At every point the assailants
found the same scattered but impenetrable fringe of riflemen, and
the same energetic batteries waiting for them.
Throughout the Empire the course of this great struggle was watched
with the keenest solicitude and with all that painful emotion which
springs from impotent sympathy. By heliogram to Buller, and so to
the farthest ends of that great body whose nerves are the
telegraphic wires, there came the announcement of the attack. Then
after an interval of hours came 'everywhere repulsed, but fighting
continues.' Then, 'Attack continues. Enemy reinforced from the
south.' Then 'Attack renewed. Very hard pressed.' There the
messages ended for the day, leaving the Empire black with
apprehension. The darkest forecasts and most dreary anticipations
were indulged by the most temperate and best-informed London
papers. For the first time the very suggestion that the campaign
might be above our strength was made to the public. And then at
last there came the official news of the repulse of the assault.
Far away at Ladysmith, the weary men and their sorely tried
officers gathered to return thanks to God for His manifold mercies,
but in London also hearts were stricken solemn by the greatness of
the crisis, and lips long unused to prayer joined in the devotions
of the absent warriors.
CHAPTER 14.
THE COLESBERG OPERATIONS.
Of the four British armies in the field I have attempted to tell
the story of the western one which advanced to help Kimberley, of
the eastern one which was repulsed at Colenso, and of the central
one which was checked at Stormberg. There remains one other central
one, some account of which must now be given.
It was, as has already been pointed out, a long three weeks after
the declaration of war before the forces of the Orange Free State
began to invade Cape Colony. But for this most providential delay
it is probable that the ultimate fighting would have been, not
among the mountains and kopjes of Stormberg and Colesberg, but amid
those formidable passes which lie in the Hex Valley, immediately to
the north of Cape Town, and that the armies of the invader would
have been doubled by their kinsmen of the Colony. The ultimate
result of the war must have been the same, but the sight of all
South Africa in flames might have brought about those Continental
complications which have always been so grave a menace.
The invasion of the Colony was at two points along the line of the
two railways which connect the countries, the one passing over the
Orange River at Norval's Pont and the other at Bethulie, about
forty miles to the eastward.
