III.[ToC]
BEE-LINE TO BRITSTOWN.
"Not bad for a green crush."
The brigadier sat down on the edge of a great slab of rock to watch the baggage over the nek. It was a typical South African nek. An execrable path winding over the saddle of a low range of tumbled ironstone. Just one of those ranges which force themselves with sheer effrontery out from the level of the plain. Loose sugar-loaf excrescences which stud the sea of prairie with a thousand flat-topped islets, and weave the monotony of landscape peculiar to this great continent. The rough post-cart track led down into a vast amphitheatre, so vast that Western Europe can furnish no parallel to it. Yet its counterparts are met and traversed every day by the countless British columns now slowly darning the gaping rent in Africa's robe of peace. Who, if they had not known, would have said that the beautiful panorama, which the morning sun now unveiled before us, was a theatre of war? Away at our feet stretched mile upon mile of rolling Karoo and blue-grey prairie. True it was punctuated and ribbed with stunted kopjes. But still the everlasting plain predominated, until it was lost in an autumn haze which no sun could master. Immense,—a land without a horizon, a land every characteristic of which inspires a sense of independence and freedom. A sensation—an intoxication, to be felt, not to be described. Why should men fight in a land such as this? Surely there is room for all! The very animals of the field, ignorant of the selfishness bred of a limited pasturage and restricted space, are docile and free of vice. But with man it is different.
The dweller on the open plain learns freedom. The lesson of cramped cities is avarice—that the fittest may survive. Who shall blend the two? There, as we stood with our loins girt for war, did that great peaceful prairie unfold before us. As the morning sun grew stronger, the everlasting grey of the Karoo became jewelled with brighter tints. The middle distance of the plain was spangled with a streak of winding silver. A river tracing its erratic course between the kopje islets. At intervals along its banks the eye rested upon the patches of darker green. The home plantation of some farm, glimpses of whose whitewashed walls even now caught a glint from the strengthening sun-rays. Here was a stretch of yellow furrow—the finger of civilisation on a virgin waste. Here spots of shimmering white, where the surface of a dam reflected the flooding light of day. Here and there a flock of sheep relieved the monotony of the everlasting grey. While across our front a bunch of brood-mares were galloping in the ecstasy of day and freedom, and a bevy of quaintly pirouetting ostriches gave life to the wonderful picture. And presently a little fan of brown dots opened out on the grey below—opened out and diverged in pairs. Dots so small and insignificant that they looked like ants upon a carriage-drive. Out and out they spread, till they seemed lost and merged with the brood-mares and ostriches, now ceasing their wild movements and grouping in mild amazement at the strange invasion. And still the dots diverge. It is the advance-guard of our column—heralds of selfish man bringing horrid war into this peaceful vale. As the dots mingle with the ant-heaps on the plain, or are lost in the folds of the grey prairie, a pillar of dust rises from the centre of the fan. A larger mass of brown—the battery and its escort—a great kharki caterpillar creeping across the grey,—it is time to be moving, the last mule-waggon has topped the nek, and the last of the rear-guard are leading their horses up the post-cart road.
"Not bad for a green crush!" said the brigadier as he prepared to follow down the hillside. "Hullo! what is that?"
A spark had shown out of the misty distance. A little glitter. It came, trembled a second, and disappeared. Again it came, a many-pointed star, winking and shivering.
"Some one is calling up. Here, signaller!—where is the brigade signaller?"
A great dragoon tumbles out of his saddle and begins to arrange his tripod. In a few seconds his mirror has caught the sun in answer to the twinkling star in front.