They were paid by the Transvaal to enlist in British corps. When we got to Mooi River one of these men was discovered—recognised as an ex-Pretorian detective. That corporal came to me and volunteered some advice. 'You prove him a spy, colonel, and then turn him over to us: you won't have any more spies after that.' I had the suspect up. There was not a shadow of doubt about his identity, so I just said to the sergeant-major, 'This man is your property—the fair name of the corps is in your keeping; there's a convenient donga over there!' I never saw the man again, nor did I ask what happened to him; but this I do know, that on the self-same evening five men came to me and asked to be allowed to resign. They came with faces as white as the coat of that mare over there. 'Yes,' I said as I looked at them, 'you may go. You leave for the good of all concerned, yourselves included.' And since that day I was never troubled by the enlisting of Dutch agents."...

and the dust of the column moving towards the Prieska Road was still hanging over the horizon when a staff-officer came galloping back to the New Cavalry Brigade. He brought written instructions to the brigadier which nullified for ever the Strydenburg scheme. "The G.O.C. directs the O.C. the New Cavalry Brigade to remain halted until he is joined by such details as are following him along the Britstown Road. As it is essential that the pass over Minie Kloof should be kept clear pending the arrival of the aforementioned details, the G.O.C. directs that the proposed reconnaissance to Strydenburg be abandoned, and the troops which would have been used for the reconnaissance be sent to hold Minie Kloof. As soon as the New Cavalry Brigade is complete, it will follow with all speed upon the direct road to Prieska. Under no circumstances are other arrangements to be made."