AN ECHO OF THE MATABELE WAR.

Otago Witness, Issue 3019, 24 January 1912, Page 83

AN ECHO OF THE MATABELE WAR.

LITTLE DILLOX,

By Frederick Russell Burnham, the Famous Guide, in the New York Herald.

‘‘l first met ‘Little Dillon’ in 189.5. There was a party of us tracking north through Mashonaland, with 100 waggons, towards Victoria. Victoria is 600 miles north of Johannesburg, and at that time it was also 500 miles from the nearest railroad, which ended at Johan-

nesburg. “Someone —I don’t remember who—brought us a rumour that the Matabeles had risen and were attacking Victoria. I hadn’t been long in Africa, but I had been in Indian compaigns in America, and I knew what that meant. There was a telegraph station 18 miles from us, the only one within 250 miles, and four of us eet out through the bush to get was there I first met ‘Little Dilion’—l never did know his first name.

“He was the telegraph operator. Yes, he Had news, all right, and it was worse than the rumour we had heard. The brightest, happiest, devil-may-care little Irishman you ever saw, Dillon was. He wasn’t more than 20, I should say, and he had whit© teeth and curly hair and clear, white skin on his forehead and pink cheeks, and the least little touch of a brogue. “The office was full of telegrams, and each one worse than the last. The Matabeks were out. Lobengula—we called him ‘Low Ben’ —had taken the field himself against fhe whit© men. There were 40,000 warriors arms, many of them with European rifles. “it was news, all right, for us, who had our families out there, and who knew there wasn’t 1000 able-bodied men in all Mashonaland and no chance of getting troops there for weeks or months. The English are like the Americans in a good many things, and one likeness is in thinking when you have coaxed or driven natives to the reservation they are going to stay there without the aid of troops. Many an Indian massacre in the southwest would have been averted if the troops hadn’t been withdrawn too soon, and that was the way it was in Mashonaland. “ ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked ‘Little Dillon’ after we had learned all the news there was.

“‘Do? I'm going to stick right here,’ he renlied.

“As near as I can remember the nearest white settlement was about 40 miles away —maybe it was 50. But Dillon just rolled a cigarette and said, ‘l’m coing to stick.’ There was no telling when an irnpi of Lobengula’s men mignt take a notion to make a raid on that telegraph station, and Dillon knew it, but he never thought of quitting. ‘l’ve got a rifle and plenty of ammunition.’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll have some fun with them yet.’ That was the best I could get out of him, and we had to go away and leave him there alone. “ ‘The real Irish spirit/ said one of our waggoners, but it was more the spirit of the real fighting man of whatever race. Don’t let anyone tell you that an Englishman can’t be as reckless and foolhardy and game as the best Irishman that ever lived. 1 know, for I've seen them; also Americans. “Little Dillon stuck in my mind. I felt sure that I should some day run into him again—and I did. Someone must have told Dr Jameson about his gameness, for when I went out to join the field force to which I had been attached as scout, by reason of my experience in the south-west, who should I find there as signalman but Little Dillon? “I don’t think there was a man in the command who didn’t love Little Dillon like a son or a brother. He was always the same—always light-hearted and gay, always smiling and always cracking jokes. “W© went along for several days without any trouble. Then I made one of the mistakes a scout is bound to make sooner or later. While I was trying to lead our little force away from an irnpi of about 3000 Matabeles in one direction. I led them right slam-bang into an irnpi of 4000 coming from the other way. “We had been having a pretty rough time of it, through wild country filled with hostikr, and living on the country like Sherman did on his march to the sea, and we had had some pretty close calls, but I never felt myself so near death as I did that day. We knew what the Matabeles would do to us. too. We had seen their work as we went along. Just the day before we had come across a white man’s settlement they had burned in a raid. I don’t like to' tell you everything we saw there, but it was awful. There had been women and children there, too, for we found children’s toys and picture books in the ruins. Dillon picked up the !neces of a torn book and put them in ris saddlebags.

“Well, here we were, with the Matabelss on l>oth sides of us. There were 14 of us and only 7030 of them —odds 500 to I—‘white man’s odds,’ as Kipling might put it. They didn't close in—that isn’t the way the Zulus fight. They just surrounded us and sat down to wait until dark to come in and finish us with their assegais. “ Some of the men began to pray. All of us thought we would never see the sun rise again. I was trying my best to figure out some way of escape when Dillon spoke up. “ ‘What’s the use of being gloomy, lads?’ he said. ‘l’ve got a story book —let’s listen to the fairy tales.’ He pulled the torn leaves out of his saddle bag and began to read aloud.

“It was ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Think of it —‘Alice in Wonderland’ out there on the African veldt, with the hostile Zulus all around us! “You may not believe it, but it brought the tears to the eyes of every one of us, rough adventurers though most of us

were. It was the picture of home—of the English homes they knew—that Alice’s wonderful adventures brought up in the minds of my companions. I wasn’t so familiar with the story, but the spirit of it caught me, too, and I thought of my mother and my own home and my brothers and sisters as they were when I was a little boy, while ‘Little Dillon’ rode up and down our little line, reading in his clear, boyish voice, with just a touch of brogue. —Nonsense Flaunts Peril.—

“About the Dormouse and the Duchess lie read, and the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit and the Walrus and the Carpenter —all that delightful nonsense that all the little children love, and that every man who has the heart of a child left in him loves yet. And those grown-up men, rough settlers and pioneers and fighting men like myself, sat there on their horses"and let the tears roll down their cheeks while ‘Little Dillon’ read the foolish story to them. We were all little boys again, out there on the veldt, with the Matabeles all around us. “Re finished the book, ‘Little Dillon’ did, with the sun getting lower and lower, and the Matabeles beginning to creep in a little closer here and there in the black, menacing circle around us. Then he dropped the book back into his saddle bag and began to sing.

“ ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ —that was ‘Little Dillon’s’ song. It was a boyhood memory, I suppose, brought up by the fairy tale he had been reading, but he didn’t have to remember very far back at that. ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ I can see him yet, his pink cheeks just a little pale, his curly hair, tousled and falling over his forehead, just like? that girl’s that went out a while ago. I can close my eyes and hear him, his sweet, high tenor voice, as he sang:—

And till the birds fell to sighing and sobbing When they heard the bells toll for poor Cock Robin. “We were facing death, yon understand —sure death, we thought it was-—and hero was ‘Little Dillon’ singing that simple little nursery rhyme and we sitting there, crying like children, not from fear, but because it made us think of the ones we loved, whom we would never sec again.

“Just about that time I saw the 3. latabeles were making preparations to attack, and I thought of a plan. It was simple enough—l’d seen it worked on the Indians in Arizona. If we could make a feint at the enemy’s front, and then, as they massed to meet us, double back quickly enough, wo might find a wea kspot in their line that we could get through. There were hills ail about us, but there was one gully that lead up into the back country. I decided that if we were to escape at all it must be by that route. So we rode along the front of the impi that was preparing to attack upon that side, as if we were going to attack. They massed up in front of us, and as soon as I thought they had thinned out enough near the gully I gave the word, and wo wheeled and lode like mad for the weak spot. We got through—the Matabeles are very bad marksmen. We killed a few natives, and one of our horses was hit, but we outran them easily once we were through the ranks.

—Nonchalance in Danger.—

“We saw some lively skirmishing for a while. Then Dr Jameson sent ns out, under command of Major Forbes, to capture Lobengula. 1 have told you before the story of ‘Wilson’s last stand’—how Major Wilson took 37 of us and crossed the river right into Lobengula’s camp and only three of us got out alive. “‘Little Dillon’ was one of Major Wilson’s force, and he was ‘Little Dillon’ to the end. We knew it was deatli to every one of us from the moment the reinforcements wo wore expecting failed to arrive bv sunrise.

“The Matabeles began to attack at daybreak. They forced us back, back into the bush before they had us surrounded. A horse fell as we were retreatin';.

“ ‘Someone cut the saddle pockets off that horse —they’re full of cartridges!’ cried Major Wilson. We were retreating, mind you, and the dying horse was yards in our rear. It was ‘Little Dillon’ who broke from our ranks, knife in hand, and ran back, straight toward the approaching Zulus. They told us afterwards they thought he had gone mad, and was going to attack the whole impi single-handed. As salmly as if the bullets were not- flying about him, he cut the saddle bags, with their precious ammunition, from the dying animal, and sauntered—that is exactly the word—sauntered back to rejoin us. His smile was as merry and his cheek as red as ever, and the same little curl hung down on his forehead.

“That vas the las! I saw of ‘Little Dillon.’ for it was just as we reached the bush that Major Wilson sent me out, with two others, on the forlorn hope of trying to reach the main column and bring them up. We reached them, but it was too late. It was six weeks before we could get back to where lay the bones of Major Wilson and bis men—and ‘Little Dillon.’

“Weeks after that, Loben[Tula's son, whom we at last captured, told ns how, when the white men’s ammunition was gone, one of them stood up and began to simr, and the rest all joined in and sang ‘Cod Save the Queen.’ T like to think that it was ‘Little Dillon’ who led them.

“He lies up on the mountain now. by the tomb of our cp'rat chief. Cecil Rhodes —‘Little Dillon,’ the bravest boy I ever knew.”