“Now, Jack,” he said, sitting down on an empty case, “light up and give me the yarn. Things here are very old and stale, and a little news is always welcome. Pass along that bottle, Frank, and make yourselves comfortable all of you.”
When Jack had given him the incidents of the attack upon the house, Tom’s face was a study, and the absolute amazement and wonder depicted upon it set the others in a roar.
“Well, I’m blowed!” he stuttered hoarsely. “Who’d have thought it! It just makes a fellow proud to be an Englishman. Jack, I knew all along that you were a plucky young beggar, but this beats all! Your friend, too, has got some grit about him, and so has Frank; but the girl—well, I never did hear of such downright bravery;” and Tom passed his fingers through his hair and gulped down a pannikin of rum and water with a distracted air which seemed to say that the news had been altogether too much for him.
Chapter Eleven.
Tracked by the Enemy.
It was in the last few days of October, when the hot season and the rains of South Africa were about to set in, that Jack Somerton and his friends at length found safety in the beleaguered town of Kimberley, after their stubborn and protracted fight in the farmhouse of the Russels. By this time the war had been many days in progress, for President Kruger’s ultimatum was despatched on October 9th, and hostilities had commenced on the afternoon of the 11th by an invasion of British territory.
We have seen that to meet that invasion and to stem the flow of the jubilant Boers there were only some 20,000 English regulars in South Africa at the time; and to these the feat of rolling back the overwhelming forces of the burghers in Natal, the protection of our northern towns in Cape Colony, and the garrisoning of Mafeking and Kimberley was a practical impossibility. Yet, with the dogged pluck and determination for which their predecessors had ever been known, that small army had done wonders already.
By October 6th, when war seemed so inevitable, 10,000 additional troops were ordered to be despatched forthwith to South Africa; and since the case was an urgent one, the regiments in India, which are always kept on a war footing, were mainly drawn upon.