Smaldeel is not an attractive place. We were dumped down in the most unattractive part of it! Imagine a four-roomed house built of wood and corrugated iron, one window per room and each one of them nailed down, as it had been for a long time. Imagine in one of these rooms Boer lumber—old clothes, empties, forgotten bedding; remember the boarded window, call for a glass of brandy, and think with sympathy of us poor sinners condemned to such a place for a livelong night.
What a ghastly night it was! They passed us in a small kettleful of coffee that ran to about half a mug per man. We were dreadfully thirsty, but the only water was a single water-bottleful between the crowd of us—they said there was no more available. For solids we had the remains of the rusks. On this slender nourishment we had to recoup our jaded bodies and revive our flagging spirits. Needless to say, in the morning we looked and felt but sorry representatives of Queen and country. At daylight we were cleared out of that room, the taste of which will remain with me until the day I die. The effect on us of the cold clean air outside was indescribable. We blew ourselves out with it like pouter pigeons, and nearly dropped down from shock to the system. We breathed the good air till we forgot to be hungry, thirsty, or even ashamed of our lamentable plight. The surging of it through our corrupted lungs was better than—but that would be departing from the plain unvarnished style with which the soldier man is allowed to embellish his narrative in lieu of literary grace.
We were popped into a waiting train the carriages of which for narrowness and hardness were like coffins without the compensating immunity from pain and trouble so characteristic of the ordinary coffin. That we might fit in easily they gave us nothing to eat or drink, and when the train started we rattled about our compartment like dried peas in a drum. To see us off the station was crowded with all sorts and conditions of the human race. It was astonishing to realise that the throat of man was so constituted that it could be used to emit sounds which were nothing like anything we had ever heard before. I heard a hundred High Court chaprassies hold the concert in which their champion sang a solo in so raucous a voice that it caused the great crack which now ornaments the Calcutta High Court building. But it was nothing to Smaldeel station! Take a Boer who has lived on the high veldt of the Transvaal with his next-door neighbour four miles off, and bring him into a space where his conversation has to carry for feet instead of miles, and you are overwhelmed by his voice.
Three hundred of that sort endeavoured to hold converse with us, wanting to know where we had come from, why we had come, and what we thought of our chances in the hereafter—no Boer thinks anybody who has taken up arms against the Lord’s anointed people has a million-to-one chance of salvation. We told them as much as we could, some of it with regard to the truth, but mostly without. They plainly said we were liars when we informed them we came from India. They knew all about Indian coolies, so weren’t to be taken in. They were of opinion that several of us who were clean-shaven were mere children, and deplored the sinfulness of a Government that could send such lambs to the slaughter. The clean-shaven ones cordially concurred, and ventured to hope the Boer Government would do the right thing and ship the little pets straight away to their mammas. That was another story, said they—one that Oom Paul would know how to deal equitably with. Pretoria! Pretoria! It was always Pretoria, as if that ghastly little village was the hub of the universe.
I may be allowed here to point out that the Dutch pronunciation of the name of the late President of the Transvaal differs slightly from that commonly used in India. Of course, our Indian way is the soundest, but it may give this feeble narrative a touch of realism to have included the fact that in South Africa ‘Kruger’ is pronounced ‘Cree-yer,’ with the accent on the ‘Cree.’ ‘Paul’ is pronounced like ‘towel,’ with a ‘p’ instead of a ‘t.’ The Burgher General Botha, in his native land, is called ‘Beau-ta,’ both syllables of equal value and spoken rather quickly—like our Indian word ‘lotah,’ with which word, in fact, ‘Botha’ rhymes. Many other words appertaining to South Africa are pronounced not at all in the way that we have accepted as fit and proper. Swears, however, find Boer and Briton unanimous both in pronunciation and frequency of use.
When we had left the babel of Smaldeel far behind we settled down to a critical examination of the country we were spinning through. We had to occupy ourselves with a subject of absorbing interest so as to divert our minds from dwelling on the vacuity of that part of our anatomies which it is not considered polite to mention out of a church or a nursery. But in the matter of country—we found it consoling to see nothing but rolling downs with never a kopje in sight, right or left, nearly all the way through the northern part of the Free State. Surely Bobs and his army would waltz along such easy going and speedily rescue us from the clutches of the wicked Boer! So far as Kroonstad there was nothing to stop the British. There a river forming a deep spruit meandered by, and would certainly give trouble were our troops to confine themselves to a frontal attack. But by this time the uses of flanking movements had been thoroughly grasped by our army, and it could only be a question of a day or two for our fellows to slip up on either side and squeeze the enemy out.
Steaming into Kroonstad it was comforting to think what a favourable country the British army would have to operate in, but the feeling was as naught compared with that aroused in us when we heard we were to be fed at Kroonstad. Psychologists evolve wonderful things from the mind of the intellectual man. But let them starve him. Then see how his inner consciousness changes its base of operations. Thoughts emanating from the brain lack the vigour and inventiveness of those prompted by the working of the more humble organ. The war in South Africa proves this conclusively. Wherever our troops and Generals have been well fed the tendency has been to make a mull of things. But they have never been starved without doing grand work: vide the defence of Ladysmith, the relief of Kimberley, the brilliant marches of Lord Roberts’s army, where for days on end whole divisions had nothing but a biscuit or two to crunch per man.
We rushed into Kroonstad station with the familiar feeling of dashing importance that everybody knows about who travels by rail. We pulled up with the old jerk, only more so, that we so joyously used to anticipate when children. We sniffed the refreshment-room, caught a glimpse of the coloured papers in the bookstall, and everything seemed just the same as in old England—as if we were only waking up to pleasant reality after a horrid dream. But when we tried to get out the grimness of the truth was brought home to us: loaded rifles barred our way.
However, the grub came, and our sorrows were forgotten in the pleasure of exercising our fast stiffening jaws. It was great sandwiches of bully beef, no butter, no trimmings, but mighty good, and bowls of steaming coffee. There was a fair whack for each man, and none of us thought of giving half to the poor or saving up any for a rainy day. Every man ate up all he got and never emitted a sound, other than that of mastication, until the grunt of interrogation which denoted finished, and was there any more? There wasn’t, and we got no more that day, barring what we bought and paid for at extortionate rates.
At any game in the world the Briton can beat the Boer if the conditions are such that the Briton has any chance at all. This may seem a reckless statement in view of the fact that 16,000 Boers are still holding the field against ten times their number. But I make it with a knowledge of the circumstances, and am willing to demonstrate the truth of my statement to any unbeliever who has the pluck to call on me expressing his doubt. At any rate, by night time, when we crossed the Vaal River and had reached Vereeniging, the first station in the Transvaal, we had so ‘kidded’ our guards into a belief in our desire to reach Pretoria that they trusted us on to the platform, from which we gravitated into the refreshment-bar with a celerity that would have astonished Sir Isaac Newton. We found it crowded with people who didn’t seem to think we were particularly remarkable—at any rate, they did not offer us drinks: these we had to pay for at the rate of 2s. a peg—cheap enough, considering everything. Hard-boiled eggs 6d. each, sandwiches 1s., cigars none under 1s. The last-named we could not run to, so set about looking for pipes and ’bacca. Boer tobacco is sold in glazed paper bags, about the size of 14 lb. of sugar, for 1s. a time. You can use it either for smoking or as bedding for horses and cattle—they won’t eat it. Pipes like those you get at home for 4½d. were half a crown, so there is no need to dissert on the fiscal methods of the Boer: there’s no free trade about him. He represents McKinley at about two stone in the matter of Protection. I coveted a pipe for 3s. 6d. and told the barman I was very sorry I only had 2s. 6d., and wouldn’t he give it to a poor broken-hearted prisoner at a reduction? It was true about the 2s. 6d., for I was afraid to produce a sovereign lest some of them should take a fancy to it, as they had done to so many of our little valuables. The beast said he’d see me damned first, and I called him something in Hindustani which attracted more attention than I liked, when I felt a hand twitching my tunic and saw a little Jew man winking portentously. I put my hand down, and he slipped a coin into it—a shilling it was, to enable me buy the pipe. This is one of the few sporting things I have seen done in the Transvaal, and it was not a Boer who did it. I don’t think Boers understand sport. They never do anything until they have got six to four the best of their neighbour. Every Boer who plays billiards carries a bit of soap, and the few that are not afraid to play football are adepts at tripping. They have stopped playing cards entirely, for they invariably found after a few hands were dealt in a game that nothing but the rags of the pack remained to be played with, all the good cards having gone up the sleeves of the players.