Part 8

Store.

Lord Kitchener is commonly spoken of as "K." in South Africa.

III.

BEE-LINE TO BRITSTOWN.

"Not bad for a green crush."

The brigadier sat down on the edge of a great slab of rock to watch the baggage over the nek. It was a typical South African nek. An execrable path winding over the saddle of a low range of tumbled ironstone. Just one of those ranges which force themselves with sheer effrontery out from the level of the plain. Loose sugar-loaf excrescences which stud the sea of prairie with a thousand flat-topped islets, and weave the monotony of landscape peculiar to this great continent. The rough post-cart track led down into a vast amphitheatre, so vast that Western Europe can furnish no parallel to it. Yet its counterparts are met and traversed every day by the countless British columns now slowly darning the gaping rent in Africa's robe of peace. Who, if they had not known, would have said that the beautiful panorama, which the morning sun now unveiled before us, was a theatre of war? Away at our feet stretched mile upon mile of rolling Karoo and blue-grey prairie. True it was punctuated and ribbed with stunted kopjes. But still the everlasting plain predominated, until it was lost in an autumn haze which no sun could master. Immense,--a land without a horizon, a land every characteristic of which inspires a sense of independence and freedom. A sensation--an intoxication, to be felt, not to be described. Why should men fight in a land such as this? Surely there is room for all! The very animals of the field, ignorant of the selfishness bred of a limited pasturage and restricted space, are docile and free of vice. But with man it is different.

The dweller on the open plain learns freedom. The lesson of cramped cities is avarice--that the fittest may survive. Who shall blend the two? There, as we stood with our loins girt for war, did that great peaceful prairie unfold before us. As the morning sun grew stronger, the everlasting grey of the Karoo became jewelled with brighter tints. The middle distance of the plain was spangled with a streak of winding silver. A river tracing its erratic course between the kopje islets. At intervals along its banks the eye rested upon the patches of darker green. The home plantation of some farm, glimpses of whose whitewashed walls even now caught a glint from the strengthening sun-rays. Here was a stretch of yellow furrow--the finger of civilisation on a virgin waste. Here spots of shimmering white, where the surface of a dam reflected the flooding light of day. Here and there a flock of sheep relieved the monotony of the everlasting grey. While across our front a bunch of brood-mares were galloping in the ecstasy of day and freedom, and a bevy of quaintly pirouetting ostriches gave life to the wonderful picture. And presently a little fan of brown dots opened out on the grey below--opened out and diverged in pairs. Dots so small and insignificant that they looked like ants upon a carriage-drive. Out and out they spread, till they seemed lost and merged with the brood-mares and ostriches, now ceasing their wild movements and grouping in mild amazement at the strange invasion. And still the dots diverge. It is the advance-guard of our column--heralds of selfish man bringing horrid war into this peaceful vale. As the dots mingle with the ant-heaps on the plain, or are lost in the folds of the grey prairie, a pillar of dust rises from the centre of the fan. A larger mass of brown--the battery and its escort--a great kharki caterpillar creeping across the grey,--it is time to be moving, the last mule-waggon has topped the nek, and the last of the rear-guard are leading their horses up the post-cart road.

"Not bad for a green crush!" said the brigadier as he prepared to follow down the hillside. "Hullo! what is that?"

A spark had shown out of the misty distance. A little glitter. It came, trembled a second, and disappeared. Again it came, a many-pointed star, winking and shivering.

"Some one is calling up. Here, signaller!--where is the brigade signaller?"

A great dragoon tumbles out of his saddle and begins to arrange his tripod. In a few seconds his mirror has caught the sun in answer to the twinkling star in front.

"Who is it?"

A silence broken only by rhythmic clicks, as the signaller catches the distant conversation, and his monotonous reading of the code. A stolid assistant takes it down. "'T' group, 'W' group, 'I' group, 'Enna,' 'E' group--Major Twine, sir."

"Oh, the advance squadron. Well, that's satisfactory; we shall not have to bury them after all. What have they got to say?" and the brigadier sat down on his rock again as the signaller spelt out the message.

"Am moving now on Nieuwjaarsfontein. Parties of mounted Boers on both flanks. Have not been molested." Here the signaller broke down.

"Something has gone wrong, sir. They have gone out!"

For a moment the light again twinkled in frenzied haste. "Breaking station--shooting!" then all was dark.

"I think, sir," ventured the signaller, "that they have broken up the station because some one was shooting at them."

"Very likely. Here, Mr Intelligence, just you get on your horse and gallop up to the main body. Tell Colonel Washington that I want to send an officer on to the advance squadron, now twenty-five miles in front of us: would he be so kind as to send one back to me. Don't waste time!"

Down the steep hillside, threading through the rumbling mule-trollies, with their teams zigzagging in the throes of a heavy drift, and their groups of chattering drivers, whose black polished faces are aglow with negroid bonhomie. "Aihu, Aihu. Bom-Bom. Scellum Oom Paul. Scellum President Steyn." Then a crack from the great 12-foot whip-thong, sounding like a well-timed volley. At the bottom of the incline a small spruit. There on the bank stands Willem the Zulu. A dilapidated coaching-beaver on his head. A square foot of bronzed chest showing between the white facings of an open infantry tunic. His nether limbs encased in a pair of dragoon overalls, with vivid green patches on the knees. Was there ever such a picture of savage good nature and childishness as the giant Willem swung the great bamboo haft of his whip above his head, and chided or exhorted his team straining in the drift! "Come up, Buller," to a favourite ass. "Kruger, you scellum," to a refractory lead, while the great thong cracked like a pistol as the leather hissed between the culprit's ears without touching a hair on its hide.

Splash through the drift. "D--n it, sir, can't you let a horse water in peace." And as you feel the springy Karoo beneath your animal's stride, you catch the lament of some officer whom you have hustled in the drift.

That first gallop in the morning! Although we who have been out here for months may hate the very mention of the veldt, yet if we live to go home we shall live to regret that we ever left it. We may curse its boundless wastes--curse that endless rise which so often has lain between our tired bodies and the evening bivouac; but the curses will die over the rail of an ocean steamer and with the fading lights of Cape Town, while the memory of the exhilarating air, the freedom, the stirring adventure lurking in every dip and donga of that wind-swept, sun-dried, war-racked expanse of steppe, will live with us for ever. Who can forget those autumn mornings, when the horse, influenced by the same exhilaration as his rider, races across the spongy soil; playfully shies at a half-hidden ant-heap; with cat-like agility avoids the dangerous bear-earth; when all seems strong, and young, and full of life; when war is forgotten, until the rocket-bird falls slanting across your path, and its plaintive note calls back to your memory the whine of the Mauser bullet! Yes, it is good to be a soldier. The chances are heavy; but, all told, it is worth it.

"Where the devil are you galloping to? Don't you know that you shouldn't approach mounted troops at that pace?"

You feel inclined to tell the cavalry colonel, fresh from the Curragh, that we had left all that behind eighteen months ago. But discipline rules experience, and automatically the respectful hand is up to the helmet-peak.

"The general's compliments, sir. He wishes to send an officer on at once with a message to Major Twine. Will you kindly detail one of your officers. He is to come back with me to the general at once."

"Oh, you are from the general, are you? Here, Sturt," turning to his adjutant, "send Mr Meadows back with this officer to the general. And you, sir, don't you in future come galloping up like that into my regiment."

"Very good, sir."

* * * * *