Ladysmith | Page 8

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 1st Devons, and within an hour a fourth arrived with five companies of the Gordons. The 42nd Field Battery then came, and the 21st later; the 5th Lancers with a few 5th Dragoon Guards, and a large contingent of Natal mounted volunteers. That was our force. It took up a strong and fairly concealed position behind a rise in the road to the left of the railway and waited. Meantime the Boer scouts crept along that rocky ridge on our right front and down into the plain, firing