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

"What do you say, Chris?" one of them said after the discussion had gone on for some time. "You have not given us your opinion."

"My opinion does not agree with yours," Chris replied. "After what I saw the other day, I think the difficulties of fighting our way over those mountains are so enormous that I doubt whether we shall ever do it."

There was a chorus of dissent.

"Well, we shall see," he said. "I hope that we shall do it just as much as you do, but it is tremendous business. I have no doubt Sir Redvers will go on trying, but I should not be surprised if at heart he has doubts that it can be done. The Boers have more guns that we have, and any number of those Maxims and Hotchkiss that keep up a stream of balls. The Boers' trenches enable them to fire at us without showing anything but a head, except when they stand up or have to move across the open. If we drive them out of one position they have others to fall back upon. It is not one natural fortress that we have to take, but a dozen of them. They know every foot of the country they occupy, while we know nothing but just what we can see at a distance."

"Well, if Sir Redvers thought as you do, why should he go on hammering at it?"

"For several reasons, Peters. In the first place, if Ladysmith saw that there was no chance of rescue it would at last give in; and in the second place, if there was an end of all attempts to relieve the place England would go wild with indignation; and in the third place, and by far the most important, Sir Redvers knows that he is keeping from twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand of the Boers inactive here, and so relieving the pressure on our troops on the other side. We know regiments are arriving from England at the Cape every day. When they get strong enough to invade the Orange Free State and take Bloemfontein, and march north, the Boers here will be hurrying away to defend their homes. Of course the Free Staters will go first, but the Transvaalers will have to follow. We hear that Methuen has been beaten at Magersfontein, and that he has been brought to a stand-still within the sound of the guns round Kimberley, just as we are here, and that the Boers have a very strong position there also. So at present the advance is as much checked there as it is here. Gatacre has had a misfortune too, so that we are all in the same boat. I saw a Pietermaritzburg paper in the naval camp just now; there are about twenty thousand men on the sea at the present moment, besides those in the colony, and two more divisions are being formed. So it is safe to come right in the long run. But at present, if those twenty-five thousand Boers opposite to us were not there now, they would be riding all over Cape Colony, and if Buller were not to keep on hammering away here a good many of them would be off at once. They say Ladysmith can hold out for another three months. By that time there ought to be such a big force in the Orange State that the Boers won't dare to stop here any longer, and no end of loss of life will be avoided.

"I never thought that you were a croaker before," Field said, "except just before the last fight; but certainly things have gone very badly lately. Three disasters in seven or eight days are a facer; but I cannot think that we shall not succeed next time. When Warren's division is up Buller will have over thirty thousand men with him, in spite of our losses the other day, and we ought to be able to do it with that."

"Well, we shall see, Field. I hope you are right."

The news of Methuen's repulse and the terrible losses in the Highland brigade, and of Gatacre's disaster, cast a greater gloom over Buller's army than their own failure had done. The one topic of conversation among the officers was, what would be the feeling in England, and whether there would be any inclination to patch up another dishonourable peace like that after Majuba. But the feeling wore off as day after day the news came that the misfortunes had but raised the spirit and determination of the people of Great Britain to carry the war through to the bitter end; that recruiting was going on with extraordinary rapidity; that fresh regiments had been ordered out; that Lord Roberts had been appointed to the supreme command in South Africa, and that Lord Kitchener was coming out as chief of his staff. The fact, too, that the volunteers had been asked to send companies to the regiments to which they were attached, that the City had undertaken to raise a strong battalion at its own expense, that the Yeomanry were to furnish ten thousand men, and that public, spirit had risen to fever heat, soon showed that these apprehensions were without foundation, and that Britain was still true to herself, and was showing the same indomitable spirit that had carried her through many periods of national depression, and brought her out triumphant at the end.

Christmas passed cheerily; no gun was fired on either side, although the Boers worked diligently at their trenches; and our men feasted as they had not done since they landed at Durban. Bacon, milk, fresh bread, beef, and a quart of beer were served out for each man, and on these men and officers made a memorable meal; the latter producing the last bottles of wine and spirits that had been specially sent up to them from Maritzburg. And on that and the following day there were sports—lemon-cutting, tent pegging, races for the cavalry; athletic sports, tugs-of-war, mule and donkey races for the infantry. The drums and fifes played national airs, and the sailors bore their full share in the fun. As time went on the preparations for the next move advanced. None were more pleased at the prospect of active work again than the Colonial Volunteers, who had several times entreated to be allowed to get out and drive back the bands of plundering Boers, who were still wasting the farms and destroying the farmhouses and furniture of the loyalists.

On the 27th a small party of Captain Brookfield's scouts had been sent out to reconnoitre the windings and turnings of the Tugela to the east, to ascertain as far as possible what the Boer positions were on that side, and whether they had placed bodies of skirmishers on the south side of the river as they did opposite Fort Wylie. Included in the party, which was a hundred strong, was the Johannesburg section. When well away from the camp they were broken up into small parties, the better to escape the observation of the Boers on the Hlangwane and other heights. The instructions given by their commander were that they should take every advantage of ground to conceal their movements from the enemy, but where the ground near the river was level and fit for galloping they should dash across it, and, if not fired at, should skirt along the banks, mark if there were any tracks by which horses or cattle had at some time come down to the water, and observe if similar tracks were to be seen on the opposite bank, as this would show that, though possibly only in dry weather, the river was fordable there. Where the ground was too broken and rock-covered to permit of horses passing rapidly across it, they were to dismount and crawl down the river to make their observations.

Only a small portion of the troop had been engaged on this work, the main body were to keep along on the hills, maintaining a vigilant watch over the country to the south and east as well as that around them, as many