Being a frontierswoman it did not take her long to catch and saddle up her horse, and in a few minutes she and her husband had left their home, and were riding for their lives towards Bulawayo. Before they were out of sight of their house they could see smoke and flames already issuing from it. The natives who had borrowed the axes had done so with the object of murdering them, and finding that they had escaped, were now wreaking their vengeance on their property. It was just Mrs. Selous’ promptness, cool-headedness, and ability to ride that saved her life.
Another woman at that time was similarly out on her farm, while her husband was away in some other part of the country. The natives surrounded her house in the night and attacked her faithful native servants. Knowing her danger, she slept in her clothes, and realising what was the matter when she heard the noise of the attack, she seized her revolver and, slipping out of the house through a back window, she escaped into the garden and hid herself behind a tombstone there. In the early dawn the marauders departed, and she came out of her hiding-place to find her home wrecked and her faithful servants all killed. A relief party of white men soon after arrived from the nearest township, and found her quite self-possessed and calm. The only excitement she showed was her intense relief at the fact that one of the attackers had seized her sewing machine and was making off with it when he was killed by one of her men, and had dropped the machine at a spot where it just escaped falling down the well. So she rode back to Salisbury in triumph with her rescuers, clutching her beloved sewing machine. She had no sooner reached safety than she discovered that she had dropped her revolver, and she insisted on going back again to find it. You might think that she could have got a new revolver in the town, but that was not the question. The revolver was a favourite of hers, because, although old and rather out of gear, she had once killed a lion with it.
She had many other exciting adventures in Rhodesia which I have not space to tell here, but she was a splendid type of what a London girl can do when put to it in places of difficulty and danger, if only she has trained herself.
S.T.
The story of Laura Secord, the heroine of Canada, shows what a frontierswoman may be called upon to do, and what she can do if only she has Been Preparing herself in strength of mind and body like a Scout.
Canada was at war with the United States over a hundred years ago. Battles between the Americans and the English were being fought on all sides in that unhappy year 1812. After the engagement on Queenstown Heights a terror-stricken woman went tramping over the field where the slain were lying in search of her husband. Laura Secord had heard that her husband had been wounded and left there for dead; but on finding him, to her joy she discovered that he was still alive, though badly injured.
It was during his long illness that a report was brought to Laura Secord that the Americans were again coming to surprise the English, unknown to the general.
Owing to her pluck and determination, Laura achieved a famous deed of heroism and saved her country by taking the information of the advance of the enemy right away to the commanding officer of the British troops. Through difficulties and dangers she sped without a fear for her own safety; she trudged on through forests and bogs, going twenty miles round out of the beaten track so as to avoid being traced. In the dusk of the evening her path was checked by a deep stream. Here she felt almost hopeless, until she found a tree-trunk fallen across the water, and by this she managed to scramble to the opposite bank. Whilst dreading what might happen at home to her invalid husband and her little children left behind, Laura Secord still pressed forward through the darkness, tired and weak, till she at length reached the British camp, and was able to unburden her mind and give the news of the danger to the officer in command. All present were struck with admiration for her gallant effort, and with the knowledge of the impending danger thus gained, the British were able to BE PREPARED.