PICTURES FROM SOUTH AFRICA

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4292, 27 February 1901, Page 2

PICTURES FROM SOUTH AFRICA

ENTERIC. (By Charles E. Hands.) It was at Paardeberg that I had the luck first to meet my major. Cronje had surrendered, there were no other Boers immediately available, stores had to be accumulated in preparation lor the next- advance, and the cooked cavalry mounts had to be rested and fed back to life. There was no likelihood of an}'thing happening for a week or two, so I rode over to Kimberley to buy horses. It was a tiring vide, for the rain clouds burst; the track, whore there was one, became a rushing river, the firm veluc became a .sloppy mud’ flat, and the loose sand became a sticky, cloggy, mortar mixture which held the horses’ feet like flypaper. A .tiring, hack-aching, tedious soaking and steaming thirty miles ride. And Kimberley, at the end of it, was 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 mounthin, 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 Moddcr River was 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 dry clothed and dry saddled, towing the swimming horses alongside. MISERY. But now the punt had gone somewhere up tiro 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, ivas rushing down in suoh a volume and at such a galloping pace that no swimming horse could have made the narrow- break in the steep bank opposite, where was the only possible landing-place. We tried higher up, bub with no luck; the river was impassable. On the other side, w-hero 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-purcaasod 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. Wo oft-saddled and the darkness came down, the storm settled into a steady, soaking, dispiriting drizzle, and I wont hopelessly off in search of somebody connected with the commissariat of the Ninth Division, which was still lying, on that side of the liver. 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 afc work under a bit of tarpaulin stretched between two waggons, and asked to be allowed to draw rations. A BIG M.-\N LAUGHING. The officer -in charge was_ 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 hear 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 laugh. 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, was tlxo major. A big, strapping, bright-faced young-looking fellow, with a knitted woollen cap set jovially back on. his curly head; ho was sitting on a little empty wooden box with his legs spread wide so a s to keep his feet clear of a puddle that had formed in th© middle of the tent. Tire 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 interior 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! Well, we’ll see if we can’t manage it. I’ll walk over with you to the waggon in a moment. Come in and sis down. Mind the puddle. Sib on that empty box. You’ve got enough mud on your breeches to make an estate at home. Why, you are shivering! Fagged and wot and cold? Yes, and you’re about nicely cooked, too —done 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; hut 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, hut his cheerful spirits warmed mo most of all, and in a few minutes I had almost forgotten my miseries. He took me over to the waggon, 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 &aid, “where are you to ins- to eat and sleep ? By the horses 1 Not a hit of it. The horses will he si! sight 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 P It’s a korrhaan. Shot him. myself this 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 that ever hungry men sat down to.

There were biscuits, there was coffee, there w-as bully beef, there was the korrliaan cooked to a turn, a most gloriously big-breasted bird, and there was the something else of which the major bad darkly hinted—a piece of springbok —the most toothsome meat that ever teas cateiu And there was a little bit of cheese, and there was actually a pot ol jam. It was a banquet.

I was not in my best form as a trencherman, but the major talked all tlirougli man, but the major talked all through dinner—the most cheerful talker. Rain and mud and discomfort were nothing to him. What did he care bow much it rained when the climate in the Free State was so glorious. And there was never such a country for sport. Ho had .shot the korrhaan that afternoon and the springbok the day before. Every afternoon, when he could manage it, he went out and always got something. He had managed to bring along a sporting rifle and shot-gun, and be was supplying tho general with no end of game. Cartridges were rather scarce, t hat was the worst if it. He could not afford to let himself -take more than three cartrides out with him when he wont shooting. But ho had commandeered a capital little shooting pony that made every cartridge a. certain kill. And wiiat did he care about half rations when there was food to bo had for the fetching. Tobacco was the greatest difficulty, and fortunately I bad brought plenty of cigarettes from Kimberley. THE HAPPY HUNTER.

So we had a very cheerful evening, and the major made me sleep in bis tout and insisted on my occupying the. driest corner of it. Ho had made the tent himself out of some canvas lie found in Cronje’s laager and some bits of broken waggons. And he vowed that ho wouldn’t change it for a house- Ho 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 tho morning the sun came out, and my wet clothes dried capitally- on a bush, 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 1 a shot-gun somewhere. You can be as happy as a grig in this country with a shot-gun.” I could not have felt more grateful to him for the shelter and good he gave if ho had saved my life. And I am not sure that ho dirfi'* It was months before I saw mv ; again. One day at Deelfontein liospiv*: . was taking my first lesson in the art a walking ou one leg with a pair of crutu eb ‘ ANOTHER PICTURE. Huddled up in rugs in a chair outside one of the huts was a cadaverous man with pale, hollow cheejts ana great staring wild eyes, and ftn, ivy growth of straggling black beard. “Hullo!” he said, huskily and faintly, as I came hobbling by, and then with the effort of speaking broke out in a paroxysm of the most awful graveyard coughing. An attendant van up and 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 re-member—-one day at Paardeberg—l gave you some dinner?” And he looked at me with the piteous look of a hopeless drowning man.

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 ho 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 tho effort of talking. I heard about liim after that. My breezy, big, buoyant-hearted major had been tho terror of Ms ward, the nightmare of th© doctors and nurses, a peevish, grumbling, querulous patient whom it was impossible to please or satisfy. His gloomy spirits darkened his ward, he had not a spark of hope or ambition or interest in life left. I do not know much about enteri* fever; but it seemed to mo as though those terrible germs, after they had ravaged the blood and body of a man, may go on to lay waste his soul.

His constitution and wonderful Deelfonteiu 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 wo call enteric.