With Buller in Natal | Page 4

her son came in. "I have had
three or four visitors in here, and they all say that there is quite an
excitement in the town."
"It has come at last," he said gravely; "war is inevitable, and will begin
in twenty-four hours. Kruger has sent one of the most extraordinary
demands ever drawn up. He calls upon England to cease sending out
troops, and to speedily recall most of those now in South Africa, and
has given two days for a reply, of which one has already expired. As it
is absolutely certain that England will not grant this modest request, we
may say that the war has begun. I wish now that I had sent you and
Chris down to Durban a fortnight ago, for there will be a fearful rush,

and judging by the attitude of the Boers, I fear they will make the
journey a very unpleasant one. As we have agreed, it is absolutely
necessary that I should remain here. There is no saying what steps the
Boers will take with reference to the mines; but it is certain that we
must, if possible, keep them going--not for the sake of the profit, which
you may be sure Kruger will not allow to go out of the country, but
because if they were to be stopped it would cost an immense deal of
money to put them in working condition again, especially if, as is likely
enough, the Boers damage the machinery. I shall do as little work as I
can; and the Boers will not, I fancy, interfere with us as long as they
can benefit by the working. For myself, I would risk any loss or
damage rather than aid in supplying them with gold, but for the sake of
our shareholders in Europe I must do my best to save the mines from
destruction. Indeed, if I don't work them, probably they will do so until
the end is at hand, and will then do as much damage as possible. You
know we have agreed on this point." "Yes, I suppose it is best, Robert;
but it seems terrible leaving you alone here, and I shall be in a perpetual
state of anxiety about you."
"I don't think there is any occasion for that; as long as I am working the
mines and they are taking the gold, which no doubt they will have to
repay when our army are masters here, they will not interfere with me.
They treat us badly enough, as we know; but they love the gold even
more than they hate us, so I have no fear whatever as to my personal
safety. I am afraid, dear, that for a time things will go very badly with
us. Already we know that commandos have gone forward in great
strength to the frontier, and I should not be surprised if the whole of
South Africa rises; at any rate, the Boers are confident that it will be so.
Gladstone's miserable surrender after our disasters at Laing's Nek and
Majuba have puffed them up with such an idea of their own fighting
powers and our weakness, that I believe they think they are going to
have almost a walk over. Still, though it was certain that we should
have a hard time whenever war came, we have been hoping for years
that England would at last interfere to obtain redress for us, and we
must not grumble now that what we have been so long expecting has at
last come to pass. I believe there will be some stern fighting. The Boers
are no cowards; courage is, indeed, as far as I know, the only virtue

they possess. In the long run they must certainly be beaten, but it will
only be after very hard fighting."
"What do you think they will do, father?"
"I can't say what they will do, but I am sure that what they ought to do
is to merely hold the passes from Natal with enough men for the
purpose, and to march their whole force, broken up into half a dozen
columns, into Cape Colony. There is no force there that could resist
them, they would be undoubtedly joined by every Dutchman there, and
I am convinced that the Africander ministry would at once declare for
them, in which case England would have to undertake the tremendous
work of conquering the whole of South Africa afresh, for certainly she
could not allow it to slip from her hands, even if it should prove as
stern a business as the conquering of half India after the Sepoy Mutiny.
Now to business. Fortunately we sent down your clothes and
everything we had of value to our friends the Wilsons, at Durban, six
weeks ago. What you have