Home Again.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11737, 15 September 1902, Page 7

Home Again.

(By Edgar Wall&ca, in the "Daily Mail.")

THE END OF A PERIOD

' Even as unrelenting fate, so does Smithy dog my footsteps. 1 leave him at Heilbron guarding stores, and two days later Ills strident voice hails me somewhere between Potchefstroom and Klerksdorp, with a demand for "pipers." I was not surprised!, therefore, on boarding the good ship Dunottar Castle to discover the (pensive Smithy—no longer a common soldier but officer's servant, with right to wear mufti—holding forth to a confrere on the blessings of home life as compared with life on the veldt, Kitchener as a strategist, and De Wet as a fighter. " 'Ome! Think of it, cocky," said Smithy ecstatically, "no more trek, no_ more biscuit an' beef, no more De \vettin', but breakfast in bed, and a pub at every corner !" ■ • * ALL OF THEM HAPPY. There were 380 Smithies on board, not all as eloquent as my frieridi, but every man as happy. I watched them troop inboard I from the 'vantage place of the upper deck. •Tanned, hardened, wiry little men, released j from work—that hard, hard school where the art of taking cover and sleeping comfortably in the rain is taught in the kindergarten stage. And they were going back to England. "Think of it!" To England, where you people live and work and play without ever thinking you are doing wonderful things in a wonderful country. It was their reward, that they might be allowed to do and be what you are doing and what you have been unconscious of —your blessed privileges. There was a man on the quarter-deck in khaki, with heavy gold lacing on the peak of his cap. A nice, .comfortable, handsome gentleman, a little inclined to stoutness. The Tommies on board did not know him because they had never served under him. Smithy knew him1, and communicated the news to the troop deck, and four days out Smithy, acting as a sort of deputation from "forrard," waited on me with the i question, "Is Charley Knox goin' to get a big receptoin at Southampton?" I opined not, and Smithy was bitter. " 'Cos 'c ain't made a song about what Vs done like " said Smithy. The general officer he mentioned I would not for the world name. DOESN'T ADVERTISE. "Can't you put something in the paper about 'im?" asked Smithy, almost tearfully, j for the mem who served under Knox are very jealous for their general. I promised. Will you kindly insert this? "General Sir Chas. Knox, X.C.8., is the best of our younger generals. He has won his way to the honours that have been bestowed upon him! by courage, endurance, and highly military qualities. He doesn't care twopence for the buttering of newspaper correspondents!, land1 as the truth (would sound like fulsome flattery, I will ' refrain, my dear Smithy, from pursuing the subject. Suffice that he captured more guns than any other general, and never got his .portrait in a biograph series. There were other men of the Knox stamp on board, and their occupations were various. Capper, for instance. You know Capper, who flogged the rebels back from the edge of Capetown. Capper spent Ma time in taking the sun with a sextant and working out impossible longitudes. Once, off Sierra Leone, he made the alarming discovery that we were 30 miles inland! THE OTHERS THERE. Then there was Ewarfc—-colonel in the Army and kindly gentleman wherever he be. Ewarfc in canvas slippers doing nothing in particular; reading a little, talking a little, is not the.Ewart I saw in! December, 1899, bringing back the battered ranks of the Highland Brigade from Magersfontein, the man who that early morning groped blindly forward in the dark, lit only by the threads of fire that darted from the Boers' front trenches and the fitful summer lightnings behind the looming kopjes. No* the Ewart that stumbled in the* trenches seeking his dying chief that time Wauchope fell among the Highlanders. A strange change this from that horrible field, bleak, sodden, carpeted with writhing men, stinking with cordite and humming with bullets, to this graceful ship slipping so easily over the sunny seas. Here is a man in pince-nez gravely bending over a chess-board He was with Methuen at Tweebosch, and .could tell you things about irregular cavalry. His opponent was a prisoner of De Wet, and liveil on mealie pap for two months. He, at any rate, is not an enthusiastic pro Boer. Burly and bluff, a typical country gen tllcman, Spens revives the glory of Hampshire cricket with an oakum ball en a 20ft pitch. Private soldier and general officer, company officer and junior subaltern, their work is dons, and how well done! "SOMETHING LIKE HOME." It is home! A chilly enough morning, with low-lying land on the port bow, and a yellow light glaring intermittently from a slip of land to starboard. A hundred snowy seagulls sailing placidly in the wake of ths ship—a feathery escort for the homeward bound warriors who flock to the sides and to the fo'c'sle head for a glimpse of green. The engines slow and stop—a dead stillness and then a shiver from bow to stern as they are reversed. A little boat dances over the grey waters, a little boat with. a yellow light, and a rope ladder drops over our side. A silence, and then again the beat of the propellor—the pilot is aboard. And so past the Needles, white and solemn in the early light. .The channel narrows, and half speed becomes quarter speed. Houses on both banks and tiny yachts lying at anchor till a bend brings in view a dozen steam "yachts lying- bow to stern, and in the centre a black two-fun-nelled vessel of peculiar shape. A man-o'-war squat and aloof. , A bl'aek, flat mass of metal brooding on/ the waters. In her shadow another ship. A large yacht— black, too, with three masts. Three masts that fly three flags. We move abreast and swing round to port. Down comes our ensign slowly—we are dipping a salute to the black yacht. Througti your glasses you see the flag she flies. It is the Royal Standard, and Atkins gaze* with reverence. Smithy touches on*>- elbow. "This is something like home," he whispers, huskily. "Good old England'! I—l wonder how the King is?" -