“I have been told that some at least of this party succeeded after a long and hazardous journey in reaching the Dutch settlements at Cape Town. I suppose that must be so, because I learned, some years afterwards, that all the particulars of the loss of the Grosvenor were known to the Dutch authorities, and I do not know how they could have learned anything on the subject except from my fellow-passengers. I have also been told that a party was sent out to search for any survivors of the ill-fated ship. If that was so, they never came near the spot where I was living.
“We saw our companions depart with very mingled feelings. The confidence of their leaders had inspired some of us with hope, while others were very despondent. This despondency was increased when, a few days after their departure, Captain Gilby and Mr Gregg, returning from a shooting expedition, reported that they had seen armed savages in the neighbourhood of the huts, prowling about, evidently with no friendly intentions towards us. It was immediately resolved to protect the building with a palisade; beyond which the ladies were never to venture without an armed escort, and to keep two of the men always on guard inside the stockade with loaded muskets. But these precautions were of little avail. Several of our small party were, from time to time, captured or wounded by the natives; and all who were thus injured expired soon afterwards in great agonies from the poison, in which the weapons of the savages had been steeped. Two or three of the women also died, partly of insufficient food, and partly of anxiety and alarm. At last the whole party was reduced to four men and five women; and we then held a consultation to decide what was to be done.
“It was impossible to defend the stockade, with our reduced numbers. It was idle to hope for rescue. It would be still more useless to surrender to the savages, who would observe no terms, even should they be induced to agree to any. The only possible hope lay in flight. If we stole out of the palisades by night, and took ourselves off in different directions through the depths of the forest, it was just possible that some of us might escape the notice of our enemies. We divided into three parties, Captain Gilby, his wife, and Mrs Wilkinson chose the path by the seashore; Captain Piers, Mr and Miss Gregg, endeavoured to follow the route taken by the party several weeks before; while Colonel Harrison took Miss Hordern and myself under his charge. The Colonel had some knowledge of the colony, and knew that the best hope of escape lay towards the north, where there were but few tribes located, and an almost endless screen of forest.
“We took leave of one another only an hour after we had come to this resolution, as the danger was growing every moment more imminent. I never heard with any certainty what became of the rest of the party; but a report once reached me that Miss Gregg (so I call her, though, as I have said before, I give none of the real names), after the murder of her brother and Captain Piers, had to submit to something of the same fate as myself. But this was only a rumour. Of the fate of Captain Gilby and his wife, I never heard anything.
“As regards ourselves, we were fortunate enough entirely to escape pursuit, and after three days of intense anxiety and fatigue, had reached a part of the forest which lay beyond the haunts of the tribes, by which we had been attacked. We were now compelled to rest awhile, and recover our strength. But though Miss Hordern and myself, who were both of us of a hardy constitution, soon rallied from the fatigues we had undergone, the old Colonel could not. He grew daily weaker in spite of all our care of him, and at last died, to our inexpressible grief. We laid his remains in an empty pit which we had found, and filled it in as well as we could, with clods and stones. We then set off—two poor desolate women—to find our way as well as we could to some place of shelter.
“The toil we underwent, and the perils, which by a miracle we contrived to avoid, would fill a volume, if I were to relate them. But it will be enough to say that, after endless wanderings, we found ourselves at last somewhere about fifty or sixty miles from the banks of the Gariep—at no very great distance, in fact, from this present spot. We had subsisted chiefly on the fruits that grow in abundance throughout the whole of the country, and were beginning to hope that, after all, we might reach the outlying Dutch farms of which Colonel Harrison had spoken, when another calamity befell us. Miss Hordern and myself were one day suddenly surprised by a party of Basutos, who had gone out on a shooting expedition to the valley of the Vaal. We instantly took to flight, but before we had gone fifty yards, Miss Hordern was struck by an arrow, and the wound proved almost instantly fatal. I stopped as soon as I saw her fall, and took her in my arms, too much distressed by this last misfortune to heed my own danger.
“What the pursuers would have done to me, I do not know. But when I recovered from the swoon of grief into which I had fallen over the body of my dead friend, I saw a tall and noble-looking warrior bending over me, his fine eyes and manly features expressing a sympathy for my affliction, which I should have supposed a savage to be incapable of feeling. He gave some orders to his men, in a language which I did not comprehend, and I was immediately carried into a hut, and carefully waited on by several women. I was ill a long time, but every day my warrior came to visit me, and gradually I picked up enough of the Basuto language to exchange a few sentences with him. I soon perceived the light in which he viewed me, and it was not unwelcome—strange as such an idea would have appeared to me a few weeks before. But I was worn out by harsh usage, he alone having shown me kindness; and my utter helplessness made me inclined to lean on any friendly arm. He was, too, one of the noblest and most generous characters I have ever met with, and his instinctive delicacy of feeling rendered him all the more attractive in my eyes. I consented to be his wife, conditionally on his taking no others, and to this he readily agreed, for, I believe, no woman but myself ever had any charm for him.
“We were married according to the Basuto forms; but at my desire we also recited the vow of husband and wife, according to the marriage service of the English Church, and for ten years lived happily together. I should mention that I found the medical knowledge I had acquired in my girlhood of the greatest benefit to my newly adopted countrymen. Several times, when epidemic fevers, common to this country, broke out, I was successful in treating them, and my husband’s authority enabled me to enforce regulations, which otherwise I could not have induced the people to observe. When my husband was killed, some fifteen years ago, by the sudden fall of a tree, the tribe insisted on making me their Queen; and nothing has ever seriously disturbed the prosperity of my reign. Ella, who was born a few years after our marriage, is our only surviving child.
“Such is my history—a strange one, no doubt. Probably most persons would regard me as an object of pity, to say the least. But I do not share the opinion. I have had, in my way, much happiness; and, if I have been deprived of privileges and blessings, which fall ordinarily to the lot of Englishwomen, have also escaped many sorrows and trials, to which in my own country I should have been exposed.
“But there are two points on which I should like to say something before I conclude. I dare say you have thought it strange that I did not communicate with my countrymen at Cape Town, when the colony fell into their hands. But news travels so slowly in these wild and distant regions, that I did not know with any certainty what had taken place till long after the occurrence. Then, my husband’s death for the time drove all other thoughts from my mind; and when I had regained my composure enough to attend once more to the affairs of my kingdom, and I sent an embassy to the English Governor, I found that the colony had been given back to the Dutch.