With Buller in Natal, Or, a Born Leader

by G. A. Henty

The chagrin felt at the mistake that had been made in not making this the prime object of attack was general, for the Boers could be seen working unceasingly at their entrenchments. They had not only made a ford by throwing great quantities of rock and stones into the channel, but had also built a bridge, so that the force on the hill could be speedily reinforced to any extent, and what could have been effected on the day of the attack by half a battalion of infantry would now be a very serious undertaking even by a whole division.

The lads were chatting one day over the chances of the next fight, most of them taking a very sanguine view.

"What do you say, Chris?" one of them said after the discussion had gone on for some time. "You have not given us your opinion."

"My opinion does not agree with yours," Chris replied. "After what I saw the other day, I think the difficulties of fighting our way over those mountains are so enormous that I doubt whether we shall ever do it."

There was a chorus of dissent.

"Well, we shall see," he said. "I hope that we shall do it just as much as you do, but it is tremendous business. I have no doubt Sir Redvers will go on trying, but I should not be surprised if at heart he has doubts that it can be done. The Boers have more guns that we have, and any number of those Maxims and Hotchkiss that keep up a stream of balls. The Boers' trenches enable them to fire at us without showing anything but a head, except when they stand up or have to move across the open. If we drive them out of one position they have others to fall back upon. It is not one natural fortress that we have to take, but a dozen of them. They know every foot of the country they occupy, while we know nothing but just what we can see at a distance."

"Well, if Sir Redvers thought as you do, why should he go on hammering at it?"

"For several reasons, Peters. In the first place, if Ladysmith saw that there was no chance of rescue it would at last give in; and in the second place, if there was an end of all attempts to relieve the place England would go wild with indignation; and in the third place, and by far the most important, Sir Redvers knows that he is keeping from twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand of the Boers inactive here, and so relieving the pressure on our troops on the other side. We know regiments are arriving from England at the Cape every day. When they get strong enough to invade the Orange Free State and take Bloemfontein, and march north, the Boers here will be hurrying away to defend their homes. Of course the Free Staters will go first, but the Transvaalers will have to follow. We hear that Methuen has been beaten at Magersfontein, and that he has been brought to a stand-still within the sound of the guns round Kimberley, just as we are here, and that the Boers have a very strong position there also. So at present the advance is as much checked there as it is here. Gatacre has had a misfortune too, so that we are all in the same boat. I saw a Pietermaritzburg paper in the naval camp just now; there are about twenty thousand men on the sea at the present moment, besides those in the colony, and two more divisions are being formed. So it is safe to come right in the long run. But at present, if those twenty-five thousand Boers opposite to us were not there now, they would be riding all over Cape Colony, and if Buller were not to keep on hammering away here a good many of them would be off at once. They say Ladysmith can hold out for another three months. By that time there ought to be such a big force in the Orange State that the Boers won't dare to stop here any longer, and no end of loss of life will be avoided.

"I never thought that you were a croaker before," Field said, "except just before the last fight; but certainly things have gone very badly lately. Three disasters in seven or eight days are a facer; but I cannot think that we shall not succeed next time. When Warren's division is up Buller will have over thirty thousand men with him, in spite of our losses the other day, and we ought to be able to do it with that."

"Well, we shall see, Field. I hope you are right."