Volume Two—Chapter Thirteen.
The Main Camp.
It was after sundown when “Claverton’s Levy” reached the camp of the main body of the forces detailed to operate in the Gaika Location.
The camp was pitched on an open flat, well situated for defensive purposes, and commanding a wide open sweep of half a mile on the most closed-in side. In the event of attack upon it the enemy would have to bring more than his wonted verve and determination to the fore, if he would render the chance of even partial success so much as possible; for here were gathered over eight hundred men, all handy with the rifle, and a few volleys, sweeping across that open approach, would tumble the advancing foe over so quickly that he would turn and flee before half the space was covered. A likely-looking force. Border farmers, up-country transport-riders, frontiersmen all—ready for the roughest work and the hardest of tussles, at the earliest opportunity—with many a long score of petty depredation and wholesale marauding, and insolence, and defiance, and menace, and desertion of service to pay off upon their erewhile turbulent neighbours, and now open enemies. Dutch burghers, from the Tarka and Cradock districts—past masters in the art of skirmishing, competent to pick off an object the size of an orange at three or four hundred yards, while exposing the smallest fraction of their own ungainly frames to the enemy’s fire. Volunteers—mostly townsmen—full of fight, if less reliable in their aim than their more practised brethren, all had their separate camps pitched in close proximity. Some of the corps were fortunate and had tents, others were unfortunate and had none. A few waggons were there, containing the supplies and baggage of each corps, or the ventures of private and speculative individuals, who retailed indifferent grog and other “luxuries” at their own prices. On one side of the camp, like a dark cloud, might be seen a swarm of native warriors; this was the bivouac of the Fingo levies, and like a disturbed ants’ nest, its area was alive with black forms moving to and fro and making themselves comfortable for the night, while the hum and murmur of their deep-toned voices rose upon the air.
Having fixed upon a camping ground for his men—to augment whose numbers an additional batch had arrived from King Williamstown—Claverton left his lieutenant in charge, and proceeded to report himself at head-quarters.
“I think you’ve done exceedingly well, Mr Claverton,” said the Commandant of Colonial Forces—a tall, quiet-looking, middle-aged man—as he listened to the narrative of the attack upon the Hottentot levy. He was a frontier farmer, and something of a politician, clever and prompt in the field, and of good administrative capacity, by virtue of which qualities he had been elected to, and subsequently confirmed in his present post. “In fact, we hardly expected you so soon. I’m very glad to find that your fellows are made of such good fighting stuff; and, by the way, you may hardly like to leave them now. I mean,” he went on, seeing the other’s look of surprise, “when I say, you may not like to leave them, that I think we can find you something better. The fact is, Brathwaite wants to get you into his troop—Garnier, his third man, was invalided on the way up, fever, result of bad water or something; and he wants to pitchfork you into his place. I told him I didn’t think you’d care to give up a regular command of your own to put yourself under another fellow, and, now, while I think of it, you have managed those Hottentot chaps so well, that I don’t much like your leaving them just as you’ve got them ship-shape. Still, you’d probably rather be among your friends, and if you care about taking the post, I’ll get you appointed at once.”
“It’s very kind of you,” replied Claverton. “If I might, I should like to think it over. Would it do if I let you know in an hour’s time?” It was even as the other had said; he was not quite prepared to throw up an absolute command of his own to serve in a subordinate capacity, even among his old comrades.
“Oh, yes. Let me know to-morrow morning, that will be time enough,” was the good-natured answer. “Why, there is Brathwaite,” and, gaining the door of the tent with a couple of strides, he called out: “Here, Brathwaite. Tumble in here for a minute, will you.”
“What’s up?” cried Jim, turning. “Why, Arthur! You here? When did you turn up?”
“He’s had a scrimmage, and a good one,” pat in the Commandant before he could answer. “But look here, Brathwaite. I’ve been telling Claverton about your idea, and he’ll let us know in the morning. If you can talk him over meanwhile so much the better—for you,” he added, with a smile.
“Oh! Well, look here, Arthur. Fetch up at my tent as soon as you’ve got your camp fixed, and we’ll talk things over and make an evening of it. I can’t stop now—got to see about that ammunition that’s just come. So long!” and he wae gone.
From head-quarters Claverton betook himself to the commissariat department to arrange for the rationing of his men. He was well pleased with his reception, and might have been more so had he heard the remark of the chief authority to a volunteer officer who had dropped in just after he left.
“A smart fellow, that—a fine, smart fellow. Wish we had a few more like him! A cool hand, too. I could see it in his eye.” And as the officer turned to gaze curiously after the receding form, he told him about the action which Claverton had reported; and the listener, brimming over with such a piece of veritable “news”—gleaned, too, at first hand, on the very best authority—was not long in delivering himself of the same, first to one auditor, then another, till the story, gathering sundry additions and exaggerations as it went, soon spread throughout the camp.
The daylight waned, and hundreds of red fires shone out in the gloaming as the cooking of the evening meal went merrily forward. Here and there might be seen a rough, bearded fellow in shirt and trousers, seated on a log or an upturned biscuit tin, stirring the contents of a three-legged pot with a long wooden spoon, while his comrades lay or sat around, smoking their pipes and chaffing the elective cook—on duty by rotation—suggesting that, as long as he watched the old pot with that hungry and particularly wolfish stare, it would never boil; or that he needn’t think to keep them all waiting long enough to send them to sleep, and enable him to polish off half the rations—and so on. Here and there, too, through the open door of a tent, a man might be seen, by the light of a lantern, writing on a box turned bottom upwards; or others, needle in hand, busily stitching at some article of saddlery, or haply of more personal accoutrement; but for the most part they were taking it easy. And now and again a buzz of voices suddenly raised or a burst of laughter was heard, telling of discussion or argument, or jest, or successful chaff. Prompt at “spotting” a new arrival, not a few were the glances of inquiry turned upon Claverton as he made his way back to his quarters. “Who is he?”
“Where’s he from?” would be the half-whispered inquiries as each group, sinking its occupation for the moment, turned to gaze after the stranger. “Looks fit, anyhow!”
“One of Brathwaite’s chaps?”
“Not a ‘swell,’ is he?” was the varying comment as he passed.
True to his promise, Claverton, as soon as he had seen to the requirements of his men and posted his sentries, made his way to Jim Brathwaite’s tent. That jovial leader wae busily occupied in setting out a variety of stores comestible upon a couple of upturned packing-cases; preserved-meat tins, biscuit, pepper and salt, cheese, knives and forks, and plates of debatable crockery warranted not to break, while upon the ground stood several bottles of Bass, and two or three of something stronger.
“Now, Klaas,” he was saying to his sable acolyte, “I don’t want you here any more, so collar that bucket and go and ‘skep’ out some water from the clean part of the river—up above; you understand. And look out that the sentries don’t shoot you, or your own countrymen either. Hallo, Arthur! here we are. Got a dinner-party on to-night.”
“Looks like it—”
“Rather! No one admitted if not in evening-dress,” cried Armitage, bursting into the tent, followed by Naylor and another man belonging to the troop.
“Where’s the post-horn, Jack?” was Claverton’s first inquiry.
“Left it at home,” replied Armitage, looking rather sheepish.
“Now bring yourselves to an anchor,” cried Jim. “You must sit where you can, and balance your plates somehow. They forgot to send a supply of tables. Here, Klaas, drag in that stew. We won’t wait for the other fellows.”
“Won’t ye? Indade and that’s illigant of ye! Company manners, I should call it!” And the speaker—a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, with a curly, reddish beard—entered the tent, a whimsical expression lurking in his blue Milesian eyes. His companion—a volunteer officer, by name Barlow—not looking where he was going, stumbled over the tent-rope and would have fallen had not the Irishman caught him in his athletic grasp.
“Hould up, me boy! Sure it’s too soon by six morthal hours for ye to be thrying to stand on one leg!”
The other laughed, and there was a fresh move in order to make way for the late arrivals, during which a newly-opened tin of salmon emptied its contents into Armitage’s hat, while simultaneously some one managed to upset and extinguish the lantern.
“Hold on! Don’t move!” cried Jim, striking a match. “There?” And lighting the lantern again, they surveyed the damage.
“See what comes of unpunctuality, McShane,” said Armitage, gravely, holding up his hat.
“Bedad, and ye oughtn’t to complain, for ye’ve got your own rations and all of ours, too,” retorted the Irishman.
“Never mind; shy it outside, Jack, or give it to Klaas. He’ll soon polish it off,” said Jim. “Here,” he went on, handing round the Bass bottles. “Just one apiece; make the most of it because it’s the last.”
“Last of the Mohicans,” inevitably and simultaneously quoted every one.
Corks popped and jollification reigned paramount; and sitting there in that rough tent, whose sole furniture consisted of a camp-stool or so, and a few old packing-cases turned upside down, Claverton began to find himself in a very comfortable frame of mind. The not very brilliant light of the tin lantern shone upon faces full of mirth and good fellowship, and many a hearty laugh rang out as they discussed the cheer before them—rough in all conscience, but plentiful and indeed luxurious compared with what awaited them. His mind was made up. He would accept the post offered to him.
The tinned meats disappeared, and so did the rather tough camp rations in their turn; and the Bass having long since vanished, the grog-bottles were beginning to show symptoms of decay.
“Tell you what it is, Claverton, old boy,” began Armitage, benignly contemplating him through a cloud of tobacco smoke. “You’d better cut in with us; just look how well we live here.”
“Jack, an’ it’s blarneyin’ ye are,” remarked the Irishman. “Ye needn’t think to find such a spread ivery night, me boy. It’s glad ye’ll be to get your eye-teeth into the hind quarters of the toughest old trek-ox in the span before you’re a week oulder—’dade and it’ll be Hobson’s choice for ye then. Tell ye what, Misther Claverton; that fellow Jack Armitage’s the damnedest old humbug in this camp. Now, what d’ye think he did, when we first came up here?”
“What?” Claverton was bottling up his mirth. He saw at a glance that this droll Irishman and Jack were sworn foes—rival wags, in fact—and was prepared for some fun.
“Why, he had a dirty, batthered ould tin trumpet, that his father used to toot on when he drove the Dublin coach, and it’s no wonder that same shandradan came to mortal smash twice a week wid such a dhriver. Well, this fellow Jack, the first time—and it won’t be the last, I’m thinking—he got his skin too full of Cape smoke, what’s he do but go outside his tent in the middle of the night and blow off a blast on his old post-horn. I give ye me word it was enough to wake the dead; anyhow, it woke the whole camp. Ye needn’t laff, Jack, ye unfalin’ divil, when it’s five innocent men ye blew to death with that trumpet—five—I give ye me word.”
“How was that?” asked Claverton.
“Well, in this way,” went on the other, delighted to find a new listener whom he could regale with Armitage’s delinquencies. “Ye see the fellow kicked up such a shilloo that every one tumbled out like mad, thinkin’ the camp was attacked, and the Fingo levies there, began lettin’ off their guns as hard as they could bang. They knocked over five of their own men and winged a lot besides, and the bullets were flying about all over the place. As soon as they could be prevailed on to cease fire, and the cause of the scare was known, no end of fellows came cruising up this way, wanting to find the chap who’d sounded the alarm, but Jack, the villain, he stowed away the old trumpet and joined in the search louder than any of them, and it hasn’t been seen or heard of since. Anyhow, he killed five innocent men wid his infernal old bray, and about thirteen of ’em—well, I was hard at work for hours next morning dhiggin’ out the bullets their chums had plugged ’em wid, and nately they’d done it, too. One chap had his—”
“Oh, don’t go lugging your old butcher’s shop in here, Dennis,” interrupted Armitage. “Even at your own trade you’re the clumsiest old sawbones that ever hoodwinked the examiners and slipped through.”
“Clumsy, am I? The divil!” cried McShane, who was accompanying the colonial forces in the capacity of surgeon. “Wait till I get me probes into ye, Master Jack Armitage—some of these days when ye get a couple of pot-legs through ye—and we’ll see if it’s clumsy I am.”
“Oh, hang it, Jim, only listen to the fellow. Do put an extinguisher on him. If we must have a butcher, at any rate he might leave the shop outside.”
There was a laugh.
“Wait a bit, Jack, me boy. It’s meself who’ll live to hear ye change your tone, as sure as me name’s Dennis McShane!” cried the other.
“Well, this is lively sort of talk,” put in Barlow, who was of a melancholy disposition, except when “elevated,” and then he was uproarious to a degree. “Haven’t you two fellows ever heard of the proverb, ‘Many a true word spoken in jest’?”
“If Jack gets hit now at any time, he ought to sue the doctor for big damages,” said Naylor, blowing out a cloud of smoke.
“Or make him put him right for nothing,” said Jim.
“An’ that’s what I’ll do, faith,” said the Irishman, “an’ it’s mighty small he’ll sing when the time comes.”
“You! I wouldn’t have you digging for bullets in me, if I had to carry them for the rest of my natural life,” cried Armitage in withering scorn. “If it came to that I’d send across for old Pollock. A blacksmith’s better than a butcher under those circumstances, and being a Cornishman he might understand lead mining.”
“An’ if it was in your head he had to look for the lead, it’s a bull’s-eye lanthern he’d want, for he’d find it mighty foggy in there, I’m thinkin’,” retorted McShane.
“By Jove, Dennis,” cried Armitage, suddenly, “It’s deuced queer that I never noticed it before; but as you sit there you’re the very image of poor Walker—Obadiah Walker.”
“I am, am I? An’ who the divil is Obadiah Walker?”
“The man who wouldn’t help himself and wouldn’t pass the bottle, though I must say that it’s only in the last particular the likeness holds good.”
“The bottle!” cried McShane, amid the roar that followed, for it was not often that even such an old hand as Jack managed to get a rise out of the astute Milesian. “Is it this one ye mane?” holding it up to the light. “Because, if so, she’s come to an end—as the gossoon said when he slid down the cow’s tail and she kicked him into the praist’s strawberry bed.”
There was other sign of the bottle having come to an end, and it needed not the misadventure of the too-enterprising youth just quoted, to support the announcement, for Barlow having passed out of the confidential stage, during which he had endeavoured to impart to Claverton, who was sitting next to him, his whole family history and circumstances, was beginning to wax extremely talkative, his utterance increasing in levity in proportion to its thickness. Armitage, who had his eye upon the unconscious sinner, was meditating what practical joke, that would bear the additional charm of originality, he could play off upon him as soon as it should be time to convey him to his own tent, when a tremendous row was heard outside—voices in remonstrance, and, loud above them, one screaming out torrents of imprecation upon everything and everybody. Quickly they all turned out, and there, not half-a-dozen yards off, stood a man of tall, powerful build, brandishing a revolver, while following on his footsteps, but keeping their respectful distance, were at least a dozen others. The fellow was mad drunk, and, as he stood there in the uncertain light, raving and dancing as he flourished his weapon, and bellowing out the most awful blasphemies, he looked quite formidable enough to afford a very sufficient excuse to the onlookers for their scrupulous and praiseworthy resolve to refrain from interfering in what was not their business. An infuriated drunkard brandishing a loaded six-shooter, is not an attractive person to interfere with.
Quickly McShane stepped up to the raving giant.
“See here, Flint,” he said, in his persuasive Irish way. “What’s all this about, now?”
The madman glared at him and started back a pace, gnashing his teeth and foaming at the mouth.
“I want my officer,” he yelled. “Where the hell’s my blanked officer? I want to blow his blanked brains out.”
“But see; your pistol isn’t loaded,” said McShane, in the quietest way.
The fellow stared, struck all of a heap by the idea, and, holding up the weapon to his eyes, began examining it in the dim flickering light. In a moment it was snatched from his hand by the intrepid Irishman who repelled his immediate onslaught with a blow in the chest, which sent him staggering back half-a-dozen paces, and before he had recovered his balance he was seized by the bystanders and firmly held.
“And why the divil didn’t some of ye do that before?” asked McShane, wrathfully. “Why, he might have blown up the whole camp while a dozen of ye were standin’ thur open-mouthed. Is it afraid of him ye were?”
The men looked sheepish, and muttered something about “were just going to” as they secured the arms of their fallen comrade, who lay on the ground still raving and cursing.
“Just going to, were ye!” cried the irascible doctor. “It’d serve ye right if he’d blown half your heads off. Now take him away. Don’t knock the poor divil about, Saunders,” he added, noticing a disposition to use the prisoner roughly.
They marched off the erring Flint, who had subsided suddenly, and became quite rational again; but it would not do to let him get abroad that night, so he was kept under arrest.
“Who’s that fellow?” said Jim. “If he belonged to my corps I’d bundle him out, sharp.”
“Yis; it’s bad enough havin’ such a chap in it as Jack Armitage. He’s a handful in himself, bedad.”
“Well, I’m going to turn in,” said Naylor. “Any one going my way?”
“Yis; hould on,” replied the doctor—and there was a general move made. Now and then a burst of laughter came from one of the tents, which, like this one, had been holding festival; but for the rest the camp was in slumbrous quiet, only disturbed by the occasional challenge of sentry, or the footfall of such loiterers as these our friends.
“Jim,” said Claverton, the last thing as he bade him good-night, “I’ve made up my mind about that offer of yours.”
“You’ll take it?”
“Yes.”
In the morning, who should turn up but Hicks and some twenty others, whose restless spirits would not allow them to remain quiet at home; and later in the day two more troops of burghers from the Western districts. And the available forces being thus strengthened, it was resolved that a forward move should take place at once.
Claverton’s swarthy followers growled considerably at losing their chief, whom, in the short time he had been with them, they had already began to look up to and respect. Lumley, especially, put his discontent into words.
“Always the way,” he grumbled. “Directly you get a fellow you pull well with—off he goes.”
“But, Lumley; you’ll be in command yourself now, don’t you see?”
Lumley evidently didn’t see, for this side of the question now burst upon him with a new light.
“Don’t know. They’re sure to keep me out of it,” he growled, but as if he thought the contingency not an unmixed evil. And the fact was, his late chief thought the same.
So Claverton, with the faithful Sam as body-servant, entered upon his new rank of Field-Captain in “Brathwaite’s Horse,” vice Philip Garnier resigned.