His brother officers seemed to
understand, but made no answer, except to jerk their heads toward me.
They were too occupied to speak. I handed the skeleton a cigar, and
he took it in great embarrassment, laughing and stammering and
blushing. Then I began to understand; I began to appreciate the
heroic self-sacrifice of the first two, who, when they had been given
the chance, had refused to fill their pockets. I knew then that it
was an effort worthy of the V. C.
The censor was at his post, and a few minutes later a signal officer
on Convent Hill heliographed my cable to Bulwana, where, six hours
after the Boers had abandoned it, Buller's own helios had begun to
dance, and they speeded the cable on its long journey to the
newspaper office on the Thames Embankment.
When one descended to the streets again - there are only two streets
which run the full length of the town - and looked for signs of the
siege, one found them not in the shattered houses, of which there
seemed surprisingly few, but in the starved and fever-shaken look of
the people.
The cloak of indifference which every Englishman wears, and his
instinctive dislike to make much of his feelings, and, in this case,
his pluck, at first concealed from us how terribly those who had been
inside of Ladysmith had suffered, and how near to the breaking point
they were.
