Philip Martin shook hands with them, and walked quickly away to warn others of his own party, while our heroes prepared for their exodus.
Chapter Thirty Six.
The Relief of Kimberley.
This most inhuman and bloody-minded Kruger, who misquoted Scripture, as he so often did, considered himself safe to order his victims to their empty tents. He had stripped them, as he fondly thought, of all means of protecting their wives and children. As he imagined, they had only their naked fists to support their manhood against his armed hordes; therefore he could be as bold as a bushranger who has bailed up a household. He had them, or, as he impiously remarked, “The Lord of the Boer hosts has put them into our hands, even as He gave the Amalekites up to the vengeance of Israel.”
To those who were not in the “know,” the Jew dealers and other aliens, who had no patriotic interest in the land, this ultimatum fell like the first ashes of Vesuvius upon Pompeii. It was definite, clear, and curtailed. They had either to join in and fight with the Boers, or else be treated with those who stood for English authority.
There was no equivocation, or holding aloof. Johannesburg, with its riches, must be abandoned, and at once, i.e. within the next twenty hours at latest. Those who remained in that city would be forced to take up arms by the Boers, when the time of grace was over. They were driven like sheep into the pen, where they were to be slaughtered if they did not declare themselves enemies of England, and “bind” themselves to the masters of this Boer rebellion.
Poor, miserable, and terror-stricken wretches—these gold and diamond traffickers, who had come here only to make money, and who were without a single molecule of courage in their composition,—they were placed between two fires, and knew not where to turn for safety. They were likely to be shot or hanged whatever side they decided to take.
They drove home in their flash traps, or in the saloon cars, with bloodless, flabby lips and staring eyes. Inside their swell houses they collapsed, and found the champagne and brandy of no more aid to them than coloured water.