All Was Weighed, All Was Thought Of, And So At Last The
White Flag Went Up.
The officer who hoisted it could see no one
unhurt save himself, for all in his sangar were hit, and the others
were so placed that he was under the impression that they had
withdrawn altogether.
Whether this hoisting of the flag necessarily
compromised the whole force is a difficult question, but the Boers
instantly left their cover, and the men in the sangars behind, some
of whom had not been so seriously engaged, were ordered by their
officers to desist from firing. In an instant the victorious Boers
were among them.
It was not, as I have been told by those who were there, a sight
which one would wish to have seen or care now to dwell upon.
Haggard officers cracked their sword-blades and cursed the day that
they had been born. Privates sobbed with their stained faces buried
in their hands. Of all tests of discipline that ever they had
stood, the hardest to many was to conform to all that the cursed
flapping handkerchief meant to them. 'Father, father, we had rather
have died,' cried the Fusiliers to their priest. Gallant hearts,
ill paid, ill thanked, how poorly do the successful of the world
compare with their unselfish loyalty and devotion!
But the sting of contumely or insult was not added to their
misfortunes. There is a fellowship of brave men which rises above
the feuds of nations, and may at last go far, we hope, to heal
them. From every rock there rose a Boer - strange, grotesque figures
many of them - walnut-brown and shaggy-bearded, and swarmed on to
the hill. No term of triumph or reproach came from their lips. 'You
will not say now that the young Boer cannot shoot,' was the
harshest word which the least restrained of them made use of.
Between one and two hundred dead and wounded were scattered over
the hill. Those who were within reach of human help received all
that could be given. Captain Rice, of the Fusiliers, was carried
wounded down the hill on the back of one giant, and he has narrated
how the man refused the gold piece which was offered him. Some
asked the soldiers for their embroidered waist-belts as souvenirs
of the day. They will for generations remain as the most precious
ornaments of some colonial farmhouse. Then the victors gathered
together and sang psalms, not jubilant but sad and quavering. The
prisoners, in a downcast column, weary, spent, and unkempt, filed
off to the Boer laager at Waschbank, there to take train for
Pretoria. And at Ladysmith a bugler of Fusiliers, his arm bound,
the marks of battle on his dress and person, burst in upon the camp
with the news that two veteran regiments had covered the flank of
White's retreating army, but at the cost of their own annihilation.
CHAPTER 8.
LORD METHUEN'S ADVANCE.
At the end of a fortnight of actual hostilities in Natal the
situation of the Boer army was such as to seriously alarm the
public at home, and to cause an almost universal chorus of
ill-natured delight from the press of all European nations. Whether
the reason was hatred of ourselves, or the sporting instinct which
backs the smaller against the larger, or the influence of the
ubiquitous Dr. Leyds and his secret service fund, it is certain
that the continental papers have never been so unanimous as in
their premature rejoicings over what, with an extraordinary want of
proportion, and ignorance of our national character, they imagined
to be a damaging blow to the British Empire. France, Russia,
Austria, and Germany were equally venomous against us, nor can the
visit of the German Emperor, though a courteous and timely action
in itself, entirely atone for the senseless bitterness of the press
of the Fatherland. Great Britain was roused out of her habitual
apathy and disregard for foreign opinion by this chorus of
execration, and braced herself for a greater effort in consequence.
She was cheered by the sympathy of her friends in the United
States, and by the good wishes of the smaller nations of Europe,
notably of Italy, Denmark, Greece, Turkey, and Hungary.
The exact position at the end of this fortnight of hard slogging
was that a quarter of the colony of Natal and a hundred miles of
railway were in the hands of the enemy. Five distinct actions had
been fought, none of them perhaps coming within the fair meaning of
a battle. Of these one had been a distinct British victory, two had
been indecisive, one had been unfortunate, and one had been a
positive disaster. We had lost about twelve hundred prisoners and a
battery of small guns. The Boers had lost two fine guns and three
hundred prisoners. Twelve thousand British troops had been shut up
in Ladysmith, and there was no serious force between the invaders
and the sea. Only in those distant transports, where the grimy
stokers shoveled and strove, were there hopes for the safety of
Natal and the honour of the Empire. In Cape Colony the loyalists
waited with bated breath, knowing well that there was nothing to
check a Free State invasion, and that if it came no bounds could be
placed upon how far it might advance, or what effect it might have
upon the Dutch population.
Leaving Ladysmith now apparently within the grasp of the Boers, who
had settled down deliberately to the work of throttling it, the
narrative must pass to the western side of the seat of war, and
give a consecutive account of the events which began with the siege
of Kimberley and led to the ineffectual efforts of Lord Methuen's
column to relieve it.
On the declaration of war two important movements had been made by
the Boers upon the west. One was the advance of a considerable body
under the formidable Cronje to attack Mafeking, an enterprise which
demands a chapter of its own.
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