With Buller in Natal, Or, a Born Leader

Christmas passed cheerily; no gun was fired on either side, although the Boers worked diligently at their trenches; and our men feasted as they had not done since they landed at Durban. Bacon, milk, fresh bread, beef, and a quart of beer were served out for each man, and on these men and officers made a memorable meal; the latter producing the last bottles of wine and spirits that had been specially sent up to them from Maritzburg. And on that and the following day there were sports—lemon-cutting, tent pegging, races for the cavalry; athletic sports, tugs-of-war, mule and donkey races for the infantry. The drums and fifes played national airs, and the sailors bore their full share in the fun. As time went on the preparations for the next move advanced. None were more pleased at the prospect of active work again than the Colonial Volunteers, who had several times entreated to be allowed to get out and drive back the bands of plundering Boers, who were still wasting the farms and destroying the farmhouses and furniture of the loyalists.

On the 27th a small party of Captain Brookfield's scouts had been sent out to reconnoitre the windings and turnings of the Tugela to the east, to ascertain as far as possible what the Boer positions were on that side, and whether they had placed bodies of skirmishers on the south side of the river as they did opposite Fort Wylie. Included in the party, which was a hundred strong, was the Johannesburg section. When well away from the camp they were broken up into small parties, the better to escape the observation of the Boers on the Hlangwane and other heights. The instructions given by their commander were that they should take every advantage of ground to conceal their movements from the enemy, but where the ground near the river was level and fit for galloping they should dash across it, and, if not fired at, should skirt along the banks, mark if there were any tracks by which horses or cattle had at some time come down to the water, and observe if similar tracks were to be seen on the opposite bank, as this would show that, though possibly only in dry weather, the river was fordable there. Where the ground was too broken and rock-covered to permit of horses passing rapidly across it, they were to dismount and crawl down the river to make their observations.

Only a small portion of the troop had been engaged on this work, the main body were to keep along on the hills, maintaining a vigilant watch over the country to the south and east as well as that around them, as many parties of marauding Boers were known to be still across the river. Knowing the sharpness of the lads, Captain Brookfield had told off their section to explore the river bank, a choice which excited no jealousy among the rest, as these were hoping for a brush with some wandering party of Boers, and the satisfaction of rescuing cattle and goods they might be carrying off. His instructions to Chris were that he was to detach two of his party at each mile, choosing points where they could best make their way to the river unobserved. As he himself with the main body would go up considerably farther, each pair, when they had searched their section, were to ride a mile or so back from the river and fall in with the main body on its return.

Riding rapidly along, Chris carried out his instructions, until, when some twelve miles from the camp, he remained with only Sankey with him. The country they had passed was rolling, and from time to time he had caught sight of small parties of Captain Brookfield's scouts. Arriving at a spot where there was a slight depression running down towards the river, he said, "We may as well follow it, Sankey. It will deepen into a donga presently, no doubt, and we can leave our horses there and go on on foot. It looks to me as if this had been used as a path. Of course it may only have been made by cattle going down to the water, but it may lead to a drift. If it is, we must be all the more careful, for it is just at these points that the Boers are very likely to be on the look-out."

They rode for some distance and then dismounted, knee-haltered their horses and moved forward cautiously. Chris still believed they were on a track, but the heavy rains of the week before had sent the water rushing down it in a torrent, which would have destroyed any marks there might have been. When they could see the opening to the river in front of them they climbed the side of the donga. All seemed quiet, and stopping and taking advantage of the bushes, they crept forward to the edge of the water. There was no sign of a break in the opposite bank.

"There is no drift here," Chris said. "If there had been there would be a pass cut or worn down on the other side. Now let us push on, but don't show yourself more than you can help, any Boer lurking on the other side could hardly miss us. A hundred and fifty yards, I should say, is about the width."

After walking some little distance along they suddenly came upon another break in the bank.

"There is a break opposite, Sankey. Ten to one this is a drift. The question is, how deep is it? You can see the river is not as high as it was by four feet, and I dare say that it will be lower yet if we get another week of fine weather. It's very important to find out. I will try to ford it; it's hardly likely there are any Boers so far down, but have your rifle ready, and keep a sharp look-out on the opposite side."

A minute later they went down the slope. "Keep back under the shelter of these bushes as soon as I go in, Sankey." Then he stepped into the water and waded out. In a few yards it was up to his waist; then it deepened slowly. He was a third of the distance across when two rifles cracked out from some bushes on the opposite bank. Chris felt a sudden smart pain in his ear. He instantly threw himself down in the water, and diving, made for the shore, allowing the stream to take him down. Swimming as hard and as long as he could, he came for a moment to the surface, turning on his back before he did so, and only raising his mouth and nose above water. He took a long breath and then sank again, swimming this time towards the shore. His breath lasted until he was in water too shallow to swim farther, and, leaping to his feet, he dashed up the bank and threw himself down. He heard two bullets hum close to him, but the Boers had not been looking in his direction, and only caught sight of him in time to take a snap shot. He crawled along through the high, coarse grass, feeling very anxious as to what had become of Sankey. He had heard the report of the Boer rifles, but there came no reply from his friend, who would assuredly have been lying in shelter in readiness to shoot as soon as he saw a flash on the opposite bank. Could he have forgotten to take cover the instant he himself entered the water, could he possibly have remained standing there watching him? Two shots had been fired: one had certainly hit his ear; had the other been aimed at Sankey? He crawled along until he came to the point where he could see down on to the road. To his horror Sankey was lying there on his back.

CHAPTER XIII

PRISONERS

The exclamation that burst from Chris's lips as he saw Sankey on the ground was answered by another from his friend.

"Thank God that you are there, Chris. I have been in an awful state about you. I saw you go down into the water just as I was bowled over. I made sure that you were killed, and I was in a state, as you may imagine, till I heard two more shots. That gave me a little hope; for as you had not been killed in the first, you might have escaped the others."

"But what is the matter with you, Sankey. Where are you hit?"

"I am hit in the arm. I can't tell much about it. I only know that I went slap down; and there is certainly something the matter with my shoulder. Like an idiot I did not take shelter as you told me, but I was watching you so anxiously I never thought about it. If I had not been a fool I should have jumped up and got under cover at once; but I fancy I must have knocked my head as I fell. At any rate, I did not think about moving till I heard those two shots."

"It is just as well that you didn't," Chris said. "They could have put half a dozen bullets in you with their Mausers before you had moved a foot. The question is, what is to be done?"

"Have you got your rifle, Chris?"

"Yes, I stuck to that, and I expect it is all right; these cartridges are quite water-tight. The question is how to get you out of their line of sight."

"The best plan will be for me to roll over and over," Sankey said. "I expect it will hurt a bit, but that is no odds."

"No, no; don't do that yet. Let us think if we can't contrive some plan of attracting their attention."

"Don't do anything foolish, Chris," Sankey said earnestly. "I would rather jump up and make a run for it than that anything should happen to you."

"I will be careful, Sankey. The first thing to do is to find out whether there are only two of these fellows or half a dozen. Where I am lying now the ground is a foot lower than it is just at the edge of the bank. I will put my cap on my rifle and raise it so as just to show."

The instant he did so three or four rifles cracked and two bullets passed through the cap. As it dropped a shout of triumph rose from the Boers. He at once crawled forward, and as he did so five of them ran down the bank and as many more stood up, believing that both the scouts had been killed.

Throwing the magazine into play Chris fired three shots in close succession, and then rolled over two or three yards, half a dozen bullets cutting the grass at the spot he had just left. Peering cautiously out again he saw that the Boers had all disappeared except two, one of whom lay apparently dead just at the edge of the water; the other was sitting down, but was waving a white handkerchief.

"I am not going to shoot you," Chris muttered, "though I know the fellows with you would put a bullet at once into Sankey if they thought that he was alive. Hullo, there!" he shouted in Dutch; "I will let you carry off your wounded man and the dead one if you will let me carry off my dead comrade." The answer was three bullets, but he had drawn back a yard or two before he spoke and was in shelter. The thought of firing again at the wounded man did not enter Chris's mind, and he crawled back to the spot where he had before spoken to Sankey. The latter was looking anxiously up.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Well, I wish you would not do it," Sankey said angrily. "If you do I will get up, and they can either pot me or take me prisoner."

"Don't be an ass, Sankey. I am going on all right. I have shot two of them; there are about a dozen of them over there, I should say. Now let us talk reasonably. Of course, if I was sure they would not cross, I would make off to where the horses are, ride out, and meet Brookfield and the others as they come back. The orders were that we were to join them in about an hour and a half, which would give them time to go seven or eight miles farther, and for us to do our work thoroughly. But I am afraid that if I went away the Boers would presently guess I had done so, and would come across and carry you off. But though it would be no joke for you to be taken prisoner to Pretoria, it would be a good deal better than for you to have two or three more rifle bullets in your body, which I am sure you would have were you to move. So we must risk it. Anyhow, I will stop for another hour. There will be plenty of time then for me to make off and meet the others."

Chris crept forward again and watched the opportunity. Half an hour later he saw what he thought was a head appear, and at once fired, rolling over as before the instant he had pulled the trigger. Three or four shots answered his own almost instantly and there was a laugh that told him that they had practised the same trick that he had done, and had only raised a hat to draw his shot. Again there was silence for some time. Then he went back and told Sankey that he was about to start.

"All right, Chris; I shall be very glad when you have gone. You will get hit sooner or later if you go on firing, and I shall be a great deal more comfortable when you are once off. I don't believe they will venture across the drift; they know how straight you shoot."

Chris crawled back for some distance, and then got down into the road. He had scarcely done so when a shot rung out fifty yards away. His right leg gave way and he fell, and with a shout of triumph two Boers ran up to him. Chris did not attempt to move. The rifle had flown from his hand as he fell, and lay some five or six yards away.

"I surrender," he said when they ran up to him.

"Well, rooinek," they exclaimed, "you are a brave young fellow to make a fight alone against a dozen of us. It would have been wiser if you had gone away when you were lucky enough to get up the bank without being hit. What was the use of staying by your dead comrade?"

"He is not dead," Chris said. "He is hit in the arm or shoulder, but he knew if he moved he would be hit again to a certainty."

"But where are you hurt?"

"In the calf of my leg."

"It is lucky for you," the Boer said, "that I stumbled just as I fired.

Now, get up and I will carry you across the drift."

They helped him up, and the other assisted him on to his shoulders. The man's clothes were wet.

"Did you swim the river?" Chris asked.

"No, there is a drift a mile lower down. It is a bad one, but we managed to get across. We knew that you were alone, and as you seemed determined to remain here, we made sure of getting you."

As they came near to Sankey, Chris called out, "You can get up, Sankey; they have beaten us."

"I am very glad to hear your voice," Sankey replied as he raised himself into a sitting position. "When I heard that shot behind me I made sure it was all up with you. Where are you hit?"

"Only in my calf. Luckily this gentleman who is carrying me stumbled just as he fired, and I got the ball there instead of through my head. It serves me right for not having thought before that some of them might cross somewhere else and take us in rear. Well, it can't be helped; it might have been a good deal worse."

The other Boer had picked up the two rifles. They now entered the river. The stream in the middle was breast-high, and the Boer with the rifles told Sankey to hold on to him, which he was glad to do, for the force of the stream almost took him off his feet. The other Boers had now left their hiding-places, and received them when they reached the opposite bank. The one who seemed to be their leader said not unkindly, "You have given us a great deal of trouble, young fellows, and killed one of our comrades and badly wounded another."

"If you had left us alone we should have been very glad to have let you alone," Chris said.

The Boers laughed at the light-heartedness of their prisoner, and then examined their wounds. Chris had, as he said, been hit in the calf. The ball had entered behind, and had come out close to the bone. Chris believed that he could walk, but thought it best to affect not to be able to do so. The wound had bled very little, and the two holes were no larger than would be made by an ordinary slate-pencil. Sankey had been hit just below the shoulder. The ball had in his case also gone right through, and from the position of the two holes it was evident that it must have passed through the bone. The Boers bandaged the wounds, and told them to lie down under the shade of a bush, and then took their places near the bank to watch the drift again.

"I suppose we have a journey to Pretoria before us," Sankey said. "I don't care so much about myself, because that is only the fortune of war, but I am awfully sorry that you are taken, Chris, and all through my beastly folly in not taking shelter as you told me."

"Oh, we may just as well be together, Sankey. Besides, I don't mean to go to Pretoria, I can assure you. I believe I could walk now if I tried; but you may be sure I don't mean to try. I should advise you to avoid making any movement with your arm; make them put it in a sling. When they start with us, we had better be sent up with wounded prisoners rather than with the others. They won't look so sharply after the wounded, and it will be very hard if we cannot manage to slip away somehow. I hope the others will find the horses all right, or that if they don't the horses will find their own way back."

"Oh, they are safe to find them," Sankey said confidently. "There will be a hunt for us when it is found that we have not joined the others. Anyhow, they will search to-morrow. I am quite sure that some of our fellows will be out the first thing in the morning, and I dare say they will take a couple of the natives with them. If they start at the point where we turned off they will track the horses down that donga without any difficulty, and even if they have strayed away they will soon have them."

"Yes, I suppose they will be all right," Chris agreed. "Of course we have got the spare horses, but we should miss our own, and I think they are as fond of us as we are of them."

As the sun got low two of the Boers brought up four ponies which were grazing some little distance from the river. They lifted Chris on to one, and helped Sankey to mount another, and then taking their seats on the other horses, rode off at a walk, and arrived an hour and a half later at a camp in a hollow behind Fort Wylie. Here they were put into a large tent, where some thirty wounded prisoners were lying. A German surgeon at once examined and again bandaged their wounds.

"You are neither of you hurt badly," he said in English. "A fortnight and you will have little to complain of. These Mauser bullets make very slight wounds, except when they hit a vital spot. You are a good deal better off than most of your comrades here."

As it was now dark they lay down at once, after taking a basin of excellent soup. The German ambulance was scrupulously clean. The more serious cases were put in beds, those less severely wounded lay on the ground between them; for the number of wounded to be dealt with was very large, and in the tents in which the Boers were treated were many terribly mangled by fragments of shrapnel and lyddite shells. The boys were some time before they went off to sleep, for their wounds smarted a good deal. However, they presently fell off, and it was broad daylight when they woke. Chris lay where he was, while Sankey got up and went round the tent. The men all belonged to either the Devon or the Queen's Own regiment. Most of them were awake, and all asked anxiously for news from Chieveley, and looked disappointed when they heard that it was likely to be some time before a fresh attempt was made to relieve Ladysmith.

"They are all right there. Of course they were disappointed that we did not get in, but they have provisions enough to last for some time yet."

"The Boers don't seem to think so," one of the men said. "As they were carrying us in here I heard one of them say that they had certainly got Ladysmith now, for the provisions there were pretty nearly exhausted, and in a few days they would have to surrender. If they did not, they meant to carry it by assault."

"I don't think they will do that," Sankey said confidently.

"Not they," the soldier replied scornfully. "They will find that it is a very different thing meeting our chaps in the open to what it is squatting in a trench, and blazing away without giving us as much as a sight of them. It is a beastly cowardly way of fighting, I calls it. I was not hit till just the end of the day, and I had been blazing away from six in the morning, and I never caught sight of one of them. I should not have minded being hit if I could have bowled two or three of them over first."

After breakfast the surgeon said to the two lads: "You will be sent off in half an hour; all the slight cases are to go on. There may be another battle any day, and room must be made for a fresh batch of wounded."

"Very well, sir," Chris replied, "as we have to go, it makes no difference to us whether it is to-day or next week."

"You are colonists, I suppose, as you have not the name of any regiment on your shoulder-straps?"

"Yes, sir; we belong to Johannesburg. I know your face. You are Dr.

Muller, are you not?"

"Yes; I do not recognize you."

"I am the son of Mr. King, sir; and my comrade is the son of Dr.

Sankey."

"I know them both," the doctor said. "I am not one of those who think that the Uitlanders have no grievances, and I am not here by my own choice. But I was commandeered, and had no option in the matter. Well, I am sorry for you lads. For though I believe that in the long run your people will certainly win, I think it will be a good many months before they are in Pretoria. They fight splendidly. I watched the battle until the wounded began to come in, and the way those regiments by the railway advanced under a fire that seemed as if nothing could live for a minute, was marvellous. But brave as they are, they will never force their way through these hills. They will never get to Ladysmith. Well, perhaps we shall meet some day in Johannesburg again."

"Yes, doctor. I suppose we shall be taken up in waggons?"

"You will, for a time, certainly. But I don't know about your friend."

"Oh, do order him to be sent up with me, doctor, that is, if it will not hurt him too much. You see, his wound is really more serious than mine, as the ball has gone through the bone."

"Yes. I have a good many cases of that sort, but all seem to be healing rapidly. However, I will strain a point and give instructions that he is to be among those who must go in the waggons."

"Thank you, sir," both boys said; and Sankey added: "We are great friends, sir. Though I don't care for myself, it would be a great comfort to us to be together, and my wound really hurts me a good deal."

"I have no doubt it does," the surgeon said. "You can't expect a ball to pass through muscle and bone without causing pain."

Half an hour later some natives came into the tent, and under the directions of the surgeon carried out Chris and three others whose wounds were all comparatively slight, and placed them in a waggon which already contained eight other wounded prisoners. Sankey, with his arm in a sling, walked out and was lifted into the waggon, into which he could indeed scarcely have climbed without assistance. Seven more were collected at other tents, and the waggons then moved off and joined a long line that were waiting on the road. Some more presently came up, and when the number was complete, the native drivers cracked their whips with reports like pistols, and the oxen got into motion. Some twenty mounted Boers kept by the side of the waggons. They followed the road until within four or five miles of Ladysmith, then turned off, crossed the Klip river, and came to a spot where a hospital camp had been erected; here they halted for the night.

The wounded were provided with soup and bread, and such as were able to walk were allowed to get out and stroll about. The surgeon who accompanied the train and the doctor in charge of the hospital attended to all the serious cases, and these were carried into the tent for the night thus making room for the others to lie at length in the waggons. Only three of these contained British wounded, the others were all occupied by Boers. Chris and Sankey excited the admiration of the wounded soldiers by conversing with the Boers and the natives in their own languages. Most of the Boers, indeed, could speak English perfectly, but did not now condescend to use it. Some even refused to speak in Dutch to the lads, as their dislike to the colonists who had taken up arms against them was even more bitter than that which they felt for the soldiers.

For six days they travelled on, at the end of that time Chris felt sure that he could walk without difficulty. He had, at very considerable pain to himself, each night undone his bandage, and had with his finger scratched at the two tiny wounds until they were red and inflamed, so that on the two occasions on which they were examined by the doctor, they appeared to be making but little progress towards healing. The inflammation was, however, only on the surface, and after several furtive trials, Chris declared that he was ready for a start. A move was generally made before daylight, in order that a considerable portion of the day's journey should be got over before the heat became very great.