Driscoll, of Driscoll's Scouts, is a thick-set, sinewy man, rather short than tall. He is of an absolute sooty blackness. Hair and moustache coal-black, and complexion so scorched and swarthy that at a little distance you might almost take him for a nigger. There is about his face a look of unmistakable determination amounting to ferocity in moments of excitement. He looks and is a born fighter, but is apt to be over headlong in action. His scouts are part of our 250 mounted men under Rimington.
As for the Colonel I don't know if I have ever tried to describe him to you. He is a man who invites description. Of all the men in the army he is the one you would single out to sketch. An artist would be at him at once. He is the living image of what one imagines Brian de Bois Guilbert to have been. An inch or two over six feet high, his figure, spare but lengthy and muscular, has been so knocked about (by hunting and polo accidents) that it has rather a lopsided look, and he leans slightly to one side as he walks, but this does not interfere with his strength and activity nor detract from the distinguished and particularly graceful look of the man. His face, like Driscoll's, is sun-blackened rather than sun-browned; its general expression stern and grim, and when he is thinking and talking about the Boers (he talks about them just as Bois Guilbert did about the Saracens) this expression deepens into something positively savage, and he looks, and can perhaps sometimes be, a relentless enemy. But this is only half the man. In ordinary talk he is quite different. He has the Celtic sensitiveness and humour. He is an artist. His manner among friends is extraordinarily winning and sympathetic, and his grave melancholy face has a way of breaking into a most infectious laugh. Altogether, what with his tall person, dark determined face, his fierceness and gentleness, and the general air of the devil about him, you are not surprised to find that no soldier's name is more common in men's mouths out here than Mike Rimington's. You might fit Marmion's lines to him well enough—
"His square-turned joints and length of limb
Show him no carpet knight so trim,
But in close fight a warrior grim."
He ought to have lived five hundred years ago and dressed in chain-mail and led out his lances to plunder and foray. As it is he does his best even in the nineteenth century. Picturesque is the word that best describes him. He makes every one else look hopelessly commonplace. His men admire him immensely, like him a good deal, and fear him a little. Generals in command sometimes find him, I fancy, a bit of a handful, that is, if their policy is at all a backward one. But most people watch him and talk of him with a certain interest, and whatever their opinions or ideas of him may be, one feels sure that none who have once met will easily forget him.
He is essentially a man who means business, who believes that the army is here to fight, and it is especially in action that he makes his value felt. Then, when he leads his squadron and the rifles begin to speak, and the first few shots come one by one like the first drops of a shower, and when he turns round in his saddle and thunders his, "Let them go" down the ranks, then I tell you there is not a trooper at his heels who does not realise that the man at their head is the right man in the right place.
At the same time it would be a mistake to think of him as one of our "let me get at them," all sword and spurs officers. There have been several of this sort in the army, and it is impossible to help very often admiring their dash. But they are most dangerous leaders. What chiefly distinguishes the Boers is their coolness. You cannot bluff or flurry them, or shift them by the impetuosity of your attack from a position which they are strong enough to hold. If indeed you have reason to believe them weak, then the faster you go at them the better: for if they mean going this will force them to go in a hurry and you will diminish the time you are under fire. But see your calculations are pretty sound, for if they don't mean bolting it will not be the fury of your charge that will make them. Generally when they begin on you at a very long range it is safe to go for them; but if they reserve their fire then look out for squalls. The Colonel has a very cool judgment in these matters; and though no one, when he does go for them, goes straighter and faster than he, no one, on the other hand, calculates more coolly the probable effect and consequence of the move.
In all scouting operations in our frequent long patrols he shows the same mixture of prudence and daring. He goes long distances from his supports and penetrates far into the enemy's country, and yet in none of these expeditions has he ever got trapped or cut off. Of course with men like the Guides, who have experience of the country and the enemy, and ways of picking up information not open to strangers, this is easier than it would be with men who had no such experience; but at the same time the chief credit and responsibility in these affairs must rest with the commanding officer. For one thing Rimington has an extraordinary good eye for a country. Perhaps at first you will scarcely realise the value of this gift. The features of this country and the way the long, undulating slopes of the veldt merge into each other are extremely perplexing, and as an engagement may be carried on over many miles of ground and your own movements may be extensive and involved, it becomes very difficult, in fact to most people absolutely impossible, to remember the lie of the land and how the various hills and slopes are related to each other. Thinking about it and trying to observe does no good at all; but some people have an extraordinary instinct by which they hold the configuration of the ground mapped in their head; judging not by slow calculation and an effort of the memory, but intuitively and at once. This instinct is called "an eye for a country," and is a most valuable gift. Personally, I am very ill equipped with it, which makes me the more inclined perhaps to admire it in others. It is developed in the Colonel to an extraordinary degree, and is one of the chief means by which, however hard beset, he has always been able, so far, to find a way out. Most nearly of any of our officers his tactics in daring and in craft resemble the tactics of that prince of scouting officers, Christian De Wet.
Kronstadt, Lindley, Heilbron, Frankfort, has been our round so far. We now turn westward along the south of the Vaal. Farm burning goes merrily on, and our course through the country is marked as in prehistoric ages, by pillars of smoke by day and fire by night. We usually burn from six to a dozen farms a day; these being about all that in this sparsely-inhabited country we encounter. I do not gather that any special reason or cause is alleged or proved against the farms burnt. If Boers have used the farm; if the owner is on commando; if the line within a certain distance has been blown up; or even if there are Boers in the neighbourhood who persist in fighting—these are some of the reasons. Of course the people living in the farms have no say in these matters, and are quite powerless to interfere with the plans of the fighting Boers. Anyway we find that one reason or other generally covers pretty nearly every farm we come to, and so to save trouble we burn the lot without inquiry; unless, indeed, which sometimes happens, some names are given in before marching in the morning of farms to be spared.
The men belonging to the farm are always away and only the women left. Of these there are often three or four generations; grandmother, mother, and family of girls. The boys over thirteen or fourteen are usually fighting with their papas. The people are disconcertingly like English, especially the girls and children—fair and big and healthy looking. These folk we invite out on to the veldt or into the little garden in front, where they huddle together in their cotton frocks and big cotton sun-bonnets, while our men set fire to the house. Sometimes they entreat that it may be spared, and once or twice in an agony of rage they have invoked curses on our heads. But this is quite the exception. As a rule they make no sign, and simply look on and say nothing. One young woman in a farm yesterday, which I think she had not started life long in, went into a fit of hysterics when she saw the flames breaking out, and finally fainted away.
I wish I had my camera. Unfortunately it got damaged, and I have not been able to take any photographs. These farms would make a good subject. They are dry and burn well. The fire bursts out of windows and doors with a loud roaring, and black volumes of smoke roll overhead. Standing round are a dozen or two of men holding horses. The women, in a little group, cling together, comforting each other or hiding their faces in each other's laps. In the background a number of Tommies are seen chasing poultry, flinging stones, and throwing themselves prostrate on maimed chickens and ducks, whose melancholy squawks fill the air. Further off still, herds and flocks and horses are being collected and driven off, while, on the top of the nearest high ground, a party of men, rifles in hand, guard against a surprise from the enemy, a few of whom can generally be seen in the distance watching the destruction of their homes.