Part 20

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:

A gruesome record of successful shooting.

Dutch, swamp.

Team.

Hindustani, arrangement.

Official designation of the field-service regulation overcoat.

Jocular rendering of "Burghers."

VII.

"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 eclaireurs 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?"