Part 10

The infantry lean lightly on their guns, the cavalry crane forward in their saddles. We pause and wait until we see the green badge of O'Driscoll's scouts on the hats of the advancing riders. O'Driscoll rides towards the staff with loosened rein, and every spur in all his gallant little troop shows how the scouts had ridden. We strain our ears to catch the news the Irish scout has brought. It comes at last Clements has met the foe, and death is busy in those distant hills.

Rundle sits silently, hard pressed in his saddle--a gallant figure, with soldier and leader written all over him. We wait his verdict anxiously, for on his word our fate may hinge. We have not long to wait--Clements can hold his own; Brabant will outflank the Boers. Forward, march! The men droop as wheat fields droop in the sultry air of a seething day. They are tired, deadly tired; not too tired to fight, but weary of the endless marching from point to point to keep the enemy from breaking through their lines and striking southward.

Away in front of us we note the snow-crowned hills which girdle Basutoland, snow crowned and sun kissed; every hilltop sparkling like a giant gem, and over all a pale blue sky, curtained by flimsy clouds of gauzy whiteness, through which the sun laughs rosily, the handiwork of the Eternal. And underfoot only the deep dead blackness of the blistered veldt, ravished of its wondrous wealth of living green, the rude, rough footprint of the god of war--sweet war; kind, Christian war!

Now, overhead, betwixt the smoking earth and smiling sky, flocks of vultures come and go, fluttering their great pinions noiselessly. To them the sound of guns is merriest music; it is their summons to the banquet board. Foul things they look as the float over us, silent as souls that have slipped from some ash heap in Hades, grey with the greyness that grows on the wolf's hide; their feathers hang upon them in ridges, unkempt, unlovely, soiled with blood and offal. They float above our heads, they wheel upon our flanks.

A horse drops wearily upon its knees, looks round dumbly on the wilderness of blackness, then turns its piteous eyes upward towards the skies that seem so full of laughing loveliness; then, with a sob which is almost human in the intensity of its pathos, the tired head falls downwards, the limbs contract with spasmodic pain, then stiffen into rigidity; and one wonders, if the Eternal mocked that silent appeal from those great sad eyes, eyes that had neither part nor lot in the sin and sorrow of war, how shall a man dare look upwards for help when the bitterness of death draws nigh unto him? The grey lines above, on flank, and front, and rear, were with greedy speed converging to one point, until they flock in a horrid, struggling, fighting, revolting mass of beaks and feathers above the fallen steed, as devils flock around the deathbed of a defaulting deacon. A soldier on the outer edge of the extended line swings his rifle with swift, backhanded motion over his shoulder, and brings the butt amidst the crowd of carrion. The vultures hop with grotesque, ungainly motions from their prey, and stand with wings extended and clawed feet apart, their necks outstretched and curved heads dripping slime and blood, a fitting setting amidst the black ruin of war. The charger now looks upward from eyeless sockets; his gutted carcass, flattened into a shapeless streak, shrinks towards the earth, as if asking to be veiled from the laughter of the skies. But there is neither pity from above nor shelter from below as the red wave of war, like the curse of the white Christ, sweeps over the land. God grant that merry England may never witness, on her own green meadow lands, these sights and sounds which meet the eye and ear on African soil.

Oh, England, England, if I had a voice whose clarion tones could reach your ears and stir your hearts in every city and town, village and hamlet, wayside cot and stately castle, in all your sea-encircled isle, I would cry to you to guard your coasts! Better, it seems to me, writing here, with all the evidences of war beneath my eyes, that every man born of woman's love on British soil should die between the decks, or find a grave in foundering ships of war, than that the foot of a foreign foe should touch the Motherland. Better that your ships be shambles, where men could die like men, sending Nelson's royal message all along the armoured line; better that our best and bravest found a grave where grey waves curl towards our coastline, than that our womanhood should look with woe-encircled eyes into the wolfish mouth of war. Better that our strong men perished, with the brine and ocean breezes playing freshly on the gaping wounds through which their souls passed outward, than that our little maids and tiny, tender babes should face the unutterable shame, the anguish, and the suffering of a war within our borders.

Do not laugh the very thought to scorn and brand the thing impossible, for fools have laughed before to-day whilst kingdoms tottered to their fall You who stay at home miss much that others know--and, knowing, dread. If England at this hour could only realise what manner of men control her destinies, then all the lion in the breed would spring to life again. I do not know if lack-brains of a similar strain control the supplies for England's Navy; but if, in time of war, it proves to be the case, then God help us, God help the old flag and the stout hearts who fight for it.

Lend me your ears, and let me tell you how our army in Africa is treated by the incompetent people in the good city of London. I pledge my word, as a man and a journalist, that every written word is true. I will add nothing, nor detract from, nor set down aught in malice. If my statements are proven false, then let me be scourged with the tongue and pen of scorn from every decent Briton's home and hearth for ever after, for he who lies about his country at such an hour as this is of all traitors the vilest. I will deal now particularly with the men who are acting under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie Rundle. This good soldier and courteous gentleman has to hold a frontage line from Winburg, _viâ_ Senekal, almost to the borders of Basutoland. His whole front, extending nearly a hundred miles, is constantly threatened by an active, dashing, determined enemy, an enemy who knows the country far better than an English fox-hunting squire knows the ground he hunts over season after season. To hold this vast line intact General Rundle has to march from point to point as his scouts warn him of the movements of the tireless foe. He has stationed portions of his forces at given points along this line, and his personal work is to march rapidly with small bodies of infantry, yeomanry, scouts, and artillery towards places immediately threatened. He has to keep the Boers from penetrating that long and flexible line, for if once they forced a passage in large numbers they would sweep like a torrent southwards, envelop his rear, cut the railway and telegraph to pieces, stop all convoys, paralyse the movements of all troops up beyond Kroonstad, and once more raise the whole of the Free State, and very possibly a great portion of the Cape Colony as well.

General Rundle's task is a colossal one, and any sane man would think that gigantic efforts would be made to keep him amply supplied with food for his soldiers. But such is not the case. The men are absolutely starving. Many of the infantrymen are so weak that they can barely stagger along under the weight of their soldierly equipment. They are worn to shadows, and move with weary, listless footsteps on the march. People high up in authority may deny this, but he who denies it sullies the truth. This is what the soldiers get to eat, what they have been getting to eat for a long time past, and what they are likely to get for a long time to come, unless England rouses herself, and bites to the bone in regard to the people who are responsible for it.

One pound of raw flour, which the soldiers have to cook after a hard day's march, is served out to each man every alternate day. The following day he gets one pound of biscuits. In this country there is no fuel excepting a little ox-dung, dried by the sun. If a soldier is lucky enough to pick up a little, he can go to the nearest water, of which there is plenty, mix his cake without yeast or baking-powder, and make some sort of a wretched mouthful. He gets one pound of raw fresh meat daily, which nine times out of ten he cannot cook, and there his supplies end.

What has become of the rations of rum, of sugar, of tea, of cocoa, of groceries generally? Ask at the snug little railway sidings where the goods are stacked--and forgotten. Ask in the big stores in Capetown and other seaport towns. Ask in your own country, where countless thousands of pounds' worth of foodstuffs lie rotting in the warehouses, bound up and tied down with red tape bandages. Ask--yes, ask; but don't stop at asking--damn somebody high up in power. Don't let some wretched underling be made the scapegoat of this criminal state of affairs, for the taint of this shameful thing rests upon you, upon every Briton whose homes, privileges, and prosperity are being safeguarded by these famishing men. The folk in authority will probably tell you that General Rundle and his splendid fellows are so isolated that food cannot be obtained for them. I say that is false, for recently I, in company with another correspondent, left General Rundle's camp without an escort. We made our way in the saddle, taking our two Cape carts with us, to Winburg railway station; leaving our horseflesh there, we took train for East London. Then back to the junction, and trained it down to Capetown, where we remained for forty-eight hours, and then made our way back to Winburg, and from Winburg we came without escort to rejoin General Rundle at Hammonia. If two innocent, incompetent (?) war correspondents could traverse that country and get through with winter supplies for themselves, why cannot the transport people manage to do the same? These transport people affect to look with contempt upon a war correspondent and his opinions on things military; but if we could not manage transport business better than they do, most of us would willingly stand up and allow ourselves to be shot. We are no burden upon the Army; we carry for ourselves, we buy for ourselves, and we look for news for ourselves; and we take our fair share of risks in the doing of our duty, as the long list of dead and disabled journalists will amply prove.

It is not, in my estimation, the whole duty of a war correspondent to go around the earth making friends for himself, or looking after his personal comfort, or booming himself for a seat in Parliament on a cheap patriotic ticket. It is rather his duty to give praise where praise is due, censure where censure has been earned, regardless of consequences to himself. Such was the motto of England's two greatest correspondents--Forbes and Steevens--both of whom have passed into the shadowland, and I would to God that either of them were here to-day, for England knew them well, and they would have roused your indignation as I, an unknown man, dare not hope to do. But though what I have written does not bear the magical name of Steevens or of Forbes, it bears the hallmark of the eternal truth. Our men on the fields of war are famishing whilst millions worth of food lies rotting on our wharves and in our cities, food that ought with ordinary management to be within easy reach of our fighting generals. Britain asks of Rundle the fulfilment of a task that would tax the energies and abilities of the first general in Europe; and with a stout heart he faces the work in front of him, faces it with men whose knees knock under them when they march, with hands that shake when they shoulder their rifles--shake, but not with fear; tremble, but not from wounds, but from weakness, from poverty of blood and muscle, brought about by continual hunger. Are those men fit to storm a kopje? Are they fit to tramp the whole night through to make a forced march to turn a position, and then fight as their fathers fought next day?

I tell you no. And yours be the shame if the Empire's flag be lowered--not theirs, but yours; for you--what do you do? You stand in your music-halls and shout the chorus of songs full of pride for your soldier, full of praise for his patience, his pluck, and his devotion to duty; and you let him go hungry, so hungry that I have often seen him quarrel with a nigger for a handful of raw mealies on the march. It is so cheap to sing, especially when your bellies are full of good eating; it costs nothing to open your mouths and bawl praises. It is pleasant to swagger and brag of "your fellows at the front;" but why don't you see that they are fed, if you want them to fight? Give "Tommy" a lot less music and flapdoodle, and a lot more food of good quality, and he'll think a heap more of you. It is nice of you to stay in Britain and drink "Tommy's" health, but there would be far more sense in the whole outfit if you would allow him to "eat his own" out here.

THE FREE STATERS' LAST STAND.

SLAP KRANZ.

At last the blow has fallen which has shattered the Boer cause in the Free State. There will be skirmishes with scattered bands in the mountain gorges beyond Harrismith, but the backbone of the Republic has been broken beyond redemption. Sunday, the 30th of July, was big with fate, though we who sat almost within the shadow of the snow enshrouded hills of savage Basutoland at the dawning of that day knew it not. It was a joyful day for us, though pregnant with sorrow for the veldtsmen who had fought so long and well for their doomed cause, for on that day our generals reaped the harvest which they had sown with infinite patience and undaunted courage. General Hunter, to whom the chief command had just been given, was there, surrounded by his staff, a soldierly figure worthy of a nation's trust; Clements, keen faced, sharp voiced, with alertness written in each lineament; Paget, whose fiery spirit spoke from his mobile face, his blood, hot as an Afghan sun, flashing the workings of his mind into his face as sunlight flashes from steel; and Rundle, hawk-eyed and stern, no friend to Pressmen, but a soldier every inch, one of those men whose hands build empires. Had he been stripped of modern gear that day, and placed in Roman trappings, one would have looked behind him to see if Cæsar meant to grace the show; but Cæsar was not there.

One of the greatest soldiers since the world began was missing from our ranks, the hero Roberts, whose great intellect had planned the _coup_ which his generals had carried to maturity. Yet, though Lord Roberts planned each general move, an immense amount of actual work was left to the generals. The country they had to pass through was rugged and inhospitable. The foe they had to fight was brave, resourceful, and well supplied with all munitions of war; a single mistake on the part of any one of them would have wrecked the magnificent plan of the Commander-in-Chief. But no mistakes were made; each general worked as if his soul's salvation depended upon his individual efforts. Where all are good, as a rule it is hard to make a distinction; but in this instance one man stands out above his fellows, and that man is General Sir Leslie Rundle, the commander of the Eighth Division. His task from the first was herculean. He had to hold a line fully one hundred miles in length; day after day, week after week, the enemy tried to break that line and pour their forces into the territory we had conquered. Had they succeeded, they would have shaken the whole of South Africa to its very centre. This task kept Sir Leslie Rundle busy night and day. Wherever he camped, spies dogged his footsteps; black men and white men constantly upon his track. His every move was rapidly reported to our ever-watchful enemies. But, quick as the enemy undoubtedly were in all their movements, General Rundle nullified their efforts by his rapidity. So terribly hard did he work his men that they nicknamed him "Rundle, the Tramp." How the men stood it I cannot understand. I know of no other men in all the world who would have gone on as they did, obeying orders without a murmur or a whimper. They were savage at times over the food they got, and small blame to them, but they never blamed their general. They knew that he gave them plenty of the class of food that he could lay hands upon. Had the general's supplies been in this part of the country, instead of being tied up in red-tape packages on the railway line, General Rundle would have kept his Division fully supplied. The only food which he could command, beef and mutton, he gave without stint. Had the War Office authorities attended to their end of the work with the same commendable zeal, half the hardships of the campaign would have been averted.

If ever war was reduced to an absolute science, it was upon this occasion. On the one hand, some six thousand Boers on the defensive, armed with the handiest quick-firing rifle known to modern times, with from eight to ten guns, well supplied with food and ammunition, and backed by some of the most awful country the eye of man ever rested upon--a country which they knew as a child knows its mother's face. On the other hand, an attacking force of 30,000 men and guns. To read the number of the opposing forces one would think the Boer task the effort of madmen, bent upon national extinction; but one glance at the country would upset those calculations entirely. Every kopje was a natural fortress, every sluit a perfect line of trenches, and every donga a nursery for death.

To attempt to go into every move made by our troops during the months of May, June, and the early parts of July would only prove wearisome to the average reader; suffice it to say that finally we got the burgher forces into the Caledon Valley. This valley is about twenty-eight miles in length, and from fourteen to fifteen miles across its widest part. Properly speaking, it was not a valley at all, but a series of valleys interspersed by great kopjes, nearly all of which presented an almost impregnable appearance. The valley had a number of outlets, which the Boers fondly believed our people to be unacquainted with. These outlets were known as "neks," and were, without exception, terribly rough places for a hostile force to attack. Commando Nek was upon the south-east, facing towards Basutoland. This was merely a narrow pass, running up over a jagged kopje, with two greater kopjes on each side of it. The hills all round it were so placed that a number of good marksmen, hidden in the rocks, could easily sweep off thousands of an enemy who attempted to take it by storm. But that pass had to be taken before we could claim to hold the Free State in the hollow of our hand. Slabbert's Nek was merely a huge gash in the face of a cliff. It was the Boers' causeway towards the north, their highway to safety. Retief's Nek lay to the westward, and formed a grinning death trap for any general who might try the foolish hazard of a single-handed attack Naauwpoort Nek, ugly and uninviting, faced south-east towards Harrismith. Golden Gate, named by a satirist--or a satyr--was merely a narrow chasm worn by wind and weather through the girdle of mountains. It looked towards the east, and was a mere pathway, which none but desperate soldiers, driven to their last extremity, would think of using.

The Boers never dreamed that it was possible for our troops to move with such machine-like precision as to hold every nek at our mercy. But whilst Rundle held the ground to the south, and kept the Boers for ever on the move by his restless activity, Clements and Paget moved on Slabbert's Nek, Hunter swept down on Retief's Nek, Naauwpoort Nek was invested by Hector Macdonald, Bruce Hamilton closed in upon Golden Gate, and the great net was almost perfect in its meshes. The enemy did not realise their danger until it was too late for the great bulk of their force to escape. Commandant De Wet saw the impending peril at the eleventh hour, and tried hard to get his countrymen to follow him in a dash through Slabbert's Nek; but very few of the burghers would believe that the sword of fate was hanging by so slim a thread over their heads. In vain this able soldier of the Republic harangued them. Vain all his threats and protestations. They could not and would not believe him. Sullenly they sat in their strongholds and watched Rundle--they could see him, and that danger which was present to their eyes was the only danger they would believe in; and day by day, hour by hour, the cordon of Britain's might drew closer and closer, until every link in the vast chain was practically flawless. Then Commandant De Wet gathered around him about 1,800 of his most devoted followers, and with Ex-President Steyn in their ranks they passed like ghosts of a fallen people through Slabbert's Nek on towards the Transvaal. How they managed to elude the incoming khaki wave some other pen must tell. It was a splendid piece of work on the Republican Commandant's part, and history will not begrudge him the full measure of praise due to him. Had General Prinsloo and his burghers been guided by him, these pages had never been written, for where De Wet took his 1,800 burghers he could as easily have taken 6,000.

Scarcely had De Wet made his escape ere the truth was borne in upon the burghers with an iron hand that their doom was sealed. General Rundle's force, which all along had been essentially a blocking force, and not a striking force, made a move on the 23rd of July. All day the cannons spoke to the burghers from Willow Grange, all day long the rifles rippled their leaden waves of death. We could see but little of the enemy; they lay concealed behind the loose rocks, and our men had little else to do but lift their rifles and pull the trigger, trusting to the powers that rule the destinies of war to speed the bullets to some foeman's resting place. But we knew they were there if we could not see them, for the snap and snarl of the Mauser rifles came readily to our ears, and the booming of their guns answered ours, as hound answers hound when the scent grows hottest. We pounded them with shrapnel and pelted them with common shell until the air around them rained iron. Our guns were six to one, yet those brave veldtsmen held their own with a stubborn courage worthy of the noblest traditions in all the red pages of war. They gave us a parting shot at sundown, and at night, when the thick mists from the snow-draped mountains behind us came down upon the land and added to the darkness of the winter's night, they moved their gun and fell back with it to a place where they could renew the battle on the morrow. And at the dawning they testified their vitality by dropping a couple of shells right into the midst of the Imperial Yeomanry camp.