With Buller in Natal, Or, a Born Leader

by G. A. Henty

"Thank you, sir!" Chris said, saluting, and then hurried off to rejoin his comrades.

"He is a plucky boy," the general said to his staff. "I heard the other day—though not officially, so I was not obliged to take notice of it—that he, with the twenty lads with him, rode out to a place seventy miles away, and rescued some farmers who were besieged by Boers, defeated their assailants, killed and wounded more than their own number, made the rest of them, still double their own strength, lay down their arms, and recaptured nearly two thousand head of cattle they had driven off. The news came to me from the mayor of Maritzburg, who had heard of it from a friend who had ridden in from Grey town. He wrote to me expressing his admiration at the exploit. I sent privately to their captain and questioned him about it, intending to reprimand him severely for letting them go; but he said that they had all resigned, as they had a right to do, for they are all sons of gentlemen, and draw no pay or provisions, and that he had therefore no control whatever over their actions after they left camp. I told him not to say anything about his having seen me, for that, as they had returned, I should be obliged to take notice of the matter if it came to be talked about. That young fellow who came here is the one who, with three of the others, tried to blow up the bridge at Komati-poort. He could not do that, but he played havoc with a large store of rifles, ammunition, and six or eight guns. After that I could not very well scold him." And he again turned his glass on the opposite hill.

Here the fighting was almost over, and in a very short time all resistance had ceased. Some of the Boer guns on the next hill had now been turned round, and opened upon the captured position, which took their own in flank. An aide-de-camp was sent off to order some of the guns to be taken, if possible, up to the top of Pieter's Hill, and after immense exertions two batteries were placed there. As soon as this was accomplished, orders were sent for the rest of the infantry to advance. General Warren was in command, and the fourth brigade, under Colonel Norcott, and the eleventh, under Colonel Kitchener, now moved forward, taking advantage of what shelter could be obtained as they advanced. At the same time a strong force of colonial infantry moved to the right to attack the Boer trenches farther up the line of railway, and were soon hotly engaged. The defenders of Hart's Hill, and the position between that and Pieter's, opened a heavy fire as soon as the British infantry showed themselves; but their morale was so shaken by the terrific bombardment to which they had been subjected, by the loss of Pieter's Hill, and by the rifle fire now opened by its captors, that their fire was singularly ineffective. Many men dropped, but the loss was comparatively much smaller than that suffered by the Irish division when moving across the open on the 23rd.

Taking advantage of every shelter, the troops moved steadily forward, maintaining a heavy fire whenever they did so, and winning their way steadily. Colonel Kitchener's Brigade pressed on towards Hart's Hill, which on the side by which they now attacked was far less formidable than that against which the Irish had dashed themselves. It had never entered the Boer's minds that they would be attacked from this side, and their most formidable entrenchments had all been placed to resist an assault from Colenso. Arrived at its foot, the troops were in comparative shelter among the boulders that covered the slopes. Foot by foot they made their way upwards, until at last they gathered for a final assault, and then with a loud cheer scrambled up the last slope and with fixed bayonets drove the Boers in headlong flight. A similar success attended the eleventh brigade, who just at sunset carried the centre position, and a mighty cheer broke out all along the line at the capture of what all felt to be the last serious obstacle to their advance to Ladysmith. On the right, the Colonial troops had driven the Boers in front of them for nearly three miles, capturing entrenchment after entrenchment, until they arrived at Nelthorpe station. The three camps of the Boers contained an even larger amount of spoil than had been discovered in those of Monte Cristo and Hlangwane. It seemed that they had been perfectly confident that the positions were impregnable, and had accumulated stores sufficient for a prolonged residence. It was evident, too, that the wealthier men with them had preferred this situation to the more exposed camps on the summit of the hills. The amount of provisions and stores of all kinds was large, Great quantities of rifle ammunition were found in every trench. Clothes of a superior kind proved that their owners had been residents of Johannesburg or Pretoria, and of a different class altogether from the farm-labourers and herdsmen who formed the majority of the Boer army. The haste with which they had fled, when to their astonishment they discovered that the British attack could not be repulsed, was shown by the fact that a good many watches were found on bed-places and rough tables where they had been left when the Boers rushed to arms, and in the hurry of flight had been forgotten.

The number of rifles that had been thrown away was very large. Among the dead bodies found were those of two women, one quite young and the other over sixty. It was notorious that women had more than once been seen in the firing ranks of the Boers, and there were reports that Amazon corps were in course of formation in the Transvaal, the Boers, perhaps, remembering how sturdily the women of Haarlem had fought against the Spaniards in defence of their city.

So complete had been the panic evinced by the headlong fight of the enemy that the general opinion was that it would be some time before they would again attempt a stand against our men, and that unless any entrenchments higher up the valley were held by men who had not witnessed what had taken place, and were commanded by leaders of the most determined character, Ladysmith would almost certainly be relieved within a couple of days, and the rescuing army would be thus rewarded for its toils and sacrifices.

In a state of the wildest delight the lads returned to the spot where they had left their horses, where they found that Japhet and the two Swazis had arrived just before them. They and the Zulus were exhibiting their intense satisfaction at the defeat of the Boers by a wild war-dance. The party rode fast back to camp, for their spirits did not admit of a leisurely pace, and they left the natives to follow them more deliberately. The news had already been received in camp by the return of officers who witnessed the scene from a point near to that which the lads had attained, and its occupants were in a frenzy of delight. The Colonial corps were especially jubilant. This was the anniversary of Majuba Hill, the blackest in the history of the Colony, and one that the Boers in the Transvaal and Orange State always celebrated with great rejoicings, to the humiliation of the British Colonists. Now that disgrace was wiped out. A position even stronger than that of Majuba, fortified with enormous pains, defended by artillery and by thousands of Boers, had been captured by a British force, and although it was as yet unknown in camp, the old reverse had been doubly avenged by the surrender on that day of Cronje and his army.

Late that evening an order was issued that Lord Dundonald with a squadron of Lancers and some Colonial corps, in which the Maritzburg Scouts were included, were to reconnoitre along the line of railway. All felt sure that no serious opposition was likely to be met with; the defeat of the Boers had been so crushing and complete that assuredly few of the fugitives would be found willing to again encounter the terrible artillery fire, followed by the irresistible onslaught of the infantry. That evening, in spite of the scarcity of wood, bonfires were lighted, and the Scouts gathered round them. Every bottle of spirits and wine that remained in the camp was broached, and a most joyous evening was spent.

"I shall be able to breathe freely;" one of the colonists, a man from Johannesburg, said, "on Majuba Day in future. I have made a point for years, whenever I wanted to do any business in Natal, to put it off till that date, so that I could get out of the Transvaal. When I could not manage it, I shut myself up and stopped in bed all day, though even there I used to grind my teeth when I heard the brutes shouting and singing in the streets. Still, to me it was not half such a humiliation as surrender day. The one was a piece of carelessness, a military blunder, no doubt; the other was a national disgrace. And though I saw Majuba myself, it did not affect me half as much as did the abject backing down of the British Government after they had collected an army at Newcastle in readiness to avenge Majuba. We could not believe the news when it came. The fury of the troops was unbounded, and I would not have given a farthing for the lives of any of the men who were the authors of the surrender, had they been in the camp that day."

"What were you doing there?" Chris asked.