PICTURES FROM SOUTH AFRICA

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1511, 14 February 1901, Page 11

PICTURES FROM SOUTH AFRICA

ENTERIC.

(By Charles E. Hands.)

It was at Paardeberg that I bad the luck first to meet my major. Cronje bad .surrendered, there were no other Boers immediately available, stores had to be accumulated in preparation for the next advance, and the cooked, cavalry mounts bad to be rested and fed back to life. There was no likelihood of anytmug happening for a. week or two, so I rode over to Kimberley to buy horses. It was a. tiring ride, for the rain clouds burst ; the track, where there wa.s one, became a rushing river, the firm veldt became a sloppy mud flat, and the loose sand became a sticky, cloggy, mortar mixture which held the horses’ feet- like flypaper. A tiring, back-aching, tedious soaking_ and steaming thirty miles ride. And. Kimberley, at the end of it, wa.s not a very reposeful place, and horse-buying was a worrying, anxious, tiring business. Then, .half-way back the storm broke again, and the last fifteen miles, covered at a dispiriting walk, seemed to stretch out to a hundred, Paardeberg mountain, where the rain did not hide it altogether, seemed to come no nearer ; and when at last we rounded the shoulder of it and came to the drift, the Modeler River wa.s uncrossable. It had been swollen when we crossed it on the outward journey; but at that time there was a boat working on a taut rope stretched from bank to bank, so that it was possible to ferry over cl it clothed and dry saddled, towing the swimming horses alongside. MISERY. But now the punt had. gone somewhere up the river, no one quite knew where, and crossing without its assistance was practically out of the question. The rain-swollen river, confined between its precipitous mud banks, w*s rushing down in such a volume and at such a galloping pace that no swimming horse could have made the narrow break m the steep bank opposite, where was the only possible landing-place. We tried higher up, but with no luck: the river was impassable. On the other side, where the camp lay, was forage and food, blankets and shelter; everything that worn men and horses needed. And a bit of an insignificant river, which we had crossed a dozen times and in which a few days before there had been barely bathing water, was now an angry, impassable obstacle. We stood and. looked at it at a spot where a few hours before a sort of punt had been washed away, and said things which did not alter the situation. The newly-purcnased horses, which had been accustomed to the luxury of Kimberley in siege time, shivered and gloomily pondered the misfortunes which the relief of the town had brought them. And the stench of Cronje’s laager put the sickening climax on our misery. We off-saddled and the darkness came down, the storm settled into a steady, soaking, dispiriting drizzle, and I went hopelessly off in search of somebody connected with the commissariat of the Ninth Division, which was still lying on that side of the river. After I had waded for an hour through flood and mud, and had slipped into a donga in the darkness, I found an Army Service Corps detachment a f- work under a bit of tarpaulin stretched between two waggons, and asked to be allowed to draw rations. A BIG MAN LAUGHING. The officer in charge wa.s willing to help me, and generously offered me a piece of his own biscuit; but he had no authority. “You had better go and see the major,” said he. And where could I find the major ? “Over there,” he said, “close to the river bank in his bivouac, and if you bear a big man laughing like the devil, that’s the major.” I pushed my aches and hunger through the. swamp in the direction of the river, and just when I had lost myself in the darkness, I heard, sure enough, a great ringing, healthy, hearty English laugn. I steered for it, and came to a sort of jury-rigged canvas shelter, through the flap of which came the light of a. candlelantern.

Inside, with another officer, ivas the major. A big, strapping, bright-faced young-looking fellow, with a. knitted woollen cap set jovially back on his

curly head: he wa.s sitting on a little empty wooden box with bis legs spread wide so a..* to keep his feet clear of a puddle that had formed in the middle of the tent. The rain was rattling on the canvas and the flaps were cracking with the wind, but you could not hear either for the happy roar of his laughter. He was engaged in cleaning out the intterior of a sizable sort of bird. "Come in,” he said, cheerily. "I don’t know that its much drier in here than out, but come in. And what can I. do for you. I told him. FAGGED AND WET AND COLD. “Is that all? Why, of course. Rations! Certainly. Afraid you'll have to be satisfied with half-biscuit, though. Won't mind, will you? It’s all we’re getting. A feed for the horses! Weil, we’ll see if we can’t manage it. I'll walk over with you to the waggon in a moment. Come in and si: down. Mind ths puddle. Sit on that empty box. Yeti’ve got enough mud on your breeches to make an estate at home. Why, you are -shivering! Fagged and wet and cold? Yes, and you’re about nicely cooked, toe —clone to a turn, that’s what is the matter with you. Put this greatcoat round you. And here, this is what will do 'you good.” He dived into the great-coat pocket and produced a small bottle half-full of something. “We’ve no whisky,” he explained; “forgotten almost what it tastes like; but this is,rum—ration rum —the very stuff for you,” And he poured into a tin cup about half of the contents of the bottle.

“Drink it off,” he said, “that will warm you. We’ll keep the rest till later. Come, off with it.” The great-coat warmed me, the rum warmed me, but his cheerful spirits warmed me most of all, and in a few minutes I had almost forgotten ray miseries. He took me over to the wageron, provided a feed for my horses, helped me to draw my rations, and arranged with some of his men to look after the man who was with me. OF THE STRAND. “'Now then,” he said, “where are you going to eat and sleep ? By the horses! Not a. bit of it. The horses will be all right where they are. I’ll tell you what we will do. When you have, seen your horses all right for the night, you find your way back to my wigwam; we’ll have your ration carried over there, and we’ll have a joint meal. We’ve got something. Did you see that bird? It’s a korrhaan. Shot him myself tins afternoon, and I’ve got something else, too. It will be cooked by the time you are through, and we’ll have a dinner that we wouldn’t swap for Simpson’s in the Strand.” Well, when I had .seen the horses all right, the drizzle fortunately developed into a thunderstorm, and the lightning made it easy to find the way, i went back to the tent, and there was ready the most glorious dinner jjia-t ever hungry men sat down to. There were biscuits, there wa.s coffee, there wa.s bully beef, there was the korrhaan cooked to a turn, a most gloriously big-breasted bird, and there was the something else of which the major had darkly hinteu —a piece of springbok—the most toothsome meat that ever was eaten. And there wa.s a little bit of cheese, and there was actually a pot of jam. It was a banquet. I was not i ll m .Y best form as a trencherman, but the major talked all through man, bin the major talked all through dinner—the most cheerful talker. Rain and mud and discomfort were nothing to him. What did he care how much it rained when the climate in the Free State was so glorious. And there was never such a country for sport. He had shot the korrhaan that afternoon and the springbok the day before. Evray afternoon, when he could manage it, be went out and always got something. He had managed to bring along a sporting rifle and shot-gun, and he wa.s supplying the general with no end of game. Cartridges were rather scarce, that was the worst if it. He could not afford to let himself take more than three cartrides out with him when he went shooting. But he had commandeered a capital little shooting pony that made every cartridge a certain kill. And wnat did he care about half rations when there was food to be had for the fetching. Tobacco was the greatest difficulty, and fortunately I had brought plenty of cigarettes from Kimberley. THE HAPPY HUNTER. So we had a very cheerful evening, and the major made me sleep in his tent and insisted on my occupying the driest corner of it. He had made the tent himself out of some canvas he found in Oronje’s laager and some bits of broken waggons. And he vowed that he wouldn’t change it_ for a house. He made me have his great-coat, and we had each a. little nip of the rum, and I slept the sleep of the well-fed. and weary, and in the morning the sun came out, and my wet clothes dried capitally on a bush A and, after a. gorgeous breakfast, I discovered a way of getting my horses across the river. “You know,” said my friend, when I was saying what I had to say at parting, “you came to the right shop, but you only came just in time. You’d had about enough of it, you know, yesterday. And you take my advice, try and raise a * shot-gun somewhere. You can be as happy a,s a grig in this country with a shot-gun.”

I could not have felt more grateful to him for the .shelter and good cheer he gave if lie had saved my life. And I am not sure that he didn’t. . It was months, before I saw my-major again. One day at Deelfcntein Hospital, I was taking my first lesson in the art of walking on one leg with a pair of es'ANOTHER PICTURE. Huddled up in rugs in a chair outside one of the huts was a cadaverous man with pale, hollow cheeks ana great staring wild eyes, and an ivy growtn of straggling black beard. “Hullo!” he said, huskily and .faintly, as I came hobblin'- by, and then with the effort, of speaking broke out in a paroxysm of the most awful graveyard coughing. An attendant ran up anil held him up in his chair until the coughing was over. Then he looked despairingly at me with his great haggard eyes, and said anxiously in a hollow whisper, “Don’t you know me? Don’t you remember —one day at Paardeberg—l gave you some dinner?” And he looked at me with the piteous look of a hopeless drowning mail. It was my major, my stalwart, lighthearted, resourceful, breezy major. Fifty years older and another man. Not a scrap left of his cheerful nature, not a ray of hope left in his spirit. Between frightening fits of coughing he told me. Enteric —a relapse, and then pneumonia—he did not think he would ever get alive out- of this country of misery. He was carried into the ward soon, limp and exhausted with coughing and the effort of talking. I heard about him after that. My breezy, big, buoyant-hearted major had been the terror of his ward, the nightmare of the doctors and nurses, a peevish, grumbling, querulous patient whom it was impossible to plea.se or satisfy. His gloomy spirits darkened ins ward, he had not a. spark of hope or ambition or interest in life left. I do not know much about enteric fever; but it seemed to me as though those terrible germs, after they had ravaged the blood and oody of a man, may go on to lay waste his soul. His constitution and wonderful Dee!fontein pulled him through, in spite of himself, and as he grew stronger gleams of the old spirit began to appear. ’ I hope the original man has by now reappeared,. the original bright, hearty, generous major, my major of Paardeberg. But it is a terrible and awful fever which we call enteric.