A REALISTIC COMEDY.
I haven't often been really defeated, but I felt very like it that Black Monday.
My convoy consisted of self and Jimmy (my subaltern), two conductors, 100 native drivers, about 500 oxen, and 40 waggons. We were hundreds of miles from the front so had no escort, and were fifteen miles from anywhere. The country was simply a succession of kopjes as like each other as a pair of ammunition boots, the map was much too small a scale to be of any use, and our native guide had lost the way!
We ought to have struck water about dawn, after trekking all night, but there wasn't a sign of it. The heat was awful as we toiled our dusty way between those glaring kopjes, until about noon we sighted a stagnant dam, half full, and we went for it like savages, men, oxen and all.
It must have been absolute rank poison. In a couple of hours two men were writhing on the ground, a score more, blue and shivering, were feeling touched, and the whole lot were thoroughly funked. It was just like a native cholera camp in India, and to those who have experienced that I need say no more.
We sent out our most useful men on our best horses, to hunt the country, five miles round for a farm or well; we started fires to boil water and worked our wretched little filters for all they were worth. Jimmy and I had a bottle of chlorodyne apiece, but they were empty in an hour or so and our whisky was finished soon afterward. I had meant to trek again as soon as it got dark, but before the sun touched the horizon all our scouts were back—not a drop of water anywhere! Had there been any, I doubt if we could have got to it—half our oxen were incapable of moving and the blacks were simply off their heads. But I noticed that our chlorodyne, either by its own power, or by the belief they put in it, had really done good. So I made up my mind to a night there and called up one of the conductors.—"Take the native guide and bring me two of the best horses you can find—ride straight on for all you are worth—find a farm—offer them any sum to send on this note of mine to Viten Siding for a doctor and medicines—bring back any drugs they've got and brandy or spirits—come back as hard as you can."
Then we settled down to the most ghastly night I've ever spent; we walked the bed cases up and down—don't know what good this is but had seen it done in India—put on mustard poultices till we fairly took the black's skins off—and knocked down a few who were howling about the camp in sheer panic. I don't know what I should have done without Jimmy, but even his chaff couldn't keep the poor devils amused. About midnight I had a bad turn myself and Jimmy put me to bed, but it wore off, and I fell into a nightmared slumber. Just before dawn I awoke; Jimmy was brewing coffee and whistling: "When we are married."
"How do you feel?" he said.
"Perfectly fit again. Any dead?"
"Only two, but they were sick before. All the lot in blue funks still."