Ladysmith Part 9

The bombardment was violent at intervals, and some hundreds of sh.e.l.ls must have been thrown at us. But there was no method or concentration in the business.

Buller's guns were heard for about two hours in the morning, and wild rumours filled the air. Roberts and Kitchener were coming out. Buller was across the Tugela. Within the week our relief was certain. At night the 18th Hussars gave another concert among the rocks by the riverside.

In the midst of a comic song on the inner meaning of Love came a sound as of distant guns. The inner meaning of Love was instantly forgotten.

All held their breaths to listen. But it was only some horses coming down to water, and we turned to Love again, while the waning moon rose late beside Lombard's Kop, red and shapeless as a potsherd.

_December 24, 1899._

Nothing disturbed the peace of Christmas Eve except three small sh.e.l.ls thrown into the town about five o'clock tea-time, for no apparent reason. The main subject of interest was the chance of getting any Christmas dinner. Yesterday twenty-eight potatoes were sold in the market for 30s. A goose fetched anything up to 3, a turkey anything up to 5. But the real problem is water. The river is now a thick stream of brown mud, so thick that it cannot be filtered unless the mud is first precipitated. We used to do it with alum, but no alum is left now. Even soda-water is almost solid.

_December 25, 1899._

The Boer guns gave us an early Christmas carol, and at intervals all day they joined in the religious and social festivities. Our north end of the town suffered most, and we beguiled the peaceful hours in digging out the sh.e.l.ls that had nearly killed us. They have a marketable value.

One perfect specimen of a 96lb. sh.e.l.l from Bulwan fell into a soft flower bed and did not burst or receive a scratch. I suppose it cost the Boers about 35, and it would still fetch 10 as a secondhand article. A brother to it pitched into a boarding house close by us, and blew the whole gable end sky high. Unhappily two of the inmates were wounded, and a horse killed.

But such little contretemps as sh.e.l.ls did not in the least interfere with the Christmas revels. About 250 children are still left in the town or river caves (where one or two have recently been born), and it was determined they should not be deprived of their Christmas tree. The scheme was started and organised by Colonel Rhodes and Major "Karri"

Davis, of the Imperial Light Horse. Four enormous trees were erected in the auction rooms and decked with traditional magnificence and toys ransacked from every shop. At half-past eight p.m. fairyland opened. A gigantic Father Christmas stalked about with branches of pine and snowy cap (the temperature at noon was 103deg. in the shade). Each child had a ticket for its present, and joy was distributed with military precision.

When the children had gone to their dreams the room was cleared for a dance, and round whirled the khaki youths with white-bloused maidens in their arms. It was not exactly the Waterloo Ball with sound of revelry by night, but I think it will have more effect on the future of the race.

Other festivities, remote from the unaccustomed feminine charm, were a series of mule races, near the old camp, for soldiers and laughing Kaffir boys. The men's dinner itself was enough to mark the day. It is true everything was rather skimped, but after the ordinary short rations it was a treat to get any kind of pudding, any pinch of tobacco, and sometimes just a drop of rum.

Almost the saddest part of the siege now is the condition of the animals. The oxen are skeletons of hunger, the few cows hardly give a pint of milk apiece, the horses are failing. Nothing is more pitiful than to feel a willing horse like mine try to gallop as he used, and have to give it up simply for want of food. During the siege I have taught him to talk better than most human beings, and his little apologies are really pathetic when he breaks into something like his old speed and stops with a sigh. It is the same with all.

CHAPTER XV

SICKNESS, DEATH, AND A NEW YEAR

LADYSMITH, _December 26, 1899_.

Good news came through the heliograph about General Gatacre's force at Dordrecht. There were rumours about Lord Methuen, too, for which Dr.

Jameson was quoted as authority. But the best evidence for hope was the unusual violence of the bombardment. It began early, and before the middle of the afternoon the Boers had thrown 178 sh.e.l.ls at us. They were counted by a Gordon officer on Moriden's Castle, and the total must have reached nearly 200 before sunset. Such feverish activity is nearly always a sign of irritation on the part of the Dutch, and one can always hope the irritation is due to bad news for them.

I have not heard of any loss in town or camp. Our guns, with the exception of the howitzers and Major Wing's field guns, which can just reach the new howitzer on Surprise Hill, have hardly replied at all.

The milk question was the most serious of the day. I saw a herd of thirty-five cows which had only yielded sixteen pints at milking time.

It is now debated whether we shall not have to feed the cows and starve the horses; or kill the thinnest horses and stew them down into broth for the others. The reports about the condition of Intombi Camp were particularly horrible to-day. But General Hunter will not allow any one to visit the camp, and it is no good repeating secondhand reports.

_December 27, 1899._

The side of Tunnel Hill, at the angle of the Helpmakaar road, where Liverpools and Gloucesters have suffered in turn, was to-day the scene of an exactly similar disaster to the Devons.

The great Bulwan gun began sh.e.l.ling us later than usual. It must have been past eight. The Devon officers had long finished breakfast, and after inspecting the lines were gathered for orderly room in their mess.

It is a fairly large shed on a platform of beaten earth, levelled in the side of the hill. The roof, of corrugated iron and earth, covered with tarpaulin, would hardly even keep out splinters, and is only supported on rough wooden beams. It is impossible to construct sufficient head shelter. The ground is so rocky that all you can do with it is to build walls and traverses. Along one side of the mess tent a great traverse runs, some eight or ten feet thick, and about as high. When the sentry blows the warning whistle at the flash of a big gun, officers are supposed to come under the shelter of this traverse, till the sh.e.l.l has pa.s.sed or declared its direction. At the first shot this morning I heard no whistle blow, but it was sounded at the second and third. It was the third that did the damage. Striking the top of the traverse, it plunged forward in huge fragments into the messroom, tearing an enormous hole in the tarpaulin screen. Unhappily Mr. Dalzell, a first lieutenant with eight years' service, had refused to come under the wall, and was sitting at the table reading. The main part of the sh.e.l.l struck him full on the side of the face, and carried away nearly all his head. He pa.s.sed painlessly from his reading into death. The state of the messroom when I saw it was too horrible to describe. The wounds of the other officers prove that the best traverse is insufficient unless accompanied by head shelter. Though their backs were against the wall, seven were wounded, and three others badly bruised. Two cases are serious: Lieutenant P.

Dent had part of his skull taken off, and Lieutenant Caffin had a compound fracture of the shoulder-blade. Lieutenant Cane, an "orficer boy," who only joined on Black Monday, was also wounded in the back. The dhoolies quickly came and bore the wounded away to the Wesleyan Chapel.

Mr. Dalzell was buried in the afternoon. "Well, well," sighed the old gravedigger, "I never thought I should live to bury a man without a head."

To-day, for the first time, we heard that Lord Roberts had lost his only son at Colenso. The whole camp was sad about it. The scandal over the robbery of the sick by the civilians at Intombi has grown so serious that at last General Hunter is sending out Colonel Stoneman to investigate. I have myself repeatedly endeavoured to telegraph home known facts about the corruption and mismanagement, but all I wrote has been scratched out by the Censors.h.i.+p. One such little fact I may mention now. The 18th Hussar officers at Christmas gave up a lot of little luxuries, such as cakes and things, which count high in a siege, and sent them down to their sick at Intombi. Not a crumb of it all did the sick ever receive. Everything disappeared _en route_--stolen by officials, or sold to greedy Colonials for whom the sick had fought. It is a small point, but characteristic of the whole affair.

_December 28, 1899._

The night was wet and pitchy dark. Only by the help of the lightning I had stumbled and plunged home to bed, when at about eleven a perfect storm of rifle-fire suddenly swept along the ridges at our end of the town. Rus.h.i.+ng out I saw the edges of the hills twinkle with lines of flashes right away to Gun Hill and Bulwan. Alarmed at the darkness, and hearing strange sounds in the rain the Boers had taken a scare and were blazing away at vacancy, in terror of another night attack. The uproar lasted about five minutes. Then all was quiet until, as dawn was breaking, "Lady Anne" and "b.l.o.o.d.y Mary" shook me off my camp bed with the crash of seven reports in quick succession just over my roof. For some days it had been an idea of Captain Lambton's to catch the Boer gunners on Bulwan just as they were going up to their big gun, or were occupied with early breakfast. Five of our sh.e.l.ls burst on the face of the hill where many Boers spend the night, probably to protect the gun.

The two last fell on the top, close to the gun itself. The latter did not fire at all to-day, and I saw the Boers standing about it in groups evidently excited and disturbed.

The bombardment continued much as usual in other parts, and I spent the afternoon with the 69th Battery on Leicester Post, watching Major Wing reply to the new howitzer on Surprise Hill. Rain fell heavily at times, and the Boers never like firing in the wet.

The day was chiefly marked by Colonel Stoneman's visit to Intombi Camp to inquire into the reported scandals. He thinks that the worst of the corruption and swindling is already over, being killed by the very scandal. But he found a general want of organisation in the distribution of food and other stores. There are now 2,557 inhabitants of the camp, of whom 1,015 are sick and wounded soldiers. Of late the numbers have been increasing by forty or fifty a day, allowing for those who return or die. The graves to-day number eighty-three, and a gang of forty Kaffirs is always digging. Outside the military, the majority of the refugees are Kaffirs and coolies, the white civilians only numbering 600 or 700. Colonel Stoneman had all, except the sick, paraded in groups, and a.s.signed separate tasks to each--nursing for the whites, digging and sanitation for the Kaffirs, cooking and skilled labour for the coolies. One important condition he made--every one required to work is also required to take his day's wage. The medical authority has objected to certain improvements on the ground of expense, but, as Colonel Stoneman says, what will England care about a few thousands at such a crisis in her history? Or what would she say if we allowed her sick and wounded to die in discomfort for the want of a little money? By to-morrow all the sick will have beds and even sheets, food will be distributed on a better organised plan, and civilians will be raised from a two-months' slough of feeding, sleeping, grumbling, and general swinishness unredeemed even by sh.e.l.ls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EFFECT OF A 96LB. Sh.e.l.l ON A PRIVATE HOUSE]

At night the British flashlight from Colenso was throwing signals upon the cloudy sky, and it was amusing to watch the Boers trying to confuse the signals by flas.h.i.+ng their two searchlights upon the same cloud. They have one light west of us near Bester's Station, and to-night they showed a very brilliant electric light on the top of Bulwan. When our signalling stopped, they turned it on the town, and very courteously lighted me home. It was like the clearest moonlight, the shadows long and black, but all else distinct in colourless brilliance. The top of Bulwan is four miles from our main street. To make up for yesterday the sh.e.l.ls were particularly lively to-day. Before breakfast one fell on the railway behind our house, one into the verandah next door, and two into our little garden. Unhappily, the last killed one of our few remaining fowls--s.h.i.+vered it into air so that nothing but a little cloud of feathers was seen again. In the middle of the afternoon old "Puffing Billy" again opened fire with energy. I was at the tailor's on the main street, and the sh.e.l.ls were falling just round his shop. "Thirty-eight, thirty-four," said the little Scot measuring. "There's the Dutch church gone. Forty-two, sixteen. There's the bank. Just hold the tape, mon, while I go and look. Oh, it's only the Town Hall!" Among other sh.e.l.ls one came in painted with the Free State colours, and engraved "With the compliments of the season." It is the second thus adorned, but whereas the first had been empty, this was charged with plum-pudding. Can it be a Dutchman who has such a pleasant wit? The condition of the horses becomes daily more pitiful. Some fall in the street and cannot get up again for weakness. Most have given up speed. The 5th Lancers have orders never to move quicker than a walk. The horses are just kept alive by gra.s.s which Hindoos grub up by the roots. A small ration of ground mealies and bran is also issued. Heavy rain came on and fell all night, during which we heard two far-off explosions.

_December 30, 1899._

Going up to Leicester Post in the early morning, I found the K.R. Rifles drying themselves in the African sun, which blazed in gleams between the clouds. Without the sun we should fare badly. As it is, the rain, exposure, and bad food are reducing our numbers fast. Pa.s.sing the 11th Field Hospital on my way up, I saw stretcher after stretcher moving slowly along with the sick in their blankets. "Dysentery, enteric; enteric, dysentery," were the invariable answers. All the thousands of sh.e.l.ls thrown at us in the last two months count for nothing beside the sickness.

On the top of the hill I found the two guns of Major Wing's battery trained on Surprise Hill as usual. In accordance with my customary good fortune all the enemy's guns opened fire at once. But only the howitzer, the automatic, and the Bluebank were actually aimed our way. The Bluebank was most effective.

It was amusing to see the men of the 60th when a sh.e.l.l pitched among them to-day. How they regarded it as a busy man regards the intrusion of the housemaid--just a harmless necessary nuisance, and no more. The cattle took the little automatic sh.e.l.ls in much the same spirit, but with an addition of wonder--staring at them and snuffing with bovine astonishment. The Kaffir herdsmen first ran yelling in every direction, and then rushed back to dig the sh.e.l.l up, amid inextinguishable laughter. The Hindoo gra.s.s-cutter neither ran nor laughed, but awaited destiny with resignation. By the way, there is a Hindoo servant in the 19th Hussar lines, who at the approach of a "Long Tom" sh.e.l.l always falls reverently on his face and prays to it.

At sundown, in hopes of adding to our starvation rations, I went out among the thorns at the foot of Caesar's Camp to shoot birds and hares.

But the thorns are fast disappearing as firewood, and the appalling rain almost drowned me in the rush of the spruits. So we dined as usual on lumps of trek-ox thinly disguised. Talking of rain, I forgot to mention that the deluge on Friday night drowned six horses of the Leicester Mounted Infantry, carried away twenty-seven of their saddles, broke down the grand shelter-caves of the Imperial Light Horse, carried their bridge away to the blue, and flooded out half the poor homes of natives and civilians dug in the sand of the river banks.

_Sunday, December 31, 1899._

Most of my day was wasted in an attempt to get leave to visit Intombi.

Colonel Exham (P.M.O.) and Major Bateson had asked me to go down and give a fair account of what I saw. General Hunter took my application to the Chief, but Sir George thought it contrary to his original agreement with Joubert, that none but medical and commissariat officers should enter the camp. So Intombi remains unvisited--a vision of my own. In high quarters I gather that, considering the great difficulties of the case, the camp is thought a successful piece of work, very creditable to the officers in charge. Otherwise the day was chiefly remarkable for the unusual amount of firing at the outposts, and the arrival by runner of a Natal newspaper with the news that Lord Roberts was coming out. As it was New Year's eve, we expected a midnight greeting from the Boer guns, and sure enough, between twelve and one, all the smaller guns in turn took one shot into vacancy and then were still.

_January 1, 1900._

The Bulwan gun began the New Year with energy. He sent thirty of his enormous sh.e.l.ls into the camps and town, eight or nine of which fell in quick succession among the Helpmakaar fortifications, now held by the Liverpools.

Three or four houses in the town were wrecked by sh.e.l.ls, the most decisive ruin being at Captain Valentine's. The sh.e.l.l went through the iron verandah, pierced the stone wall above the front door without bursting, and exploded against the part.i.tion wall of the pa.s.sage and drawing-room. Throwing forward, it cleared away the kitchen wall, and swept the kitchen clean. Down a pa.s.sage to the right the expansion of the air blew off a heavy door, and threw it across the bed of a wounded Rifle Brigade officer. He escaped unhurt, but a valued servant from the Irish Rifles got a piece of sh.e.l.l through back and stomach as he was preparing breakfast in the kitchen. He died in a few hours. His last words were, "I hope you got your breakfast all right, sir."

The house had long been a death-trap. Perhaps the Boers aim at the telegraph-office across the road, or possibly spies have told them Colonel Rhodes goes there for meals. The General has now declared the place too dangerous for habitation.

In the afternoon we were to have had a military tournament on the Islington model, but the General stopped it, because the enemy would certainly have thrown sh.e.l.ls into our midst, and women and children would have been there. At night, however, the Natal Volunteers gave another open-air concert. In the midst we heard guns--real guns--from Colenso way. Between the reflected flash on the sky and the sound of the report one could count seventy-eight seconds, which Captain Lambton tells me gives a distance of about fifteen and a half miles. All day distant guns were heard from time to time. Some said the direction was changed, but I could hear no difference.

The mayor and councillors relieve the monotony of the siege with domestic solicitude. To-day they are said to be preparing a deputation to the General imploring that the first train which comes up after the relief shall be exclusively devoted--not to medical stuff for the wounded, not to food for the hungry troops and fodder for the starving horses, not to the much-needed ammunition for the guns--but to their own women.