With Buller in Natal, Or, a Born Leader, G. A. Henty [best novels to read .TXT] 📗

induced them to side with the Boers; and it was the general hope that something might occur which would induce the English to allow them to attack their enemies.

Chris and his friends had laid aside their bandoliers, retaining only the cartridges carried in their belts, in order to assume the appearance of Englishmen merely travelling for sport, and as they went on they generally managed to shoot deer enough for the needs of the whole party. Occasionally they slept in the kraals of chiefs, but greatly preferred their own little tents as the smoke in them was often blinding, and more than once the attacks of vermin kept them awake. Still, it would have been a slight to refuse such invitations, and they had to go to the kraals as it was necessary to frequently buy supplies of mealies. At times the travelling was very rough, and with the utmost exertions they could not make more than twelve or fourteen miles a day, and at other times they could make five-and-twenty. Without the supply of Indian corn, the ponies could not have continued this rate of going without breaking down. The native horses are accustomed occasionally to make very long journeys, and can perform from sixty to eighty miles in a day, but after such an exertion they will need a week's rest before making another effort. With their Basuto masters they are not called upon to do so. When one of these makes a long journey he will leave his pony with the person he visits and return on a fresh mount, or if he returns to his own home after his first day's journey he will take a fresh horse from his own stock, which may vary from five to fifty ponies. As they rode they seldom talked of the work that was to be done. Until they saw the country, the positions, and approach, no plans could possibly be formed, and they therefore treated the matter as if it were a mere sporting expedition in a new country, and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. They had heavy work in crossing the Lebombo range, and, travelling a day's journey farther west, turned to the north again. They were now in Swaziland, a wild and mountainous country. Here also they were hospitably received where they stopped, although the Swazis were deeply aggrieved by the shameful manner in which England had refused, after the valuable aid they had rendered in the last war, to give them any support against the Boers. A word would have been sufficient to have kept the latter out of Swaziland, as it had kept them from raiding in Zululand; but that word was not given, and the unfortunate people had been raided and plundered, their best land taken from them, and they themselves reduced to a state of semi-subjection. However, they were glad to see four English sportsmen among them again, and to learn something of the war that had broken out between their oppressors and the British.

"If you beat them we shall be free again," they said. "Last time you were beaten, and gave over the whole country to the Boers, and left all our people, who had fought for you, at their mercy. This time you must not do that. If you beat them, shoot them all like dogs, or make slaves of them as they make slaves of the natives who dwell in their land. Only so will there be peace."

"I don't know that the English will do that," Chris said; "but you may be sure that, when the war is over, the Boers will be no longer masters, and there will be just law made by us, and all white men and all natives will be protected, and no evil deeds will be allowed."

"We are no longer united among ourselves," one of the chiefs said. "Some have been taken by the promises and gifts of the Boers, and our queen is also, it is said, in their favour. She is afraid of them, but most of us would take advantage of their fighting you to drive all of them out of our land, and to win back all the territory they have taken from us. We are very poor, our best land is gone, we can scarce grow enough food; and we long for the time when once again we can have rich mealie patches, and good grazing land for our oxen and our horses, and are again a strong people, and they afraid of us. Had not the English interfered and taken over the Boer country, we should have wasted it from end to end; and they knew it well, and begged your Shepstone to hoist your flag and protect them. Ah, he should have stayed there then! The natives, our friends in the plain, still talk of that happy time when you were masters, and the Boers dared no longer shoot them down as if they were wild beasts and treat them as slaves, and the towns grew up, and your people paid for work with money and not with the lash of a whip or a bullet. All of us have mourned over the time when the English bent their knee to the Boers, and gave them all they wanted,—the mastery of the land, and the right to kill and enslave us at their will."

"That was not quite so," Chris said. "They promised to give good treatment to the natives; that was one of the conditions of the treaty."

"And you believed them!" the chief said scornfully. "Did you not know that a Boer's oath is only good so long as a gun is pointed at him? Perhaps it will be like this again, and when you have conquered them you will again trust them, and march away. But they tell us, it is not you who will conquer them, but they who will conquer you. They tell our people that they will be masters over all the land, and that your people will have to sail away in your ships. Runners have brought us news that they have gathered round the place where our people go to work digging bright stones from the ground, and that very soon they will take all the English prisoners, and that they have also beset Mafeking, and that they have beaten the English soldiers in Natal, and there will soon be none left there; and more than that, that the people of the other Boer state have joined them, and have entered the English territory, and are being joined by all the Boers there. Therefore we, who would like to fight against them, are afraid. We thought the English a great people; they had beaten the Zulus, and dethroned the great King Cetewayo. But now it seems that the Boers are much greater, and our hearts are sore."

"You need not fear, chief," Chris said. "Our country is very many miles away, many days' journey in ships; it will take weeks before our army gets strong. The Boers have always said they wanted peace, and we believed them and kept but a few soldiers here, and until the army comes from England they will get the best of it; but we can send, if necessary, an army many times stronger than that of the Boers, and are sure to crush them in the end."

"But how could you believe they wanted peace?" the chief asked. "Everyone knew that they were building great forts, and had got guns bigger than were ever before seen, and stores full of rifles. How could you believe their words when your eyes saw that it was not peace but war that they meant?"

"Because we were fools, I suppose," Chris said bitterly. "It was not from want of warnings, for people living out here had written again and again telling what vast preparations they were making, but the people who govern the country paid no attention. It was much easier to believe what was pleasant than what was unpleasant; but their folly will cost the country very dear. If they had sent over twenty thousand men a year ago there would have been no war; now they will have to send over a hundred thousand men, perhaps even more; and great sums of money will be