Ladysmith | Page 8

just
possible that the great force, which we vaguely hear is coming out from
England (all English news is hopelessly vague), will have to send the
bulk of its troops to fight up Natal for our relief. But the south of Natal
having few rocks is not suited for Boer warfare. When the Boers
boasted they were coming to Durban, a wit replied: "Then you will
have to bring the stones with you." For a Boer much prefers to have a
comforting stone in front of him in the day of battle. In these districts
every hill is for him a natural fortress. His hope is that we shall venture
into the mountains; ours that he will venture down to the plains. So far
hope's flattery has kept us fairly well apart. The day after to-morrow is
now fixed by popular judgment for battle and attack. But only one
thing is certain: we can stand still if we choose, and the Boers cannot.
To be under martial law, as we now are, does not make much
difference to the ordinary man, but to the ordinary criminal it appears
slightly advantageous. For his case is very likely to be overlooked in
the press of military offences, and it is doubtful if any civil suits can be
brought. At all events, a legal quarrel I had with a farmer about some
horses has vanished into thin air; and so, indeed, have the horses. The
worst offenders now are possible spies. A few Dutch have been
arrested, but the commonest cases are out-of-work Kaffirs, who are
wandering in swarms over the country, coming down from

Johannesburg and the collieries, and naturally finding it rather hard to
give account of themselves. The peculiarity of the trials which I have
attended has been that if a Kaffir could give the name of his father it
was taken as a sufficient guarantee of respectability With one miserable
Bushman, for instance--a child's caricature of man--it was really going
hard till at last he managed to explain that his father's name was
Nicodemus Africa, and then every one looked satisfied, and he left the
court without a stain upon his character.
So we live from day to day. The air is full of rumours. One can see
them grow along the street. One traces them down. Perhaps one finds
an atom of truth somewhere at the root of them. One puts that atom into
a telegram. The military censor cuts it out with unfailing politeness,
and a good day's work is done. Heat, dust, and a weekly deluge with
stupendous thunder complete the scene.
CHAPTER IV
BATTLE OF ELANDS LAAGTE
LADYSMITH, _October 22, 1899_.
It was a fair morning yesterday, cool after rain, the thin clouds
sometimes letting the sun look through. At half-past ten I was some six
or seven miles out along the Newcastle road--a road in these parts
being merely a worn track over the open veldt, distinguishable only by
the ruts and mud. Close on the left were high and shapely hills, like
Welsh mountains, but on the right the country was more open. A Mr.
Malcolm's farm stood in the middle of a waving plain, with a few fields,
aloe hedges, and poplars. The kraal of his Kaffir labourers was near it,
and about a mile away the plain ended in a low ridge of rocky "kopjes,"
which ran to join the mountainous ground on the left at a kind of "nek"
or low pass over which the railway runs. Beyond that low ridge lay
Elands Laagte, an important railway station with a few collieries close
by, a store, a hotel, and some houses.
The Boers had occupied it two days before, had captured a train there,
and torn up the rail in two places, making a number of prisoners and

seizing 100 head of cattle and quantities of other private stores and the
luggage going to Dundee. Early in the morning we had gone out with
four companies of the Manchesters in an armoured train with an
ordinary train behind it, a battery of Natal Field Artillery, and the
Imperial Light Horse under Colonel Scott Chisholme, to reconnoitre
with a view to repairing the line. They seized the station and released a
number of prisoners, but were compelled to withdraw by three heavy
Nordenfeldt guns, which the Boers had posted on a hill about 2,500
yards beyond the station. At half-past ten they had reached the point I
describe, and were very slowly coming back towards Ladysmith, the
trains moving backwards, and the cavalry walking on each side the line.
The point is called Modder's Spruit, from some early Dutchman, and
there is a little station there, the first out from Ladysmith town. At that
moment another train was seen coming up with the