Ladysmith Part 3

To-day the melodrama has begun in earnest. "Long Tom" and four or five smaller guns from Bulwan, and a nearer battery to the north-west, began hurling percussion sh.e.l.l and shrapnel upon the Naval batteries at half-past seven. Our "Lady Anne" answered, but after flinging sh.e.l.ls into the immense earthworks for an hour or two without much effect, both sides got tired of that game. But the Boer fire was not quite without effect, for one of the smaller sh.e.l.ls burst right inside the "Lady Anne's" private chamber and carried away part of the protecting gear, not killing any men. Then "Long Tom" was deliberately turned upon the town, especially upon the Convent, which stands high on the ridge, and is used as a hospital. His sh.e.l.ls went cras.h.i.+ng among the houses, but happily land is cheap in South Africa still, and the houses, as a rule, are built on separate plots, so that as often as not the sh.e.l.ls fall in a garden bush or among the clothes-lines. Only two Indian bearers were wounded and a few horses and cattle killed. Things went pretty quietly through the morning, except that there was a good deal of firing--sh.e.l.l and rifle--on the high ridge south-west, where the Manchesters are.

About two o'clock I started for that position, and being fond of short cuts, thought I would ford the river at a break in its steep banks instead of going round by the iron bridge. Mr. Melton Prior was with me, for I had promised to show him a quiet place for sketching the whole view of the town in peace. As we came to the river a sh.e.l.l pitched near us, but we did not take much notice of it. In the middle of the ford we took the opportunity of letting the horses drink, and they stood drinking like the orphan lamb. Suddenly there was something more than the usual bang, crash, scream of a big sh.e.l.l, and the water was splashed with lumps and shreds of iron, my hat was knocked off and lay wrecked in the stream, and the horses were das.h.i.+ng this way and that with terror.

"Are you killed?" shouted Mr. Prior. "I don't think so," I said. "Are you?" And then I had to lash my horse back to the place lest my hat should sail down-stream and adorn a Queen's enemy. There is nothing like sh.e.l.l-fire for giving lessons in horsemans.h.i.+p.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DRIFT AND WATERING PLACE]

The Manchesters had been having an uncomfortable time of it, and I found Sir George White and his staff up on their hill. As we walked about, the little puffs of dust kept rising at our feet. We were within rifle-fire, though at long range. Now and then a very peculiar little sh.e.l.l was thrown at us. One went straight through a tent, but we could not find it afterwards. It was a sh.e.l.l like a viper. I left the Manchesters putting up barbed-wire entanglements to increase their defence, and came back to try to find another runner. The sh.e.l.ls were falling very thick in the town, and for the first time people were rather scared. As I write one bursts just over this little tin house. It is shrapnel, and the iron rain falls hammering on the roof, but it does not come through. Two windows only are broken. Probably it burst too high.

_November 8, 1899._

Fairly quiet day. The great event was the appearance of a new "Long Tom"

on the Bulwan. He is to be called "Puffing Billy," from the vast quant.i.ty of smoke he pours out. Nothing else of great importance happened. Major Grant, of the Intelligence, was slightly wounded while sketching on the Manchesters' ridge. Coolies wandered about the streets all day with tin boxes or Asiatic bundles on their heads. Joubert had sent them in as a present from Dundee. They were refugees from that unhappy town, and after a visit to Pretoria, they are now dumped down here to help devour our rations. Some Europeans have come, too--guards, signalmen and shopkeepers--who report immense reinforcements coming up for the Boers. Is there not something a little mediaeval in sending a crowd of hungry non-combatants into an invested town?

CHAPTER IX

INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, AND REALITIES

LADYSMITH, _November 9, 1899_.[1]

A day of furious and general attack. Just before five I was wakened by a sh.e.l.l bl.u.s.tering through the eucalyptus outside my window, and bursting in a gully beyond. "Lady Anne" answered at once, and soon all the Naval Brigade guns were in full cry. What should we have done without the Naval guns? We have nothing else but ordinary field artillery, quite unable to reply to the heavy guns which the Boers have now placed in position round the town. Yet they only came up at the last moment, and it was a mere piece of luck they got through at all. Standing behind them on the ridge above my tin house, I watched the firing till nine o'clock, dodging behind a loose wall to avoid the splinters which buzz through the air after each shot, and are sometimes strangely slow to fall. Once after "Long Tom" had fired I stood up, thinking all was over, when a big fragment hummed gently above my head, went through the roof and ceiling of a house a hundred yards behind, and settled on a sh.e.l.l-proof spring mattress in the best bedroom. One of the little boys running out from the family burrow in the rocks was delighted to find it there, and carried it off to add to his collection of moths and birds'

eggs. The estimate of "Long Tom's" sh.e.l.l has risen from 40lbs. to 96lbs.

and I believe that to be the true weight. One of them to-day dug a stupendous hole in the pavement just before one of the princ.i.p.al shops, and broke yards of shutter and plate gla.s.s to pieces. It was quite pleasant to see a shop open again.

So the bombardment went on with violence all the morning. The troglodytes in their burrows alone thought themselves safe, but, in fact, only five men were killed, and not all of those by sh.e.l.l. One was a fine sergeant of the Liverpools, who held the base of the Helpmakaar road where it leaves the town eastward. Sergeant Macdonald was his name, a man full of zeal, and always tempted into danger by curiosity, as most people are. Instead of keeping under shelter of the sangar when the guns on Bulwan were sh.e.l.ling the position, he must needs go outside "to have a look." The contents of a sh.e.l.l took him full in front. Any of his nine wounds would have been fatal. His head and face seemed shattered to bits; yet he did not lose consciousness, but said to his captain, "I'd better have stopped inside, sir." He died on the way to hospital.

A private of the Liverpools was killed too. About twenty-four in all were wounded, chiefly by rifle fire, Captain Lethbridge of the Rifle Brigade being severely injured in the spine. Lieutenant Fisher, of the Manchesters, had been shot through the shoulder earlier in the day, but did not even report himself as wounded until evening.

After all, the rifle, as Napoleon said, is the only thing that counts, and to-day we had a great deal of it at various points in our long line of defence. That line is like a horseshoe, ten to twelve miles round.

The chief attacks were directed against the Manchesters in Caesar's Camp (we are very historic in South Africa) and against a mixed force on Observation Hill, two companies of the Rifle Brigade, two of the King's Royal Rifles, and the 5th Lancers dismounted. The Manchesters suffered most. Since the investment began the enemy has never left them in peace.

They are exposed to sh.e.l.ls from three positions, and to continual sniping from the opposite hill. It is more than a week since even the officers washed or took their clothes off, and now the men have been obliged to strike their tents because the sh.e.l.ls and rifles were spoiling the stuff.

The various companies get into their sangars at 3 a.m., and stay there till it is dark again. Two companies were to-day thrown out along the further edge of their hill in extended order as firing line, and soon after dawn the Boers began to creep down the opposite steep by two or three at a time into one of the many farms owned by Bester, a notorious traitor, now kept safe in Ladysmith. All morning the firing was very heavy, many of the bullets coming right over the hill and dropping near the town. Our men kept very still, only firing when they saw their mark.

Three of them were killed, thirteen wounded. Before noon a field battery came up to support the battalion, and against that terrifying shrapnel of ours the Boers attempted no further advance. In the same way they came creeping up against Observation Hill (a barren rocky ridge on the north-west of the town), hiding by any tree or stone, but were completely checked by four companies of Rifles, with two guns and the dismounted Lancers. They say the Boer loss was very heavy at both places. It is hard to know.

In the afternoon things were fairly quiet, but in walking along the low ridge held by the Liverpools and Devons, I was sniped at every time my head showed against the sky. At 4 p.m. there was a peculiar forward movement of our cavalry and guns along the Helpmakaar road, which came to nothing being founded on false information, such as comes in hourly.

The great triumph of the day was certainly the Royal salute at noon in honour of the Prince of Wales. Twenty-one guns with shotted charge, and all fired slap upon "Long Tom"! It was the happiest moment in the Navy's life for many a year. One after another the shot flew. "Long Tom" was so bewildered he has not spoken since. The cheering in the camps was heard for miles. People thought the relief division was in sight. But we were only signifying that the Prince was a year older.

[Footnote 1: Despatched by runner on November 20, but returned to the writer on December 23, and despatched again on January 1.]

_November 10, 1899._

Another morning of unusual quiet. People sicken of the monotony when sh.e.l.ls are not flying. We don't know any reason for the calm, except that the Dutch are burying their dead of yesterday. But the peace is welcome, and in riding round our positions I found nearly all the men lying asleep in the sun. The wildest stories flew: General French had been seen in the street; his brigade was almost in sight; Methuen was at Colenso with overwhelming force. The townspeople took heart. One man who had spent his days in a stinking culvert since the siege began now crept into the sun. "They are arrant cowards, these Boers," he cried, stamping the echoing ground; "why don't they come on and fight us like men?" So the day wears. At four o'clock comes an African thunderstorm with a deluge of rain, filling the water tanks and slaking the dust, grateful to all but the men of both armies uncovered on the rocks.

_November 11, 1899._

A soaking early morning with minute rain, hiding all the circle of the hills, for which reason there is no bombardment yet, and I have spent a quiet hour with Colonel Stoneman, arranging rations for my men and beasts, and taking a lesson how to organise supplies and yet keep an unruffled mind. The rest of the morning I sat with a company of the 60th (K.R.R.) on the top of Cove Hill (another of the many Aldershot names).

The men had been lining the exposed edge of Observation Hill all night, without any shelter, whilst the thick cold rain fell upon them. It was raining still, and they lay about among the rocks and th.o.r.n.y mimosa bushes in rather miserable condition.

It would be a good thing if the Army could be marched through Regent Street as the men look this morning. It would teach people more about war than a hundred pictures of plumed hors.e.m.e.n and the das.h.i.+ng charge.

The smudgy khaki uniforms soaked through and through, stained black and green and dingy red with wet and earth and gra.s.s; the draggled great-coats, heavy with rain and thick with mud; the heavy sopping boots, the blackened, battered helmets; the blackened, battered faces below them, unwashed and unshaved since the siege began; the eyes heavy and bloodshot with sun and rain and want of sleep; the peculiar smell--there is not much bra.s.s band and glory about us now.

At noon the mist lifted, and just before one the Boer guns opened fire nearly all round the horseshoe, except that the Manchesters were left in peace. I think only one new gun had been placed in position, but another had been cleverly checked. As a rule, it has been our polite way to let the Boers settle their guns comfortably in their places, and then to try in vain to blow them out. Yesterday the enemy were fortifying a gun on Star Hill, when one of our artillery captains splashed a sh.e.l.l right into the new wall. We could see the Boer gunners running out on both sides, and the fort has not been continued.

To-day "Long Tom's" sh.e.l.ls were thrown pretty much at random about the town. One blew a mule's head off close to the bank, and disembowelled a second. One went into the "Scotch House" and cleared the shop. A third pitched close to the Anglican Church, and brought the Archdeacon out of burrow. But there was no real loss, except that one of the Naval Brigade got a splinter in the forehead. My little house had another dose of shrapnel, and on coming in I found a soldier digging up the bits in the garden; but the Scotch owner drove him away for "interfering with the mineral rights." At 3.30 the mist fell again, and there was very little firing after 4. Out on the flat beyond the racecourse our men were engaged in blowing up and burning some little farms and kraals which sheltered the Boer scouts. As I look towards the Bulwan I see the yellow blaze of their fires.

_Sunday, November 12, 1899._

Amid all the estimable qualities of the Boer race there is none more laudable than their respect for the Sabbath day. It has been a calm and sunny day. Not a shot was fired--no sniping even. We feel like grouse on a pious Highland moor when Sunday comes, and even the laird dares not shoot. The cave dwellers left their holes and flaunted in the light of day. In the main street I saw a perambulator, stuffed with human young.

Pickets and outposts stretched their limbs in the sun. Soldiers off duty sc.r.a.ped the clods off their boots and polished up their bayonets.

Officers shaved and gloried over a leisurely breakfast. For myself, I washed my s.h.i.+rt and hung it on the line of fire to dry.

In the morning one of the Irish Brigade rode in through the Liverpools'

picket. He was "fed up" with the business, as the soldiers say. He reported that only about seventy of the Brigade were left. He also said the Boer commandants were holding a great meeting to-day--whether for psalms or strategy I don't know; probably both. We heard the usual rumours that the Boers were going or had gone. Climbing to the Manchesters' post for the view, I could see three Boer trains waiting at Modder's Spruit station, about six miles up the Newcastle line. Did they bring reinforcements, or were they waiting to take "Long Tom" home by return ticket? We shall know to-morrow. Over the valley where we repulsed Thursday's attack, the vultures flew as thick as swifts upon the Severn at twilight. Those were the only signs of war--those and the little forts which hid the guns. Otherwise the enormous landscape lay at peace. I have never seen it so clear--the precipitous barrier of the Basuto mountains, lined with cloud, and still touched with snow: the great sculptured mountains that mark the Free State border: and then the scenes which have become so familiar to us all--Elands Laagte, Tinta Inyoni, Pepworth Hill, Lombard's Kop, and the great Bulwan. Turning to the south we looked across to the nearer hills, beyond which lie Colenso, Estcourt, and the road to Maritzburg and the sea. It is from beyond those hills that our help is coming.

The Boers have many estimable qualities. They are one of the few admirable races still surviving, and they conduct this siege with real consideration and gentlemanly feeling. They observe the Sabbath. They give us quiet nights. After a violent bombardment they generally give us at least one day to calm down. Their hours for slaughter are six to six, and they seldom overstep them. They knock off for meals--unfas.h.i.+onably early, it is true, but it would be petty to complain. Like good employers, they seldom expose our lives to danger for more than eight hours a day. They are a little capricious, perhaps, in the use of the white flag. At the beginning of the siege our "Lady Anne" killed or wounded some of "Long Tom's" gunners and damaged the gun. Whereupon the Boers hoisted the white flag over him till the place was cleared and he was put to rights again. Then they drew it down and went on firing. It was the sort of thing schoolboys might do. Captain Lambton complained that by the laws of war the gun was permanently out of action. But "Long Tom" goes on as before.

I think the best story of the siege comes from a Kaffir who walked in a few days ago. In the Boer camp behind Pepworth Hill he had seen the men being taught bayonet exercise with our Lee-Metfords, captured at Dundee.

The Boer has no bayonet or steel of his own, and for an a.s.sault on the town he will need it. Instruction was being given by a prisoner--a sergeant of the Royal Irish Fusiliers--with a rope round his neck!

_November 13, 1899._

The Boer method of siege is quite inexplicable. Perhaps it comes of inexperience. Perhaps they have been studying the sieges of ancient history and think they are doing quite the proper thing in sitting down round a garrison, putting in a few sh.e.l.ls and waiting. But they forget that, though the sieges of ancient history lasted ten years, nowadays we really can't afford the time. The Boers, we hope, have scarcely ten days, yet they loiter along as though eternity was theirs.

To-day they began soon after five with the usual cannonade from "Long Tom," "Puffing Billy," and three or four smaller guns, commanding the Naval batteries. The answers of our "Lady Anne" and "b.l.o.o.d.y Mary" shook me awake, and, seated on the hill, I watched the big guns pounding at each other for about three hours, when there came an interval for breakfast. As far as I could make out, neither side did the other the least harm. It was simply an unlucrative exchange of so much broken iron between two sensible and prudent nations. The moment "Tom" or "Billy"

flashed, "Anne" or "Mary" flashed too. Our sh.e.l.ls do the distance about two and a-half seconds quicker than theirs, so that we can see the result of our shot just before one has to duck behind the stones for the crash and whiz of the enormous sh.e.l.ls which started first. To-day most of "Tom's" sh.e.l.ls pa.s.sed over the batteries, and plunged down the hill into the town beyond. It is supposed that he must be wearing out. He has been firing here pretty steadily for over a fortnight, to say nothing of his work at Dundee. But I think his fire upon the town is quite deliberate. He might pound away at "Lady Anne" for ever, but there is always a chance that 96lbs. of iron exploding in a town may, at all events, kill a mule.

So the bombardment went on cheerily through the early morning, till about 10.30 it slackened down in the inexplicable Boer fas.h.i.+on, and hardly one shot an hour was fired afterwards. The surmise goes that Joubert cannot get his men up to the attacking point. Their loss last Sat.u.r.day was certainly heavy.

Yesterday the Boers, with fine simplicity, sent to our ambulance camp for some chlorodyne because they had run short of it, and were troubled with dysentery like ourselves. Being at heart a kindly people, we gave them what they wanted and a little brandy besides. The British soldier thereupon invents the satire that Joubert asked for some forage because his horses were hungry, and Sir George White replied: "I would very gladly accede to your request, but have only enough forage myself to last three years."

The day pa.s.sed, and we did not lose a single man. Yet the enemy must have enjoyed one incident. I was riding up to spend an hour in the afternoon with Major Churcher and the 200 Royal Irish Fusiliers left at Range Post, when on an open s.p.a.ce between me and their little camp I saw a squadron of the 18th Hussars circling and doubling about as though they were practising for the military tournament. Almost before I had time to think, bang came a huge sh.e.l.l from "Puffing Billy" just over my head, and pitched between me and them. Happily, it fell short, but it gave the Dutch gunners a wonderful display of our cavalry's excellence.

Even before I could come up men and horses had vanished into air.

All day strange rumours have been afloat about the Division supposed to be coming to our relief. It was expected to-morrow. Now it is put off till Thursday. It is even whispered it will sit quiet at Estcourt, and not come to our relief at all. To-night is bitterly cold, and the men are chilled to the stomach on the bare hillsides.

_November 14, 1899._