'Not quite all. Besides, chances or no chances, we must go down fighting.'
'You preach a strange gospel of peace!'
'And you English,' he rejoined, 'have strange ideas of liberty.'
So we parted, without more words; and I rode on my way into the town. Heilbron had one memory for me, and it was one which was now to be revived. In the hotel--a regular country inn--I found various British subjects who had been assisting the Boer ambulances--possibly with rifles. It is not my purpose to discuss here the propriety of their conduct. They had been placed in situations which do not come to men in quiet times, and for the rest they were mean-spirited creatures.
While the Republican cause seemed triumphant they had worked for the Dutch, had doubtless spoken of 'damned rooineks,' and used other similar phrases; so soon as the Imperial arms predominated they had changed their note; had refused to go on commando in any capacity, proclaimed that Britons never should be slaves, and dared the crumbling organism of Federal government to do its worst.
We talked about the fighting in Natal which they had seen from the other side. The Acton Homes affair cropped up. You will remember that we of the irregular brigade plumed ourselves immensely on this ambuscading of the Boers--the one undoubted score we ever made against them on the Tugela.
'Yes,' purred my renegades, 'you caught the damned Dutchmen fairly then. We were delighted, but of course we dared not show it.' (Pause.) 'That was where De Mentz was killed.'
De Mentz! The name recalled a vivid scene--the old field-cornet lying forward, grey and grim, in a pool of blood and a litter of empty cartridge cases, with his wife's letter clasped firmly in his stiffening fingers. He had 'gone down fighting;' had had no doubts what course to steer. I knew when I saw his face that he had thought the whole thing out. Now they told me that there had been no man in all Heilbron more bitterly intent on the war, and that his letter in the 'Volksstem,' calling on the Afrikanders to drive the English scum from the land, had produced a deep impression.
'Let them,' thus it ran, 'bring 50,000 men, or 80,000 men, or even'--it was a wild possibility--'100,000, yet we will overcome them.' But they brought more than 200,000, so all his calculations were disproved, and he himself was killed with the responsibility on his shoulders of leading his men into an ambush which, with ordinary precautions, might have been avoided. Such are war's revenges. His widow, a very poor woman, lived next door to the hotel, nursing her son who had been shot through the lungs during the same action. Let us hope he will recover, for he had a gallant sire.
CHAPTER XIII