RUSHING A BOER CAMP IN THE DARK.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 13, Issue 65, 22 August 1902, Page 2

RUSHING A BOER CAMP IN THE DARK.

A graphic account of a night attack on a Boer encampment is contributed by " Linesman " to the current issue of " Blackwood's Magazine. "—He writes : Night on the veidt, and all the winds at rest save one, which every now and then sends a faint warm puff across the miles of withered'grass, like the uneasy mutterings, coming from a man talking in his sleep. All around dead, utter silence—the silence peculiar to vast spaces—and deep blue velvet darkness resting on the grass immensity like a hot heavy hand ; a silence that makes the ear throb with a desire to hear it broken, which is not broken but deepened by the" fluttering patter of a nieercat, stealing to its burrow, or a beetle settling with a little click upon a sun-baked ant heap : a darkness that is impenetrable even on the dim yellow shadow of the upland veldt road, and almost appalling in the kloofs and hollows. Many fine things have been written about Night but nothing that even in the remotest degree can tell the reader of the awe and solemnity of the dark hours that precede moonrise on the South African veldt. What the sea is to water, so is the veldt to earth—its acme of nobility and grandeur, tremendous in its very featurelessness, because, like the sea there is nothing by which one can measure it but itself and oneself. Few men can lead or accompany many night attacks and keep their nerve, but of those few the army in South Africa has luckily numbered many men whom an era of night work, coming after two years of incessant strain, still sees unshaken and confident, and with confident men behind them. And the leader of this little band being such a man, they steal through the night over the anxious miles, with no qualms, on their part at any rate, straight for the invisible berg ahead. Behind it lies their prey, 120 Boers sheltering, and let us hope, sleeping under the lee of the great grassy wall. A " pesky," irreconcilable lot of ruffians, led by a certain violent Erasmus, who have been swooping so often at the line defences from their eyrie that their destruction has become a necessity ; and as one may as well attempt to arrest snow-flakes as Boers in the day-time the blow must fall suddenly at night, and in the very eyrie itself. A hazardous off-chance, indeed, even with equal numbers, but many hundred chances against it, and ruin too hideous to contemplate if unsuccessful ; but with numbers actually less than the objective, a night onslaught on a wary, semi-animal enemy is an enterprise bordering on the desperate. Yet such has been the unique and dangerous fighting in South Africa that what in other wars would have been considered a job too risky to be often attempted is here looked upon as all in a day's work ; and this is by no means the first time that these 80 men have found themselves on the open waste at night, with Ihe camp far behind them, and the tremendous unknown close in front. On they go over flats, down into the dark hollows up the darker rises beyond, every man locked close to his neighbour, staring from side to side, and knocking his neighbor's knees when he starts, as he does, momentarily at the fancied sound outside the squadron, or a fancied sight away in the darkness. Not a word must be spoken, even when Bill, on the left of you, clutches your bridle-arm, and points with his up to Jhe left, where the rise we are bresting ends in a dim knob. Upon its very summit stand three black figures of horses, too dark to see more, motionless as the kopje they stand on. They disappear, and from the kopje comes a faint ring of a hoof upon a stone. Are we discovered The officer in front holds up his hand the leading files halt, those in the rear bump into them, and the whole party stands huddled together halfway up the slope, every man's head bent sideways in a fever of listening. If those were Boers the game was up ; they are galloping back to the laager now ; and very few of those 80 blankets and picket-pegs in camp will see their proper occupants again. The commanding officer is whispering to the guide, a little active figure in a slouch hat, and one of his subalterns, who dismount and vanish towards the knob. They are going to solve this riddle somehow

Quietly they creep upwards, 10 yards apart, and worm their way to the summit, and from there, to their intense relief, perceive the three black shapes some distance down the further slope. Not Boers, evidently ; probably not even Kaffirs. The subaltern and guide, taking no chances, stalk them carefully downhill through the long grass, revolvers at the " ready " and finally lie staring a few yards above the suspicious objects.

A sustained pause, then a low chuckle from the guide, which would lift a ton of anxiety from the listeners behind if they could hear it loose horses ! The two rise and walk swiftly over the knob down to their friends ; still no word. That is only one of a thousand chances made good and the march is resumed. The business in hand must be done quickly, for there is little hope of success, even of return, if Erasmus' desperadoes once detect the small numbers of their assailants. In a night affair the attackers can expect little mercy if they are worsted. The confusion, terror, and indignation of the surprised give little scope or will to take prisoners those of the beaten surprisers whom it is impossible to shoot.

The dismounted troopers, stealing forward in the half-light, know all this well enough, and pray that events may inarch quickly, so that they may forget it and acquit themselves like men. They have not long to wait Down from the path above comes the clattering of a galloping stumbling

horse. A Boer half-way up the hillside has detected the party climbing to cut off the picket, and with presence of mind he leaves 1 lie smaller issue to its fate and flies to warn the main body

The clattering changes to a heavy swishing as he plunges through the thicket hehind the house. The three encircling parties run crouching to their places only just in time. Then a hoarse shout from the Boer, who pulls up at the end of the wing and flings himself from his horse. "Come out, burghers ! Come out ! - The English are on the pass ! " he cries. He then runs behind the farm, calling wildly to a native to loose the precious cattle from their kraal. " Jantje, Jantje, you sleeping pig, loose the beasts ! " The bewildered animals stream out, trotting lumberingly right amongst the men lying in ambush and between them and the farm. Then some one fires. A roar arises from within the building, an exclamation from a hundred startled men, the sound of a hundred men clutching at their rifles and clothes and leaping; across the encumbered rooms.

The first man appears at the doorway at the end of the wing, another shot and he is down. And then the tempest is let loose, and the scene is indescribable. Out of the doorway pours a stream of half-naked men, some firing some falling, all shouting in their terror, some curses, some for mercy. A ring of spitting, flashing fire bursts from the ambuscade ; it rolls from end to end of the halfcircle, backwards and forwards, its uproar redoubled by the smacking of the bullets upon the stone walls, the resonant singing note as they strike and tear through the corrugated tin roof, and the crash and streamy tinkle of shivering glass. From every window figures are leaping, some black, fully clothed, others ludicrously white in drawers and shirts. Some of the English charge madly up to these windows. " Hands up ! Hands up, you ! " Mercy is given

wherever asked ( have British soldiers ever forgotten in the wildest scuffles that their enemies were men with souls ?), death is dealt out when roared for by a Mauser shot echoing from inside the rooms. The farm is surrounded by leaping cursing figures, friend flying from friend in the gloom some flinging themselves on the ground, some jumping high in the air at every shot, as if they expected the bullet to pass under their feet. It is an Inferno, a Babel, anything you will, of horrible confusion, racket, and agony. But the Boers are too many for their assailants. They break out behind the circle in twos and threes, in tens and twenties, some running at full speed with bodies bent until they almost touch the ground, others rushing manfully at the straggling line which hems them in ; others slither through the thicket at the back, and the bullets rasp through the long dry grass over their heads. In odd corners under walls and bushes, even old waggons and heaps od mealies, men are finding men to grapple with, and bayonet, or clutch by the throat. " Hands up ! Hands up ! " sounds from all sorts of dark spots—often from one soldier encountering another in the half light, when they part with an oath and a laugh which has something hysterical in it. And then it dies fitfully away—a hoarse cry here and there, a plunge of something heavy in the brushwood, and silence.