FRAGMENTS FROM GERMAN EAST.
BY A SOLDIER’S WIFE.
A still lagoon of veld, mile upon mile. Nowhere in the world, I should suppose, does the tide of battle ebb and flow so almost imperceptibly. Sometimes, only in echo, we hear the thunder of the overwhelming seas—sometimes, just now and then, the ripple at our feet breaks in a little cloud of spray and for a moment dims the eyes that are used to vast spaces, with sudden yearning for an island home beneath the far horizon, and perhaps hands tremble a little in tearing the wrapper from the daily newspaper.
But enough for us, so far, has been our all unequal struggle with Nature, who turns our skies to steel and with fierce winds scatters the hovering clouds, while the young crops shrivel and the watersprings are dry and the eyes of the beasts wait upon us who can give them no meat in due season.
A Kaffir boy comes round one evening and sings a doggerel he has fashioned from an old nigger melody, and others join in the foolish refrain:
‘I come to Basutoland,
I come through lands and sea,
I kill five thousand Germans,
With my banjo on my knee.’