Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1432 page)
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Authors: SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Our railway engineers are great. The train was in Brandfort next day, in spite of broken bridges, smashed culverts, twisted metals, every sort of wrecking. So now we are ready for another twenty miles Pretoria-wards. The Vet River is our goal this time, and off we go with the early morning.
Another great green plain, with dotted farms and the huge khaki column slowly spreading across it. The day was hot, and ten miles out the Guards had about enough. Stragglers lay thick among the grass, but the companies kept their double line formation, and plodded steadily along. Ten miles sounds very little, but try it in the dust of a column on a hot day, with a rifle over your shoulder, a hundred rounds of ammunition, a blanket, a canteen, an empty water-bottle, and a dry tongue.
A grey-bearded padre limped bravely beside his men.
“No, no,” says he, when offered a horse. “I must not spoil my record.”
The men are silent on the march; no band, no singing. Grim and sullen, the column flows across the veldt. Officers and men are short in their temper?
“Why don’t you,” etc., etc., bleats a subaltern.
“Because I never can hear what you say,” says the corporal.
They halt for a mid-day rest, and it seems to me, as I move among them, that there is too much nagging on the part of officers. We have paid too much attention to the German military methods. Our true model should have been the American, for it is what was evolved by the Anglo-Celtic race in the greatest experience of war which the Anglo-Celtic race has ever had.
On we go again over the great plain. Is there anything waiting for us down yonder where the low kopjes lie? The Boers have always held rivers. They held the Modder. They held the Tugela. Will they hold the Vet? Halloa, what’s this?
A startled man in a nightcap on a dapple-grey horse. He gesticulates. “Fifty of them — hot corner — captain shot — lost my helmet.” We catch bits of his talk. But what’s that on the dapple-grey’s side? The horse is shot through the body. He grazes quietly, with black streaks running down the reeking hair.
“A West Australian, sir. They shot turble bad, for we were within fifty yards before they loosed off.”
“Which kopje?”
“That one over yonder.”
We gallop forward, and pass through the open ranks of the Guards’ skirmishers. Behind us the two huge naval guns are coming majestically up, drawn by their thirty oxen, like great hock-bottles on wheels. In front a battery has unlimbered. We ride up to the side of it. Away in front lies a small, slate-roofed farm, beside the kopje. The Mounted Infantry have coalesced into one body, and are moving towards us. “Here’s the circus. There is going to be a battle,” was an infantry phrase in the American war. Our circus was coming in, and perhaps the other would follow.
The battery (84th R.F.A.) settles down to its work.
Bang! I saw the shell burst on a hillside far away. “
The game seems to us rather one-sided, but who is that shooting in the distance?
“Wheeeeee” — what a hungry whine, and then a dull, muffled “Ooof!” Up goes half a cartload of earth about a hundred yards ahead of the battery, The gunners take as much notice as if it were a potato.
“Wheeeeeee — oof!” Fifty yards in front this time.
“Bang! Bang!” go the crisp English guns.
“Wheeeeeee — oof!” fifty yards behind the battery. They’ll get it next time as sure as fate. Gunners go on unconcernedly.
“Wheeeeee — oof!” Right between the guns, by George! Two guns invisible for the dust. Good heavens, how many of our gunners are left? Dust settles, and they are all bending and straining and pulling the same as ever.
Another shell, and another, and then a variety, for there comes a shell which breaks high up in the air — wheeeeee — bang — with a musical resonant note, like the snapping, of a huge banjo-string, and a quarter of an acre of ground spurted into little dustclouds under the shrapnel. The gunners take no interest in it. Percussion or shrapnel, fire what you will, you must knock the gun off its wheels or the man off his pins before you settle the R.F.A. But every shell is bursting true, and it is mere luck that half the battery are not down. Once only did I see a man throw back his head a few inches as a shell burst before him. The others might have been parts of an automatic machine. But the officer decided to shift the guns — and they are shifted. They trot away for half a mile to the right, and come into action again. Good old 84th Battery! Nothing the matter with it.
The lonely hero is the man to be admired. It is easy to be collectively brave. A. man with any sense of proportion feels himself to be such a mite in the presence of the making of history that his own individual welfare seems for the moment too insignificant to think of. The unit is lost in the mass. But now we find ourselves alone on the plain with the battery away to the right. The nerves of the novice are strung up by the sound of the shells, but there is something of exhilaration in the feeling.
There is a fence about two hundred yards off, and to this we tether our horses, and we walk up and down, trying with our glasses to spot where the Boer guns are. We have suspicions, but nothing more. Our gunners may know, but we do not feel confident about it. Surely the stealthy, lurking gun is worth six guns which stand bravely forth in the open. These farmers have taught our riflemen their business, and they bid fair to alter the artillery systems of the world as well. Our guns and theirs are like a fight between a blind man and one who can see.
An artillery colonel is wandering loose, and we talk. He has no job of his own so he comes, like the coachman on a holiday, to watch some other man’s guns at work. A shell falls some distance short of us.
“The next one,” says the colonel, will go over our heads. Come and stand over here.” I do so, with many mental reservations. Wheeeeeeee —
“Here it comes!” says the colonel. “Here I go!” think I. It burst on our level, but forty yards to the right. I secure a piece as a souvenir.
“Shall we wait for another?” I began to be sorry that I met the colonel.
But a new sensation breaks upon us. Looking back, we see that the two monster naval guns are coming into action not fifty yards off our tethered horses, which stand in a dead line before their huge muzzles. We only just got them clear in time. Bang! The father of all the bangs this time, and a pillar of white smoke with a black heart to it on the farther hill. I can see some riders, like ants, going across it — Boers on the trek. Our men take the huge brass cartridge-case out of the gun.
“Can I have that?”
“Certainly,” says the lieutenant. I tie it on to my saddle, and feel apologetic towards my long-suffering horse. The great gun roars and roars, and the malignant spouts of smoke rise on the farthest hill.
A line of infantry in very open order comes past the great guns, and I advance a little way with them. They are Scots Guards. The first line goes forward, the second is halted and lying down.
“That’s right! Show where you are!” cries the second line, derisively. I seem to have missed the point, but the young officer in the first line is very angry.
“Hold your tongues!” he shouts, with his red face looking over his shoulder. “Too many orders. No one gives orders but me.” His men lie down. The sun is sinking low, and it is evident that the contemplated infantry assault would not come off. One of the great naval shells passes high over our heads. It is the sound of a distant train in a tunnel.
A man canters past with a stretcher over his shoulder. His bay horse lollops along, but the stretcher makes him look very top-heavy. He passes the guns and the infantry, and rides on along the edge of a maize field. He is half a mile out now, heading for the kopje. Every instant I expect to see him drop from his horse. Then he vanishes in a dip of the ground.
After a time the stretcher appears again. This time two men are carrying it, and the horseman rides beside. I have bandages in my pocket, so I ride forward also.
“Has a surgeon seen him?”
“No, sir.” They lay the man down. There is a handkerchief over his face.
“Where is it?”
“His stomach and his arm.” Pull up his shirt, and there is the Mauser bullet lying obvious, under the skin. It has gone round instead of penetrating. A slit with a penknife would extract it, but that had better be left for chloroform and the field hospital. Nice, clean wound in the arm.
“You will do very well. What is your name?”
“Private Smith, sir. New Zealander.” I mention my name and the Langman Hospital at Bloemfontein.
“I have read your books,” says he, and is carried onwards.
There has been a lull in the firing, and the sun is very low. Then after a long interval comes a last Boer shell. It is an obvious insult, aimed at nothing, a derisive good-night and good-bye. The two naval guns put up their long necks, and both roared together. It was the last word of the Empire — the mighty angry voice calling over the veldt. The red rim had sunk, and all was purple and crimson, with the white moon high, in the west. What had happened? Who had won? Were other columns engaged? No one knew anything or seemed to care. But late at night, as I lay under the stars, I saw far on the left front signal flashes from the river, and I knew that Hutton was there.
So it proved, for in the morning it was over the camp in an instant that the enemy had gone. But the troops were early afoot. Long before dawn came the weird, muffled tapping of the drums and the crackling of sticks as the camp-kettles were heated for breakfast. Then with the first light we saw a strange sight. A monstrous blister was rising slowly from the veldt. It was the balloon being inflated — our answer to the lurking guns. We would throw away no chances now, but play every card in our hand — another lesson which the war has driven into our proud hearts. We climbed the kopjes where the enemy had crouched, and saw the litter of empty Mauser cases and the sangars so cunningly built. Among the stones lay a packet of the venomous-looking green cartridges still unfired. They talk of poison, but I doubt it. Verdigris would be an antiseptic rather than a poison in a wound. It is more likely that it is some decomposition of the wax in which the bullets are dipped. Brother Boer is not a bushman, after all. He is a tough, stubborn fighter, who plays a close game, but does not cheat.
We say good-bye to the army, for our duty lies beyond us, and theirs in front. For them the bullets, for us the microbes, and both for the honour of the flag. Scattered trails of waggons, ambulance carts, private buggies, impediments of a11 kinds, radiate out from the army. It is a bad drift, and it will be nightfall before they are all over. We pass the last of them, and it seems strange to emerge from that great concourse and see the twenty miles of broad, lonely plain which lies between us and Brandfort. We shall look rather foolish if any Boer horsemen are hanging about the skirts of the army.
We passed the battlefield of last night, and stopped to examine the holes made by the shells. Three had fallen within ten yards, but the ant-heaps round had not been struck, showing how harmless the most severe shell fire must be to prostrate infantry. From the rifling marks in the clay the shells were large ones — forty-pounders, in all probability. In a little heap lay the complete kit of a guardsman — his canteen, waterbottle, cup, even his puttees. He had stripped for action, with a vengeance. Poor devil, how uncomfortable he must be today!
A Kaffir on horseback is rounding up horses on the plain. He gallops towards us — a picturesque, black figure on his shaggy Basuto mount. He waves his hand excitedly towards the east. “Englishman there — on veldt — hurt — Dutchman shoot him.” He delivers his message clearly enough.
“Is he alive?” He nods.
“When did you see him?” He points to the sun and then farther east. About two hours ago apparently.
“Can you take us there?” We buy him for two shillings, and all canter off together.
Our road is through maize fields, and then out on to the veldt. By jove, what’s that? There
is
a single black motionless figure in the middle of that clearing. We gallop up and spring from our horses. A short, muscular, dark man is lying there with a yellow, waxen face, and a blood clot over his mouth. A handsome man, black-haired, black-moustached, his expression serene. No.410 New South Wales Mounted Infantry — shot, overlooked, and abandoned. There are evident signs that he was not alive when the Kaffir saw him. Rifle and horse are gone. His watch lies in front of him, dial upwards, run down at one in the morning. Poor chap, he had counted the hours until he could see them no longer. We examine him for injuries. Obviously he had bled to death. There is a horrible wound in his stomach. His arm is shot through. Beside him lies his water-bottle — a little water still in it, so he was not tortured by thirst. And here is a singular point. On the water-bottle is balanced a red chess pawn. Has he died playing with it? It looks like it. Where are the other chessmen? We find them in a haversack out of his reach. A singular trooper this, who carries chessmen on a campaign. Or is it loot from a farmhouse? I shrewdly suspect it.
We collect the poor little effects of No. 410 — a bandolier, a stylographic pen, a silk handkerchief, a clasp-knife, a Waterbury watch, two pounds six-and-sixpence in a frayed purse. Then we lift him, our hands sticky with his Wood, and get him over my saddle — horrible to see how the flies swarm instantly on to the saddle-flaps. His head hangs down on one side and his heels on the other. We lead the horse, and when from time to time he gives a horrid dive we clutch at his ankles. Thank Heaven, he never fell. It is two miles to the road, and there we lay our burden under a telegraph post. A convoy is coming up, and we can ask them to give him a decent burial. No.410 holds one rigid arm and clenched fist in the air. We lower it, but up it springs, menacing, aggressive. I put his mantle over him; but still, as we look back, we see the projection of that raised arm. So he met his end — somebody’s boy. Fair fight, open air, and a great cause — I know no better death.