With Roberts to Pretoria: A Tale of The South African War

by G. A. Henty

"Please pass it round, cornet. I am afraid it won't go very far, but you are heartily welcome to it. I don't drink it myself, but I generally carry it in case I should get hurt anyhow, or sprain my ankle among your rocks. I may as well hand you this pistol too," Yorke said—it had been unnoticed in the dark by the men who had taken his rifle—"it is certain that your people will not let me keep it, and you may as well have it as another; but I do not suppose your cartridges will fit it." He had dropped his own on the way.

"As you say, I may as well have it as another," the field cornet said taking it. "Besides, it might go off by the way, and it is well to avoid the possibility of accidents. Now, as you have given me your word of honour that you will not try to escape to-night, will you assure me, on your word of honour, that you have not come out to gather information—in fact, that you are not a spy?"

"Willingly, sir. I give you my word of honour that I am not sent out on any such mission. I was simply told to make my way to the Modder, and, so far from trying to make out your arrangements, my great object was to try to avoid coming near any of you."

"What he says is true, I am certain," the Boer said in Dutch to his companions. "I am sure by his face that he is not lying. It is a shame to have sent a lad like this on such an errand. However, I will send a strong letter with him in the morning to the commandant at Boshof, and assure him that there is no question whatever that this young officer's story is true, and that he is entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war. We have not gone into this fight in order to kill as many Englishmen as possible, but because we want to help our friends of the Transvaal to keep their independence; and I for one hope that there will be no more bloodshed than necessary. Young fellows like this simply do what they are ordered, just as we do.

"Of course we both do our best when we are fighting. Certainly we have no ground for animosity against England; she has always kept her engagements with us, and we have been just as independent as if there were no one in South Africa but ourselves. We have always been good friends with the English who live among us. Once it comes to killing spies they could kill a hundred of our men to every one we could kill. We know everything that passes in Natal or Cape Colony from our friends there, and it is only natural that they should want to know what is passing among us. If we shoot a man on the ground that he is a spy, they may shoot hundreds of Dutch, who are sending us news from among them. We have not heard of their shooting one; and I say if we find an Englishman doing what so many of our men are doing let us stop his work by imprisoning him until the war is over. If the Transvaalers like to act differently we cannot help it. They hate the English. Why, I don't know, for they have all got rich at their expense. Still, they do hate them.

"Before this began I was as good friends with my English neighbours as I was with my own people, and I see no reason for any change. They are not fighting us; it is we who are fighting them. I don't say that Steyn was wrong in joining our kinsmen across the Vaal; that is his business and that of the men we elected. Anyhow, we are bound by them; we and the Rooineks have got to shoot each other till one of us gives in. I am sure we shall all do our best to win. We have shown them that we can fight, and they have shown us that they can fight; but when it comes to shooting in cold blood I will have nothing to do with it. In the first place, because I call it murder; and in the second, because where the English have got one man sending them information from our side, we have got a thousand doing the same from theirs. We should be fools indeed if we were to set an example and take one life, for our action might entail the shooting of all our friends in the colonies."

"There is a good deal in what you say, mynheer," one of the others agreed, "and I am sure you are right. For my part, when I see our shell bursting in there, I often say to myself, 'It is the women and children that are suffering from this.' Let us fire at their forts—though I don't see that that does much good—but leave the peaceful people alone; they won't give in because a few hundred women are killed. It does not seem as if we should take the town by force. At any rate, we have made no attempt to do so at present, and are not likely to. We shall starve them into surrender, and might just as well leave them alone till they have eaten their last crust. For my part, I think we ought to have made a rush and finished the business directly we got here. We should have lost a good many men, but that would have been the end of it. The end will come just the same, but we shall have killed many women and children and some soldiers, and we shall have lost in the long run as many as we should have done if we had attacked the place before they had time to build their forts and prepare for us."

"I don't see the use of keeping up this fire myself, Isaak," the field cornet said; "but again, that is not my business, my orders are to hold this kopje, and I mean to do so. My heart aches whenever I see a shell burst in the middle of the town, but our commandant has got to account for that, not I. It is time now for the men on the hill to be relieved, and let the next two to go on guard duty get their rifles, and keep watch over this lad. I have no fear of his trying to escape; but you say he had another with him, for all that we know there may have been three or four, and they may try to crawl in and get him off."

The idea that Peter might attempt this had already occurred to Yorke, and he sincerely hoped that the Kaffir would not do so. One of the men brought an armful of straw and put it down for him between two rocks. Here he lay down. The two men told off sat themselves on the ground in front of him after lighting their pipes, and in a short time all was quiet. Yorke soon went off to sleep. In the middle of the night he was startled by one of his guards leaping to his feet and shouting "Who's there?"

"What is it, Jans?" the other said.