It was making them welcome
at Jones's Hotel. The sun had sunk an angry crimson, the sure sign
of a bloody battle on the morrow, and a full moon had turned the
dusty street and the veldt into which it disappeared into a field of
snow.
The American scouts had halted at Jones's Hotel, and the American
proprietor was giving them drinks free. Their cowboy spurs jingled
on the floor of the bar-room, on the boards of the verandas, on the
stone floor of the kitchen, and in the billiard-room, where they were
playing pool as joyously as though the English were not ten miles
away. Grave, awkward burghers rode up, each in a cloud of dust, and
leaving his pony to wander in the street and his rifle in a corner,
shook hands with every one solemnly, and asked for coffee. Italians
of Garibaldi's red-shirted army, Swedes and Danes in semi-uniform,
Frenchman in high boots and great sombreros, Germans with the sabre
cuts on their cheeks that had been given them at the university, and
Russian officers smoking tiny cigarettes crowded the little dining-
room, and by the light of a smoky lamp talked in many tongues of
Spion Kop, Sannahspost, Fourteen Streams, and the battle on the
morrow.
They were sun-tanned, dusty, stained, and many of them with wounds in
bandages. They came from every capital of Europe, and as each took
his turn around the crowded table, they drank to the health of every
nation, save one. When they had eaten they picked up the pony's
bridle from the dust and melted into the moonlight with a wave of the
hand and a "good luck to you." There were no bugles to sound "boots
and saddles" for them, no sergeants to keep them in hand, no officers
to pay for their rations and issue orders.
Each was his own officer, his conscience was his bugle-call, he gave
himself orders. They were all equal, all friends; the cowboy and the
Russian Prince, the French socialist from La Villette or Montmartre,
with a red sash around his velveteen breeches, and the little French
nobleman from the Cercle Royal who had never before felt the sun,
except when he had played lawn tennis on the Isle de Puteaux. Each
had his bandolier and rifle; each was minding his own business, which
was the business of all - to try and save the independence of a free
people.
The presence of these foreigners, with rifle in hand, showed the
sentiment and sympathies of the countries from which they came.
These men were Europe's real ambassadors to the Republic of the
Transvaal. The hundreds of thousands of their countrymen who had
remained at home held toward the Boer the same feelings, but they
were not so strongly moved; not so strongly as to feel that they must
go abroad to fight.
These foreigners were not the exception in opinion, they were only
exceptionally adventurous, exceptionally liberty-loving. They were
not soldiers of fortune, for the soldier of fortune fights for gain.
These men receive no pay, no emolument, no reward. They were the few
who dared do what the majority of their countrymen in Europe thought.
At Jones's Hotel that night, at Ventersburg, it was as though a jury
composed of men from all of Europe and the United States had gathered
in judgment on the British nation.
Outside in the moonlight in the dusty road two bearded burghers had
halted me to ask the way to the house of the commandant. Between
them on a Boer pony sat a man, erect, slim-waisted, with well-set
shoulders and chin in air, one hand holding the reins high, the other
with knuckles down resting on his hip. The Boer pony he rode, nor
the moonlight, nor the veldt behind him, could disguise his seat and
pose. It was as though I had been suddenly thrown back into London
and was passing the cuirassed, gauntleted guardsman, motionless on
his black charger in the sentry gate in Whitehall. Only now, instead
of a steel breastplate, he shivered through his thin khaki, and
instead of the high boots, his legs were wrapped in twisted putties.
"When did they take you?" I asked.
"Early this morning. I was out scouting," he said. He spoke in a
voice so well trained and modulated that I tried to see his shoulder-
straps.
"Oh, you are an officer?" I said.
"No, sir, a trooper. First Life Guards."
But in the moonlight I could see him smile, whether at my mistake or
because it was not a mistake I could not guess. There are many
gentlemen rankers in this war.
He made a lonely figure in the night, his helmet marking him as
conspicuously as a man wearing a high hat in a church. From the
billiard-room, where the American scouts were playing pool, came the
click of the ivory and loud, light-hearted laughter; from the veranda
the sputtering of many strange tongues and the deep, lazy voices of
the Boers. There were Boers to the left of him, Boers to the right
of him, pulling at their long, drooping pipes and sending up big
rings of white smoke in the white moonlight.
He dismounted, and stood watching the crowd about him under half-
lowered eyelids, but as unmoved as though he saw no one. He threw
his arm over the pony's neck and pulled its head down against his
chest and began talking to it.
It was as though he wished to emphasize his loneliness.
"You are not tired, are you? No, you're not," he said. His voice
was as kindly as though he were speaking to a child.
