So closed the fifty-sixth day of the siege. Two months had rolled by, at traction engine speed. Some impatience manifested itself; the food was all wrong. But we looked forward, and were sustained by the ultra-jolly Christmas that would be ours. The few who had promised themselves an Antipodean Yuletide in the frost—or slush—of merry England could not keep their words. The most would have to be made of the coast towns. What an exodus it would be! To sniff the salt air; to fight our battles over again; to fondle the missing (gastric) links that would litter the Christmas table! The "greater number" could not of course go far from the Diamond City. But Modder River was near. There were the time-honoured annual excursions to that modest watering-place and now famous battlefield to excite the imagination, where "shells" could be gathered of more historic value than the "common" ones by the sea.
Chapter IX
Week ending 16th December, 1899
The pleasures of Sunday were on the wane. The outbreak of war had detracted little from its peace; but its dinners were—oh, so different! Sunday had formerly been in the main an occasion of abandonment to the joy of eating. The propriety of such a custom may be open to question; but we had turned over a new leaf—until the perusal of the old one would be feasible again. Our bad habits were compulsorily in abeyance: the "good tables" were gone. The Simple Life is a splendid thing, but unless voluntarily adopted it sheds all its splendour. Delicacies had long been falling victims to galloping consumption, and at this date had totally succumbed to the disease. Worse still, the "necessaries" were more or less infected, and disposed to go the way of the dainties. Meat troubles maddened everybody. The beef was all neck. Everybody said so. Not one in ten, it seems, ever managed to secure a more tender morsel from the flesh of these remarkable bovine phenomena (for they were oxen, not giraffes!) The meat was indiscriminately chopped up in the shambles, and the odd one (in ten) who had not his legal complement of "neck" alloted him was just as likely to be given for his share—to take or leave—a nose, his due weight of tail, a teat or two, or a slab of suet, as any more esteemed ration from the rib. It was laid down that favouritism had no place in Martial Law; but we were not all Medes and Persians in Kimberley. The rush for meat between six and eight o'clock in the morning was one of the sights of the siege: It sometimes happened that people, after a long wait, would throw up the sponge in despair and go home meatless; the odds were that they had not missed much, but their grievance was not the less real, nor their "language" the more correct, on that account. There were persons who never tried to get meat; and they were probably the wisest—'the world knows nothing of its greatest men.' In the scramble for precedence a fight occasionally ensued. The special constable did his best to keep order; but he had only a truncheon; he had no other weapon, not even a helmet—that awe-inspiring utensil!—to cow the multitude. Numbers of people deliberately transgressed the "Law" by turning out at five in the morning to make sure of their meat; and the Summary Court was kept busy fining these miscreants ten shillings each, with the usual "oakum" alternative. One lady (in a letter to the Editor) drew a vivid picture of the rush for meat. She had travelled a good deal, she told us, and had "roughed it" on Boxing nights; she had been (unaffectionately) squeezed to suffocation in London. But nowhere outside the Diamond Fields had she encountered the rudeness that springs from ten thousand empty stomachs! Who now shall say that hunger is good sauce?
There were, besides meat troubles, minor grievances increasing every day. A plate of porridge was a thing of the past; and milk of course was an antediluvian quantity! All the tinned milk had been commandeered for the hospital. Nobody objected to the priority of that institution's claims; but it was complained that the quantity commandeered was excessive, unnecessarily large. Eggs were one and a penny each (each egg!), which sum few could afford to pay, and a number, whose economic souls revolted at it, declined to pay, through sheer respect for proportion. There was nothing to fall back on but "mealie-pap," an imitation porridge, made of fine white mealie meal; the very colour of if tired one; white stirabout, connoisseurs opined, was not a natural thing. There were scores who would not touch "mealie-pap" with a forty-foot spoon. But they changed in time; "I am an acquired taste," cries Katisha; so is "mealie-pap." We acquired the taste for it, just as people do for tomatoes (where were they!) or a glass of vinegar and water. This hew porridge was not new to the natives; they dissipated on it three times a day, and were satisfied so long as they had sugar to make it doubly fattening. It was all so unlike the piping times of peace! Sunday was now a bore, productive chiefly of ennui. On Monday one could at least scour the town in search of something to eat; and many a coolie shop was invaded by bluffers, dressed in the "little brief authority" of a Town Guard's hat, who endeavoured to bully the coolie into unearthing hidden stores. But to no avail; the coolie was not to be frightened, nor even excited, by hat or pugaree. His stock of good things had indeed been reduced to lozenges, sugar-sticks, and other dental troubles.
Nothing startling was expected on Monday; but we were disappointed. The noise sounded like the roar of thunder; we had heard similar sounds emanate from Modder River; but these were undoubtedly louder and nearer. It soon became evident that they could not be thunder-claps; they were too continuous and unceasing. We listened for six hours to the incessant booming of British artillery—the finest in the world! What else could it be! Would there be a Boer left, we asked ourselves, would one survive to depict the carnage around him. The guns in action must have numbered forty or fifty. Soon a great rush was made for the debris heaps on the Reservoir side—whence, through a glass, the shells could be seen bursting in rapid succession at Spytfontein. Strong though the position admittedly was, its defenders could never resist a cannonade so awful. It was the famous, disastrous battle of Magersfontein that was in progress. But of that we then knew nothing. We knew not that hundreds of the Highland Brigade lay dead, nor that while Kimberley was brimming over with enthusiasm at the prospect of immediate freedom, dismay was rampant everywhere else. There we were, twenty miles from the scene of slaughter, looking on, not only ignorant of the truth, but entirely mistaken in our assumption that it was what we wished it to be.
The sight of what appeared to be a balloon (and we soon discovered that it was nothing else) excited tremendous interest. It ascended and descended repeatedly during the battle, apparently for the purpose of locating the enemy and directing the fire of Methuen's guns. We had been inundated with narratives of the extraordinary strength of the positions into which Boer ingenuity had converted the kopjes of Magersfontein. No further attention was paid to these tales, for lyddite was a terrible thing—that could move kopjes. It was but a matter of hours until the Column would be with us, unless, indeed, it paused for rest. The next day, we felt, would end the Siege of Kimberley, and bring again into vogue good dinners, buttered bread, and—something to drink.
When firing ceased at length, the Beaconsfield Town Guard determined to make a noise on their own account. The easiest way to do it was to sound the alarm; and they did sound it, with right good will. They had observed a large party of the enemy clearing out of Alexandersfontein, and were possessed of an hallucination that it portended an attack on Beaconsfield. These wolf-cries, however, were venial faults; they denoted watchfulness; we were not disposed to take umbrage at small things; it was a day of victory. No suspicion of the truth flashed through our minds to upset our comfortable conclusions. Our ignorance was bliss; the folly of wisdom was to manifest itself all too soon.
The Advertiser had news at last—authentic news and fresh; and forth from Stockdale Street was launched a three-penny "Special," to tell of the balloon "we" had seen and of the cannon "we" had heard. That was all. We put down our tickeys without a murmur. In the fulness of our hearts we said the paper had to live. The revenue from its advertising columns was a cypher, since there was so little to advertise about, and so little need to advertise anything that was about. The "ads." had fallen off only in the sense that they were no longer paid for. They were still printed (to fill up space); and very annoying reading they made. Before, there was some truth in them; now, there was none. How we sighed for the times of extreme individualism.