11th September.—My anniversary of joining Her Majesty’s Service, 1876–1896—twenty years. I always think more of this anniversary than of that of my birth, and I could not picture a more enjoyable way of spending it. I am here, out in the wilds, with three troopers. They are all Afrikanders, that is, Colonial born, one an ex–policeman, another a mining engineer (went to England with me in 1889 on board the Mexican), the third an electrical engineer from Johannesburg,—all of them good men on the veldt, and good fighting men. We are nearly eighty miles from Buluwayo and thirty from the nearest troops. I have rigged up a shelter from the sun with my blanket, a rock, and a thorn–bush; thirteen thousand flies are unfortunately staying with me, and are awfully attentive.
One of us is always on the look–out by night and by day. Our stock of food, crockery, cooking utensils, and bedding does not amount to anything much, as we carry it all on our saddles.
Once, not very long ago, at an afternoon “At Home,” I was handing a cup of tea to an old dowager, who bridled up in a mantle with bugles and beads, and some one noticed that in doing so my face wore an absent look, and I was afterwards asked where my thoughts were at that time. I could only reply that “My mind was a blank, with a single vision in it, lower half yellow, upper half blue,” in other words, the yellow veldt of South Africa, topped with the blue South African sky. Possibly the scent of the tea had touched some memory chord which connected it with my black tin billy, steaming among the embers of a wood fire; but whatever it was then, my vision is to–day a reality. I am looking out on the yellow veldt and the blue sky; the veldt with its grey, hazy clumps of thorn bush is shimmering in the heat, and its vast expanse is only broken by the gleaming white sand of the river bed and the green reeds and bushes which fringe its banks. (Interruption: Stand to the tent! a “Devil,” with its roaring pillar of dust and leaves, comes tearing by.) I used to think that the novelty of the thing would wear off, that these visions of the veldt would fade away as civilised life grew upon me. But they didn’t. They came again at most inopportune moments: just when I ought to be talking “The World,” or “Truth,” or “Modern Society” (with the cover removed), and making my reputation as a “sensible, well–informed man, my dear,” with the lady in the mantle, somebody in the next room has mentioned the word saddle, or rifle, or billy, or some other attribute of camp life, and off goes my mind at a tangent to play with its toys. Old Oliver Wendell Holmes is only too true when he says that most of us are “boys all our lives”; we have our toys, and will play with them with as much zest at eighty as at eight, that in their company we can never grow old. I can’t help it if my toys take the form of all that has to do with veldt life, and if they remain my toys till I drop—
“Then here’s to our boyhood, its gold and its grey,
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May;
And when we have done with our life–lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of Thy children, the boys.”
May it not be that our toys are the various media adapted to individual tastes through which men may know their God?
As Ramakrishna Paramahansa writes: “Many are the names of God and infinite the forms that lead us to know of Him. In whatsoever name or form you desire to know Him, in that very name and form you will know Him.”
In the afternoon I rode out with one of the men some ten miles down the Shangani River, to see if we could find any spoor of the enemy crossing the sandy bed or coming to get water there, but we only found the separate tracks of three men at all fresh, though we found hundreds of old tracks. As we came in sight of our bivouac on our return, my man said, “There is a strange horse grazing with ours; someone has come to the camp;” and it was true enough—we had a visitor. Vyvyan, who was acting as staff officer to Ridley, had received my note which I had sent on by runners, saying that I was coming out to take command of the column, and that he was to return to Buluwayo to act as chief staff officer. From him I ascertained that the column was only twenty–five miles away, and had not yet had a big fight, although it had lost a few men in taking some of the innumerable koppies in which the rebels of that part had taken refuge. So towards evening we saddled up and moved on, Vyvyan going on to Buluwayo with one man as escort, and I and my little party continuing our way eastward. We went on for three hours until the moon set, and then bivouacked for the night.
12th September.—On again at daybreak, through thick bush country, in which were numerous granite boulder koppies. Everywhere we found more or less recent tracks of natives, and the wheel–marks of Ridley’s waggons once more became pretty well defined. Our horses were now beginning to get done—indeed, one of mine was doing his best to die; so, knowing that we must be near Ridley’s camp, I pressed on ahead of the party leaving them to follow more leisurely. Presently I came across two niggers hiding in the bush, but evidently unarmed and afraid to run away. From them I managed to elicit that the camp was not far off, and they soon put me on the right path to it, and I got in in time for a late breakfast. The laager was formed in an open spot, surrounded on all sides at a short distance by eight koppies which formed the strongholds of the enemy. One of these koppies had been attacked and taken two days previously, and the chief of the tribe had been there captured. But we had lost one man killed and four wounded, and there still remained seven koppies to be taken. One of my first acts in camp, after taking over command of the column, was to visit the hospital, where I found one man with his hand amputated; he bore it very well, and, being one of the best football players of the 7th Hussars, he was in good training, and therefore but little affected by it. When I said I hoped it would not spoil his football in the future, he laughed and said that as he played the Association game, he would be all the better without a hand. Another poor chap had a great double wound in his thigh (all unbandaged for my edification); and another, who was yesterday a particularly handsome young hussar, has to–day a horrible caricature of a face, with the whole of his lower jaw shot away. And with what object? Merely to get half a dozen frightened niggers out of their holes in the rocks. Then I was shown the chief who had been captured—Uwini by name. He was badly wounded in the shoulder, but, enraged at being a prisoner, he would allow nothing to be done for him; no sooner had the surgeon bandaged him than he tore the dressings off again. He was a fine, truculent–looking savage, and boasted that he had always been able to hold his own against any enemies in this stronghold of his, but now that he was captured he only wished to die. His capture had been most pluckily effected by Captain van Niekerk and two of his men. When his kraal was taken by the troops, Uwini had scrambled down into the labyrinth of caves which ran through the rocks on which the kraal was built. Trooper Halifax and another crawled in after him, and followed him from one point to another of his refuge, often firing and being fired at by him. After some hours of this game of hide–and–seek, Halifax had managed to wound the chief; they then followed him up with a lighted candle, tracking him by his blood spoor, until they finally cornered him in a cleft of the rocks from which he could not escape. He was so disabled by his wound as to be unable to fire on them, and they made him a prisoner.
It now rested with me to decide what should be our next step. We had lost five men killed and wounded in taking one koppie, and there still remained seven to be taken, which were just as strongly held as the first one; consequently we must expect to lose a number of men before we finally effected our purpose, and the probability was that we should not do this before we had first killed a large number of the rebels. The Native Commissioner of this part had been murdered by the rebels and his police had joined them, so that civil power in the district had ceased to exist. There was in camp, however, an acting Native Commissioner, Mr. V. Gielgud, who was to assume the post of Commissioner so soon as the rebels could be induced to surrender. This officer was most anxious that I should try Uwini by court–martial, for the following reasons:—Uwini was not only the leading chief of that part of the country, but was one of the four chiefs of the whole of Matabeleland who were supposed to be specially endowed by the M’limo, the god of the people; he was therefore in their eyes sacred, invulnerable, and infallible. He was well known to be the instigator of rebellion, and of several specific murders of whites in the district. His immediate punishment, then and there, would do more than anything else to restore our prestige and bring about the surrender of rebels, not only of his own tribe, but probably of the neighbouring tribes as well.