Chapter Thirty Seven.
To Clear the Kopje.
As a rule, the garrison at Groenfontein after the posting of the watch settled itself down for a quiet night’s rest, for experience had taught that there was very little to fear in the shape of a night attack. This was foreign at first to the Boers’ idea of warfare. They knew well enough that they were strongest in defence, and acted accordingly. Every place they held was turned into a hive of cells, in which they lurked, stings ready. It was generally some kopje covered with loose stones, cracks, and crevices, while the open portions were soon made formidable with loopholed walls of loosely built-up stones. If their resting-place was in the more open country, it was a laager whose walls were the wagons, banked up and strengthened with stakes, thorn bushes, and a terrible entanglement of barbed galvanised iron wire.
Attacks had been made on the fortified village and the kopje at early morning, but never pushed home; and all through the occupation the tactics of the general in command had been the harassing of the British regiment with shell fire and clever marksmanship from cover, so constant and so dangerous that the wonder to the English officers was that the enemy had not long before fired their last cartridge away.
But upon this particular night something more was fully expected. The English scouting parties had brought in the information respecting the reinforcements to the Boer corps, so that when a Zulu, who had been a very faithful hanger-on to the British force, came in full of eagerness that afternoon to announce that the Boers meant to attack in force, the colonel, though always ready to doubt the information received and the possibility of the black spies’ surmises being correct, felt that he was warranted in making every preparation; and this was set about in a calm, matter-of-fact way.
Judging that the attack would be in the form of a surprise directed at the kopje, possession of which would render the village perfectly untenable, the two field-guns posted in the most commanding position in the village were hauled up to appointed places on the kopje to strengthen the big captured gun, and the major portion of the troops were marched up to the well-fortified lines there, the colonel intending to hold the rocky elevation himself, leaving the defence of the village to the major, who was to keep the enemy who attacked in play there as long as seemed necessary, and then retire along the well-fortified path which connected village and kopje, where the principal stand was to be made.
The great natural advantages of the rocky mount had not been neglected. From the first the colonel had looked upon it as a little inland Gibraltar in which he could bid defiance to ten times the number of the enemy that had been attacking him, so long as food and ammunition lasted; and to this end he had, directly after the discovery of the entrance to the cavern, supplemented the stores found there by removing all they had from the village, and making additions from time to time whenever suitable captures were made; while, greatest prize of all, there was the inexhaustible supply of pure cold water, easily enough obtainable as soon as proper arrangements were made.
Hence it was that the little English force was always ready, the plans for the defence arranged, and nothing remained to be done but for the various defenders to march quietly to their appointed places.