On the Heels of De Wet

T >> The Intelligence Officer >> On the Heels of De Wet

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In obedience to the superior command, the whole brigade in the
afternoon sauntered on the four miles set down in the general's
message. The day had been a repetition of the one which had preceded
it--one of those burning karoo afternoons, which seem to sap the very
soul out of all things living. The feeling of dejection which pervaded
the staff seemed to have communicated itself to the whole column, and
the New Cavalry Brigade slunk rather than marched into camp. It was
not a cheerful camping-ground--a solitary farm-house of the poorest
construction, and two shallow, slimy pools of water were the only
attractions which it could claim. The men soberly fixed their
horse-lines, and rolled over to sweat out the trials of the heat until
sundown. The brigadier, who was still in his Achilles mood, retired to
his waggon. The new brigade-major, who was the only man with any
spirits left at all, busied himself with arranging for the
night-pickets and nursing the Mount Nelson Light Horse. But over a
bowl of tea, which the mess-servants arranged by four o'clock, the
brigadier seemed to revive; and he had just become approachable when
the colonel of the newly arrived contingent sauntered up to the
mess-waggon,--a big, rather ungainly man, who arrived with all the
self-assurance of one in authority.

_Colonel_ (_looking round the group of officers at tea and singling
out the Brigade-Major, whom he knew_). "Which is the brigadier?"

_Brigadier_ (_who had totalled the new-comer's checks in one brief
glance_). "I am that unfortunate. What can I do for you?"

_C._ (_saluting casually_) "Glad to meet you, sir; I thought that I
would come round to introduce myself--especially as I have some bad
news!"

_B._ "A truly noble action, and one which is likely to ingratiate you
here. What is it?"

_C._ "Nothing more or less than my men and horses are dead-beat. They
will have to halt here at least two days before they will be fit to
move. I have----"

_B._ "My dear colonel, have some tea; or perhaps you would prefer some
whisky-and-sparklet? You bring me the best news that I have heard
to-day!"

_C._ "Thank you, sir; but I am serious about----"

_B._ "Of course, of course you are serious, and I should have been
delighted to have left you and your regiment here as long as you
pleased--the longer the better. Only I shall probably have orders to
move with my whole force before daybreak, and that being the case, I
am afraid that your 'robbers' will have to move too, 'dead-beat' or
not."

_C._ "But I assure you, sir----"

_B._ "There is no need to assure me of anything, colonel. I have
absolute confidence in your knowledge of the state of inefficiency
existing in your regiment. Only I will beg you to remember in future
that I am the judge as to the capabilities of movement of the units
composing this column. But let us discuss the prospects of peace, or
some other less abstruse subject than the Mount Nelson Light Horse. In
the meantime, colonel, just to emphasise what I have said, my
Intelligence officer has orders to go out to those farms over there to
see if he can get suitable guides. I have ordered him to take a troop
of your men. He will start in fifteen minutes. Won't you stay for your
drink?" (The lion of the slouch-hat persuasion was reduced to the
lamb; he saluted, and sidled away while the brigadier replenished his
tea-cup.)

_Brigade-Major._ "That is about his size, sir. He has been more
trouble to me in my march from Hanover Road than the whole of the
truck, ox-waggons included."

_B._ "I know them. I knew that man's character from the tilt of his
hat and the cut of his breeches. He will probably prove a good
swashbuckler if kept in his place. But he came up here to divide
authority with me, and only one man can command this crush, and only
one man is going to. These fellows, if you let them, always become
saucy as soon as they pin ostrich feathers into their hats. They are
welcome to the feathers, but they must drop the sauce. So cut along,
Mr Intelligence, and see that you get that troop up to time. I don't
mind if you lose it; but you must be back yourself sometime to-night.
I want a reliable guide to take me anywhere within a radius of twenty
miles, and all the information that you can incidentally pick up. If
we hang about here much longer, we shall find ourselves let in for a
night-attack, and a night-attack with a Town Guard crowd like my new
addition is to be avoided."

The Intelligence officer went off to find the Tiger and get his horse
saddled up. He had reverted to his legitimate duties at once, and was
not sorry that the brigadier had detailed him for this particular
duty, though he felt that his mission had been designed rather as a
lesson to the colonel of the Mount Nelson Light Horse than as a
necessary precaution for the safety of the camp. But it took the
troop a powerful long time to turn out, and when at last twenty men
were mounted, they looked for all the world as if they were a party of
criminals about to be driven to the scaffold. The Tiger whispered to
the Intelligence officer--"We shall have to go easy with these
fellows. If we were not here, they would march out of camp with both
hands above their heads. They are the class of men who will become
panic-stricken at a dust-devil, and surrender to the first
cock-ostrich they meet!"

This may have been an exaggeration. There were some good men in the
corps, men who had fought well in the earlier days of the campaign.
But they were few and far between, and as events were to show, there
were not sufficient of the proper stamina to leaven the whole.

The farms which the brigadier had indicated were situated at the foot
of a spur of rocky excrescence which ploughed into the veldt from the
north of Minie Kloof. They were only five miles from the camp. But
that five miles proved too much for the escort. Whether it was
physical weakness or incipient mutiny it matters little. The men just
crawled along. So slow was the progress that the Intelligence officer,
afraid of being benighted, selected four of the better mounted from
the troop and pressed on to his objective, leaving the escort to
follow at such pace as they found convenient. The first farm lay in a
small kloof right against the hillside, and the approach was so masked
that the little party of scouts rode to within two hundred yards of
its whitewashed front without as they thought declaring themselves. A
rise in the ground and a hillock gave all the cover that the Tiger
deemed necessary, and he suggested that the four troopers should be
sent up a donga, which would enable them to climb the reverse of a
second hill which overlooked the farm, while he himself went forward,
covered by the rifle of the Intelligence officer from their present
position. To the first part of the scheme the Intelligence officer
agreed, but he reversed the order of the latter arrangement. Having
seen the troopers well on their way, he left the Tiger to cover the
advance, and rode leisurely himself towards the farm. It was a very
ordinary farm--not flush with the ground, but standing on a plinth of
brick like an Indian bungalow. A great solemn quietness reigned over
the whole kloof, not a living soul was visible, and the footfalls of
the horse sounded strangely exaggerated as the solitary rider
approached the verandah. Presently a dog stirred, trotted out into the
sunlight, and barked furiously. It disturbed the inmates of the house;
a girl hurriedly opened the upper swing-back of the door, looked out,
and then closed the door with a bang. This was suspicious, and the
Intelligence officer let his hand drop to the wooden case of the
Mauser pistol strapped to his holster; his thumb pressed the catch,
and he threw the pistol loose, keeping his hand upon its stock. Then
to his shout of "_Wie dar!_" the upper portion of the door was again
gingerly opened. The same face appeared, that of a round blue-eyed
Dutch girl. She turned her impassive gaze upon the visitor, who, by
way of opening the conversation, taxed his limited knowledge of the
vernacular so far as to ask for a little milk.

"Milk!" the girl answered in passable English. "Yes; I will get you
milk. Just wait!"

She seemed a long time finding the milk, and the Intelligence officer
began to feel the situation oppressive. He would have liked to have
turned his head to see if there were any sign of his troopers being in
position on the hill above him. But he had that indescribable feeling
which often inspires a man with the belief that his every movement is
being watched by unseen eyes. Those of you who have been
tiger-shooting on foot will readily appreciate the nature of this
sense. Yet, though he peered through the open door, his eyes could
discern no movement or his ears any incriminating sound. Presently the
girl returned with a glass of milk upon a tray. She opened the lower
half of the door, and came demurely to the edge of the verandah. The
Intelligence officer put out his hand to receive the glass, when in a
moment the girl lowered her elbow and soused the contents of the glass
full into his face.

"Hands up!" in stentorian tones from the doorway; and through a white
mist of milk, the Englishman had a vision of the business end of two
rifles pointed at him at short range, held by rough bearded customers,
and of a white-faced girl convulsed in laughter. The sobering effect
of the metal throat of a rifle a few inches removed from your breast
is considerable, and the Intelligence officer was a captured man. But
for a moment only. Something swished past his ear, and a great star
appeared in the white-washed plaster, just a foot above the Dutchmen's
heads. The Tiger had risen to the situation. The girl's laughter died
out, the two men ducked, and made instinctively for the cover of the
door. The Intelligence officer had an eighth of a second in which to
make up his mind. To have been truly sensational he should have
covered the Burghers with his Mauser; but he was more practical, and
by the time the men recovered their equanimity he was galloping as
fast as his pony could lay legs to the ground back to the hillock
where the Tiger was lying ensconced. Then he realised the extent of
the hornet's nest into which he had blundered. Rifles cracked to right
and left of him, like stock-whips in a cattle-run. But it is hard to
hit a moving body. Many who took part in the battle of Omdurman will
remember how a single Emir on a scarecrow of a horse galloped
unscathed along the whole length of the British division advancing
round the base of Jebel Surgham, though every man in the firing-line
did his best to bring him down. Similarly the Intelligence officer
braved the gauntlet, and reached temporary security round the base of
the Tiger's hillock without harm. There was no time to waste. The
Tiger was down to his horse and mounted almost before his officer
realised he was safe.

_Tiger._ "Come along, sir; it's been a near thing, but we have just
time if we gallop for it!"

_Intelligence Officer._ "But the flanking party; we must not desert
them!"

_T._ "We can do them no good. They must take their chance--for God's
sake, gallop, sir!"

The Tiger indeed spoke the truth; it was a near thing. They had not
placed a hundred yards between them and the hillock when dismounted
enemy were at the top, and the ground round the fugitives throwing up
little puffs of dust as the bullets struck.

Their luck was in, and after a perilous three minutes, they were clear
of immediate danger, as the popping of rifles from the rise in front
of them gave evidence that the officer in charge of the supporting
troop had risen to the occasion. If he had been a better soldier, he
might have lain low, and let the fugitives entice their pursuers after
them to their own destruction. But this had not occurred to the youth
who had recently changed the pestle and mortar of a chemist's
dispensary for the sword of a mounted infantry leader, and he did his
best, in a suitably excited manner.

The Tiger's story was interesting. "Just as you halted at the farm,
sir, I caught sight of the glint of a rifle on the top of the hill
which we had sent the troopers to occupy. As I knew that it could not
be our own men, I at once realised that we were in for it. They had
seen us coming. I knew that the troopers were lost men--the Boers
would let them blunder up the kopje, and when they arrived at the top,
utterly blown and useless, would disarm them without firing a shot.
Everything now depended upon the chance of my having escaped notice.
It was impossible to warn you without firing my rifle, so I looked
round to see if I was being stalked. I could see no one on my track,
so I just lay still and waited developments at the farmhouse. I saw
the girl throw the milk, and I then calculated that a shot placed
between you and the men would so disconcert them for the moment that
you could be able to get away.

"As soon as you turned, the fat was into the fire, and I found that
they were lying up for us all round. It was a mercy that they never
spotted me before I fired. I suppose they concluded that five went
with the flank scouts instead of four only. Anyhow, there must have
been quite thirty of them, and we now know that they are there."...

"Well, young feller!" said the brigadier when the Intelligence officer
reported himself, "what has all the shooting been about?"

He listened to the story, and remained thoughtful for a moment. Then
he handed the Intelligence officer a message, which ran as follows:--

"From De Wet Expert, Hopetown, to O.C. New Cavalry Brigade, Prieska or
vicinity.

"De Wet was at Strydenburg last night. Repeat to," &c.

_Brigadier._ "What do you think of that?"

_Intelligence Officer._ "We have lost a big thing. But may we not be
in the right position to-night? It seems to me that I must have run my
head right into them."

_B._ "I am afraid not. We have just touched up the 'red herring'; but,
great Scot! what a chance has been taken from me. Argue it out.
Balance the probabilities. This is what I make it. Hertzog joined De
Wet at Strydenburg last night. Hertzog joined him with the information
that three columns had moved out of Britstown, by way of Minie Kloof.
Three columns would be too much for De Wet in his dilapidated state;
so he has just thrown out a patrol to observe us, while he has struck
elsewhere. If he is still intent on going south, he will pass between
Britstown and De Aar. But I doubt if he tries the seaboard trick. If
I know him, he will double back along his original line. He is a sly
old fox. You may bet all you are worth that you blundered into his
observation patrol, and that we have lost the best chance of the whole
war simply through the idiosyncrasies of a stupid old man. I shall not
trouble about your friends any more to-night!"

An hour after dark four sorry objects, stark-naked save for their
vests, and with putties bound round their feet to replace their boots,
staggered into camp. They were the four troopers of the Mount Nelson
Light Horse which had furnished the Intelligence officer's flanking
party. As the Tiger had surmised, they had fallen an easy prey to the
Boers on the top of the hill. These had stripped them of all their
clothes, and, after herding them in a donga for a couple of hours, had
sent them back into camp with Commandant Vermaas's best compliments.
They were to tell their general that De Wet would be in Britstown that
night, and that he had passed within four miles of our camp with his
whole force that afternoon.

"That settles it," said the brigadier. "They would not have pitched
that yarn if De Wet had been really going to Britstown. You can mark
my word, he has gone north."

The words were still on the brigadier's lips when a native came in
with a message in cipher from the general. It read as follows:--

"Reliable information points to De Wet being at Strydenburg.
Concentrate there with me by midday to-morrow. I shall take the
Zwingelspan Road, which will bring me out into the hills north of
Strydenburg. You will take the Kalk Kraal-Grootpan Road, and install
yourself on Tafelkop, south of the town. Arrange to have your guns in
position by noon. Do not try to open up visual communication with me.
Such a course might give information of our movements to the enemy.
Send a receipt of this message to Zwingelspan, so as to arrive not
later than 10 A.M. to-morrow." Signed, "N----, Chief Staff-Officer.
_P.S._--Am afraid that De Wet will have taken your convoy."

_Brigadier._ "Was there ever a worse atrocity perpetrated than this?
If he had only been man enough to have done this twenty-four hours
earlier, when I implored him to do so, he might have been the greatest
hero of the war by this. But here, Uncle Baker (to the brigade-major),
just you send for that saucy fellow who commands the cyclists of the
Mount Nelson Light Horse, and tell him that he and his cyclists have
got to fight their way into Strydenburg by 10 A.M. to-morrow. Tell him
that if he gets a message off to Pretoria before 10 A.M. to-morrow,
it's as good as a D.S.O. for him. Tell him he must be prepared to
fight like h--l, only don't frighten him too much: just tell him
enough to keep him looking about him, otherwise his gang will get
captured in detail by the first Burgher they meet. He may start when
he likes. If I can get a message through to K. first, it won't matter
how much I mutiny afterwards!"

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Major (now Lieut.-Colonel) Bogle-Smith.

IX.

TO A NEW COVERT!

The cyclists of the Mount Nelson Light Horse trundled out of camp with
some show of bravery. They had left Cape Town 100 strong. The journey
from Hanover Road to Britstown had reduced their numbers by fifty per
cent. The bare fifty still with the brigade were the survival of the
fittest after a week of rain at Hanover and another week of struggling
with Karoo tracks ankle-deep in dust. But the men tried to show
something of a front as they pedalled out of camp. Their captain was
an enthusiast. He had, however, but poor material into which to infuse
his enthusiasm; and at any time South African roads are as
demoralising to wheel-men used to a macadamised surface as the
bouldered bed of a stream would be to a traction-engine. These same
cyclists were the men who had scorched up to the Picquetberg Passes
when ten men and a boy threatened Cape Town with invasion; and the
memory of the wave of military enthusiasm which convulsed the great
seaport from Greenpoint to Simon's Town was still worth something to
them as, over-weighted, they struggled with the Karoo.

"You may not think it," said the brigadier, as he wrestled with the
mutton, which is the staple food of the veldt breakfast-table, "but I
am anxious about those fellows,--d----d anxious. But it is no use
having cyclists if they are only to loaf about in camp. I use them
much in same spirit as an inexperienced pyramid player breaks up the
balls at the beginning of a game. I trust that out of the crowd just
one may get home. The captain is a hearty fellow, and will probably
make his way into Strydenburg; but he is about the only one that it
would be worth betting upon. I should be sorry to lose him, for I like
enthusiasts; but as for his gang, I would willingly present the lot to
'brother.' I had some cyclists down Calvinia way. I found that on a
down gradient they were terrors, but when any climbing came their way
they afforded 'brother' any amount of fun. The cyclist, to be any use
in war, must have roads and luck; otherwise, as Scout or messenger, he
is valueless. It is all very well for faddists to prophesy a future
for them. I like to see them working out their own salvation: pictures
of dismounted cyclists behind stacks of bicycles prepared to receive
cavalry fill me with delight. I like to anticipate the glee of the
cavalry which has forced them to dismount for action at some
disadvantageous spot, and then, while they are doubling up their
machines as a _chevaux de frise_, shoots them from the cover of a
hay-stack at a thousand yards."

_Brigade-Major._ "But surely, sir, there must be some use in cycles
for military purposes. The French, for instance, use them almost
exclusively for carrying messages in their manoeuvres!"

_Brigadier._ "True for you. But then in France they have roads. Though
even with the best of roads there is a limit to their utility. Behind
an army they are excellent; in front of an army their value is still
problematical. Even down in Calvinia, where Burghers were scarce and
main roads fair, they rarely carried a message as safely and as
quickly as a mounted Kaffir. They are vulnerable all round from other
causes than the hazards of war. Machine vulnerable, man vulnerable,
and in a country like this, where the roads are not masked by
hedgerows, they furnish a kind of 'running-deer' to every Burgher
observation-post, and, as far as I can judge, an observation-post is
to be found on every kopje!"...

It will be seen from the above that the brigadier had no intention of
undertaking the wild-goose chase which had been proposed to him. The
missive which he had sent to Strydenburg had been cunningly
constructed. It ran: "Local information indicates that the invaders
have doubled back to the north, evidently with the object of
recrossing the Orange River. I am moving with all reasonable despatch
upon Hopetown. I was in touch with scattered parties of enemy last
night. Have just sufficient supplies to take me into Hopetown." The
message was addressed to Chief, Pretoria, and repeated to the
lieutenant-general commanding the operations to suppress the invasion.
Knowing that the cyclists might draw blank at Strydenburg, a second
copy of the message was sent by the hand of a Kaffir, to be delivered
at the telegraph office in Britstown. As events turned out it was the
cyclists' telegram which went, and, as intended, upset the apple-cart
which the general subsequently tried to drive over the brigadier's
prostrate form. In the strict letter of the military law which, in so
many cases, subordinates individual initiative and sound judgment, the
action taken by the brigadier was indefensible. But as a matter of
fact the mutiny was not so terrible as it at first appears. Setting
aside the common-sense issue which ought to guide officers in senior
commands when accepting orders from a superior, it should be
remembered that the brigadier had only been directed to co-operate
with the officer who had now taken unto himself the position of
supreme command. Lord Kitchener himself, at the meeting on the De Aar
platform, had given the brigadier a roving commission, to be
controlled only by orders from Pretoria and the lieutenant-general at
De Aar. Consequently he resented his free action being clogged by a
senior whose only object seemed to be a desire to hug him and his
force as closely as possible for self-protection against imaginary
dangers. The brigadier, who was in every way as capable a soldier as
any in South Africa, had not spent eighteen months in following, or
being followed by, Boers, without arriving at a very shrewd estimate
of their tactics. The lore of the chase in which he was engaged, as he
read it, pointed to a break back on the part of the main body of the
invaders in the direction of the Orange River; and having balanced his
conception of the situation with his conscience, he considered that
the most serviceable move he could make was to place himself and his
brigade upon the railway at Hopetown. And so having sent the cyclists
to smell out the land of Strydenburg, the New Cavalry Brigade, working
in three parallel columns, fringed round the east end of the Beer Vlei
and struck north-east, with the backs of its rear-guard turned on the
Karoo for ever.

"How about Zwingelspan?" queried the brigade-major, remembering the
written instructions in the general's missive.

"Let it rip," was the laconic reply from the brigadier. "With this
crowd of Vermaas's hanging about I am not going to risk patrols other
than cyclists, and I am certainly not going to push on in force!" This
was final, and the extended front of the brigade opened out across the
veldt, throwing out its feelers like the tentacles of some slowly
crawling monster. Through highland and lowland it wound, rummaging the
isolated farmsteads, ploughing through ravine and mealie patch. But
though wild-fowl rose chattering, and, scolding bitterly, circled
round the scouts, though springbok trotted leisurely away from the
front of each several column, though sullen girls and gaping Kaffirs
peered from beneath the eaves of farmsteads, no sign of hostility was
to be found in all this life. It was the same old monotonous drudgery
of the veldt again. The same merciless sun, the same sapless and
parched surroundings. As the day wore on men longed for the crack of a
rifle to ease the burden of the monotony. The country, too, grew more
hilly, and fearing that he might be attacked in detail, the brigadier
reduced his front, till by four in the afternoon the brigade to all
practical purposes had concentrated. Then it was that the
advance-guard struck a great white road, ankle-deep in dust. This
veldt track was so rigid in its alignment, that for the moment it
might have been taken for a turnpike road fallen upon decadent days.
But the local colour of its surroundings did not support the
comparison, and the reason of its being loomed up gauntly in the
middle distance. A great square of whitewashed building, which,
strange to relate, was overshadowed by quite a number of trees, giving
it an appearance not unlike the first attempt which a Bengali merchant
makes at a country residence, when success in commerce renders it
imperative that he should improve the circumstances of his dwelling.
But though in the first instance the general appearance of the farm
was forbidding, yet, on examination, it presented several qualities
which are valuable to the soldier. An infant _barrage_ closing the
drainage slope in a depression formed an artificial water-pan of no
mean dimensions. A pair of zinc-fanned windmills worked two artesian
wells with such success that the purest drinking-water abounded; and
the result of all this moisture was the nearest attempt at a lawn that
any single man in the brigade has seen in the length and breadth of
South Africa outside Cape Town and its suburbs. A great stack of
forage added to the military assets of the locality, and the brigadier
just looked at the water and the lawn, and said, "A land flowing with
milk and honey,--this is where I shall camp. I could not resist
camping in such a spot even if I had old man De Wet dead beat a
furlong from home!" And it was indeed an entrancing spot to the
Karoo-worn warrior. Just one of those delightful oases which do exist,
but which do not abound in Cape Colony. Upon them stand the best and
oldest farms, for when the forebears of the present owners first
struck them, they had no need to good farther afield in search for a
desirable anchorage. If more of these enviable spots had abounded,
even the barbarity of British rule would not have driven the
_voortrekkers_ into wholesale emigration across the soapy waters of
the Orange River.

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