“Little Miss Tucket Sat by a Bucket”
A small girl and her puppy, captured at Wedza’s stronghold (on the mountain in the background). She was content to sit for hours by a bucket, and play with empty meat–tins.
While the mounted infantry were thus taking the kraals in succession, the hussars were recalled from their outlying positions around the stronghold; and, though pretty well fagged out with the almost incessant work of the last twenty–four hours, they eagerly volunteered to clamber up the mountain and take part with the mounted infantry in completing the destruction of the stronghold; and Major Ridley, with his usual energy, led them up there. All through the heat of the day they were at work, over most awful ground and clambering on to inaccessible peaks, to effect the complete destruction of the enemy’s villages and the clearing of their grain stores. It was not till after dark that they were all safely down again, with their work well accomplished, and the blazing evidences of it gleaming out their message to all the rebels for miles round.
21st October.—Excuse bad writing; but the light is waning; it is sunset, the yellow–red sky is cut by the black skyline of the next ridge and its wooded crest in strong silhouette. Looking from my lair, through the frame of great black tree–stems, our bivouac fires in the gully just below look like ragged bits of the orange–coloured sky dropped into the dark abyss of the bush, and their blue misty wreaths of smoke rise slowly on the breathless air like a circle of ghostly sentries. The men are busy at their evening meal, the murmur of their voices and the crunching of the horses, with their muzzles deep in looted corn, are only sounds that go to emphasise the stillness of the forest. Overhead, in the darkening sky, “Celangobi” (C stands for a Matabele click, with a sound of Kts), the matron evening star, beams calmly on our rest; but, over her shoulder, little, laughing stars are already twinkling at the humour of the thing, for they can see her peaceful gleam glinting sharply from the rifles and sword–scabbards on the ground below; the peace of the scene is but the peace of the hour—to–morrow there will be war again.—What nonsense it is to write all this! but when one is tired, it is as when one is ill: one likes to review such trifles in a dreamy way. I am tired,—we all are tired,—nature herself seems tired to–night. And we’ve some reason for it. On the evening of the 19th, we (a party of forty mounted men, hussars and mounted infantry) moved out from camp without encumbrances, but taking two days’ rations in our wallets, to follow up Wedza’s people in their flight through his country, and to harry them into submission.
An evening march, off–saddle in the woods, and on again at 3 a. m. No pipes nor talking as we pass along the foot of the rocky ridge on which the rebels have their kraals. Then clamber up on foot, lugging our horses after us, along the steep and rocky cattle track. No cattle now are here—the spoor is old. We break up into small patrols, to each of which is assigned a bit of mountain and its kraals.
With my patrol we have a weary trudge—for only twenty per cent. of the men have boots still fit for walking—(and I am one of the remaining eighty per cent.; my feet are partly through the soles and on the ground; I go, like Agag, “treading delicately”). We see no kraal; but the fresh spoor of men, women, and children lies before to guide us. It turns and leads into the boulders on the mountain–side. There, just round the corner of a rock, one spies the eaves of a thatched hut, and, close beside a cave, a few dead branches show there is a cattle kraal. We press through thorny bush, and clamber up the slippery granite path, some men working up the right and others up the left. Behind some rocks we come upon a few huts, all empty but for some calabashes of water and some fetish rags. Then a nasty slit between the rocks has to be approached with care, or others stepped across in haste—these are the caves in which Mashonas love to lie when danger visits their kraal. The caves are labyrinths of little passages between the rocks below the ground; and a few men with guns, well posted, can hope with ease to stop a host of enemies.
The path leads up a kind of stair of rocks to a gap between two heavy boulders, and in the gap is fixed a strong stockade of roughly–trimmed saplings. To either hand, interstices between the rocks have been blocked up with stones, and made into loopholes. These defences are without defenders—and we are soon among the better huts of the kraal proper, and among the corn–stores.
Each man carries an empty nose–bag, and as soon as these are filled, and some errant chickens killed with sticks, and curios taken from the huts, we burn the kraal, commencing on the windward side. There is a roar, as the pillar of flame shoots up its twenty feet into the sky, the pots and calabashes crack up from heat with the report of pistols, and in a few minutes the village is a heap of smoking ruins—a warning far and near to watching rebels.
After burning two such kraals, we make our way back to the horses, the whole patrol reassembles and continues its march, having destroyed five kraals among us. Through woods and stony hills into the Sabi Valley. Off–saddle by a convenient water–hole, for breakfast and midday rest. On again in the afternoon, to a bold, upstanding, solitary peak, a regular acropolis, on the top of which are clustered the huts of Monti’s stronghold. Keeping under cover of the woods, we divide into two parties, and rapidly surround it. Dismount; and half an hour’s arduous climb brings us past caves and barricades up to the summit. Nobody there! Splendid view, fine kraal, good huts; fill our nosebags and baskets, clear out, light up, and gingerly, among the sharp stones, down we go again, to the music of the crackling huts behind us. Then through the forest—up over stony mountains—alternately walking and riding—to ease our worn–out nags. Over the Fisu range; then down into an ideal cattle–robbers valley, full of kloofs and glades, with a grassy, marshy bottom. Cliffs tower up on either hand, and from their tops we can hear the rebel look–outs shouting their warning of our approach, confound them! They soon know miles ahead that we are there—and the path is far too bad for night marching!