In the afternoon a football match was played. The gate-money was handed over to the Widows' and Orphans' Fund. Our happy speculations on what happened at Magersfontein served a good purpose here in stimulating the generosity of the spectators. A team of our visitors (the Lancashire Regiment) lined up against the pick of the Citizen Soldiers. The game was well contested, but the superior discipline of the Colonel's lot told, and they won.
At break of day on Tuesday the Column's guns were at it again. This was disappointing, inasmuch as it led us to infer that some Boers were yet alive at Magersfontein. And our ardour was further damped by the De Beers directors who instead of formally dispersing until the next day, once more adjourned their meeting—sine die. What did it mean? A Special was shortly forthcoming and was bought up eagerly, while many eyes were being strained to catch a glimpse of Lord Methuen's legions in the distance. The Special gave us news of a fight, indeed; but not of the fight; it was Modder River over again. In fine, we were sold again, for the Modder River fight was—if not quite ancient history—as remote from our thoughts as the "famous victory" at Blenheim in ages past. Despatch riders had been coming and going, we knew all about the River battle, and after an interval of fifteen days an ambiguous "slip" was slipped upon a too confiding clientele! It was sharp practice; and its employment at a moment when suspense had thrown us off our guard was superb. We bristled with indignation, but the coup (as such) was splendid. We, the victims, were not entirely blameless; we had had ample experience of the risk attached to speculation in Specials. It was ever thus. An ancient number of the Cape Times would drop from the clouds, and for weeks the news it contained would be administered in homeopathic doses to the public at three pence per dose. It was good business. "Slip" was the appropriate appellation bestowed upon the Special. Sometimes two or three "Slips" would be issued on the same day. One would come out early, after which a huge blackboard, intimating in chalked capitals that "important news" was to appear in a later edition, would be carried round the town by two black boys. And though the news was never important, the enterprise was a success. To the smart sets the limited reading matter the "half sheet of notepaper" contained was a positive recommendation; and at afternoon (Natal) teas there was many a "Slip" between the cup and the lip.
Time passed; and still the Column came not. We felt disgusted rather than distressed; we were yet confident of the Column's invincibility. Various tit-bits of secondary interest were served out to humour us, and a startling rumour was put in circulation—a rumour round which clung no element of justification to soften the wrath it aroused.
A meeting composed of the Military authorities and a few leading civilians had been held some days before, and the subject of its deliberations had at length come to light. It was proposed and debated at this meeting that—when railway communication had been restored—all women, children, and non-combatants should be sent away to the coast! This would mean some twenty-seven thousand whites, together with natives, coolies, etc.—about forty thousand people. The idea behind all this was to make Kimberley a garrison town, to stock it well with provisions, and afterwards to allow the Boers—if they were so disposed—to re-mutilate the line to their hearts' content. The "Military Situation" would not admit of the employment of a host of men to guard it.
The scheme was immediately howled down. The ladies, it need hardly be said, were well in the van of opposition. They foregathered in the streets, and with arms fixed resolutely akimbo denounced the contemplated outrage as a monstrous tyranny—enough to make them "turn Boer," indeed, as one lady luridly put it. Whither would they go? Would the "Military Situation" answer whither? There were women of mature years who, given a choice between hanging and a whirl day and night through the Karoo, would almost favour the suspension of the constitution! But apart from physical inconvenience, the idea of forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty as inhuman. Their protest was loud and dignified; and when the women are concerned in a public protest the men are—oh, so mere! And the men in khaki were no exception to the rule; they were cowed, with all their munitions of war. They had decided on no definite course of action; or said they had not—to save their face. Their plans were essentially tentative; and, besides, the railway train—an important factor—was not just yet able to carry far a scheme of compulsory migration.
Thursday came; but not so Methuen. It was allowed that the Noble Lord could hardly be expected to gauge accurately the violence of our hurry; nor to conceive, however noble his imagination, that our hens laid eggs at eighteen pence apiece. We got another glimpse of the balloon to cheer us, and were also edified in the course of the day with news of the Belmont battle. The Belmont battle was a stale story when the Modder River fight was fresh, and the latter was now in all conscience stale enough. Of Magersfontein, not a word. This reticence in regard to Magersfontein intensified our curiosity; it was the parent of a pessimism that was to thrive. Common sense and the dictates of reason would clamour for recognition. Between the struggle at Modder River and the publication of its result there had been no interval to speak of. The fight of Belmont had occasioned no departure from the exercise of the "new diplomacy." We had heard of the collision and of the victory at Graspan almost simultaneously. But we were not yet acquainted with the sequel to the clash at Magersfontein; it was a solemn secret. There was news that Cronje had decamped from Mafeking and was at Modder River with an augmented force; but this did not for the moment interest us. In his (Cronje's) alleged quarrels with the Free Staters we had no immediate concern. What they told us of his inglorious retreat from the north was not to the point; it was enough that he had been wafted south by an ill wind that might blow us no good luck. All these tit-bits made news in the abstract, but were foreign to the mystery surrounding what happened at Magersfontein. Something was wrong; but the policy of prolonging the suspense was not right. Every nook and cranny in the hospital were being held in readiness for the sick and wounded (presumably accompanying the Column), and a vague fear was entertained that all the nooks and crannies might be needed. Who could tell?
More news in the afternoon—the wrong sort again. A faded (pink) copy of the Cape Argus was mysteriously smuggled through. Not a line of it alluded to Magersfontein. A screw was loose somewhere; our distrust of the Military increased. Could it be, was it conceivable that Methuen had been worsted at Magersfontein? That indeed was a reasonable conclusion to draw from the reticence of our Rulers. But it was not strictly logical, and besides—we liked it not. We preferred to attribute the silence to a way they have in the army; to the Colonel, who did not take tea with our Editor (it was said)—for Special reasons. We sympathised with the boycott; but the conduct of the "sojers" tended to cause a reaction in the Editor's favour. Our paper would tell the truth and shame the devil if the Censor, who was also a "sojer," did not unblushingly forbid it. We were oddly ingenious at times when the monotony clamoured for variation.
But to return to the Argus. It was affecting in its puffery of the beefsteak pudding that ninepence purchased in Cape Town; and poignantly prolix in its conception of how Horatius held the bridge of Modder River some five-and-twenty years ago (sic). The Boers, we gathered, had been knocked about at Ladysmith, and Mr. Morley had sympathised with them in London. All this would have been entertaining, even exciting, before Magersfontein; but after? it annoyed us.
On Saturday a sort of "boiling oil" turn was given by the rumour-monger. We heard wild stories concerning the annihilation of the British army. The air was red with blood. No importance was attached to these ghastly theories—they were nothing more—but their effects were depressing; they threw an atmosphere of gloom over the city, which was reflected in a thousand faces. What was once a "frigid falsehood" had been modified to mean a "gross exaggeration." This connoted a slight departure from sentiment, a tendency to reason, to think more dispassionately. Anxious as we were to get again in touch with the world and what it could offer to eat, we could no longer evade the sorrowful conclusion that siege figures, like every other, make four of two and two.
In the distance the cannon kept booming intermittently; nothing but boom. Our besiegers' guns were being used to check the advance of Methuen. There remained only one piece of ordnance, nicknamed "Old Susannah," to keep Kimberley in order. The Premier Mine was the recipient of some lumps of love from this amorous gipsy; but nobody was smitten by her charms.