What rapture to be out on the starry veldt and to have left that Enslin "News"—the transport lines—miles (five and a doubtful bit) behind us. Shortly afterwards the moon again appeared, and we proceeded to negotiate a very promising nullah with gently sloping sides. Full speed ahead and up we go, but, alas! the latter part of our programme was somewhat disarranged, like Labby's furniture at Northampton, owing to the fact that buck waggons and mule transport are not adapted to racing through a truckload of sand of uncertain depth but of certain difficulty! However, "man the wheels and shove behind" was the natural sequence of events, and when the mules ceased pulling in every direction except the right one from sheer exhaustion, a few judicious cracks of the sjambok, together with a few different languages, mostly bad, and up we eventually did go.
A wide stretch of perfectly flat veldt lay before us, and we shortly lost both moon and wire simultaneously. Some one suggested "follow the track": valuable advice, but difficult to carry out, as there happened to be about fourteen of them, and all in different directions. Pleasant predicament to be in: 1 a.m., cloudy sky, and lost on the anything but trackless veldt! Feel about as comfortable as the man who was going to be hanged at 8 a.m. Finally decided to proceed at right angles, and return our wrong way if necessary, and succeeded in finding that precious wire at last. Persistency is the road to success, but what about an old hen sitting on a china egg?
Moon on the wane, but reached Ram Dam at 3 a.m., and all of us surprised and delighted to get there, as it would have very shortly been a case of the "light that failed!" Ram Dam itself looks like a remarkably low Thames somewhere near the Isle of Dogs, but glad to get anywhere, and ready to eat or drink anything.
G. W. STEEVENS.
BY LIONEL JAMES.
(With an Original Verse by Rudyard Kipling.[4])
Through war and pestilence, red siege and fire,
Silent and self-contained he drew his breath.
Too brave for show of courage—his desire
Truth as he saw it, even to the death.
Rudyard Kipling.
There is a pretty little cypress grove nestling under the shadow of one of the Ladysmith defences. A peaceful oasis—green where the land is parched and dry. It is God's acre. Before shaking the dust of Ladysmith from off my feet for ever, I turned my pony's head towards the green. The little animal seemed to know the way, and well he should, for the melancholy journey to the cemetery had been frequent during the latter period of the siege. I tied the pony to the rail and passed in under the shadow of the cypresses. The interior of the enclosure was one stretch of new-turned earth. The turf seemed all exhausted. The dainty cemetery of three months ago had now the appearance of a badly harrowed field. In places a rough cross marked the last resting-place of the victims of war and pestilence, a few had the names just scrawled upon a chip of wood; the majority lay unnamed—the price of Empire keeping: a nameless grave!
I passed down the clay trodden pathway. The brief legends ran—Egerton, Lafone, Watson, Field, Dalzel, Dick-Cunyngham, Digby Jones, Adams—but why name them? They were all men whom three months ago I had called my friends. Then I found the spot for which I searched—a plain wooden cross inscribed G. W. Steevens, and a date. What an end—six feet of Ladysmith's miserable soil! It was too cruel. My memory carried me back to the brave companion and upright colleague who was gone, and to the manner of his death—the man who had raced with the Cameron Highlanders for Mahmoud's zareba; who had stood with his hands in his pockets when it seemed that it must be but a matter of minutes before Wad Helu swallowed up Macdonald's Soudanese brigade. The man who had scorned death on Elandslaagte's crest lay there a victim to pestilential Ladysmith. If the spare frame had been as stout as the heart which it contained, that miserable rat-hole could not have brought about the end. Poor Steevens—how he strove to live! For a month he lay and fought the battle for life. And then when all seemed well, and we looked for the day that we should have him back again, he quietly faded under a relapse.