England spared neither women nor children nor old men tottering on the brink of the grave!
CHAPTER XXIX
TO THE TRANSVAAL
Our horses needed rest after all the hard trekking. Luckily we were able to grant them this on the farm Rondebosch, which we reached about a week after we had effected the passage at Kalk-krans. There the horses not only got some rest but also forage. This rest, however, did not last long. After two days we heard that the English were again approaching, and, as we had expected, were returning from Harrismith. We had now to give way before the enemy once more. The question was, Whither? And as it was clear to the President that his presence in the districts of Bethlehem and Vrede was largely the cause of the continual reappearance of English columns in those parts, the question arose, whether it would not be better, in order to give these districts, which had latterly been terribly harassed, as well as himself some rest, to leave them and betake himself beyond the railway line to those portions of the Free State which were then enjoying comparative repose.
General de Wet, who was still with the President, approved of the idea, and the plan was carried out.
We saddled our horses with the intention of going to the district of Fauresmith, but it turned out that we landed in the Transvaal.
At sunset on the 5th of March we left Rondebosch. It was a dark night, and the darkness was the cause of some loss to me, for we had hardly commenced to trek when the pack in which my clothes and blankets were, tumbled off. I was riding in front, and did not know that my little Kaffir boy was struggling with the pack; but I soon heard that everything was lost—my Kaffir boy too; for in running after a led horse that had broken loose while he was busy with the pack, he got lost himself, and although we shouted and searched for him we could not find him.
The commando had to proceed, and I had to proceed with it, possessing nothing but what was in my wallets and the clothes I was wearing. I thought it remarkable that while everything had been saved in the dash through Kalk-krans, here, where there was no immediate danger, everything should be lost. But I did not feel unhappy. On the contrary, it was with a feeling of relief that I remembered I should not have the trouble of having to look after worldly possessions, nor the care of the little Kaffir, during the difficult journey that lay before us. He was safer at his kraal, which was not far from the spot where the mishap had occurred, and the "secret of Jesus," as Matthew Arnold calls it, became clearer to me than ever before: that to gain life one must lose it. From that evening up to the end of the war I rode on my pony with a few blankets that I got the next day fastened on a led horse. I was without cares.
The English had approached to within nine miles of us on the following day, and we saw that we should have to bestir ourselves. While hurrying on our way to the Frankfort-Heilbron line of blockhouses we halted for half an hour, while General de Wet, who was about to part from the President, discussed the route that should be taken. He said that it would be best to cross the railway line somewhere between Wolvehoek and Vaal River, "and then," he said to Commandant van Niekerk, "you must"—
"But why should you not go with us?" the President asked.
General de Wet replied that if he did this it would look as if he were fleeing from the enemy.