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one man with whom, through all the long three months to come, I could sit down to a tête-à-tête certain that I should learn something from his conversation.

In the centre of the little town, which consisted of some fifty tinroofed - some tin altogether houses, was a substantial stone building, the court-house, Landdrost's office, and jail. The windows had been pulled out, the doors unhung, and in their place bags piled up full of earth, small holes being left for the rifles. Bustling in and about this were numbers of soldiers in shirt-sleeves carrying in more bags, planks, barrels for water-supply, provisions, ammunition, and other things necessary in a siege. A little further off was a second house, also in the same state, with more soldiers hurrying about; and away again on the road towards Heidelberg was the hotel, now doing a limited business on its own account, while more soldiers were doing the same work by it as had been done to the other houses. Taking the Landdrost aside, I found that he had heard some indefinite rumours of the disaster to the 94th; and these coming from another source than that from which my information had come, I got him to show me into the telegraph office to tell the tale below.

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taking down the words as they unwound themselves on the endless roll of paper coming from it. The wire had been cut daily, and it was all but hopeless to try to send a message, and I was lucky to find the line open. Later on in the day I went in again and received the answer to mine of the morning, the last I was destined to get, and one I was just too late to reply to, the line failing at that instant. Next day I sent down it, and found it cut in twenty places, the wire chopped into short lengths a yard long, the poles thrown down by threes and fours.

The message with its news, the last we heard for ninety-two days, was: "Your action approved by General; artillery will push on to Newcastle, but not a man is to proceed beyond that station without special orders from Headquarters." So we knew that a concentration of troops at the frontier town was in progress. The next message I received three months after the first, by hand from Newcastle, where it had lain ever since its arrival shortly after the despatch of the other, its cheering words unheard by us till the hand that wrote it lay with the rest under the turf of the Drakensberg. The message said

"Dec. 24th.-General highly approves of your prompt action, and hopes you will give a good account of Boers if attacked. Send messenger to Boer camp to ask after wounded and offer services of a surgeon, and try to get them sent in to our lines." Cheering words to us poor beleaguered ones they would have been, and breathing the well-loved spirit of him who sent them in every line. Murray, who had driven me, was starting back. He was safe enough, well known on the road, and without a hated redcoat as a passenger, was sure to get through. So I got into a small

back room in the hotel and scribbled off a few hasty lines to the dear ones at home-the last they too would get throughout weary months of waiting.

It was a thought that came up often enough during that time, that if we shut-up ones had the danger and the bullets for our share, those at home had far worse-the anxiety of dead silence about those they loved, the dread of what tidings the news might bring when it came; and, as usual in the world, the stronger had the less to bear.

The letter written, I drove up to the fort a mile away, on rising ground to the south of the town and found things quieter there. The fort or laager, as it was then called-was a low earthwork with a ditch round it, at one part deep, for the rest only a mere scratch. Through the centre ran a thick wall, with a tin roof sloping on one side the place forming an open shed, once a stable. Every where the earthen parapets had fallen down, leaving great breaches which had been partially filled in with mealiebags of mould; piles of stones fallen from the walls lay about. Inside all was dirt and muddle. It had been used since construction as a commissariat store, and was littered with boxes, bags, tents, and all kinds of stores, in admirable confusion. Tents, pitched anyhow, tripped you up with their ropes; a troop of curs loafed about on the look-out for garbage; and a pony was picketed to a tent-peg, and munched away contentedly in a circle of filth, which showed that the spot had been his stable for some time past.

These were matters which, as the siege went on, mended themselves. Horses could not pass the entrance if they had wished it-it was too narrow. Dogs were rigidly excluded: a somewhat dilapidated old soldier, standing at the gate, with

such terrible orders against the whole canine race, that one day, on a sneaking cur getting past him, he was seen, capless and breathless, pursuing the brute through the fort, with whirling stick, and yells almost Red Indian in their ferocity, till both he and the cur fell into the ditch outside, and had to be picked out carefully.

The fort inspected, we did a bit of the old Zulu game, and "manned the laager," to show the men their places-a game in which our previous experience, when marching on Ulundi, stood in good stead. Every man got round the walls as if by nature born to a loophole, and the array of glittering points sticking out gave our laager a most formidable look when seen from an attacking point of view. One thing had struck me on arrival-that the town was practically open to any one who liked to come in and inspect our defences,-one avowed rebel having already been shown round the court-house, and a second driving up as near as he dared to the laager to look at a place which he was the first to fire at a few days later. To put an end to this inquisitiveness, I established a strong party to stop every person arriving or going out, with orders to examine them, and, if necessary, to confine them, till I was communicated with; and I found the plan work admirably. One small man, some five feet in stature, a lawyer's agent, held in great esteem by the Boers as one of their best advocates, was among the first to be arrested when attempting to leave, being then and there put under a sentry. This same prisoner afterwards became one of my leading volunteers, and towards the end acted as the storekeeper when I seized all the provisions in the town and put the inhabitants on a reduced scale of rations.

Now he was inclined to bluster;

and after several attempts to get at me, he succeeded, and asked me what I meant by arresting him. I assured him that I did not want to bother him more than I was obliged; but just now all who were not for me were against me; and I ended by advising him to keep quiet and not bother me; "for," I added, "I seem a very quiet man, but I can be very nasty if I like; and if I find you bother me I might shoot you!" My manner was horribly cool; but he saw that I meant it, and went off under escort to see his wife. A little later he returned and asked me if he took the oath of allegiance and joined the volunteers should he be free again. He was walked off to the Landdrost, who administered the oath on the spot, was drafted into the volunteers, and shouldered his rifle throughout the siege as well as any other man. He was, moreover, a fisherman, and often sent me some excellent fish a treat indeed in a beleaguered town so there are worse ways of getting round a man than by offering to shoot him.

After this I held a meeting of the inhabitants, when the Landdrost read the last telegram from Sir G. Colley, saying that relief would come on 20th January, up to which date he expected us to be able to hold out; and I made some mild speeches to the effect that they must help to defend themselves, calling on them to come forward as volunteers, foot or horse, letting them choose their own officers, arming and drilling them myself. And so was formed the nucleus of our volunteer corps, which numbered seventy-five men, and did excellent service, as will be seen hereafter.

A committee to provide for the safety of the women and children was formed, of which I was president; and after some deliberation we picked out a large wool-store in

the centre of the town, blocked up the windows with mealie-bags, and put all women and children into it of nights under care of the parson-an arrangement the fair creatures stuck to for a limited time, eventually leaving it for their houses, preferring to risk a stray bullet to encountering the horrors of its mixed population, amongst which might be counted as not the least numerous those insects from which it came to be known as "The Flea Laager."

By this time it was growing dark, and we sat down to a wretched dinner of bad beef and dry bread, washed down by a case of champagne given us by a considerate storekeeper for the occasion.

The mess-room was a little stone cottage, very rough, much too small for our party, and extremely dirty. Two barrack-tables held the cracked plates and dishes we fed from; boxes for seats were more plentiful than chairs; our food came through a hole in the wall; our wine-cellar was a second room opening from our first, its principal occupants a litter of nine puppies who sucked and snored most vigorously; our servants, soldiers somewhat exhilarated, for it was Christmas Eve; our conversation, the expected attack and our means of meeting it.

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We had got half-way through the tough beef when a in to say the Dutch were on us, and the men in the laager to resist them; so we had to run up too, finding the tents struck and the men standing to their loopholes. But no sign of the Dutch came out. One rather credulous youth declared he heard revolvers going off in town, but they turned out to have been crackers let off by boys in honour of the day-it was Christmas Eve-and magnified by a slightly heated imagination into firearms. So we sloped back to

our dinner, the beef still standing in a pool of stagnant fat, once gravy, and were glad to wash down our first scare with the champagne, getting off to our tents soon after. And that was how we spent our Christmas Eve.

Our garrison consisted of 350 men-three companies 94th and one 58th Regiments. These, with the exception of a single company of the 94th, had but just arrived under circumstances of considerable difficulty, always in danger of an attack, when the disaster of Bronker's Spruit might have been repeated. The 94th were met at the border by a brother of Joubert's, an undersized man with dirty nails, who delivered a letter to the officer in command, in which he was ordered to halt under peril of an attack. The 58th received a similar letter, amusing enough to copy here. ran as follows:

It

"SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC, HEIDELBERG, December 20, 1880.

"To the Commander-in-chief of her Majesty's troops on the

road to Pretoria.

"SIR,-We have the honour to inform you that the Government of the South African Republic have taken up their residence at Heidelberg.

"That a diplomatic commissioner has been sent by them with despatches to his Excellency Sir W. Owen Lanyon.

"That until the arrival of his Excellency's answer we do not know whether we are in a state of war or not.

"That consequently we cannot allow any movement of troops in our country from your side, and wish you to stop where you are.

"We not being in war with her Majesty the Queen, nor with the people of England, who we are sure to be on our side if they were acquainted with the position, but only recovering the independence of our country, we do not wish to take to arms, and therefore inform you that any movement of troops from your side will be taken by us as a declaration of war, the responsibility whereof we put on your

shoulders, as we will know what we will have to do. We are, sir, your obedient servants,

"P. KRUGER.

H. PRETORIUS.
P. J. JOUBERT.

" А. Вок, Secretary to the South African Government."

Neither of these orders was obeyed, the troops, of course, hurrying on, and arriving safely at Standerton by a forced march. I had thus about 300 effective men, eleven of them officers, and a population of 450 civilians, a large proportion blacks, besides women and children.

Supplies were my first thought: cattle, fortunately, were plentiful, biscuit ample for present wants, and a good supply of lime-juice made me independent of vegetables. The town, too, appeared fairly stocked, although the Dutch had lately made a practice of taking away flour to a large extent. Gunpowder had entirely gone the same way, one storekeeper having sold six barrels within a few months, while another gave 1000 rounds of Westley-Richards cartridges to a Boer, the leader of one of the attacks on Standerton, and avowedly disaffected, that being the quantity he was allowed to purchase each year, the Landdrost giving him the "permit" within a few days of the proclamation of the Republic-so well were matters managed by the Government at Pretoria.

In the morning I called the men together and told them the tale of the massacre of their regiment, interrupted by low remarks, muttered comments, and at the mention of the officers who had fallen, by still louder ones. When I came to the colonel's reported death, the whole broke out into a strange chorus of ejaculations, almost sobs from many, followed by a cry for revenge absolutely savage in its intensity. At the tale of the white flag, and the

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treachery that came close on its display, with my warning against its repetition, a whisper went round like wildfire; the words I told them seemed like an order, and white flags just then would have fared badly at the hands of those sternfaced men round me clutching their rifles. Later on came an instance of the disrepute into which these flags had fallen. A party of scouts rode into camp with a herd of cattle and goats which they had captured. They were in charge of a Dutchman and two natives,' said the sergeant who brought them in; "and when he saw us he waved his flag, a white one, and we let drive at him; and didn't he go off quickly! though we didn't hit him, more's the pity." The Dutchman turned out to be a loyal native who affected European clothes, and was the court interpreter, and who came on under his white flag, nothing doubting, when he was greeted with a volley, and cleared out faster than he came. And towards the close of the siege, when the white flag with news of the first armistice came down the opposite hill, the marksman on duty came to report it as usual, saluting and asking in the most matter-of-fact way, "Shall I take him now, sir, or wait till he comes nearer ?"

It never entered his head that anything but a volley was the proper reception for the flag; and as I went down the line of men behind the shelters towards the drift to which the flag was coming, I found every man with his sight up and his rifle pointed in readiness to fire; and they seemed to think me a queer fellow to tell them what these flags had done to us, and then to stop them giving it back again. That day came on one of the thunderstorms of the country, bad enough in peace time; now, with the Boer scouts riding about outside, and all the buzz of

preparation going on within, peculiarly awful. First increasing darkness till the tents were scarcely visible, and the men had to strike off work; then a flash, and a roll of thunder coming nearer; a second flash more blinding than before, followed at a shorter interval by a louder roll, the air still as death; we remained in great expectancy, no breath, no sound, except the crashes, culminating in one that shook one's very frame, and made us turn round involuntarily to see which of us were hit. Close by two horses lay stone-dead, without a mark upon them; a man near the tent we sat in, stretched out, fortunately only stunned; and a corporal inside the tent beside him grinning, half in terror and a little bit in sheer amusement, with a big hole burnt in his coat-sleeve, still smoking. We were lucky to escape so easily. The strange thing in these storms is that they always wind up with one big crash. After that the thunder rolls and rumbles quietly away as if in a hurry to be off after doing the worst it can do.

As we sat round our poor table that evening, getting through a repetition of yesterday's dinner, we talked of home a bit and of the merry evenings that our friends were passing that Christmas night; yet, as we came to know afterwards, they were not so merry in many homes, the telegram telling our sad news having arrived that same Christmas-day. Then we did not know that, and we munched our tough beef, and washed it down with the champagne left from yesterday's present, and thought of them at home, and wished that we were with them.

That night, at ten o'clock, I was roused by a mysterious man, who confided in a whisper that some of the townspeople had subscribed to buy some dynamite; that it could be got at a store forty miles off; and

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