[14] The double report made by a small-bore rifle.
[15] The major commanding the battery R.H.A.
[16] I.e., Brother Boer.
IV.[ToC]
THE FIRST CHECK.
The first lesson brought home to the Englishman in South Africa is, that he must not judge the country by any European standard, for as long as he continues so to do he will find himself at sea. To show surprise is to declare ignorance—and the British and Dutch South Africans, after the manner of all superlatively ignorant races, have the profoundest contempt for those in whom they themselves can discern ignorance. Thus when the kindly eminence of a hill gives you a ten-mile view of some tiny townlet—a view conveying no inkling of the importance of the centre which you are about to approach—it is well to be silent. For the Colonial is surely more imaginative than the phlegmatic Englishman—and the sorry collection of tin shanties and flimsy villas, which at so great a distance appear to you of little more significance than a farm with straggling outhouses—represent to his mind a town, and he will resent a less appreciative rating of them. This may appear unreasonable: it is, but it is none the less true; and in a great measure the variance of focus between the English and the Colonial mind has been responsible for the girth-galling which at the beginning of the war marked our efforts in harness with our colonial confrères. We have heard all the defects of the British officer, because the Colonial thinks quickly and lightly, and wastes no time in giving expression to his thoughts; we have not heard so much of the defects of the Colonial, because the British officer, while focussing his opinions less rapidly, though more seriously than the majority of Colonials, reserves his criticisms. But they are an easy people to manage if you can preserve your silence without offending their vanity. They admire in the Englishman the qualities which they themselves have not yet fully developed; but it cuts them to the quick if the evidence of superiority is thrust upon them. Thus, when the officer commanding the advance-guard, looking down the great straight road leading into Britstown,—a track which would have done credit to the Roman Road at Baynards,—commented unkindly upon the township, the Tiger was hurt, and thought unpleasant things about British cavalry subalterns in general, and the officer in command of the advance-guard in particular. But then Britstown had been a town to the Tiger ever since he could remember. Until he had arrived at man's estate and visited Kimberley and Cape Town, Britstown had been the town of his imagination and Beaufort West his metropolis. To the officer commanding the advance-guard, Britstown and Beaufort West, if rolled into one, would hardly have earned the dignified classification of a village. The mental focus of the two men was at variance, and the Tiger felt that the subaltern possessed the stronger lens. Yet man for man, on horse or foot, clothed or naked, to the outward eye he was not a better man. It is here that the feeling lies.
The brigadier halted the advance-guard upon the rise. He wanted to know something about Britstown. The ugly rumour of Brand's intention to storm and sack it was still with us. As yet there had been no news of Lieutenant Meadows and his patrol. Three hundred yards to the right front was a tiny farm. A solitary upstart on the bare veldt. An architectural nightmare in red brick. Already a patrol from the advance screen of dragoons was edging towards it, lured by that magnetism irresistible to every British soldier. A magnetism prompted from beneath the belt, and which no military precaution, or experience, or solicitude for personal safety will eradicate from the canteen-bred soldier. If our scouts had been as farm-shy as so many of them have proved gun-shy, it would have made an appreciable difference in the casualty lists of the campaign. The brigadier looked upon the farm. It cannot be said that he found it fair, within the artistic meaning of the phrase. But there was a pan,[17] which meant water for the horses, and doubtless there was a hen-house and a buttery.