It was not an original greeting, but it seemed sufficient to
all of us. "Are the Boers on Bulwana?" we asked. "No, they've
trekked up Dundee way. You can go right in."
We parted at the word and started to go right in. We found the
culverts along the railroad cut away and the bridges down, and that
galloping ponies over the roadbed of a railroad is a difficult feat
at the best, even when the road is in working order.
Some men, cleanly dressed and rather pale-looking, met us and said:
"Good-morning." "Are you from Ladysmith?" we called. "No, we're
from the neutral camp," they answered. We were the first men from
outside they had seen in four months, and that was the extent of
their interest or information. They had put on their best clothes,
and were walking along the track to Colenso to catch a train south to
Durban or to Maritzburg, to any place out of the neutral camp. They
might have been somnambulists for all they saw of us, or of the Boer
trenches and the battle-field before them. But we found them of
greatest interest, especially their clean clothes. Our column had
not seen clean linen in six weeks, and the sight of these civilians
in white duck and straw hats, and carrying walking-sticks, coming
toward us over the railroad ties, made one think it was Sunday at
home and these were excursionists to the suburbs.
We had been riding through a roofless tunnel, with the mountain and
the great dam on one side, and the high wall of the railway cutting
on the other, but now just ahead of us lay the open country, and the
exit of the tunnel barricaded by twisted rails and heaped-up ties and
bags of earth. Bulwana was behind us. For eight miles it had shut
out the sight of our goal, but now, directly in front of us, was
spread a great city of dirty tents and grass huts and Red Cross
flags - the neutral camp - and beyond that, four miles away, shimmering
and twinkling sleepily in the sun, the white walls and zinc roofs of
Ladysmith.
We gave a gasp of recognition and galloped into and through the
neutral camp. Natives of India in great turbans, Indian women in gay
shawls and nose-rings, and black Kaffirs in discarded khaki looked up
at us dully from the earth floors of their huts, and when we shouted
"Which way?" and "Where is the bridge?" only stared, or pointed
vaguely, still staring.
After all, we thought, they are poor creatures, incapable of emotion.
Perhaps they do not know how glad we are that they have been rescued.
They do not understand that we want to shake hands with everybody and
offer our congratulations. Wait until we meet our own people, we
said, they will understand! It was such a pleasant prospect that we
whipped the unhappy ponies into greater bursts of speed, not because
they needed it, but because we were too excited and impatient to sit
motionless.
In our haste we lost our way among innumerable little trees; we
disagreed as to which one of the many cross-trails led home to the
bridge. We slipped out of our stirrups to drag the ponies over one
steep place, and to haul them up another, and at last the right road
lay before us, and a hundred yards ahead a short iron bridge and a
Gordon Highlander waited to welcome us, to receive our first
greetings and an assorted collection of cigarettes. Hartland was
riding a thoroughbred polo pony and passed the gallant defender of
Ladysmith without a kind look or word, but Blackwood and I galloped
up more decorously, smiling at him with good-will. The soldier, who
had not seen a friend from the outside world in four months, leaped
in front of us and presented a heavy gun and a burnished bayonet.
"Halt, there," he cried. "Where's your pass?" Of course it showed
excellent discipline - we admired it immensely. We even overlooked
the fact that he should think Boer spies would enter the town by way
of the main bridge and at a gallop. We liked his vigilance, we
admired his discipline, but in spite of that his reception chilled
us. We had brought several things with us that we thought they might
possibly want in Ladysmith, but we had entirely forgotten to bring a
pass. Indeed I do not believe one of the twenty-five thousand men
who had been fighting for six weeks to relieve Ladysmith had supplied
himself with one. The night before, when the Ladysmith sentries had
tried to halt Dundonald's troopers in the same way, and demanded a
pass from them, there was not one in the squadron.
We crossed the bridge soberly and entered Ladysmith at a walk. Even
the ponies looked disconcerted and crestfallen. After the high grass
and the mountains of red rock, where there was not even a tent to
remind one of a roof-tree, the stone cottages and shop-windows and
chapels and well-ordered hedges of the main street of Ladysmith made
it seem a wealthy and attractive suburb. When we entered, a Sabbath-
like calm hung upon the town; officers in the smartest khaki and
glistening Stowassers observed us askance, little girls in white
pinafores passed us with eyes cast down, a man on a bicycle looked
up, and then, in terror lest we might speak to him, glued his eyes to
the wheel and "scorched" rapidly. We trotted forward and halted at
each street crossing, looking to the right and left in the hope that
some one might nod to us. From the opposite end of the town General
Buller and his staff came toward us slowly - the house-tops did not
seem to sway - it was not "roses, roses all the way." The German army
marching into Paris received as hearty a welcome.
