THE WAY THAT HE TOOK.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 18, 21 July 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE WAY THAT HE TOOK.

♦ ■ ■■ THE ENEMY DISCONTENTED. RECRIMINATIONS. HOW A TRAP WAS SET. THE NURSE'S WARNING. THE EOERS CHECKMATED. BY RUDYAKD KIPLING. (Copyright.) PART 11. The general's flag still flew before his unstruck tent, to amuse Boer binoculars, and local lying correspondents still telegraphed accounts of his daily work. But the general himself had gone north to ""Join an army in preparation a hundred miles away,, drawing off from -time to time every squudron, gun, and company that he dared. His last words covered the entire situation. "If you can bluff 'em till we can get round to tread on their tails it's all right. If you can't they'll probably eat you up. Hold 'em as long as you can." So the skeleton remains of the brigade lay close amciig the kopjes till the Boer, not seeing them in force on the skyline, feared they might have learned the rudiments of war. They rarely disclosed a gun, foi the reason that they had so few; they scouted by fours and fives instead of clattering troops and clattering companies, and when they saw a too obvious way opened to attack, they, lacking the force to drive it home, looked elsewhere. Great was the anger in the Boer commando across the river — the anger and unease. "The reason is they have so few men," loyal farmers reported, all fresh from selling melons to the camp and drinking the Queen's health in good whisky. "They have no horses— only what they call mounted infantry. They are afraid of us. They try to make us friends by giving us brandy. Come on and shoot them. Then you will see us rise and cut the line." "Yes, we know how you rise, you Bondsmen ? " said the Boer commandant above His pipe. "We know what has come to all your promises from Beaufort West, and even from De Aar. ,YVe do the work and you kneel down with your Predikante in your room and pray for our success. What good is that? The President has told you a hundred times that God is on our »ide. Why do you worry Him? We did not send you Mausers and ammunition for that." "We kept our commando-horses ready for six months— and forage is very dear. We tent all the young men," said an honoured member of the Bond. "A few here and a few servants there. What is that? You should have risen down to the sea altogether." "But you were »o quick. Why did you not wait the year? The Bond was not mdy, Jtitt," "That is a lie— all you Bondsmen lie. You want to iave your cattle end your farms. Walt till the Vierkieur flies from here to Fort Elizabeth, and you shall see •what you will save when the President learns how you have risen —you so clever Bondsmen." Among his own kind the Boer is phenomenally incontinent of tongue, and it is to jusl this sort of threat many times repeated by hasty commandants that we owe much of the largely advertised Dutch loyalty. As Van der Hooven of (Jradock, put it after Bloemfontein, when he attended the annexation meeting — "Our friends fought too soon and talked much too soon." 1 The saddle-coloured sons of the soil • looked down their noses. "Yes — it is true. Some of our farms are close to the line. They say at Worcester and in the Paarl that very many Rooineks are always coming in from the sea, One must think of that — at least till they are shot. But we know there are very few in front of you here. Give them what you gave the fools at Stormberg, and you will see how we can shoot rooineks." "Yes. I know that cow. She is always going to calve. ~et away. lam answerable to ihe President — not to the Bond." But the information stayed in liis mind, and, not being a student of military works, he made a plan to suit. The tall kopje on which the English had planted their helio station commanded the more or less open plain to the northward, but did not command the five-mile 1 belt of broken country between that and the outmost English pickets, some three miles from the camp. The Boers had established ' themselves very comfortably among thesa rock ridges and scrub- patches, aiid the great war in that particular quarter of Africa had drizzled down to long shots and longer stalking. The young bloods wanted rooineks to shoot, and said so. "See here," said the experienced Jan van Staden that evening to as many of the commando as cared' to listen. "You joungsters from the colony talk a lot. Go and turn the rcorneks out of their kopjes to-n:g}ii. Eh? Go and take their bayonets and Etick them into them. Eh 7 You don't go?" He laughed at the silence round the dung fire. "Jan — Jan," said a Bethulie man, appealingly, "Don't call us to make a mock of us." "I thought that was what you wanted so badly. No? Then listen to me. Behind us the grazing grows bad. We have too many cattle." (They were stolen from farmers who bad been heard to express fears of defeat.) "To-morrow, by the sky's look, it will blow a wind. Then to morrow early I shall send all the cattle north to the new veldt. That will make a great dust to rise from their helio • — yonder." He pointed to a twinkling night-lamp stabbing the darkness with orders to an outlying picket. (Time was when the Boer helio, worked by a German printseller from Johannesburg, ■would have joined in the talk with derision and obscenities, but the German had • foolishly got himself shot. ) "Then with the cattle go the women. Yes, all the women and the waggons that we can spare, and -the lame ponies, and the carfs we took from Anderson's farm. That will make a big dust — the dust of our retreat. Do you see?" They saw and approved. "Good. There are many men who want to go home to their wives. I shall let 30 go for a week.. Men who wish

to go will speak to me to-night." (This meant that Jan needed money, and furlough would be granted on strictly business lines.) "They will order the cattle and sco that they make a great dust for a long way. They will run about behind the cattle. So that, if the wind blows, will bo our retreat. The cattle will feed beyond Koopman's Kop." "No good water," growled a fanner who knew that section. "Better go on to Zwartpan. It is always sweet there." The commando discussed the point for twenty minutes. It was much more serious than shooting rooineks. Then Jan went on. "When they see our retreat they may all come into the kopjes together. If so, good. But I think it is tempting God to expect such favour. They will send i some men to scout." He grinned broadly, using the English word. "Almighty ! To scout! They have none of the new sort of rooinek that they used at Sunnyside." (Jan meant the incomprehensible animal from over the southern seas who played the game to kill.) "They have only some mounted infantry that was once a red-jacket regiment, so their scouts will all stand up to be 'shot at." "Good — good," .said a youngster .from Stellenbosoh, where they train parsons for the Dutch Reformed Church. He had come up on a free pass as an excursionist from Capetown just before the war to a farm on the border, where his aunt kept his horse and rifle. ' "But if you shoot those scouts I will sjambok you myself," said Jan amid a roar of laughter. "Wo must let them come all -into the kopjes to look for us, and I pray God will nob allow any of us to be tempted to shoot them. They will cross the drift in front of their camp. They will come along the road — bo." He imitated with ponderous arms the English stylo of riding. "They will trot up the road. They will follow the road this way and that way" — here he snaked his hard finger in the dust — between the kopjes till they come here where they can see the plain and our cattle going away. Then they will go back and tell the others. Then they will all come in close together. Perhaps they will even fix bayonets." "Urn ! We must not let them get so near as that," said a Vryheid man, who had assisted at a white-flag play on the Belmont side, and remembered the upshot. "Don't you be afraid. We shall keep behind the stones there and there." He pointed to two flat-topped kopjes, one on either side of the road, some 800 yards away. "That is our place. We go there before sunrise. Remember we must ba careful to let the last of them quite, pass before we shoot. They will come along a little careful at first. But we do not shoot. Then they will see our fires, and the fresh horse-dung, so they will know we have gone on. They will run together and talk and point and shout in this nice open place. Then we shoot from up above." "Yes, uncle, but if the scouts see nothing and there are no shots, and we let them go back quite quiet, they may think it was a trick. Perhaps the main body may never come at all. Even rooineks learn in time — and we shall lose even the scouts." "I have thought of that, too," said Jan with slow contempt, as the Stellenboseh boy delivered his shot. "If you had been my son I should have sjamboked you hard when you were a yoiwigster. I shall put you and four or five more on the nek where the road comes in from their camp into these kopjes. Go there before light. Let the scouts pass -in or I will sjambok you. When they come back after seeing nothing then you may shoot them but not till theyhave passed the nek and are on the straight road to their camp. Do you understand? Say what I have said, so I skill know." The youth obediently repeated his orders. "Kill the officer if you can. If not, no great matter, because they will run to the camp with the news that the kopjes are empty. Their helio-station will * see you trying to hold the nek so hard— and all that time they will see our dust yonder, and they will think we are escaping. They will be angry." "Yes, yes, uncle, we understand," from a dozen voices. "But this calf does not. Be silent ! They will shoot at you on the nek because they will think you are to cover our getting away. They will shell the nek. You will ride away. They "will come after you all hot and in a hurry — perhaps even with guns. They will pass our fires and the fresh horse-dung. They will come here as the scouts came. They will see the plain so full of dust. They will say, 'The scouts spoke true. It is a full retreat.' Then wo up here will shoot, and it will be Stormberg in the daytime. Do you understand?" '• Those of the commando directly interested lit their pipes and discussed the matter in detail until midnight. Next morning the operations began, if one may borrow from other despatche* — "with the precision of well-oiled machinery." The helio-station reported the dust of waggons, and the movements of armedmen in full flight across the plain beyond i the kopjes. The colonel, newly appointed from England by, reason of his seniori ity, to the charge of what had once been a brigade, sent forth a dozen mounted infantry under command of a captain. Till a month ago they had been drilled by a cavalry instructor, who taught them "shock" tactics to the music of cavalry trumpets. They know how to advance in echelon of squadrons, by cat's cradle of troop, in quarter-column of slablelitter, how to trot, co gallop, and above j all, to charge. The;.' know how to sit their Jiorse<? unremittingly, so that at the day's : end they might boast how many hours they had been in the saddle. They learned to loathe business of horse-hold-ing, at best a dreary job ; to make a butt of the third man, which, too, is' easily learned ; and they learned to rejoice in the clatter and stamp of a troop moving as such. Their horses learned even more quickly than the men to be unhappy when they were alone. In short, they were first-class mounted infantry of the early war pauern. They trotted out two and two along the farm road that trailed lazily through the driven dust across the half-dried ford, to a nick between low stony hills leading into the debatable land. (Vrooman of Emmaus, from his neatly-bushed hole, saw that one man carried a sporting Lee-Enfield rifle with a short foreend. Vrooman of Emmaus argued that he was an officer to be killed on his return, and went to sleep.) They saw nothing except a small flock of sheep and a kafifir herd, who spoke broken English with curious fluency. He had heaid Uiat the Boers had decided to go away on account of the number of their sick and wounded. The captain turned to look at the helio-station four miles away. "Hurry up," said the dazzling flash. "Retreat apparently continues, but suggest you make sure. Quick."

I "Ye-es," said the captain, v fahade bitterly, as he wiped the 6weat from a sun-skinned nose. "You want me <to come back and report all clear. If anything happens it will be my fault. If they get aAvay safely it's my fault again •for disregarding the signal. I love officers who suggest and advise, and want to make their blasted reputation in twenty minutes." "Don't see much 'ere sir," said the sergeant, scanning the bare cup of the hollow, where a dust devil danced alone. "No. We'll go on." "If we get among these steep 'ills we lose touch with the 'elio." "Very likely. Trot." The rounded mounds grew to spiked kopjes, heartbreaking to climb under a hot sun at 5000 ft above the sea. This is where the scouts found their spurs peculiarly useful. Jan van Staden had thoughtfully allowed them a front of two rifle-shots or 5000 yards, and they, kept 1000 yards within his estimate. Ten men strung over three miles feel that they have explored the round earth. They saw stony slopes combing over in scrub, narrqw valleys clothed with stone, low ridges of splintered stone and tufts of brittle-stemmed bush. The wind, split up by many barriers, cuffed them over the ears and slapped them in the face at every turn. They came upon «n abandoned camp fire, a little fresh horsedung, an empty ammunition box splintered for firewood, an old boot, and a stale bandage streaked with dirty red. A few hundred yards further along the road a battered Mauser had been thrown into a bush. The glimmer of the barrel drew the scouits from the hill-side, for here the road, after passing between two • flat-topped kopjes, entered a valley nearly half a mile wide, rose slightly, and over the nek of a ridge gave a clear view across the windy plain. "They're on tne dead run, for sure," said a trooper. ""Here's their fire and their litter and their guns, and that's where they're bolting to." He pointed over the ridge to the bellying dust cloud la mile long. A vulture high overhead flickered down, steadied herself, and hung motionless. "See," said Jan van Staden. "It comes like a well-oiled wheel. They look where they need not look, but hero where they should look on both sides they look at our retreat — straight before them. It is tempting the burghers." "That's about it," said the captain rubbing the dust from his binoculars, ■•'ihe Little Man has cut their line. north, and they're on the run. We'll get back and tell the camp." He wheeled his pony, and his eye traversed the top of a flat-topped kopje commanding the road. The stones at its edge seemed to be piled with less than nature's carelessness. ."A dashed ugly place if it were occupied — and that other one, too. They aren't 800 yards from the road, either of them. Hold on, sergeant. I'll light a pipe." He bent over the bowl, and above the lighted match squinted up at the kopje. A stone, a small, roundish brown boulder, at the Up, waa moving slowly. The short hairs of his neck grated his collar. "I'll have another squint at their retreat," he cried to the sergeant, astonished at the steadfastness of his voice. He swept the plain, and, wheeling, let the glass rest for a moment on the kopjeje top. One cranny between the rocks was pinkish where the sky should have shown. His men dotted the hollow, sat heavily on their horses — for it never occurred to them to dismount. He could hear the squeak of the leather as a man shifted. An impatient gust blew through tho valley and rattled the bushes. On all sides stood the expeot&nt hills under the pale remote blue. "And we passed within four Hundred yards of 'em. We're done I" The thumping heart slowed down and he began to thmk ' clearly—so clearly that the thoughts seemed concrete things. "It's Pretoria, or the other place for us. Perheps the man's only a look-out, though. We'll have to bolt! And I led 'em into it ! . . . ." "You fool," said the other self, above the blood and heat in his ear-drums. "If one man could snipe you all from up there, why hasn't he done it already V Because you're the bait for the rest of the attack. They don't want you now. You're to go back and bring tho others to b& killed. Go back. Don't detach a man or they'll suspect. Go back altogether. Tell the sergeant you're going. Some of them there will understand English. Tell it aloud. Then back you go with the news — the real news." "The country's all clear, sergeant," he shouted. "We'll go back and bring up the others." With an idiotic giggle he added, "It's a good road for guns, don't you think?" "Hear you that?" said Jan van Sladt, gripping a burgher's arm. "God is on our side to-day. They will bring the guns." "We'll go easy. No good bucketing the horses to pieces. We'll want them for the pursuit later," said the captain. "Wot's 'c shoutin' at us that Vay for?" said a private. j "HuHo, there's a vulture ! How far would you make, that, sergeant?" "Can't tell, with a straight over'ead shot, sir, in this dry air?" "Gawd ! Ain't he seen enough stinkin' aasvogels in this country to leave 'em alone. Blowed if 'c ain't unstrappin' 's bLnos to squint at it. 'E's got a touch o' fever, 'c 'a<3 !" The bird swooped towards the second flat-topped kopje, but suddenly shivered sideways through the air and wheeled off again, followed intently by the captain's glass. "And that's simply full of 'em," he said, flusiiing. "A buck drive wouldn't be in it. Pcrfecty confident, they afce, that we'd take this road — arsd they'd Stormberg the whole boiling. The filthy insole-ace of it. They'll let us through to fetch up the others. What swine ! But I musn't let 'em think we know. By Jove, they can't think much of us !" The cunning of the trap did not impress him till later. Down the winding track jolted a> dozin men, langhing and talking— a mark to make a pious burgher's mouth water. Thrice had their captain explicitly said that they were to march easy ; so a trooper began to hum a line that he had picked up in Capetown streets: — Vnt jou goet en trek, Ferreira, Vnt jou {fuet en ti-oit, Jnniiio mot de hoepel bein, Ferreira, Jainiio mot de hoepel beiu! Then, with a whistle — Zwaor drua— nl en de o!n Knnt! The captain thinking furiously, found his mind suddenly turning to a camp in the Karroo, monj-hs ago ; an engine that halted in that waste, and a woman Avith brown hair, early grizzled— an extraordinary woman. Yes, but as soon as they* had dropped the flat-topped kopje behind its neighbour he must hurry back and report. A woman with gvoy eyes and black eyelashes — the Boers would probably be massed at those two kopjes. How soon dare he break into a canter? — A woman with a aueer cadence in her

speech. It not more than five miles home by the straight road. "Even when we wore children wo learned not to go back by the way we had come." The sentence returned to him, selfshouted, so clearly that he stared to sea if the scoute had heard. Tho two flattopped kopjes behind him were covered by a long ridge. The camp lay duo' south. He had only to follow the road to the nek — a notch, unscouted as he recalled it now, between two hills. He wheeled his command west up a valley. "Excuse me, sir, that ain't the road," said the sergeant. "Once we get over this rise, straight on, we come into direct touch with the 'clio, on that flat bit o' road where they 'elioed us going out." "But we can't get in touch with them. Come along, and come quick!" "What the 'ell's the ineanin' o' this?" said a trooper in the rear. "What's 'c doin' this detour for'/ We shan't get in for hours an 1 hours. S'welp me, I'll 'aye to draw on my e-mergency ration." "Come on, men. Flog a canter out of your brutes somehow," the captain called back. -"-^ For two 'throat-parching" hours he held west by south,- -puzzling ovefc a compass already demented by the ironstone in the hills, and then turned south-east through an eruption of low hills that ran far into the re-entering bend of the river that circled the left bank of the camp. Eight miles to eastward the student from Stellenbosch lay out on the rocks to expound hi 9 gospel. "Jan is a clever man," he said to his companion, "but he does not think that even rooineks may learn. Perhaps these scouts will have seen Jan's commando, and perhaps Avfll come back to warn the rooineks. That is why I think we must shoot them before they come to the nek and make quite sure that no one gets away. It will make the English more angry, and they will come out across the open in hundreds to be shot. Then, when we run away, they will run after us without thinking. If yom can make the English hurry they never think." "Lie down and pray to God you have not shown yourself to their helio-sta-tion," growled Vrooman of Emmaus. "You throw your arms and you kick your I legs like a rooinek. When we get' back i I. will tell Jan, and he will sjambok you. I shall shoot the captain with the gun ; but we must let the men go away to carry the news." '"Ere's a rummy picnic. We left camp, like as it were, by the front door, an' now we're comin' in by the backdoor. 'E'a given us a giddy-go-round, an' no mistake," said a dripping private as he dismounted behind the infantry lines. "Did you see our helio?" This was the colonel in charge, hot from racing down the helio-kopje. "There were a lot of Boers wailing for you on the nek. We saw 'cm. We tried to get at you with the helio and tell you we were coming out to help you. Then' we saw you didn't come over that flat bit of road where we had signalled you going out, and we wondered why. Wo didn't hear any shots." "I turned off, sir, and came in by another road," said the captain, full of his report. "By another road 1" The colonel lifted his eyebrows. -v*aaps you're not aware, sir, that the Boers have been in full retreat for the last three hours, and that those men on the nek were simply a rearguard put on to delay us for a, little. We could see that much from here. Your duty, sir, was to have tak&n them in the rear, and we could have brushed them aside. Tha Boer retreat has boon going on all the morning, sirall tho morning. You were despatohed to see the front dear and to return at once. The whole camp has been imder arms for three hours, and instead of doing your work you wander about Africa with your scouts to avoid a handful of skulking Boers. You should have sent a man back at onee — you should have " The captain got off his horse stiffly. "As a matter of fact," said he, I didn't know there were any Boers on the nek — but I do know the kopjes beyond are simply crawling with 'em." "Nonsense. We can see 'em retreating." "Of course you can. That's part of their game, sir. I saw 'em lying up on tho- top of a couple of kopjes commanding the road, where it goes into the. plain on the far side. They let us come in to see, and they let us go out to report the country clear and bring you up. The whole thing is a draw." "D'you expsct an officer of my experience to believe that?" "As you please, sir," said the captain hopelessly. "My responsibility ends with my report."