On the Heels of De Wet | Page 2

between the waggons, for engines are attached, and
the trains jolt backwards and forwards apparently without aim or

warning. Up over an open truck! You roll on to the top of sleeping men,
and bark your shins against a rifle. Curses follow you as you clamber
out, and drop into the middle way. A clear line. No,--down pants an
armoured train, a leviathan of steel plates and sheet-iron. You let it pass,
and dash for the next barricade. Thank heaven! this is a passenger train.
As it is lighted up like a grand hotel you will be able to hoist yourself
over the footboards and through a saloon--"Halt! who goes there?" and
you recoil from the point of a naked bayonet. "Can't help it, orficer or
no orficer, this is Lord Kitchener's special, and you can't pass here!" It
is no use. Another wide detour; more difficulties, other escapes from
moving trains, and at last you find the platform.
De Aar platform at night. If the management at Drury Lane ever wished
to enact a play called "Chaos," the setting for their best scene could not
better a night on De Aar platform. Each day this Clapham Junction of
Lord Kitchener's army dumps down dozens of men, who are forced for
an indefinite period to use the station as a home--tons and tons of army
litter and a thousand nondescript details. The living lie about the station
in magnificent confusion--white men, Kaffirs, soldiers, prisoners,
civilians. A brigadier-general waiting for the night mail will be asleep
upon one bench, a skrimshanking Tommy, who has purposely lost his
unit, on the next. Even Kitchener's arrival can work no cleansing of De
Aar. It only adds to the confusion by condensation of the chaos into a
more restricted and less public area.
But our first needs are animal. Stumbling over prostrate forms,
cannoning against piles of heterogeneous gear, we make the buffet. A
flood of light, the buzz of voices, and the hum of myriads of disturbed
flies, and we live again. Filthy cloths, stained senna-colour with the
spilt food and drink of months, an atmosphere reeking like a
"fish-snack" shop, a dozen to twenty dishevelled and dirty men of all
ranks clamouring for food, two slovenly half-caste wenches. That is all,
yet this is life to the man off "trek." There is even a fascination in an
earthenware plate, though its surface shows the marks of the greasy
cloth and dirty fingers of the servitors.
A lieutenant-general and his staff have a table to themselves; we find a

corner at the main board, where the meaner sit. After food, news. De
Wet has invaded the Colony with 3000 men. He was fighting with
Plumer to-day at Philipstown. Then we begin to understand why we
were summoned to De Aar. The little horse-gunner major, who
vouchsafed the news, had just arrived with his battery from somewhere
on the Middelburg-Komati line. Five days on the train and his horses
only watered four times. That was nothing at this period of the war,
when the average mounted man was not blamed if he killed three
horses in a month. The major did not know his destination or what
column he was to join. Delightful uncertainty! All he knew was that his
battery was boxed up in a train outside the buffet, and that it would
start for somewhere in half an hour. It might be destined for Mafeking,
or it might be for Beaufort West; but he was ready to lay 2 to 1 that
within six weeks his battery would be on the high seas India bound.
Wise were the men who took up this bet, for the little major and his
battery are in South Africa to this day.
Food over, it was necessary once more to face the maze of De Aar
platform. It may seem strange, but when you are on duty bound, it is
easier, once the right platform is gained, to find the officials at
midnight than in the day. Under martial law few travellers have lights;
fewer are allowed, or have the desire, to burn them on the platform.
Consequently a light after midnight generally means an official trying
to overtake the work which has accumulated during the day.
"Railway Staff Officer? Yes, sir, straight in here, sir."
A very pale youth, in the cleanest of kit, whitest of collars, and with the
pinkest of pink impertinences round his cap and neck. He never looked
up from the paper on which he was writing as he opened the following
conversation--
Pale Youth. "What can I do for you?"
Applicant. "I am here under telegraphic instructions."
P. Y. (taking telegram proffered) "Never heard of you."

A. "You must have some record of that wire!"
P. Y. "I never sent it. It must