“We have told you that we are not belligerents,” replied George; “you have no right to question us.”
“Ha! I see you will not answer, because you have seen your countrymen, and know where they are. As to having no right, we will see about that. We are at war with the English, and the English are our enemies, though they may choose to say they are not. I shall make you my prisoner. And this person,” he continued, turning to Hardy, “who is he?”
“I am an Englishman, like Mr Rivers,” answered Hardy; “like him, too, not a belligerent. Your President, Mynheer Praetorius, would not, I am sure, approve your proceedings.”
“You think so, hey? Well, you may see him at Laing’s Nek, and find out how much respect he will have for your rights?”
“We are quite willing to be taken before him,” said Hardy. “We will accompany you to the camp, and answer, without objection, any questions he may put to us.”
Rudolf appeared to be somewhat puzzled by this suggestion, but saw no reason why he should not agree to it. Indeed, it had already occurred to him that George Rivers was the stepson of Ludwig Mansen, a man well known to, and respected by, the Boer leaders. Any violence used towards a near relative of his would probably be condemned by his superiors. And he further reflected that he had no kind of evidence that these two Englishmen had really encountered the soldiers, or knew where they were. It was also evidently no use to attempt any further pursuit of the runaways, every trace of whom had disappeared.
“Very well,” he said, after a few minutes of silence, “you shall go with us to Laing’s Nek, and if the President is still there, and chooses to see you, he will do so. You can ride on the saddles of two of the men, but, I warn you, you will be shot without mercy if you make the slightest attempt to escape.”
They mounted accordingly, and the party rode off. George, who understood Hardy’s manoeuvre, by which he would get access to Praetorius without attracting general attention, which it was his special object to avoid, made no demur to the arrangement. He further reflected that, as soon as he reached the Boer camp, he could ask for an interview with Vander Heyden, who would, no doubt, at once set him at liberty and grant him an escort to Dykeman’s Hollow. Nothing worse, therefore, was likely to happen to either of them than a ride to the Dutch camp and a few hours of detention there; and to this he was so far from objecting, that he was particularly anxious to learn from an authentic source what had really taken place and was likely to ensue.
They rode in profound silence, the Boers being habitually taciturn, and George and Hardy anxious under present circumstances to say as little as possible. Presently the narrow defile running between lofty rocks and along the margin of mountain streams was passed, and they entered the broken and wild country which extends between Newcastle and the border of the Transvaal. After an hour’s ride, which would have been protracted to twice that length but for the Boers’ knowledge of the ground, they reached the camp, where some five or six thousand men had established themselves. George was at once struck with the difference between it and the camps to which he had been accustomed. There was an utter absence of the military discipline to which he had been used. It bore more the appearance of a great camp meeting, at which every person provided for his own lodging and maintenance; and yet there was a readiness to carry out the orders of the general officers in command, which seemed to take the place of the regular routine of a camp. As they rode over the ground where the battle had been fought that morning, they passed numbers of men employed in the melancholy duties which follow only too surely on an armed encounter. Wounded men were being conveyed on stretchers to the farmhouses and inns, which had been turned into temporary hospitals; others, whose injuries were too severe to permit of removal, were being ministered to on the ground as well as circumstances allowed; while several parties were engaged in digging graves to receive the dead bodies which lay scattered in all directions. One of these companies was working under the direction of Henryk Vander Heyden; and the latter no sooner perceived the two Englishmen than he rode up to them, and, after a friendly salutation, inquired what had brought them to Laing’s Nek.
“This gentleman, Mynheer Kransberg,—I am not aware of his military rank,—but he has brought us here as his prisoners,” replied Rivers.