“But,” I asked the general, “hadn’t Colley asked you to disarm?” “I will tell you,” he replied; “on Friday morning I received a message from General Colley calling on me to disarm, and saying he would send a dispatch to the imperial government representing the Boer grievances. I answered to the effect I could not do this without first getting permission of the chairman of the Triumvirate at Heidleberg, a process which would take four days. Now, I thought, all was right till Monday, and as a proof of my confidence, I even reduced my patrols. What made me also more certain was that on the next day I got a letter from President Brand telling me that there was every chance of negotiations for peace coming to a successful conclusion. I sat up late that night making copies of Brand’s letter to send to the Triumvirate at Heidleberg and to General Colley. On going to bed, I can assure you, I couldn’t sleep, my rest was uneasy and I tossed about till nearly four o’clock in the morning, when I called my boy to make a fire. Just as the day was dawning my wife, who had been with me only a few days, got up to make coffee. Going out of the tent she said, ‘see what lots of men are on the mountain!’ Suspecting nothing I merely said: ‘It is only our own people.’ She was not satisfied, however, but got my binocular, and looked again, when she called out excitedly: ‘Leave your writing! put down your pen! come here! the English are on the mountain!’ I ran out at once, there was no need for me to take the glass as I could plainly distinguish the English troops by their walk. I jumped on my horse, which like all other horses in the camp, according to general orders, was saddled at four in the morning, and rode at once to Franz Joubert[[73]] who had just come into laager the day before. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘didn’t I tell you the English would get up the mountain? Look, there they are.’ He wouldn’t believe me but insisted they were our own people. At this juncture I saw the men returning who should have formed the picket on Majuba the night before, and heard and saw two shots fired on them from the hill. I almost lost my temper. ‘Would our own people fire on us?’ I asked. ‘No! they are English, I say.’ When Franz Joubert calmly answered, ‘If that is so we shall have to get them down.’ Hurriedly telling him to go on up the mountain, while I would go back and send some more men, I galloped off to our laager. On my way I met my son with a message from General Smit advising me to come to Laing’s Nek at once as that might be attacked. So I left instructions for Veld Cornets Roos and Minnaar to attack Majuba on one side with about forty men, and the commandant of Utrecht with something like the same number would go up the other.”
“But tell me, general,” I said, “were the English fully aware that the Boers were really coming up the mountain to attack them?”
“Yes! of course they were, they knew it for eight hours, as it was five o’clock in the morning when they fired the first two shots, and it was one o’clock when we got to the top.”
“Then it was not, as it is alleged, a sudden attack in force which gained the day?”
The general smiled at my question. “How could it be when heavy firing was going on all the morning up to the very last moment.”
“When the top was gained by the Boers, what took place next?”
“There was no resistance, all was over in a minute or two.”
“But tell me, general, how do you account for the fact that 500 English should run before 60 Boers who had just had an eight-hours’ climb up the mountain?”
“I don’t wish to give any opinion,” said the general, looking serious indeed, “but I am certain the hand of God was with us all through.” Then waxing quite eloquent, he continued: “Men of mine, whom I knew were such cowards, that in Kafir wars even I have set them to cook the pots, advanced with determined step, impressed with the work before them, actuated, I am sure, by an Almighty power.”
Then, continuing the narrative, he told me how General Smit sent him word about three o’clock that Colley was killed and how he forwarded instructions that the body should be carefully guarded during the night with “all honor and respect,” and that the wounded should be laid together and covered up, the prisoners of war in the meantime being sent under escort to the Boer camp and transported the next day by wagon to Heidleberg.